mshriver's Aspen White Grocery Getter

[mshriver]

Hi Stanceworks. Ive been a member for a while but have not been very active until recently. Ive been reading so many build threads and am in awe of the work many of you are doing. I thought I would share my car with you. Although I certainly wouldnt consider it stanced yet, some wide wheels are in store for the future.

Here is my baby. It is a 97 Impreza outback sport, or at least it was at one time. Right now its more like a sti wagon wannabe with a slowpoke powerplant (for the moment).

The story:
This car is my first car. It is a 1997 subaru impreza outback sport. I purchased it with a lot of hard earned money when I was 15 in September of 2004 for $5900 with 119K on the odo. It spent the first couple of years of its life getting the crap beat out of it by me and my horrible paper route. All of my income came from my paper route which was very rural and looking back I realize I should never have used a awd manual car with the 150+ stops/starts ever single day. All of this abuse went through a lot of mainainance and is the reason I probably could afford a new sti with all the money I have in my car and the reason I will probably never sell it.

It has gone through many changes. It reached its peak of what I consider version 1.0 in summer of 2008. After that it slowly deteriorated until I had the means to breathe new life into the car. I did what I consider a restoration from summer 2010 - spring 2011 in my free time from college and working a summer internship. I will probably not list all of the details in my journal on the restoration but you can see every single detail here: http://www.rs25.com/forums/f24/t1386...sto-wagon.html

It is now a completely different looking car (version 2.0). I have recently graduated college and am an IT change management analyst. I have big plans for the car and it will continue to be a project for a long long time. Everything done to it so far has been on a high school or college budget so look for good things in the future of this journal.

[mshriver]

Modifications

Exterior:
Fresh paint (subaru aspen white)
Shaved side moldings, hatch key-hole, antenna hole, roof moldings
Version 5/6 front bumper and replica lip
Version 3/4 euro/jdm rear bumper with spats
RS sideskirts
JDM sti roof rails
Version 6 sti grill
replica sti wagon upper and lower spoiler
JDM tail lights
Black housing headlights, turn signals, etc
35% tint

Engine / Drivetrain:
ej25 engine swap from a 98 2.5 RS
Legacy GT tranny
OBX intake
Full exhaust - Borla headers, custom headerback, magnaflow muffler
ACT LW flywheel and street clutch
Kartboy Short Shifter

Suspension / Handling / wheels
BC BR series coilovers
Cusco Rear swaybar
Adjustible rear lateral links
Whiteline roll center adjuster kit
17x7.5 Rota SDR wheels on 215/40 yokahama parada tires

Interior
Customer leather interior
Plaid headliner and pillars

Misc.
Hella Supertone Horns with scoobymod mount
Wolf whistle horn for the ladies ( they either love it or flick me off)

[mshriver]

Version 1.0 and a slight history

Here is the absolutely oldest picture I could find of the car (sometime in 2005)


Yes at one point I did manage to wreck the car into a muddy bank (the reason everything doesnt line up perfect now :bonk
Before

After


Sometime in here I started autocrossing:
2006 H stock impreza


2007 street mod impreza




2007 - Summer of 2008 was the peak of version 1.0... I was a senior in high school, thought i was tough shit, and had some mods done to my car.
At this point it had an ej25 swap, some lowering springs, I had shaved my roof and added a sti top spoiler. It really isnt anything special looking back on it but I thought it was cool.

Me and a buddy of mine



Winter 2008 / 09.... I would have been a freshman in college. I rocked some neon pink wheels for winter, and also got my first set of winter tires. I will never be without a subaru with winter tires for the rest of my days. I had recently installed my 2nd ej25 due to the first one blowing a headgasket. I thought I did everything right by replacing the gaskets on the new one before installing it, but little did I know they would only last a year themselves due to me not getting oem subaru ones.



Jan. 09 I got fed up with the shitty stock obs interior (zebra on crack I call it) and bought a set of custom leather seats that had been in an rs, and custom fabbed the rears to work in the wagon.



Fall / Winter 09
Sometime around here I blew that hg I recently mentioned. I finally got it right on the third try. All new oem subaru hgs and the heads resurfaced. I pretty much considered my car to be a beater at this point. I just wanted it to make it through college, and didnt really feel the same as I had in the past about the car. I did however give it my favorite winter mode setup.
(you can sort of tell its going down hill here from the summer before)



I did decide to do one modification here that stems from the few VW's I have owned in addition to my suby.
Interior:
All custom plaid doorcards, headliner, and wrapped pillars




I also had lots of fun in the snow this year.... Not worrying about paint chips on my bumper, and pretty much considering the car nothing but a snow toy to beat up at this point, I beat the snot out of it:
[ame=http://www.vimeo.com/10452667]suby in snow on Vimeo[/ame]


But then the inevitable happened.... I walked by my car in the garage one day, tripped on something and bumped into the passenger side rear quarter panel. When I looked down, a hunk of paint that had been all that was holding my rear quarter together was laying on the floor. I looked at the giant brown rust hole that now stuck out like a sore thumb on the rear of the car. It was time to either breathe new life into the suby or watch it slowly die of cancer....

[mshriver]

Restoration

I have a lengthly restoration thread that can be found here: http://www.rs25.com/forums/f24/t1386...sto-wagon.html it is 19 pages long and has over 14,000 views So I will try to keep this part short and sweet. It is however, a very important part of this cars history

Spring 2010..... Junior in college, had a nice $18/hr internship lined up for the summer, felt pretty rich and ready to start buying things for the suby again. In my mind this thing would be a professionally painted, fire breathing, sti monster wagon before I went back to school in the fall. Yeah right! :mamoru:

I do regret not getting good pics of the rust before we started chopping. But it really did make me sick, not something I wanted to document.

As it was before teardown:


And it begins: (ill let the pictures do the talking)



New problem :bonk:







I drove it like this for a little while



Right about here I got an estimate of $3g to paint my car..... Needless to say, I was back in school, unemployed and SOL.


Sept 2010.
I decided to sell my VW that I was very fond of to fund the suby project. And I picked up "Rusty" the beater to get me around
SOLD

Bought

Then painted it for $30


Cusco Zero 2e coilovers installed.... I didnt like the ride and eventually got rid of these:



Got myself some adjustible lateral links to try to fix some camber issues (which were a huge pain due to my rust bucket of a car)



Jan 2011
I paid a local guy who does paint on the side to finish sanding the body and primer it for $300.... Biggest mistake I made of the project because we pretty much had to sand it all the way back down again. But hey, at least I didnt have to sand all those chips out of the bumper myself.


Poor Rusty.... He was getting some serious winter abuse


Me and my buddy finally got some time to get started painting ( I had decided an amature paint job for just the cost of materials would do me over a $3g professional one)





Feb. 2010 - The actual car gets painted



And I pick up Rusty's replacement:

New and improved rust free Rusty had a bad heart. So I sacrificed Rusty's reliable 2.2L heart to his cancerless younger replacement. (all in one night) The origional rusty is later parted and scrapped.



getting there

wings and skirts




and now we have........

[mshriver]

Version 2.0 aka Wookie

** If you are confused by wookie, just think of a subaru's exhaust note and you might get it







and hence the name of this thread..... I have an Illest Grocery Getter

[mshriver]

What I am working on now...

The engine swap


My winter project is to swap the engine, clean up and paint the engine bay, and upgrade the brakes to handle the new power.

Im going with a wrx hybrid swap (poorman's sti swap). Its going to look like this:
ej257 (stock sti) block
ej20 (stock 2.0 wrx) heads, intake mani, wiring, etc,
vf43 turbo (newer stock sti)
sti injectors
sti top mount intercooler
Goodies such as full exhaust, intake, ported IM, TGV deletes, and a cobb protune

And since I have been mentioning my daily drivers up to this point, here is my current one:

I traded the silver wagon seen above plus a little cash for this one.

[hinrichs]

looking good, i think you were along with the kid that bought my cabby

[mshriver]

Yep that was me... Your place was actually the first trip I took in my car after it was painted. My friend has since fixed up the cabby and then totaled it. He turned into a "drifter", bought a gross looking 240 and I beleive just traded the cabby for some cheap jetta. Hopefully its new owner is fixing the cabby back up.

[mshriver]

Some updates. I took the heads and oil pan off my junk 2.0 block. This is my first tear down of something I plan on reusing so I meticulously labled everything and took my time. Also took the oil pan off and found lots of bearing junk in there as I assumed I would.

I got some parts I needed and just ordered some more today. I got some DW 565 injectors off a seller on Nasioc, ordered a Walbro fuel pump and install kit, Tomei timing belt guide, and Cometic Headgaskets. Today I ordered a Gates timing belt kit, oem oil pump, oem oil cooler, valve cover reseal kit, and a Perrin crank pulley.

Next step is taking the heads and ej257 block to the machine shop to get everything cleaned and checked. Going to let them clean my valve covers and oil pan too while Im at it.