My built, widened and bagged 06 WRX Wagon

[stray]

This thread has me on the fence on whether I should save up for an EF Civic or a Subie for a project car.

Wonderful build, OP. Absolutely stunning.

[John@BagRiders]

Went out with my good friend Taylor last night as he snapped some pics of my hoopty

EDIT: I need to re-host them

[becausephilchow]

Photos don't work!

[anti.engineered]

I can't stand these cars but you've done a terrific job. Well done.

[fackinsteve]

Had a great look at this at Wolfsgart, seriously amazing

[John@BagRiders]

Photos don't work!

well, damn. haha, edited the post!

I can't stand these cars but you've done a terrific job. Well done.

thanks! i really appreciate that.

Had a great look at this at Wolfsgart, seriously amazing

i'm glad you like it! thank you!

well anyhow here's a super hipster instagram edit of my buddy Taylor's shot from a couple weeks back, then a few composition shots from his set along with a lot of me rambling about the strange, intimate details of my subaru haha



lot of stuff tucked out of sight on the firewall side of the reversed intake manifold. Underneath everything, I re-plumbed the OEM hard lines that connect the crank case to the valve covers (i think these are only on the 2.5L) since the OEM assembly was really inconveniently routed. That gave me room to re-plumb lots of stuff, I started with the PCV system. So there's a "Y" assembly from the factory with one large hose going to the turbo inlet and one small hose going to the intake manifold with a check valve in it to prevent pressurized air from entering the case case. I kept the one-way line plumbed as it was, but tee'd the breather portion into the valve cover breathers which go to the baffled catch can. the catch can has a drain line that I made out of PTC air line and fittings with a petcock valve mounted under the driver side rocker sill for a convenient drain. i did all that hosing with -8 black braided stuff and some "AN-look" hose clamp finishers at most visible connection points. I also mounted the boost control solenoid and MAP sensor down in here.

its kinda visible in the photo but since the pipe coming out of the turbo runs through this area, I was pretty liberal with my usage of heat shielding. Basically, I just shielded the shit out of everything haha.


i really love the wide body conversion, even though basically its only people that are real into subarus and know the different body styles really well that notice it haha. its basically the approach as converting an s4 to an rs4... or a regular 3 series to an m3. probably my favorite part is the rear bumper, which is a custom made "hyrbid" of the wagon bumper and sti bumper. The 05-07 Sti has the little quarter panel trim that you see on mine, the body line of which runs into the bumper cover. Unfortunately the sedan bumper is no where close to fitting on the rear end, whereas the front-end is an entirely bolt on ordeal. So, I had a local body shop (Gorillaz Garage, just down the road from our shop) fabricate the bumper using pieces from a donor STi bumper. The whole reason I did this was because after doing only the quarter panels, the body line over the rear arch was all weird, basically it had an obtuse corner/sharp edge where the bumper and quarter panel meet, not a nice clean arch. so doing this was to make a nice clean arch there. cool story huh!




i absolutely love my rotiform wheels, and running 17's on this car. i rebuilt them over the winter to be more aggressive, as i actually ordered them when i still had my 2.5i and wasn't sure how much room I'd gain with the wide body conversion. I re-lipped/barreled them and now they're 10" wide and +6/+12.

getting it to sit lip to fender involved modifying the wheel tubs, an axle notch, another notch for the control arm, as well as some extended ball joints. i'd love to one day have a custom hub made to correct the geometry but I don't think LIC makes them anymore and honestly I don't really want to spend more money on the car lol.


last year i focused on "the cockpit" and other interior bits. i got some corbeau reclineable seats which I really like and so does my almost wife (8 days!) so that's a plus. the steering wheel is an alcantara d-shaped wheel from Prova and its easily one of my favorite mods. I also really love my shift knob which is a Sneed4Speed "Billy Club" shifter. Kinda a side benefit of the sti 6spd is more shift knob options haha. basically as soon as I got the car years ago I had an upholstery shop do the a/b/c pillars and headliner in alcantara, and had some custom alcantara sunvisors made by overland designs who also did the shift/hand brake boot and arm rest thing.

all of the plastics are from the limited sti, and the gauges are from the jdm s204. the cluster is from a version 9 sti and I think the gauges are ProDrive.


i hope you guys liked my stories

[becausephilchow]

Love it so much!

[Fleetlin49]

Bro. Your car is beautiful, and I love the attention to detail!

[John@BagRiders]

Love it so much!

Bro. Your car is beautiful, and I love the attention to detail!

Thanks fellas!

So, I'm married now! My good friend Zak DePiero (@zakdepiero) snapped this awesome shot of my wife and I cruisin down from the ceremony site with my brother and best man at the wheel. He's not into cars but I think he liked being in the driver seat

[John@BagRiders]

Sorry it's been a while since I updated this thread, but I have been working on my WRX a bit!

Firstly, I'm testing out some new bags from Only Charged Dubs over in the UK: their "Bags by OCD". These are a nifty new product that threads directly onto many existing coilovers allowing certain enthusiasts a more convenient path to air ride. We picked up a set of BC BR Type "Extreme Low" coilovers to try these bags with on my WRX.

I've been asked this question a lot and want to make it very clear that I am super happy with my Air Lift Performance struts, and am solely testing this new suspension setup in order to form my own personal opinion about their performance. I like to have first-hand experience with the products we offer our customers, it's as simple as that

Here they are all assembled.


And installed, lookin' fly!


Also air ride related, I'm switching from e-Level to Air Lift Performance's newest 3H control system. I've had e-Level for almost 5 years now and it has served me well, but I have also experienced scenarios that should never happen (e.g., adjustments while cornering) despite having "perfect" height sensor travel ranges and an otherwise very careful and professional installation. Like I mentioned before, I also very much like to have first hand experience with our products so it was just time for me to move on to something newer. I'm very excited to start using the 3H once my car is back on the road come spring time!


I decided to rip out my entire air management and start fresh. I previously had dual 3 gallon tanks and dual 400c compressors. This setup was nice for car shows when I wanted to have a lot of air on hand to demonstrate with, but for daily use I felt like the dual 400c pumps were a little slow from 110-150psi given the volume they had to fill. So I'm switching up to a 24x6" (roughly 4 gallon) Seamless tank and an Air Zenith OB2 compressor. This setup will allow for a couple of up/down cycles before the pump kicks on, and the OB2 will fill from 110-150psi slightly faster than dual 400's would, and the lower volume will further reduce compressor run times. Overall, I think I'll be much happier with this plumbing.


Since I have a lot more room in the compartment now, I'm going spruce it up a bit with some aluminum hard lines. I'll be running all 3/8" hard line and converting to 1/4" PTC via PTC to NPT bulkhead unions, and 1/4" will run to the bags. I just prefer the slightly greater precision due to the slower lift/dump speed of 1/4" lines. I got a big pile of fittings from JEGS on Friday, so I'll begin plumbing it up this week if I have the time.




In the engine bay I've been addressing parts that I feel like I rushed in order to get the car ready for the show season last summer. First up was the radiator setup, which was out of a GC, and a less than optimal pull/push fan setup due to my intercooler pipe routing. I've switched back to a GD radiator with two OEM radiator fans and a new OEM spring cap as I had gutted the one on my last setup (long story). Anyhow, I had some higher than normal coolant temps while sitting in traffic so I hope returning to an OEM setup will resolve that issue.


You can see in that last pic I've got the new pipes setup how they'll be run, and also a new catch can peeking up in the back. I picked up this neat little 3-port catch can from Mishimoto which I think will be perfect for my car. I also decided to delete the PCV valve on my car and just run vacuum from the turbo inlet on the crank case and valve cover breathers. This can is internally baffled and the outlet port has a bronze micron filter on it, so I'm hoping that will be enough to keep the turbo inlet free of oil while still keeping a vacuum on the crankcase especially. The bottom of the can is tapped NPT so I'm running a drain on that down to a petcock valve I've mounted beneath the car, and as you can see I've got an AN -10 tee on one inlet for the valve covers.


On my old throttle body, I had plugged up the MAP sensor galley with epoxy because I had to relocate it at some point in the cars life. Anyhow I picked up a junkyard throttle body, sandblasted it and painted it black. Now the throttle body is back in its OEM orientation with the MAP sensor mounted to it like it should be.


Everything is coming together quite well, the only other part in the engine bay I'm addressing is the suction line for the power steering pump. I converted the inlet to AN with an MSI adapter flange, but for some reason had a -08 fitting on it, and downsized the Chase Bays can to -08 So I'm converting all that to -10 and running a 120 elbow off the pump instead of a 90 which will fit a little better. I've still got a 90 on it in this picture but you get the idea


I'll snap some more photos of the engine bay and air ride stuff as I make headway on it this week. Very excited to get out to a few more shows this summer

[John@BagRiders]

Just a few small details... new hose and fittings for the power steering pump inlet, finalized catch can plumbing, ohhhh and a black boot for the alternator post... FANCY!

I changed up the power steering pump inlet a bit, now it's a -6AN ORB to -10AN male (previously was -8 male) and replaced the 90* elbow off the pump inlet with a 120* fitting that makes the hose routing just a little bit cleaner:


All the various hoses hidden under the intake have been cleaned up a bit, no more tees, everything has its own port. After deleting so much stuff there really isn't much left that needs a reference, just the recirc valve, fuel pressure regulator and brake booster plumb to the intake manifold and the two hoses off the turbo inlet are a 1/2" vacuum source for the catch can, and the recirc line for the boost solenoid.

[hinrichs]

Looking good John

[John@BagRiders]

Looking good John

Thank you!

---

I got started on my hard lines!


Once I've got everything fit I'll be carpeting the wood. I'm just waiting on pump isolation mounts to do the line from the pump to the tee, and to drill some holes in that MDF. Next up is the last 4 hard lines from the manifold (for the air springs) which will route to PTC to NPT bulkheads on each side of the chassis. All this stuff is -6 (3/8) but will be downsized to 1/4" air line on the other side of the bulkhead to the bags since all that is already run nicely and I don't want to redo it... and I just like the look of -6 more than -4 for "the bling factor"

[John@BagRiders]

Finished up my bends!


Next up, a few bulkheads, plumbing/wiring hidden under the MDF, carpeting MDF and painting the tank. Fun!

[DUTCHswift]

I have photos of this thing from my PVW coverage of Wolfsgart last year. I was just waiting until the issue came out to post them on my own. I'll make sure to post them here when I get around to putting them up on Flickr.