My built, widened and bagged 06 WRX Wagon

[GTOguy]

Absolutely incredible build thank you for posting a write up for us to see!

[SD202]

so good. love this thing.

[John@BagRiders]

Well it's winter time and you know what that means! That's right, time to make a series of poor decisions and rip apart a perfectly fine and working car! Wahoo!! :

I've got the intake just about taken apart, I think I'm gonna be lazy and not drain the coolant entirely, just get what I can out of the expansion tank and pop that sucker off so I can get the manifold off. I'm removing it to install new fuel rails/lines and clean up the wiring harness. Ya know, important stuff like that. :


After flipping the intake around, as you might imagine the various bungs are literally in the opposite place to where they're meant to be, which makes for some confusing/messy hose routing. So I went and picked up this NPT manifold from Vibrant to solve address that issue. It fits perfectly atop my intake manifold and the included hardware was even the correct thread pitch to fit the OEM holes that were there.

Sorry for b/w pic btw.

Alright here's were the truly poor decision making kicks in. Fuse box is getting a change of scenary, i.e., the fender well. Putting a bunch of electrical stuff in the fender well is a bad idea you say? You're probably right, but I'm doing it anyhow!


I'll be keeping this thread updated as I continue to make questionable decisions with my vehicle, thanks for watching!

[Zachariah666]

Awesome car, rad thread. In for updates

[John@BagRiders]

Alright, little update on "operation bad decisions" :P

A few days ago I got the ABS pump out of there. Seeing as I've had the ABS fuse pulled since the day I bought the car, this was long overdue!


I started my morning today with a decision I'll probably regret in about 7 months when it starts getting hot around here (yes it gets hot in Vermont), which was to delete my A/C


But look at all the room there is for activities now!! Since my charge piping was made to clear the alternator (rather than moving alt to where a/c pump would be) I think I'm gonna try to mount a stuff like a coolant res to where the a/c pump used to sit... still haven't decided quite yet.

Next I pulled the wiring harness that runs through the front clip for the headlights, horns, crash sensors, etc. out to re-route it under the frame rails... it was only barely visible by the headlamps but hey, it was easy enough so might as well right?


While I had everything out, I noticed just a little bit of surface rust forming on things like the bracket that houses the radiator stay bushings along with the front clip where the harness had been. None of it was too bad since the car has only seen one Northeast winter but I decided to get ahead of it and coated the entire radiator support and crash beam with POR15. I've already done the engine/tranny cradles and front control arms (wagons and WRX get steel LCA's unlike the STi aluminum ones). While I have the fenders and rocker panels off, I'm going to hit the pinch welds and other areas where I know dirt and crap accumulates.


Didn't snap any photos but I've pulled out most of the interior panels I'll need out of the way to run wires up to the starter and also to reroute my front air lines and e-level sensors. For those I think i'll just follow the wire harnesses that pass through the driver and passenger side fender wells. I think it would be a nice touch to do bulkheads for the air lines, then a couple of feet of hard line up to the fender well where it will mate to the leader line for the front struts, basically the same idea as OEM brake lines.

So I'm pretty close to starting to put everything back together which is exciting! For the brake lines, fuel lines and power steering lines I'm going to go through the awesome team at Chase Bays for some high quality and stealthy parts. If you've never heard of them, they specialize in aftermarket wiring and hosing solutions for cleaning up your engine bay. They've got stuff for tons of different cars so check them out if you're into that sorta thing.

Anyhow, time for a bite to eat then back out to the garage-- hoping to get the OEM brake lines completely out of there and get the front clip wiring harness tucked before I call it quits for the night and spend some time with my fiance, who has been wayyyyy too nice about the amount of time I've been spending cooped up in the garage!!

[John@BagRiders]

Annnd one last update for the night! Got all the OEM hard lines out as well as the two soft lines for the front calipers which I'm replacing with braided hoses. The POR15 was still a bit tacky so didn't start with the harness re-routing.


Got family stuff all day tomorrow but I'll be back wrenching in the garage Monday night! Next up I wanna get the driver side engine harness plugs re-routed under the brake booster and run wires from the new battery location up to the starter/fuse box. Fun fun!

[fackinsteve]

Do you plan on spraying the engine bay at all? That's always been the one thing I don't like about Subaru's is that they're engine bay are more of an e coat than actual paint

[John@BagRiders]

Do you plan on spraying the engine bay at all? That's always been the one thing I don't like about Subaru's is that they're engine bay are more of an e coat than actual paint

Yeah I'm really hoping to do that. Once I get all the wiring and brake lines done, my plan is to get it back together to the point where I can still easily pull the motor (e.g., intake back on, stuff like that), then tow the car to our shop as right now it's at my garage at home where I just have hand tools. Once I get it to our shop I can fab new wheel tubs, fill in the holes I don't need, then send it off for finishing and spraying.

It's a touch decision for me because I'm also trying to plan our wedding while doing all this, so time is very valuable. It's hard for me to justify paying someone to do stuff that I could do myself, but it might come to that for the engine bay fab work, or I'll postpone it till next year. Who knows! Basically it comes down to putting a dollar value on my own time and trying very hard not to exhaust my soon-to-be wife's patience lol



I spent a little bit of time out in the garage last night doing some not-so-fun wiring stuff. Looks like the two plugs for the engine harness (off to the right on the minivac) should be able to separate from the rest of the harness with a bit of detangling. Trying to avoid cutting wires where I can, but those two plugs are gonna go back out through the hidden hole below the brake booster, along with the wires going from the relocated battery up to the starter.

Since the battery is moving to the trunk I've also got my air ride "wiring zone" pulled out and disassembled so I can rearrange stuff to better suit the new battery location. I'm hoping to get all the wiring done before it gets too cold here (this 50+ degree weather is insane) because doing things that require finesse (e.g., soldering small wires) in sub-freezing temps is not fun.

[hinrichs]

So glad I could finally see all the pics in your thread and I had the time to actually read everything. Solid build and cant wait to see the bay once its finished and you get it all cleaned up. Props to having a fiance/soon to be wife that is so cool with you working on it so much.

[OSSHWA]

Very extensive build with a keen attention to detail. I dig this man!

[labuffness]

Very nice build. Can't wait to get bags on my Evo..

[Clint_McMIllan_95]

i can help share some bay problems i ran into while doing mine. funny, were doing similar things in different orders haha. i love the car, my friend. **** hawkeyes, but this one looks fantastic. you can pull it off VERY well

[John@BagRiders]

So glad I could finally see all the pics in your thread and I had the time to actually read everything. Solid build and cant wait to see the bay once its finished and you get it all cleaned up. Props to having a fiance/soon to be wife that is so cool with you working on it so much.

Thank you for the kind words! She is very awesome and she appreciates the recognition haha

Very extensive build with a keen attention to detail. I dig this man!

Thank you sir!

i can help share some bay problems i ran into while doing mine. funny, were doing similar things in different orders haha. i love the car, my friend. **** hawkeyes, but this one looks fantastic. you can pull it off VERY well

Thank you! I'd love to hear any input you have, that would be great! Shoot me a PM/post here/whatever is easiest, thanks for the offer I appreciate it!

Very nice build. Can't wait to get bags on my Evo..

Shoot me a PM or e-mail john@bagriders.com I'd love to help you out!

----


Well, didn't have much time last week to work on the car-- had stuff to do every night but was able to spend a couple hours this weekend and got the two engine harness plug harnesses decoupled from the rest of the harness. I also soldered on wire extensions for the three wires that are cut in this photo. I used some high quality TFL stranded copper wire and stepped up one gauge (e.g., 10awg extended with 12awg) to hopefully maintain signal integrity. I think the two smaller wires go to a relay for one of the radiator fans and the larger yellow wire surely carries some current, so I'm not too worried about any of it. I had to cut up the fender well grommet a bit to get the plugs through it, but I managed to do so in a way that I'll be able to re-seal it without any issues.


As you can see I got some padding for the floor to keep my butt from freezing off haha. Even though its only like 3/4" it is soooo much nicer to sit on than the concrete floor, and with the space heater right next to me it actually stays pretty warm! Whenever I go from work to modding, I always park my daily in the garage and pop the hood and the warmth put off by the engine raises the temp by a few degrees pretty quickly. Every little bit helps haha.

It's my fiance's birthday today and we're both taking the day off tomorrow then I'm headed to Maine on Wednesday to visit family for the holidays, so I won't be working on the car until Monday or so. I'm going to bring my engine harness with me so I can hopefully finish that up while I'm chillin' in Maine. I'm just about ready to start putting everything back together and I've got a crapload of Scotch 88 electrical tape and various wire looming to do it all "the right way" and as OEM as possible.

I'm really trying hard not to add anything to my already very full plate of "to-do's" but while I've got the brake system bled, I'm reallllly tempted to rebuild my calipers so they look brand new.... We will see haha

Alright back to work! Thanks for the kind words everyone and happy holidays!

[John@BagRiders]

Well not all that much progress due to holidays and such, but at least I've got somewhere!

I finally got the driver-side harness all separated, only had to clip three wires which is nice. I've enlarged the hole near the clutch pedal in order to fit the engine harness connectors through it, along with new wires from the rear-mounted battery to the starter. I'm using an old radiator hose to protect the wires passing through the firewall. The connectors will sit somewhere near the starter in a stealthy manner, just need to avoid the ol' steering shaft. As you can see, I disconnected just about everything below the dash in order to give myself more room. I had a real nice sore back following the day of being cramped under the dash, there is no comfortable position to work in that area lol.


While I was at my folks house for the holidays I brought with me my engine harness so that I could tinker with that while I was bored there. I cut off all the unused plugs and pulled the wires back to their respective harness connectors. I've got the harness in the bay now, just need to figure out where I want the connections to happen before I start re-looming with some nice black sheathing.


After a delayed start, the cold weather is here in VT (3 degrees today ) which ironically lights a fire under my ass to get this thing out of my garage, it's cold out there.

[Wirtz]

Looks good john! I'll have to hit you up on fb today or tomorrow and share where my progress is as well. I'm about at the same spot currently. I have a lot of extra length on the engine harnesses that are inside the cabin now. They are through the firewall he but I need to loom them and seal the hole. I didn't want to shorten the harness so I got creative tucking the wiring inside.

Gotta lengthen an injector wire and the alternator wiring and re ground the main harness and I should be okay. Everything reaches my fuse box location currently