Brighton96

Parts Hoarding Update The silver GT donor has since been stripped and sent off to scrap and I acquired another donor, this one is missing most of what I need aside from headlights (damaged but usable), grill (damaged by usable), one fender and core support(maybe also bent.) I plan to also steal the white door trim, exterior handles, rear hatch and rear right door to replace mine since they are in better condition than mine. This car is a 95 LSi which had a few unique things (leather e-brake) and what not. If you need parts feel free to let me know, my basement is getting full.

The outback struts are like 2 in longer than the legacy ones and the forester ones might be longer than that. If the forester top hat holes don't line up, you can just use legacy/outback top hats. It's like assembling legos, most of the parts are interchangeable. I lifted mine for a while using outback struts and then legacy springs, it raised the car about 2 inches but the strut rubbed the inside of the strut tower on full droop (aka when jacking the car up.) You can also do saggy butt spacers to get a little extra height out of it. Secondly, outbacks come with subframe spacers and possibly longer lateral/trailing arms. If you lift it too much without those supporting parts you will strain axles which could cause premature failure or binding.

It's removable iirc and it looks like the OEM part number is for the inner sheet metal is 52410AC110 and outer sheet metal is 52410AC040. I can't tell for sure because I'm just looking at a outline diagram.

Nice! And the radio is a double din, so you can get a double to replace it or a single and then put a storage compartment in the other spot.

Agreed, turned out as good as it could have aside from not happening at all.

Damage Report The weather was nice enough so I figured I'd start stripping the front of the car to assess the damage and it's about on par with what I was thinking. The car she hit had a trailer hitch and it seems the hitch hit right in the section I circled, which mitigated the damage to the things around it, the rad, condenser and fans are all fine as a result. The bumper cover mount broke free and was pushed upward into the headlight (RIP) And the fiberglass bumper is tore up but really, not as bad as it could have been.

Nice to see you still have the Gt-B wheels from me! They'd surely have been ruined if I kept them.

Exactly, insurance is gambling but I spoke with the rep today, they are going to fix the other persons car (and hike my rates obviously) and then they won't touch my car cause I didn't buy the right coverage for that, which is actually ideal. No insurance to appraise the car = no risk of salvage title. My mom feels bad and has offered to pay to get the car resprayed once I have it fixed. The current plan is use this opportunity to do the metal work I've been wanting to do, which is shave the engine bay, roof rack, badge holes, and fix the rust the right way. I'm expecting it to be done mid next year so then I'll have it repainted. Going to coordinate with Sublimejoe to pick up his donor and then get to stripping (not the fun kind)

I have a white donor car lined up to buy but just waiting on the insurance adjuster to show up before I commit. I'll need to source a hood but other than that I'll have the parts I need. Just gotta find out if painting a hood and bumper will total a car worth $2k haha. I also haven't measured the engine bay using my bodyshop quote book yet but visually the structure seems fine.

Timing could be better update Sorry in advance for typos, I have had many beverages to deal with this! Out of the kindness of my heart I let my mom borrow the legacy while she waits for her new car to arrive from carvana, and she repays me by stuffing my car into a POS Lexus in front of her. Hoods bent (had to unbolt the latch assembly to get it open), core support is a little tweaked, trans cooler line is broken, grill is trash and, the drivers JDM light is trash. Silver lining, I already had the GT front bumper and manual trans from my donor car, but already sold my other set of JDM lights, GT fogs and scooped hood. Adjuster is coming tomorrow to find out if I get a salvage title out of this whole deal or not. Woo car ownership, but mark my words I will not let it die that easy. Got the quarter repair panels and mini tubs waiting to be installed so can't let those parts go to waste.

If the pressure raised with oil added to the cylinders then it's most likely failing rings. You can try soaking each cylinder with marvel mystery oil to see if it's because the rings are stuck/have dirt in them. Normally you'd check compression with the engine warm and at WOT but that's not always an option. You should have 90+ psi on a cold engine to start it.

It's a closed deck 2.2 and has oil squirters that help with oiling. All in all that engine is way over built and is worth at least double what they are asking for the car (I don't know what they are asking for it.) Plus with a proper turbo with an inter-cooler set up, you can easily bump up the HP

+1 to not a 2nd gen. It's a first gen and that engine is a unicorn so absolutely get it if you can.

It could be a number of things but I'm leaning towards the fuel system. Even if there wasn't much fuel in it when stored, that could be enough to not run right. Fuel goes bad in like 6 months and starts to varnish. So the pump or injectors could be gummed up or you just didn't dilute the old stuff in the tank enough to burn off the trash gas. Either way I would maybe try to pull the fuel lines off the firewall and divert them to a jerry can and use a cheap electric pump to see if you can get it to run off only good fuel. Be sure to remove the fuel pump relay when you do this too.

As an additional thought, when you are dealing with old subarus, they tend to get cobbled together from other cars so you can't trust that an engine or trans are original to the chassis. So if you aren't sure and need to know for the sake of interference for example, the engine build date is under the oil filler cap and the chassis build date is on the data plate in the drivers door frame.

Hopefully this helps haha If the 95 is the same body as the 97/98s then most of the chassis parts are the same but the earlier 2.2 (up to 96) was the first gen/phase 1 which is single outlet exhaust on the heads and non interference. The later 2.2 is second gen/phase 2 which is dual outlet and interference. In regards to running like crap, check and clean grounds (The stock grounds aren't really adequate.) You most likely need a cat or at least O2 sensors with antifoulers. I don't think the car will ever run well without that info. So maybe put stock headers on and add O2 bungs or get the cat since the O2s both plug into it directly. With the Evap leak, most likely it's one of the rubber hoses back by the gas tank, if the Evap canister got smacked into a rock or something it could leak too since i's not protected by anything. It's in the passenger reward pocket thing behind the rear bumper.

It's been a while since I messed with a sedan but I think the trunk liner needs to be removed from the trunk lid in order to access those bulbs.

Update The donor car is pretty much stripped aside from the rear brakes so that will be gone soon (Thankfully) and then I can start on rust repair, but for now I just got the headlights refinished. I had already gotten a second set of JDM lights to replace my current set since the current set had a lot of discoloration and cracking, but come to find out they just looked that way because they had a plastic film on them, so I heated up the film and pulled it off and was left with a lot of adhesive that was surely 20+ years old. This was after the film was removed but before any work This was after 4+ hours of sanding, buffing and sealing. The lenses have a lot of small imperfections from the adhesive remover rubber wheel thing but I fear that sanding them all out will make the lens too thin/brittle. So, this will be good enough! I'm also working with someone local to get some help retrofitting modern HID Projectors in these ones so that they will work better for LHD. (I'll provide info once I have it)

Normally I'm hesitant too, the redeeming thing with it is it's aluminum and thus weldable, so if something breaks I can just fix it. The welds look nice and build quality is respectable. The coolant cap is weird and I had bought an OEM sti one for it because I don't trust the cap it comes with, but the filler neck isn't a Subaru one so I can't use the OEM cap which kinda sucks.

If you look on ebay there are a few unbranded ones for our gen cars, I have one waiting to be installed but haven't tested yet. I will probably replace the fans it comes with so I have some proper ones in that I trust, but otherwise seems fine. The 1st gen legacy also works and you can get legit branded rads. However they are an inch or so taller than ours so you will have to fabricate a way to mount it. This is the one I bought This is the one for the 1st gen

Does the starter engage or no? Because a sign that the coil is failing is that is won't work consistently when it's hot.

Yes and no. It will bolt in, but the NA subframe doesn't support the turbo exhaust and most of the wiring is different.

Let me know when you want my silver hood, gt bumper and engine haha. But definetly lower priority than the house, congrats!

There isn't a reason to try to buy every single tool right off the bat. Get a comprehensive kit and a good electric impact. You can always upgrade to bigger better tools and you will also accumulate obscure tools as you work on things. But there is no need to dump thousands in tools right off away. If you can find someone selling a complete tool box with tools on gumtree that'd be ideal. But if not, find a budget rolling tool box and a good variety of sockets, wrenches and so on.

Slow Progress Update To start off, I now understand why people give up on these cars, finding a lot of rust at once is an absolute motivation killer. However, I ordered mini tubs today so all is well! I still don't have a goal in mind for how I want to build the car but it'll be an antique this coming January so I can basically do whatever I want with it. I perused Summit Racing and found some tubs that are fairly close to our cars wheel wells, albiet a few inches too large in a few directions but whatever. So the plan right now is strip my donor car (pretty much done right now) and set aside all the parts I want, then send it off to it's death. After that I'll strip my car down and start bracing the rear strut towers and then start cutting and welding. Hopefully the end result means a simpler and, more spacious rear end. Meaning I can run bigger tires and not worry about cancer for at least another 20 years. After that we can worry about the manual and RWD conversion. I think I'm basically gonna turn it into a van and what I mean by that is delete the back seats, seatbelts and what not, then build a false floor to take up that space. Mostly because I use the car to haul stuff regularly (aka go carts, dirtbikes etc.) Essay over, got the front coilovers installed and adjusted absolutely improperly, got the goodridge front brake lines installed and the brakes not bled properly. But at least the parts are no longer sitting on the shelf. Also here are the tubs if you want to do the same