blide

Took a road trip in the spec.b from South Carolina to New Hampshire. Spent a week going all over New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. 3800 miles in 9 days and who knows how many tolls (waiting for all of the pay by plate bills to arrive). Went to the top of Mount Washington, Visited Acadia NP and went to the Subaru Motorsport mecca that is VSC. The car did great. Averaged about 26mpg on the highway there and back... not so much in the mountains.

Finally had the opportunity to address the radio in my spec.b. The previous owner installed an amp with the stock radio. Good news is that he had already installed fairly nice new speakers in all of the doors. Bad news is that he took the amp out before he sold it so the speakers were no longer connected. So, I've been riding without tunes for 6 months. Ordered the JDM climate controls with the double DIN setup and a new hazard switch from avojdm.com. Got the wiring harness from Dave at ae64.com (highly recommended BTW). Picked up a Sony XAV-AX7000 head unit and got to installing. Since the previous owner hacked into the factory wiring harness to install the amp, I had to start by splicing it back together. Got the radio installed and fired it up only to find that the head unit was seeing a short at the speakers and would cut power to them. Finally figured out that the new speakers had been installed into the hacked up OEM speaker mounts and the leads to the speakers were grounding against the metal in the door. Fired up Fusion360 and the 3d printer to create some new proper mounts and we were in business. This is supposed to be the OEM Subaru parts but ultimately, I'm pretty disappointed in the fit of the climate controls. The whole unit is offset about 1/8" to the right. This leaves a gap and the shifter trim doesn't quite meet up right. Guess I'll just need to get the JDM console pieces to fix it. I'll also need to address the mismatched faces at some point as well. But at least for now I have Android Auto and music.

I can only speak for myself but I'm almost 50. My boy racer days are long gone. I drive a Legacy because I like the extra comfort and I'd like to keep the safety. I also don't need to make 500hp. I'm tuned to right around 300hp and that's about right for me. I want reliable and safe since this is my daily driver. My family rides in the car as well. The TMIC works fine for my purposes. Everything I've done is to try to keep it as reliable as possible. There's a few other things I'd like to do to make working on the car easier, like redoing the fuel delivery system and getting rid of the stupid under intake setup. Anyway, I don't want to get rid of fog lights or the crash beam. I also don't want to deal with all of the piping for the FMIC. Just my perspective. Bobby

The photos are great. If anyone has photos for the fuel line routing with our setup, especially with the top mount intercooler in place, I'd like to see it. This is on my to do list at some point and having a reference would make the process much easier. Don't have to reinvent the wheel so to speak.

A couple weeks ago, I found that my clutch decided to try to eat the little cover that goes over the access hole at the back of the block. So, I got the Verus Engineering cover and installed it. No way this one is going to drop in. Only issue was that this meant that there were now three brackets on the bottom bolt in the photo. I decided to remove the engine removal bracket so now it's just the Verus cover and the support bracket for my intercooler.

The software isn't as easy to use as the commercial variants but the concepts are all the same. If you can tune a car with Cobb, for example, you can tune it with the Open Source software. You just need the Tactrix cable and you're in business. When I had mine done, I took my cable with me to make it easy. If you are interested in doing an etune remotely, I'm sure Elijah at Redemption Tuning will help you out. He's tuned two of my cars, my daughter's 03 WRX (etune) and my Spec.B (Dyno), and I highly recommend him.

In the US, to legally drive a vehicle on public roads, you must maintain insurance. However, plenty of people drive without insurance. And, yes, if an uninsured vehicle hits you, your insurance will cover it and try to get payment from the accountable driver. Unfortunately, if someone is driving without insurance, they probably don't have the money to pay out of pocket either. And, one way or another, your insurance company is going to get their money back. What usually happens is your rates will go up when your policy renews and/or your policy will be a little more expensive from the beginning to account for the possibility/probability of an accident with an uninsured motorist. And, judging by the condition of the Tahoe that hit me, they wouldn't have been able to pay if they didn't have insurance.

Well, I got to make an insurance claim yesterday. On the way home from the Taylor Swift concert in Atlanta, traffic on I 20 slowed to a crawl. We had been in start and stop traffic for a mile or two and almost to the end of the slow down, when I pulled forward 50 feet and stopped but the Tahoe behind me decided to use me to stop. Got a few scuffs on the rear bumper cover and one nice gash where the tow hook of the Tahoe buried itself in my bumper. It's very frustrating to spend almost a year building a car and for someone to ram in the back of it for no reason. My daughter was with me and said that the lady driving the Tahoe was, of course, on her phone. Anyway, I guess I'm getting a new bumper cover out of it and thank goodness the other vehicle had insurance.

Installed the Koyorad aluminum radiator tonight. Spent some time cleaning the fans and shrouds to try to make them look a little better before installing them on the awesome new radiator. This thing looks fantastic. I'm really impressed. You have to install the nipple for the connection to the turbo reservoir. When you do, the flat sides for the wrench end up being perfectly horizontal. Really nice attention to detail. Install was straight forward and fairly easy. You do have to get things in the right order. I mounted the driver side fan and installed the radiator. Then put the passenger side fan in from underneath. That way I didn't have to take the upper radiator hose off of the crossover pipe. Got all of the hoses connected and ran the car up to operating temp to burp the system. Then went for a drive and enjoyed the non-leaking radiator and the lower operating temps. The radiator really looks good in the engine bay. Almost wish half of it wasn't covered up by the Grimmspeed radiator stays. Just need the alternator cover and the JDM battery and abs covers.

Looks great. My son put the Avalon King ceramic coating on his 21 STI right after he brought it home. Its lasted about a year and half and made washing the car sooooo much easier. I vowed to put a coating on my car, whenever I actually bought me a car. Well, the time has come. We'll see how this one lasts but I'm really looking forward to the quick, easy washes.

I buy most of my detailing products from Detailed Image. You can find the CarPro Cquartz UK 3.0 here.

Installed the Koyorad tonight. Spent some time cleaning the fans and shrouds to try to make them look a little better before installing them on the awesome new radiator. This thing looks fantastic. I'm really impressed. You have to install the nipple for the connection to the turbo reservoir. When you do, the flat sides for the wrench end up being perfectly horizontal. Really nice attention to detail. Install was straight forward and fairly easy. You do have to get things in the right order. I mounted the driver side fan and installed the radiator. Then put the passenger side fan in from underneath. That way I didn't have to take the upper radiator hose off of the crossover pipe. Got all of the hoses connected and ran the car up to operating temp to burp the system. Then went for a drive and enjoyed the non-leaking radiator.

That really wasn't very clear. The factory radiator failed and I ordered a new Koyorad aluminum one to replace it. The old radiator failed at the seam between the plastic top and the aluminum body. Sorry about the confusion.

I finished the paint correction and ceramic coating. Also ordered a new Koyorad aluminum radiator to replace the failed one. It's supposed to be here tomorrow so I can get it installed before I take my daughter to Atlanta Friday for the Taylor Swift concert.

A couple weeks ago, I came back from running errands, pulled into the garage, got out and immediately smelled the lovely aroma of hot coolant. Pop the hood and found small amounts of coolant all over the front of the of the car and engine. Steam was coming out of the radiator as well. After a little investigation, I found the seam between the plastic top of the radiator and the aluminum fins had failed. I was hoping to get a little further down the road before replacing the radiator but here we are. So, I knew it was going to be a couple weeks before I could afford to order the radiator, I figured I'd use the time to start the paint correction and hopefully get it ceramic coated. Started with a good wash and got all of the bugs and tar off the car. Tried the Meguiar's Iron removing spray I picked up at Advance Auto to decontaminate the paint and followed up with clay bar. The car's paint is typical of mid 2000's Subaru paint. Clear coat is failing in places and there's a bunch of small cracks and imperfections. I used my typical Megiars M105 with Lake Country orange pad for the first pass. Then followed up with Meguiar's Ultimate polish with a Lake Country white pad. While the paint looked much better, it also highlighted all of the paint chips all over the car. Especially when the primer coat under the paint is white. I stopped by my local paint and body supply and got some color matched paint mixed up. I touched up a bunch of the larger chips that really stuck out. There's a ton of small chips and scratches that would've taken forever to fill. Ultimately, the car needs to be resprayed but this is a 16 year old, 175K mile car. So, I called it good and moved on. After another quick wash and an IPA wipe down, it was ready for ceramic coating. I went with CarPro Cquartz UK 3.0. It was surprisingly easy to apply. This was the first time I've put a ceramic coat on a car and was expecting it to be a little difficult. It was a little slow going but was difficult as long as you have good lighting wherever you are working. I don't have very good lighting in my garage but I made it work. Honestly, the car looks better in photos than it does up close however it looks worlds better than it did. Overall, I'm really happy with the way it came out.

Dyno Day: I've used Elijah Nichols at Redemption Tuning in Taylorsville NC a couple times now and have had great experiences both times. The first was when I needed a tune for my daughter's 03 WRX and then this car. Since I deleted the EGR/secondary air and the TGVs and Cobb has decided that they hate us, I went for an OpenSource tune. I already had the Tactrix cable and I'm an IT Systems Engineer so this wasn't a big deal for me. Elijah sent me over the base map for me to do the engine break-in on and I got it loaded. I did run into a couple of issues trying to get it loaded the first time. I tracked it down to bad grounds. I replaced the flimsy OEM straps with some custom 8 gauge wire and lugs and everything started working perfectly. On February 3rd 2023, I drove from my home in Aiken SC to Taylorsville NC to put the car on the dyno. Since I hadn't really gotten into boost much to this point, we did find a couple issues. After tracking down 2 boost leaks from hoses that weren't tightened down enough, we were up and running. I was shooting for around 300hp and we just made it. I started running out of fuel at the very top but we made 304HP and 348ft/lbs of torque. While it was Interstate the whole ride up, I took the backroads on the way home to have some fun. If you are in the south east and want to put your car on the dyno or if you need an etune, I highly recommend Elijah. Redemption Racing and Tuning Also, thanks to my wonderful wife who surprised me with an early Valentines day gift. She bought me the Grimmspeed intake so that I could have it on the car for the dyno. Now I don't have the stupid blue intake hose ruining the look of the engine bay.

Engine break-in. I decided to follow IAG's engine break-in procedure. This maybe overkill for an OEM block but I didn't want to take any chances. I ordered 15 quarts of Motul break-in engine oil and bought a bunch of Purolator One oil filters. For the initial start up and first 50 miles I used some cheap Castrol dino oil. Then put in the Motul break-in oil and changed after 500 miles. Changed the oil with more Motul break-in oil and drove 1000 miles and finally one more time for 1500 miles. Finally, Motul 8100 X-cess gen2 will by oil of choice going forward. That's what IAG recommends for their engines so I figure if its good enough for them, its good enough for me. Of course, all of this meant that I had to put some miles on the car. I drove the car as my daily but also set out on a couple of long drives on the weekends eat up the miles quickly. First start was on the evening of January 12 and I had an appointment for tuning on February 3rd.

While working to get the engine built and installed, I also started working on how to mount my gauges. Initially, I have an AFR and oil pressure gauge but also will be adding a boost gauge as funds allow. Most of the gauge pods I could find were fairly expensive and most required permanent modifications to the the mounting surface. I have a 3d printer so I decided to come up with my own mount. My goal was to have room for 3 gauges and to make no permanent changes to the interior. I came up with a side window vent mount that uses a little hook in the bottom middle that grabs the underside of one of the vent slats. Once tightened down, the gauge pod sits on the outside rim of the vent. The wires for the gauges exit out the back and drop down between the windshield and the dash. This worked fairly well but the hard PETG I used to print the mount and the hard plastic of the vent caused it to need a pretty good clamping force to hold it in place. This slightly deformed the underside of the vent slat. So, I ordered some NinjaTek Chinchilla TPU (black was on backorder so I went with gray for now) and printed a thin soft gasket to go on the underside of the gauge pod. This allowed it to grip the edge of the vent much easier and seems to be working pretty well. We'll see how it holds up to the summer heat. Once I had this worked out, I got the engine installed and engine bay buttoned up. I'm really disliking the blue intake tube and the lack of the top plate for the air box so look for that to change shortly.

While I was building the engine and getting it installed, I also wanted to do a few things with the driveline. I replaced the oil in the trans and rear diff with OEM Subaru fluids. I was told by the previous owner that the trans had the 4th gear grind. I was going to try the Redline shockproof and Motul 300 magic elixir but I can't find anyone who has the Motul. Instead I just went with OEM for now. While draining the oil from the trans, I figured out exactly why 4th gear is having issues. Several small chunks of synchro came out with the oil. While inspecting everything under the car with the engine out and changing the trans fluids, I quickly realized that getting to the shifter bushings and linkage was not going to be as easy as it is on the 5mt once the engine is back in. So, I placed an order for the Cobb short shifter and Whiteline bushings. I had a slightly used 5mt linkage on the parts shelf that I figured I use as well. Once the parts came in, I got assembling everything. Once I got everything back together under the car I started installing the short shifter. It was here that I realized something was wrong. I couldn't shift into 4th, 6th or reverse. After checking my install a couple of times I realized that while the shifter linkage for the 5mt and 6mt look the same, they are slightly different. So, I took the bushings from the 5mt linkage and put them in the housing from the OEM 6mt linkage to eliminate the slop. Lesson learned.

Out with the old and in with the new. As you can see, it wasn't just blown turbo seals. The compressor wheel fins were pretty beat up. That debris made it into the cylinders and did some damage. The compression in the engine was around 60psi for all cylinders. I'm kinda surprised it still ran and moved under its own power. I built the new engine replacing every seal and every hose as I went. The ARP head studs are so much easier to torque down than the Subaru ones. While I don't plan to send a lot of boost through, the peace of mind was worth it. I also replaced all of the soft fuel lines and all of the vacuum lines with silicone hoses. Please ignore my mess of a garage. I wish I could say its not always like this but....

Build log: Engine/Performance: New Subaru Type RA block OEM gasket kit Rebuilt heads by Automotive Performance and Maintenance outside of Asheville NC ARP head studs VF52 turbo with Millet CHRA with billet compressor wheel Cobb turbo inlet Cobb uppipe Process West top mount intercooler Grimmspeed hood scoop splitter TGV delete OEM fuel injectors cleaned and tested NGK 2309 plugs Aisin TK005 timing set OEM oil cooler delete OEM timing covers and gaskets Killer B oil pickup and baffle New OEM oil pan Subaru 11mm oil pump Removed banjo bolt screens IAG turbo oil feed lines IAG AOS black Gates accessory belts Block off plates for EGR/Secondary air system delete Grimmspeed 3 port EBCS Replaced all vacuum lines with silicone hoses AEM AFR gauge AEM oil pressure gauge Deatshwerks 265LPH fuel pump Grimmspeed intake Grimmspeed radiator shroud Optima yellow top AGM battery Grimmspeed light weight battery tie down Driveline: Cobb double adjustable short throw shifter Whiteline shifter bushings Rebuilt shifter linkage using bushings from Turn-in Concepts 5mt linkage Subaru 75w90 gear oil in transmission and rear differential Rebooted front CV axles Exedy Stage 1 Organic clutch OEM flywheel Interior: Replaced all interior bulbs with LEDs Wix cabin air filter Replaced mode blend door actuator with OEM part Exterior: Replaced reverse bulbs with LEDs Hella horns Started the build in November of 2022 and first start was on January 12 2023. My goal for this car is to be my daily driver. I spared no expense to build a fun and reliable (as reliable as a modified Subaru can be) Subie.

Finally getting around to documenting my build that started almost a year ago. I purchased my 2007 Legacy GT Spec.b in Montgomery AL on 5/29/2022 for $1,000. It was that cheap because it had blown turbo seals and what appeared to be ringland failure. The car came with a Cobb SF intake (missing the top cover), an aftermarket unlabeled downpipe, Stromung exhaust, and OZ Superleggera 18x8 et51 with 235/40/R18 Firestone Firehawk Indy 500 tires. I towed it home and put it in the garage for safe keeping while I saved up the funds to bring it back to life.

I went with an OpenSource tune. You just need a Tactrix cable and a laptop. You can use ECUFlash to save the OEM tune (ROM) once you uninstall the AccessPort. I use Elijah Nichols at Redemption Tuning in Taylorsville NC for my tuning. I put my 07 spec.b on the dyno there but I've also tuned my daughters 03 WRX with him via etune. Its really pretty easy to do and you can then turn off all of the associated codes for your deletes. I deleted my TGVs and the EGR/secondary system.