ckwaters

I installed my 60mm Defi gauges and installed my new pod made by Ortiz Custom Pods. 
Also installed a charger with USB C and a volt meter. 
And I relocated the dimmer knob for the supercharger cooling fan to the steering column. 
Lots of little stuff but it had to be done. 

 

On 9/22/2023 at 8:10 AM, SubOperator said:

Thanks to my boys who did most of the heavy lifting for the swap, taking care of removing the USDM front end parts and installing JDM hood, fenders and whole bumper related set of parts. I mostly dragged the project by procrastinating with the headlights and related wiring.

 

Btw now I have full 05 USDM front end in RBP (color code 35J) for sale - hood, fenders, bumper, front crash bar, headlights, fog lights. Will put that up in FS section.

 

There is a forum member in Hawaii that makes wiring adapters for various JDM things. Headlights being one of them. Anyone know his name off the top of their head?

On 9/4/2023 at 1:22 PM, Febreze Mee said:

Aw yeah! You already know what time it is.

Made in USA air filter, a true patriot here

I think similar to stock. Probably a restriction on my car now after my power upgrades. This video is with Raptor headers, high flow cats and a STi mid pipe 

 

I’ve been wanting to try a couple things but don’t have the time. Maybe someone else can try. Try disconnecting the G sensor located behind the shifter. Or disconnect the steering angle sensor behind the airbag. Not sure what other systems get input from those sensors but disabling either one should definitely kill VDC. And to get rid of the light, remove the bulb would probably be the only way. 

I’m using an OEM Outback pump without issue. Using Whiteline isn’t a requirement but you’ll have to see if you have enough toe adjustment when you put your tie rods on.

3 hours ago, boxkita said:

It's summer. I finally have a working sports car again. Anyone want to go for a drive?

I’ll be back in WA in mid June. I’m pretty much done working on my car and would like to go one some drives this summer. We met at the last Wagonfest 

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9 hours ago, KZJonny said:

Is that a custom built up wagon, or are 4th Gen 3.0L's just really rare? I only recall really seeing the 3.0L in 3rd gens around me, but that is Canada, so we got/didn't get some stuff that other markets may have. (Facelift manual wagon GT's for example...)

Looks awesome in any case, and I admire the gutsy attitude to pick an exhaust system as your first welding project!

There are quite a lot of 3.0L from 2005-2009 but none in USA are manual. The car is very custom and a lot of fun to drive. 

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I agree. So I got mine extended. Yours look amazing. Nice and new. That’s a good deal. 

My first time welding! I welded together some pipes, flanges and made a mounting bracket. Huge improvement over my old exhaust. 
now I have single 3” or dual 2.5” the whole way. The supercharger should be able to breathe harder now. 
Sound clip 

 

I just did this swap about a month ago on my Outback 3.0R. I used Whiteline outer tie rods, bushings and Cusco brace. You DO NOT need to cut your inner tie rods, they did not bottom out even with jam nuts removed.....plenty of depth in the Whitelines.

At full adjustment I was slightly toe-out. I purchased thinner jam nuts and now there is plenty of adjustment. I bought a toe measuring tool and I got to 0 degrees toe and have more adjustment to spare if needed.

VDC is giving me a little trouble. It's kicked on 3 times so far. Each time was in a medium speed right bend in 3rd gear off throttle. One time a car was following me pretty closely through the turn and that was not a situation I want repeated so I plan to disable it one way or anothe as soon as possible. 

I'm re-reading this thread and checking out the linked STi threads but so far I don't see a full workaround for the VDC. Is programming an Ardurino an option? I already have one for my 6MT swap so throwing a few more codes in there might not be difficult. Or can a tuner do something to fix or disable it? I don't want any dash lights on long term.

On 3/14/2022 at 1:04 PM, Smithcraft said:

Didn't know how many of the slim jam nuts would be needed so I ordered 2 packs, so I have a bunch to send if someone needs them.

 

SC

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I bought my ticket. And this year the weather is actually going to be nice. I hope we have another BP meetup beforehand 

@crjohnson Maybe you can take a video of it. Your problem sounds like one that the guy in this YouTube video had. I actually bought the car in this video and took the 6MT swap out and put it in my car, also a 2008 3.0R wagon and I don’t have the over-rev problem. Strange how random that is. We never learned the cause of his problem.

 

What a boss, thanks for this. Any advise on sourcing bathe edm console , I just wondered down that rabbit hole.

 

Is there a write up with part numbers somewhere ?

 

I could not find one

 

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Here's a tip more useful than part numbers since a lot of them are discontinued. The hardest part of all of this in my experience was finding a handbrake boot. After months of looking I found one yesterday in the form of an entire handbrake lever. "Handbremshebel" is German for handbrake lever. Let this be an indication of how persistent and creative you have to be to find these parts.

The parts are a pain to find. eBay doesn’t make it easy to search for parts only in other countries. Maybe a VPN would help. I found some parts on eBay and then asked the seller if they could get me the other parts I needed. Finally got most of what I needed from Lithuania. I have all the part numbers somewhere. They’re on opposed forces. But it’s not that helpful because people don’t list things on eBay with those part numbers.

Anyone who has done an EDM center console swap knows that it's both expensive and challenging to find the parts needed for the swap. Especially when you end up buying the same parts more than once because you didn't know about all the variations in these parts.

 

In my experience, my first EDM center console came from Lithuania. The console I purchased must've come from a base level vehicle because it didn't have SI-Drive and the cupholders did not have LEDs. Fortunately, the JDM cupholder fits in the EDM console and they are much easier to find then EDM parts. So I purchased JDM cupholders which had all the parts I needed; the LEDs and the clear rings that go around the cupholders that are illuminated by the LEDs. The cupholders from Lithuania had black plastic rings and no LEDs.

 

After getting my JDM cupholders I hooked everything up and installed it in my car thinking the project was finally finished. I turned on my car only to find out the standard JDM cupholders had BLUE LEDs! I loathe blue LEDs in any application. Out cars have red LEDs everywhere and they look great, following that color to the cupholders would've made too much sense. So I was scratching my head thinking maybe the previous owner swapped them for blue because I know I've seen pictures of cupholders with red LEDs.

After a lot of research I found out that the red LED cupholders only came on the S402. At the time of this posting I did see at least 1 option for S402 cupholders on Yahoo Auctions for a little over $100. That's not a bad price considering that financial logic is thrown out the window the moment you decide to install an EDM center console. But since I already had 2 sets of cupholders and the only thing I wanted to change was the color of the LEDs I decided to go about only changing the LED to save some money and more importantly a lot of time waiting for more parts to arrive from Japan.

The blue LEDs look OK in the picture above but believe me, that's just the magic of the iPhone. They clashed hard and they needed to go in a hurry. And that's what this write-up is for.

 

The LEDs look like this. There are 2 of them and they connectors plug into the bottom.

 

Here it is again with the grey plastic casing removed. Special thanks to members such as aero901, Tricky Rick and SwitchPNW on SubaruOutback.org for educating me on LEDs and circuits. The resistor pictured is 1.3k Ohm. Blue LEDs require more power than red so the red will be brighter with the same amount of power, but don't worry about that in this case because the brightness of the red ended up being perfect without messing with the resistor.

 

As for the size, the common sizes I could find on Amazon and eBay were 5mm and 3mm while the OEM LED was exactly 4mm.

 

I purchased a pack of 200 5mm LEDs in a variety of colors for about $9 and some change. They measured in at 4.875mm and are quite a bit taller than the OEM LED.

 

Swapping the LEDs wasn't too challenging. I used a soldering iron, a solder sucker, soldering wick, a tiny flat screwdriver, needle nose pliers and solder.

First secure the circuit board so you have 2 hands to work with. Heat up the solder and remove it with the solder sucker and/or solder wick. Once it's cleaned up enough, gently straighten the pins and the LED should come right out. Save the black plastic piece that adds stability to the LED pins, we will reuse it with the new LED.

 

With LEDs it's important to get the orientation correct. The positive is the side closer to the resistor and both LEDs have an axe-shaped conductor on that side. It's easily visible in this picture and a whole lot easier in person. Just remember the axe is positive. And since the new LED is much larger I choked it all the way down so it is sitting on top of the black plastic piece and their heights were close enough that the LED functions the same. Push the new LED pins through and trim the leads so there is enough material to bend over and hold the LED in place. Gently crimp the leads down with needle nose pliers so it looks like this picture above when you removed the solder. Now add a little bit of solder to the leads.

 

Test them out to make sure you did a good job with your soldering. I like to use my battery jumper for stuff like this because it's portable and has a big switch on it that I can quickly turn off if something goes wrong.

 

I think this is a picture of both new LEDs installed. I forgot to do a side by side. But make sure you put the new LEDs on straight because the plastic housing barely fits the larger LEDs. If you run into problems you could ream them out a little with a drill but in my case that wasn't necessary. At this point I tested them again just to make sure my soldering could withstand the force of putting the circuit boards back in the housing.

 

And here is the finished product inside the car! The color and brightness look exactly as they should. I used these LEDs for the project but any brand will probably work just as well. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Q3LCMFK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Success! Saved well over $100 on an S402 cup holder. A write up will be coming soon.

 

 

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I just finished (or so I thought) installing my EDM center console. It has been really difficult finding all the pieces but damn it looks good..... Then I turned on the illumination. Blue?!?! That's not what I signed up for. After a lot of research I found that only the Legacy S402 in Japan got the red LED rings in the cupholders. Strange considering that every LED in the car is red then they pull a 180 and go with blue only for the cupholders.

S402 parts are harder to find than the regular JDM Legacy parts and therefore more expensive. Since I've already spent a lot on this project and all I want is a different color LED I'd be very interested in just swapping out the LEDs if that's an option. And hopefully this will help others in the future. It would even be worth doing a writeup on.

 

I just need some help getting started. The input to this circuit board is your standard 12v from the car. I think LEDs usually run on 2-3v from what I see on Amazon. Does anyone here know how to read resistors? I can't figure out the meaning of the stripes and don't even know which is the left or right side of the resistor. If someone can tell me more about this resistor and therefore what voltage the LED is running off of that would help me choose the correct voltage red LEDs. To my eyes it looks like gold, red, orange (could be yellow), brown. And what's the thing on the other side, a fuse?

Great thread. I also have an EDM center console question. My install is complete. I just got the LED and rings from Japan, installed and found that the LEDs are blue! Gross! Yours are a lovely red that goes with the rest of the interior. Did some cars come with red and some with blue?

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JDM headlight leveling switch bank wanted for a 2005 although I believe they are same all models

 

Need one to decide on JDM lights or not if I can source one of these I'll go jdm

 

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I have one

 

 

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I got to this too late: the plate you want is from any 2008-2009. They updated it for the facelift. I was in the same boat.

 

 

My car is an 08 so I’m not sure what you mean. So I have the correct plastic pieces on my car already but that thick metal plate seemed to keep the European plastic from fitting correctly.

 

 

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