John Hall's 2007 specB - Daily turned Restoration (Respray, Engine Build, Air Ride, More!)

[arlia101]

Wow, John -- this certainly puts all our own little plans in perspective XD

 

Great to see there'll be at least one rust-free Legacy up in the Northeast -- and with over 200k miles, amazing!

 

 

To everyone else who's lamenting the decline of forums like this in preference for Instagram and Facebook and junk like that... hear, hear! I hate having to wade through Facebook posts for legit info... c'mon, no topical threads? search features?

 

Hope I keep finding y'all here until after the last car rusts away

 

 

@BagRidersJohn Tangential question -- for a job at work, I've been looking up fixes for rusty galvanized steel / galvalume. I see you've used both POR-15 and Rust Bullet here. Looks like you used the POR-15 on still-surface-rusted calipers, while the Rust Bullet you did a full metal prep first. That sound right? General preference of one vs the other?

[BagRidersJohn]

Really appreciate all the kind words folks! The communities built around a particular make or model has always been one of my absolute favorite aspects of my wrenching hobby. I'll be keeping up with build threads as long as forums continue to exist!

 

@BagRidersJohn Tangential question -- for a job at work, I've been looking up fixes for rusty galvanized steel / galvalume. I see you've used both POR-15 and Rust Bullet here. Looks like you used the POR-15 on still-surface-rusted calipers, while the Rust Bullet you did a full metal prep first. That sound right? General preference of one vs the other?

 

Yes that is correct re: products. I think POR15 is an excellent product but I think its a bit naive to expect any topical coating can magically "stop rust" entirely. Rust has started peaking through the POR coating on my calipers after a couple years which isn't bad, but ya its not a permanent fix. I'm certain my results would've been longer lasting had I put more prep into the part e.g., sand blasting.

 

I like the 2-part process of Rust Bullet, and they also make some other coatings for industrial applications you might want to check out. I like that it can be sprayed through an HVLP spray gun which is great for large areas. I've both sprayed it on and brushed it on; spray definitely gives a better aesthetic and is faster to apply.

 

Depending on the application, I'd gladly use POR15 or Rust Bullet, I think they're both great products. For me, it would likely boil down to the desired application method, coverage area, and how the surface can be prepped. For example, I have my front uprights/knuckles out of the car now and I'll be sandblasting those at our (Bag Riders) shop/studio this weekend, and intend to hit those with a brush-on application of POR15 for a "one and done" ordeal with minimal clean up. For a large surface or something with more hard to reach or very tight areas that would be difficult to achieve ample coverage with a brush, I'd lean towards Rust Bullet via HVLP spray gun.

 

I'm not an expert on these things by any means, just speaking from experience! I think the best advice I can give is to choose the product that will allow you to achieve the best coverage while following the manufacturers guidelines for application. I hope that helps!

[Gex]

Great work! My back hurts just thinking about you sitting under and scrapping,sanding, prepping, applying. Seriously that is some effort!

[BagRidersJohn]

Great work! My back hurts just thinking about you sitting under and scrapping,sanding, prepping, applying. Seriously that is some effort!

 

Thanks! My back still hurts

[BagRidersJohn]

Nothing too exciting going on, as I mentioned a few posts back I decided to pull the front suspension apart to touch up the wheel wells and hubs.

 

I mounted the bracket for the air ride height sensor to the front crossmember, and made a little bracket to hold the bulkhead fitting (seen next to the brake line bracket). Similarly to the brake pipe system on the car, I design my air ride setups to have "semi permanent" runs from each wheel well to the manifold and a "more serviceable" section within the wheel well. A braided and lined hose will mate this bulkhead connection to the air spring in the same way the soft brake hose connects the hard piping to the caliper.

 

With the control arms out of the car, I cleaned them up with some degreaser and a maroon scuff pad. They cleaned up nice! The reason they're out of the car is so that I could tap them for the air ride height sensor linkage. Of course before removing them from the car, I marked where I intended to tap. Since these arms are aluminum, I'm going to use a fiberglass reinforced nylon fastener instead of the provided stainless one in order to avoid galvanatic corrosion. The nylon fastener will be strong enough for this no-load application and in the event there IS load on it, I'd much rather snap a fastener that costs a few cents than a $100+ electrical sensor!

 

Lastly, I took at trip to Bag Riders HQ yesterday to do some computer work around the office. I recently built a new rig for our YouTube videographer/editor and had a few other things to address while I was there, having been working remotely for a long time now. Anyhow, I brought my hubs with me and used our sand blast cabinet to clean them up -- they came out nice! I'll be hitting these with a matte black POR15 then they're ready to go back in the car.

 

Not pictured, I repacked my front inner CV's with some Red Line CV grease. Neat!

 

Next up on the agenda is giving the front wheel arches a quick coat of paint, replacing the axle seals on the front diff, paint the hubs, then put it all back together. With the front end done, I'll get back to work on the rear of the car, starting with the brake piping and EVAP canister then the fuel tank and rear cross member. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, I can see it!!

 

Bonus content! I'm sure some of you are interested in computers so I'll share a few pics I took yesterday while at HQ. The machine is built around a Ryzen 9 5900 cooled by a Kraken x73 with 64GB of some fast DDR4 and a GTX 1080ti. The 1080ti is reused from the last build as I don't see it being the bottleneck for his intended uses, and video cards are basically unobtainable these days These photos were taken in our YouTube studio which is about 2000 sq/ft out of around 12,000 sq/ft of our facility in Williston, VT. Our office staff has been working remote for what seems like forever now, I'm so excited to hopefully soon get us all back together IRL.

 

Anyhow, some shots

Edited March 8, 2021 by BagRidersJohn

[derache123]

Wow, that is one pretty PC!

 

The cars aren't too bad either.

[BagRidersJohn]

Happy Friday LGT Fam!

 

Small and relatively unexciting update but hey, progress is progress! I've been swamped with work which eats into my shop time but hey as the French say, c'est la vie.

 

I painted my front uprights/knuckles (what do you guys call these things?) with some POR15 and I like the look. I'm waiting on some new OEM brake shields to show up before they go back together the rest of the way, should be this weekend. Of course, I put a liberal amount of anti-seize on the pinch bolt to give it a fighting chance of coming out smoothly should I need to service the ball joint some day. I think I put the Whiteline kit in maybe 3 years ago now and the pinch bolt came out without a hassle. Maybe the recipe for success is just to re-apply anti-seize to these bad boys every year

 

Like I mentioned a couple posts back, I tapped some M5-0.8 threads into the LCA to accept the linkage for the air ride height sensor. Out of fear of galvanic corrosion from a stainless bolt in the aluminum part, I opted for a nylon fiberglass reinforced fastener from McMaster-Carr and some PTFE washers. Before final assembly, I'll hit the heim joint / spherical bearing with some silicone paste to help keep debris out and promote smooth operation. I must have chased these threads a dozen times to ensure the nylon fastener threads in/out smoothly!

 

Last but certainly not least, I cleaned up the front wheel wells. This was not even remotely close to the effort involved in the back of the car. There was only a few small areas of surface rust that were easy to address with a die grinder. Overall the process was the same as the rest of the car, just a much much smaller and easier to work in area.

 

Now, I know what you're thinking.... the front cross-member!! It is rusty!! As painful as it is for me to ignore it, I have to for the time being. Don't you worry though, it will get addressed at some point, most likely next winter. The poor EJ255 in this car is getting tired (remember, its got 200K on it!!!), so I plan on dropping it along with the 6MT and rebuilding them. I'll tackle the motor, whereas the trans I'll hand off to a neighbor who owns a local transmission shop and also happens to have a lot of experience with Subaru 6MTs. With the motor and trans out of the car, I'll take the opportunity to freshen up the cross-member, steering rack, various other things in the front of the car, and color match the engine bay.

 

Until then though, I'm dead-set on reassembling this thing and getting it back on the road!!

[socalsleeper]

Unfortunately, my front wheel wells did not turn out how I had hoped. I originally put some black paint over the existing rubberized goop from the factory, but that would not cure properly and would remain tacky.

I cleaned it with acetone and applied some rubberized undercoating and that dried, for a while but again got tacky. I could just clean it with acetone again, but that also makes that undercoating look messy so it is going to come off. Time to bust out the heat gun and scraper.... ugh.

 

That is a long way of saying I feel your pain!!! and applaud your progress, keep at it.

[BagRidersJohn]

I'm back and comin' in hot with another update!

 

I've been focusing on getting the car back to being able to roll around which is super exciting! In my last post I had cleaned up the front wheel wells and cleaned up the suspension parts. Those are now back in the car, and then some!

 

Starting with the front suspension... I loosely bolted the everything back together, the whole time wishing the Whiteline bump steer correction steering rods didn't look so nasty... oh well! It is a shame they look so rough after only a few winters.

 

Unfortunately my rotors were toast from sitting in the same wet muddy (and then frozen) spot for like 6 months before I winched it out and put it into my shop last year (...?) or whenever it was that I started this project Anyways, I decided to replace them, and just bought the same thing I already had, some StopTech slotted jimmies. New pads as well because well, why not.

 

You'll notice in these photos the bracket for the air line (next to the brake line bracket) and air ride height sensor (mounted to the cross member). I'll finalize the height sensor linkage length and bracket position with the suspension loaded so I can confirm travel and such. The key to success with air ride height sensors is to utilize as much of their travel range as possible, so you want to do them after adjusting your suspension.

 

Lastly, I think I mentioned this in my last post, but I painted some reman'd calipers and brackets. Gotta love that fresh black look!

 

Everything is loose in these photos as I like to tighten things up as the very last thing before I put the car on the ground (or wheel stands, in this case). Of course some fasteners need to be torque at drive height.

 

Summary of what I did up front:

• Refinished wheel well
  
• Sand blasted and painted knuckles/uprights
  
• New wheel bearings
  
• New brake dust shields
  
• New calipers & brackets, painted black
  
• Cleaned aluminum LCAs, tapped for air ride height sensor linkage
  
• Mounted air ride height sensor bracket and fabbed basic bracket for air line coupler
  
• New Perrin end links
  
• New slotted rotors
  
• Re-packed CV joints with Redline CV Grease
  
• Replaced inner axle seal (on the diff)
  

 

With the front suspension more or less buttoned up, I was excited to get back to work on the rear end of the car.

 

Firstly, I had to reinstall the stuff that came out in prep of doing all the chassis work i.e., brake lines, EVAP assembly, and tow hook brackets. The rear brake lines were seized at some union so I had cut them out and bit the bullet for new rear lines. The tow strap brackets were also in pitiful condition and they were relatively inexpensive compared to my time so I decided to just buy them new instead of refinishing. At some point I also blasted and refinished the bracket that holds the brake line junction block. I did get a bit of paint on the lines that run through the interior as well as the junction block, but the rest of it looks great!!

 

As you might notice in that photo, I ran the harness for the air ride height sensors through the ABS grommet for a clean, OEM-like installation.

 

With all that stuff back in place, I began prepping the new (to me) fuel tank. I picked up this along with a number of other big items from 541 Motorsports. Big shoutout to them, they're great to work with. The fuel tank arrived in excellent condition so all I had to do was swap over a few hoses, the sending unit, transfer pump, and voila it was ready to go! I also replaced all the nuts with some 316 stainless nuts; the OEM ones were SO corroded!! Of course, I anti-seized the studs for future serviceability if needed.

 

And here it is up in the car! New straps at all! It probably goes without saying, but stainless hardware and anti-seize were used on all the mounting bolts. This applies for everything I'm doing haha.

 

Oh yeah, I replaced the fuel filler neck too

 

Next up was the rear cross member / sub-frame. This also came from 541 Motorsports and I gave it a good cleaning, sanding, and coat of POR15. I bought new upper mount washers (cant remember what they're called; the part that that go between the mounting points and chassis), lower washers (for the rear mounting points) and also the Whiteline bushing inserts. Here it is ready to go into the car

 

To say that the installation process was easier than removal would be the understatement of the century. Its just so nice to be working with well prepped, new, clean parts and to see all my hard work coming together.

 

Feeling motivated, I made quick work of the suspension arms. I anti-seized all the turnbuckle threads on the lateral links for good measure. Every single nut and bolt in the rear suspension was replaced with a new OEM part, with the exception of the factory toe adjustment cam bolt that was replaced with the Whiteline lockout kit since its purpose is replaced with the adjustable arms. I had to take a moment to appreciate the progress!

 

New OEM backing plates and hub/bearing assemblies really put to shame the rusted pieces that came out of the car. Tomorrow I plan on painting the rear calipers and brackets, and I have new rotors and pads on the way as well.

 

Next on the ever-shrinking list for me is installing new parking brake cables, parking brake hardware, and then the rear brakes. I also lugged my R180 down from the attic (that sucker is heavy!!), removed the diff from the case and started prepping the case for refinishing. I decided against doing a complete rebuild (e.g., not pulling the pinion) as everything looks fine and dandy inside the case, but will be refinishing the case, replacing the bearing holders, bearing shims, all the external hardware, axle seals, and everything on the cover. It's going to look great!

 

It wont be long before the car hits the ground (well, wheel stands, then the ground) and let me tell you, I can't wait to make that happen!!

 

As always, thanks for reading and following along!!

[Infosecdad]

Beautiful attention to detail, it's amazing, I love it.

I've picked up a few things from 541 Motorsports over the years and they have been great to work with, I can definitely second that.

[jaylew]

Putting bags in the rear has me interested...but just the rear to get on the BMW / MB level to account for all the groceries in my wagon. Love the work otherwise! Looking really good!!

[zcokes]

Amazing work dude! Love the attention to detail

[BagRidersJohn]

Beautiful attention to detail, it's amazing, I love it.

I've picked up a few things from 541 Motorsports over the years and they have been great to work with, I can definitely second that.

 

Thank you!

 

Putting bags in the rear has me interested...but just the rear to get on the BMW / MB level to account for all the groceries in my wagon. Love the work otherwise! Looking really good!!

 

Thank you! I'd be happy to help you if you have any questions about air suspension! As you mentioned, air springs are fairly common in OE applications (especially in luxury vehicles) for the purposes of load support and providing the capability of dynamic spring rates to suit different driving scenarios. The air ride kits we offer at Bag Riders are generally geared towards lowering the vehicle without entirely sacrificing practicality (e.g., being able to lift the vehicle for a rough road or steep incline). That said, load support is absolutely a benefit! I can't recall how many times over the 8+ years of my wagon being bagged that I've loaded it full of stuff that, if I was lowered on coilovers, would not have been possible (or would have at least resulted in some serious damage to wheels/fenders!!). Camping trips, heavy building supplies (concrete bags!!), car show supplies... the list goes on! Very handy!

 

I've got a few parts trickling in over the weekend that will allow me to button up the suspension, finally! I'm SO excited to get the Legacy off stands so I can FINALLY see it laid out! Before that happens I do need to finish rebuilding my wheels and mount some tires on them.

 

The list of stuff showing up includes new rear rotors, brake pads, rear parking brake hardware, a bunch of hardware for rear diff, shims for the rear diff, and a couple of nuts/bolts for the rear suspension that apparently I forgot to order.

 

With that stuff in hand, I don't think there is anything else preventing me from getting the suspension and drivetrain all back together, and finally put the car back on the ground.

 

While I've got the interior apart, I'm going to do some aftermarket audio then put it all back together. Yay!

[BagRidersJohn]

Now I know that stance and tight fitment isn't everyone's cup of tea, but that's what I'm going for on this car: wide, low, aggressive stance. Ever since I switched up my WRX to be more "function > form" by the way of bigger tires and less aggressive wheels, I've been missing having a stanced car. So yeah, I'm very excited about this and I hope you can appreciate the effort required to achieve this sort of wheel fitment.. especially building a set of 3 piece wheels based on measurements and math!

 

Front (18x10.5 et +6)

 

Rear (18x10.5 et -6)

 

Still have plenty of fine-tuning to do, but this was an exciting and fulfilling milestone for me! Definitely motivation to keep making headway and finally get this car back on the ground!!

[whitexc]

Sideshot with wheels pic request for the win. Looks great.

 

Sent from my moto z3 using Tapatalk

[BagRidersJohn]

Sideshot with wheels pic request for the win. Looks great.

 

Sent from my moto z3 using Tapatalk

 

Alright if you're gonna pull my leg... (and thank you!)

 

 

Seeing this was very motivational to me; I can't wait to finally see it on the ground. It's been a hovercraft for FAR too long

[BagRidersJohn]

Last night I finished up the reseal, refinish and light rebuild of my R180, and it came out pretty darn good I think!

 

I used all new OEM hardware of course. I replaced the axle bearing holders (the part that bolts to the diff housing) with new factory parts. The most PITA part of this process was removing the carrier bearing race from the old crusty pieces. I replaced the shims and O-Rings with new factory parts as well, along with all the hardware on the cover and mount. I also used Whitelines bushing inserts on the mount bushings.

 

You can see that the ring and pinion on the diff is in good shape so that was good to see

 

And since everyone loves as good "before and after", look how crusty this thing was when it came out of the car!!

 

Hoping that tonight I will have time to put this sucker back in the car along with the rear axles, then I'll actually be able to put the car on the ground. Hell ya!

[socalsleeper]

WOW Very crusty indeed!!!

You have the clutch style LSD, or the rock grinder type in there?

[socalsleeper]

BTW that side shot is very very nice!!! Love the color, I would love to see it in person in some daylight. I'm sure it will pop!

[BagRidersJohn]

I didn't get a whole lot done on the Legacy this weekend. It was beautiful out and unseasonably warm, sitting over 70 degrees all day Saturday! So my wife and I took the day to work on overhauling our garden and other around-the-house projects.

 

But I did get some work done on my Legacy and other cars!

 

Since refreshing the diff, I couldn't bring myself to just reinstall the axles without giving them any love. They were very crusty so I did the usual process of grind, clean, and paint. Good ol' needle scaler and die grinder made pretty quick work of the rust buildup on the cups and I just hit the shafts by hand. I used some paint I had kickin' around from some tractor mods, so we'll see how it holds up. I'm not holding my breath but at least it looks better now!

 

No "before" pics but if you're still in this thread, you're used to that by now

 

And with those cleaned up, it was finally time to get the diff and rear axles back in the car so that is just what I did. I torqued all the fasteners on the diff while it was still on the bench and left the fill plug loose. I used a 2x12 as a platform on the jack which made getting the diff up into the crossmember easy peasy despite it being pretty heavy.

 

So clean!!

 

I have a few small parts for the parking brake on order from Subaru, like the lever that the parking brake cables attaches to. At this point, when something is super crusty I just replace it. As the saying goes, "in for a penny, in for a pound". Once those parts show up I can reassemble the parking brakes and that will do it for the suspension overhaul. It's been a long time coming, I'm very excited!

 

Having 4 axles in the car finally queued me to order tires, which means I need to finish building my wheels. Right now they're just held together by 4 bolts each (out of 40) so I've got to put the rest of them in, torque them all, then apply sealant before mounting tires. I love the outcome, but I don't really love building 3 piece wheels

 

Other car stuff for me this weekend were starting my WRX for the first time this season and doing an oil change + polishing up some of the aluminum parts in the engine bay. I also put some Method wheels and bigger tires on my 05 Outback that I rebuilt as a winter beater. Bonus pics!

 

Until next time!

[SoobyDoobyDoo]

Night and day difference between the before and after on the rear diff-any special tools needed to repair/rebuild? Looks very clean! Always nice to see some rex pics too

[BagRidersJohn]

Night and day difference between the before and after on the rear diff-any special tools needed to repair/rebuild? Looks very clean! Always nice to see some rex pics too

 

Thanks! Nothing special to do what I did, but I didn't take apart the actual diff which would require some special tools. There is actually a really good video on a drivetrain shop rebuilding an R180 on YouTube that you should watch if you're considering doing it. What I did was an aesthetic overhaul more than anything since upon opening it up, I found the diff to be in good condition with normal looking wear on the gears.

 

---

 

Haven't had much time in the shop recently with stuff around the house and life in general, so when I'm out there I've been doing little things like fiddling with wheel fitment and dialing in the air ride height sensors. All that is going good!

 

I dialed in the left rear wheel fitment last night. I think I nailed it! I'm going for an aggressive stance with what would be considered "moderate" camber in the stance world. I'm guessing this is somewhere around -5 or -6 which is indeed very moderate considering double digit negative camber is super common.

 

I like the look of lip to fender with the lip of the wheel just barely protruding past the wheel arch. I very likely will need to make some adjustments when i have tires on these wheels, however.

 

Little random detail, but I wanted to try something different for leader hoses. This is just an aesthetic thing for me; I like stuff to be black. Leader hoses are steel braided air hoses that are a good choice for MacPherson applications as the strut turns with the steering and therefore the air hose is generally more exposed to road debris than e.g. a rear air spring or a front spring that isn't part of a MacPherson assembly. I used some abrasion resistant nylon sleeve material from McMaster and heat shrunk the ends for a finished look.

 

For the front height sensors, I mounted one of our sensor brackets to the front crossmember using some nutserts and M6 hardware. These brackets are super handy as they lend themselves to pretty much any sort of installation. They can be bent, cut and reshaped with ease. They're slotted for both the sensor orientation as well as the mounting slots which helps get the position and sensor travel really perfect. I'm going to hit these with some black paint once after a little bit more testing.

 

The purpose of the height sensor is, hopefully quite obviously, to determine the height of the vehicle for the purpose of maintaining a consistent aligned driving height when adjusting the air suspension. Height readings are always a reliable means of determining the suspension height of the vehicle, very much unlike air spring pressure. Take for example, changes in cabin weight e.g., adding passengers or cargo. As weight in the cabin increases so does air spring pressure, however the height of the vehicle is lowered by the added weight. So pressure goes UP but the vehicle goes DOWN. Therefore, you cannot rely on a set of air spring pressures to consistently yield the same driving height whereas you can ALWAYS rely on the values of the height sensors to yield the same driving height.

 

Installing height sensors is probably the most dreaded aspect of an air ride install as they can be tricky to find an ideal location, therefore it is very common for folks to skip this step altogether and instead rely on air spring pressures. You can absolutely get by with air spring pressures alone, especially if you don't often have passengers or cargo, but there is no arguing that height sensors are the "end all be all" to determining your suspension height. It should come as no surprise that OE's will use height sensors with air suspension every time.

 

I could go on and on about the importance of height sensors and how to install them, but I think this post is already getting quite long so I'll save you the reading Anyways, here is the location for my front height sensors. I simply bent the bracket and notched it for steering arm travel. I shortened the linkage rod and installed a stud on the lower control arm to receive it. Clearance is tight around the swaybar linkage, but there is no interference throughout suspension travel. It appears that I'm utilizing most of the sensor's travel range which is ideal for accuracy. Once I fire up the system, I will know exactly how much of the sensor I am utilizing via the air ride controller.

 

I intend on chopping the sensor arm down to remove the unused portion, but otherwise this is ready to go!

 

Thanks for reading!

[socalsleeper]

Night and day difference between the before and after on the rear diff-any special tools needed to repair/rebuild? Looks very clean! Always nice to see some rex pics too

 

For replacing seals yes and no. The only "special tool' You might need is someway to keep the pinion from spinning when you are trying to remove, and re-torque the nut that holds the flange to the pinion shaft. Otherwise hand tools.

 

If you are replacing bearings that is another subject. Then you need a dial indicator and some way to remove the bearings from the carrier, and prob a shop press.

For most people this level of work is best done at a shop. Before I sold my Jeep I swapped the differential in that thing to a larger stronger unit with and LSD. I replaced all seals and bearings. I took the pinion and the carrier to a shop, and did the rest myself to include checking backlash. Rebuilding a diff is definitely, and rare thing for most guys to do at home. Not rocket science, but it is just much cheaper and easier to have some one else do it.

 

If all you have is a leaky side seal you can do that on jackstands, if you have some humming going on. Then you should drop it, buy the bits and have a shop rebuild the hole thing and save yourself a lot of headache.

 

Hope that helps.

[BagRidersJohn]

Everything socalsleeper said about a diff rebuild is spot on! Since what I did here was just really a reseal and aesthetic refresher, I didn't require any special tools. If there was something wrong with the diff, I'd have handed it off to some drivetrain specialists to get the job done right!

 

Not much for an update this week unfortunately. Typically my "all day shop day" is Sunday and this particular Sunday got away from me. My wife and I went to meet my FIL in town and on his way there, he was having issues with his clutch pedal not returning. I figured his fluid was shot or some failure in the plumbing caused a fluid leak. Well when we got to his location, I could smell the burning clutch. Sure enough the reservoir was just about empty so I filled it with fluid and that fixed the pedal issue, but he then mentioned that the car was making a terrible noise when the clutch pedal was depressed. Now you have to understand my father in law is very hard of hearing, so for him to complain about a noise really is saying something. I hopped in the car to hear it for myself and knew right away, the throwout bearing was toast.

 

I offered to drive his car back to my shop about 25 miles away. I managed to do so while only using the clutch pedal twice for two first-gear starts at a red light and getting off the highway. I pulled the engine out knowing that I'd be doing a clutch job, and man oh man was I right about the TOB.

 

The clutch wasn't far behind so I'm doing that plus throwing a new flywheel in there. Should be good to go for a while after that!

 

The only things I really got done on my Legacy were building my wheels and reassembling the rear parking brake.

 

All new parking brake stuff, nice!

 

Sealing up 3 piece wheels is easy but a bit time consuming, having to torque 40 bolts per wheel and seal up the flange with silicone. I always enjoy taking my time to make this part look really nice, although one will never actually see it aside from tire changes...

 

One night this week I hope to make it into our shop to do the mount and balancing.

[BagRidersJohn]

Happy Monday LGT fam. Most of my free time last week was spent doing the clutch replacement on my FIL's Outback and doing some family stuff, but I got some solid time out in the shop on Sunday and managed to reach a major milestone which was getting the car OFF JACK STANDS!!! WOOO!!!

 

It feels like it has been in that same spot on jack stands for a LONG time so I turned to my photo album on my phone to get a more accurate date and turns out, it was on May 18th 2020 that it went onto jack stands... almost a year ago!

 

I'll be mounting tires onto my Rotiform splits later this week so until then I have it sitting on its old winter wheels.

 

Not a very exciting picture, but a big milestone for this project nonetheless. Literally everything came off the underside of the car and was replaced or refinished, both for the front and rear suspension. Man let me tell you, it a good feeling to crawl under there and see all the new goodness and wrench on fasteners that aren't bound by decades of rust!!

 

At some point here I'm going to make a thread for installing air suspension on a LGT covering where I routed lines and wires, and go into a bit more detail about how I mounted the height sensors. Height sensors are one of my favorite details of an air ride install because they require critical thinking and problem solving. When done right, they make for an incredibly enjoyable system.