Liltoua's Little Black Beast

Alright so I've been meaning to start one of these things for awhile now. Let me start off with my story of how I came into the Subaru world.


Like every other kid growing up and having a taste for modifying car, there no better way then to start off with a cheap Honda/Acura car. That's exactly what I did. I was blessed with a graduation gift from my parents after graduating High School with a 1995 Acura Integra. I was still very poor at the moment so mods came slowly and I never really did that much to it.

Jumping to College long story short, like any other day I park and go to class, and to my lucky I come out and my car goes missing. I pretty much lose all hope for my car(being one of the 10 ten most stolen cars) and had to take out a student loan to purchase a new car being a commute student, I had no choice.

Before:



After:





So I take out a $4,500 student loan (I only had liability on the Integra) :wtc::wtc: and started looking. I'm going to be honest, I never knew about the older Impreza. I never thought that Subaru were even in my price range (typical honda boy). When I thought Subaru, I thought STI and those were nowhere near my price range. So I was searching local forums and load and behold I found a black 98 Impreza 2.5 RS locally for around my price range. I immediately started doing research on the history of the car, common problems with the car, and all sorts of stuff about the car. Then I made my decision and purchased the car...ON my birthday HAHA.

Car:
1998 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS (DOHC :wiggle::wiggle
131,XXX Miles and going
Obsidian Black Pearl

Engine/Drivetrain:
Stock Motor
Injen Cold Air Intake
Ebay Replica Headers
EZR Exhaust (2.5 inch)
Track Pipe
Short Shifter
Whiteline Steering Rack Bushings
TIC Linkage
GroupN Tranny Mount
Koyo Radiator w/ Stock fans


Suspension/Breaks:
Whiteline HD Rear Endlinks
Whiteline Front Endlinks
Perrin 22mm Adjustable Rear Sway Bar
Front Strut Bar
Rear Strut Bar
KYB GR-2 struts
Ground Control Sleeves
Rotora 4pot BBK fronts only
Rotora Drilled Slotted rotors
Hawk HT-10 Pads
Goodridge SS Brake Lines
M4isFlat Fender Brace
Grimmspeed Master Cylinder Brace
17" Prodrive P1 with 225/45/117

Body/Interior:
V5/v6 JDM Rear bumper / JDM bumper beam
v5/v6 front bumper / JDM bumper beam
v5/v6 lip
v6 rear spoiler
JDM corner lights
JDM taillights
CF Eyelids
Foglight covers (sitting at the house waiting to be put on)
Morimoto Mini BiXenon Projectors
E46 shrouds
55w Ballast w/ 4300k D2S bulbs


This is how it looked with I first got the car




Progress Pictures:







Current Pictures

 

Here are just pictures I took when I installed my Whiteline Endlinks and Perrin Sway Bars








Here is when I first got my Exhaust in brand spankin new. Probably one of the only things I bought brand new lol





I got very very lucky and got hands on a JDM rear bumper with spats, for pretty much the price one would pay for the spats alone LOL



If it's one thing I hate about my car when I got it, it was the crappy and horrible play in the shifter. I mean I already have the crappy 5spd to deal with, and I wasn't havent it with wobble in my shifter. You could literally be in any gear and move the shifter from left to right. So I ordered the TIC linkage to fix that little problem. A mod I never want to do again. At least if I do it again, I want a lift and not be on my back HAHA.

 

Here is probably one of my most favorite mods ever.



So I had S2K projectors at my disposal, I really had my mind set on doing S2K projectors, but then I found a little site called theretrofitsource.com that had some really nice projectors that are half the size of the S2K and was pretty much going to be ALOT easier to retrofit, so I sold my S2K Projectors and bought the whole Morimoto Mini H1 kit and STILL came out with money on top. You can't beat that.

 

reserved

 

Nice car and nice progress.

At least they left the knob in the Integra, but now you're better off, right?

 

Awesome 2.5RS man.
I'm envious. I was close to taking out a loan for a 2.5RS in North Carolina, but was pressed for time so I ended up with my 3.
And good thing you got rid of that 'Teg. Lol.

 

As a former Integra driver, I agree with Peter. I don't know about yours, but mine was a turd from the get-go.

 

Unless it's a Type-R, waste of time and money.
I love the Type-Rs.

 

HAHA, I know! Those thieves were really stupid. They tried to take my short shifter or something and just cut my whole shift boot out but failed to get anything. Yea I don't miss my integra at all.

Yea I got SUPER lucky with mines. It was just the right timing for me.

 

Shifter feels awesome! I was lucky enough to drive this car.

 

I drive past your house going to Mahdavi like twice a week

 

nice i think I seen you a couple times on I85.

 

Ahh so your the subaru I always hear LOL!:wiggle:

 

Nice write up!

 

Great looking car and nice write up. I love that retrofit, looks great!

 

what a pos....hurry up and swap it!

 

Lol PAT. Incredibly rude.
But yes. Swap it. Do it.
Be like Rick. And Brett.

 

im joking. he knows

 

Me too. I had hoped you'd know. Lol

 

Man I want to swap soo bad. I'm tired of driving this N/A car. After driving a handful of WRX and a couple STI, I want to boost soo bad, but unfortunately, being a poor college student, funds don't come to me as easily HAHA

 

Multiple loans. LUL

 

HAHA, yea I already took a loan for this car, so I'm gonna wait. When I do my swap I want to do it right the first time so it doesn't turn into that big of a money pit LOL.

Anyways a buddy of mines called me over and said he had some wheels that were 5x100 and told me to come over and test fit them on my car, so why the hell not LOL. here's what it looks like



I can't say that I like them, but then again, I can't say that I don't HAHA. What do you guys think?

 

They're not bad. I just don't like the color on them.
Also, great picture.

 

Yea I don't like the color on them either, but I just wanted to see how 17x8 +35 would sit on a GC

Drags...same thing right LOL.

 

Great photo!!! I really dig the that wheel color on black...I think the yellow fogs kill the look (w those wheels).

 

Yeah... There's just something about the yellow fogs.
Is it an overlay? Or is the actual cover yellow?

 

Yea Matt, I remember seeing that picture float around, it looks really good, I like it alot! I think it's one of the reason I wanted to see how it would look on my car LOL.

Thanks! Yea I think if the wheel was a different color I could rock my yellow fogs. I'm running the overlay because it helps with those damn rocks cracking my foglights and those foglights are not cheap :|.

Just an overlay, here's how it use to look white



I didn't rock it clear for that long because I was scared they would crack after spending $100 on them already. :|

 

You could always get clear overlays to protect them.
It looks pretty good clear.
But I don't blame you for being scared of them cracking/damaged.
Thankfully, the Mazda3's fogs aren't as huge as those so I don't have to worry about them that much.
When they come in anyway.

 

Are those Hella horns?

 

yes

 

OMG doing a head-gasket change on the Suby right now. So far it took a buddy and me 1 day to pull out the motor and changed out both head-gaskets o the motor. Not to bad if you ask me. This is my first motor pull EVER and it's on a complicated ass Flat 4 motor LOL. This has definitely been a learning experience for me. It's amazing how much you can learn from just doing this. I learned SOOO many things.

Tomorrow I will be cleaning up all the damn gunk that has piled over the years and degrease everything and get the engine ready to drop back in and assemble everything back. Hopefully I won't run into any problems. I already know I lost some bolts, so I'm gonna have fun finding replacements. I also found out I need a new motor mount, so if you have one laying around let me know ASAP! (^_^)

 

I just ordered like a gasket kit and it came with a bunch of gaskets and seals. I don't know if they were the STI ones, but it sure wasn't the old design ones haha. It was a PITA to take off all the old gasket that was left on the block, took me the majority of the time b/c I didn't want to mess up on that.

 

So my car is running fine now. Finally got my headgasket done and fixed. I ran into so many problems doing this, but I learned so much. Im sure next time I do this it will take half the time it took me. Anyways, shot a SHORT video of my car with my new 60D and took a quick snap this morning of my car as well. Enjoy

[youtube]mHSYvCkbShE[/youtube]

 

So when I was doing my head-gasket I already knew that my spark plug gaskets were shot, but I had to wait for the gaskets to come in because no one remotely had them in stock. So I just re-assembled everything together because unfortunately this is my daily driver and I have no time to wait on parts. So my parts finally come in and I change them out tighten everything back up in that cramp little engine space of ours. So I go in to pour some more oil in because it drips a little when you take off the valve cover and I just hear a stream of oil just drip out from under the car. OMGWTF! I was piss! I took a flash light and looked from the bay to see where the leak was coming from.....poked my finger around the corner of the head and BAM! My fingers goes straight through my block. Took everything apart and....



I didn't even see that when I was assembling everything back, I didn't have much sunlight and couldn't see crap. Subaru charges $8 bucks for that little plastic piece....go figure, it could have been worse LOL. So I just put some RTV on it and called it a day.

On to my next story. I was driving to school and was about 15ft away from one of those uhaul moving trucks just driving normally minding my own business. Then all of a sudden I see the truck swerve out of the way of something and his back tire hits a 2x4 piece of wood and "BAM" hits my car, didn't think anything of it, thought it just hit my bumper and bounced off....WRONG. I was doing my head-gasket change and look what nice surprise I found...



How safe is it to run like this until I get a replacement part? I mean I'm not leaking any coolant and I've been watching my water temp and it's been steady.

 

wow, looks like the exact situation that happened to me with my fmic toua
if you've been driving around like that then you should be fine, just change it out asap

 

Out of all the USDM Imprezas, this is really the only one I like. I would love to have one as a DD and keep my Legacy as a track only car.

I feel your pain. I've done these three times...and both times I was on jackstands. The hardest part is the damn spring pin on the front side.

 

man terribly sorry about your whip, man such a beauty another gc that i love... but man sucks about that wood that has happended to me on the on ramp back in vegas in my first gc... i guess someone dropped parts of a bunkbed and the guy in front of me drove over and it shot out and busted through my bumper and shot up my rad, luckily iwas near my friends house and we replaced it... but love your ride for real... but hopefully u get this fixed.. good luck man with the damage... i would replace it if your seeing changes in the car.. only u know how ur car runs...

 

i ran over 2 mattresses last week...people need to secure stuff...arrgg!

when you did the engine did you figure out exactly where the leaks were comin from?

 

Thanks for all the compliments guys!

Yea I plan on a swap in the feature so I might as well upgrade to an aluminum one, I'm looking at Koyo right now because it looks like I can use my stock fans for it for now until I can upgrade the fans.

Yea debris on the road really sucks and it's pretty much SOL if you hit something. Yea I found where the leaks were. I had a couple.

1. Spark plug gasket
2. Somewhere along my power steering lines, still not sure where.
3. Pretty much the whole driver side head-gasket. I blew one head-gasket, but my passenger side was still good, but starting to go.

If I had time I would have done my rear main seal and water pump and all that other crap, but this is my DD, so I have no time to wait on parts and change it out. I needed this thing in and out, so just did what needed to be done.

 

So it was time to retire my headers. They were already beat to hell. I had a really bad exhaust leak from my headers. I had a good friend of mines weld the headers two times on two different pipes. Everything was going fine and then I herd another small leak from the headers again! I think I lost the battle with my headers HAHA. I finally gave up and just bought new ebay ones. I mean you can't beat the price of $170 shipped for brand new headers. So I said to hell with it and just ordered them because that leak was getting on my nerves.

 

Dang that's not looking promising for me then LOL. I guess it's a hit or miss with ebay headers huh? Maybe my car is running crappy and causing my headers to get too heated up causing the crack. Who knows, or maybe....I just need a swap HAHA.