Liltoua's Little Black Beast

take a piece of hose and cut it length ways to wrap around the flex line before zip tying them to anything. this way you don't kink the line and add a bit of abrasion resistance to them

 

and don't use a braided line that does not have a protective sheathing over the braid. road grime will get in the weave and cause problems as well

 

So I spent 2 weekends slaving away at sanding the old clear coat off my carbon fiber hood. I called up spray glow to see if they would tackle reclearing my hood because although it's not hard....I knew the process of doing it and I wasn't sure if I was ready for it. Long story short, they said they didn't want to do it because it would cause to many fish eyes. I got turned down and wasn't going to wait around for someone to do it for me. I now have a new appreciation for people who do body work. I did some research and bought all the materials that I needed. Here's a list of the materials.

- 800, 1200 girt wet/dry sand paper
- 3M fine scotch bright pads
- 3 can's clear coat
- Cutting pads for porter cable
- Meguiar's Mirror Glaze Ultra-Cut Compound
- Lots of microfiber towels
- Lots and lots of patience

First up here is what I had to work with. I really don't care for carbon fiber, but I wanted a lighter hood than the stock steel RS one. I can say that I neglected the hood so it was my fault for the way that it looks haha.




I then started off, by wet sanding away all the old clear coat from the hood. I started off with an 800 grit sand paper to take it off. This was by far the most labor intensive part of the DIY. Maybe I was doing it wrong....or maybe I should have taken a porter cable/sandpaper to it because it took FOREVER! I think this took me a whole weekend LOL. I got so tired that I just stopped at some point. There was still more to be done, but I got the majority of it. There's gotta be an easier way then by doing it by hand. Here's what I was left with.









I don't have any in progress pictures, but after that I rattle canned the hood with three layers of clear coat waiting 15 minutes in between coats. I'm not a professional and I just wanted it to look better than it did before so this was the lazy way of doing it. The real way would be to buy a cheap gun and clear coat and spray it that way. You get a more even coat and the outcomes are far better. After the clear coat has settled and dried, I took 1200 grit wet/dry sandpaper and even out the clear coat. Let it dry and make sure the whole hood is hazy and even.







After that you are ready to polish it out! I bought a Chemical Guys pad kit that came with 7 pads....which I used only one LOL. I combined that with the Meguiar's compound. This is where your hard work pays off. I should probably have finished it off with some polish...but like I said I was to lazy and this project had already taken to much of my time. I went over the hood with the compound and magic happened.

 

meh.

 

will that work on the fenders?

 

Nice job man.

 

Great job tackling a daunting task yourself. It's not hard at all....just takes time and lots of patience.

 

This is awesome!

 

Haha came out great, did you do this at Thuy's house?
background looks awful familiar

 

That's pretty phenomenal man. HUGE DIFFERENCE. Great job.

 

Thanks guys!!!

Yea I did LOL. Sprayed it outside and polished it in the garage. It turned out pretty good for what I did.

 

Drove around the car for a day w/o the hood while the clear coating was going on. The intake/BOV was SUPER loud on WOT haha, it was pretty awesome. Not everyday I get to see my car hood-less lol.

 

Every time I see your car I grunt involuntarily. Like Tim Allen home improvement type of grunt with some mumbling.

 

Well said, and I agree 100%.

 

F*** you Toua!

 

Not much happening. I've been having lots of electrical issues lately. It started off with my taillights not working and then my battery going out LOL. It all started when my friend told me that one of my taillights were out. I figured it was just a simple light bulb replacement. I was very wrong. All of a sudden my brakes started triggering my cluster, Defi gauges, and corner lights when I pressed on the brakes. I tested current in my taillights and everything seemed to be getting proper power, but the moment I put in a bulb....everything goes haywire.

Then I went to go check voltage of my light weight battery and it was only reading 9 volts when the car was on. I had a WRX alternator laying around so I converted my harness which only supported a 2 pin alternator to a 3 pin and threw the WRX alternator in. I figured it was the alternator not keeping the battery alive, but after all of that my battery was still reading 9 volts. So I said to hell with lightweight batteries and bought a proper battery. I'll be spending this weekend relocating the battery to the rear and hopefully all my electrical problems will go away .

 

Just a quick picture I took with a last minute mountain run up in Dahlonega. Sorry I didn't invite anything lol, very last minute. No updates on the car, just enjoying the car

 

love the plate, its classic

 

Decided I wanted to go a little all out at the autocross event at IA so I raised up the car a bit. Event was pretty fun minus the non working timers they had. Couldn't get an official time, but my friends time all of us and it looks like I ran one of the fastest times. The first half of the day everyone was sliding around because the track was cold. I was doing fine thanks to the AWD . The car feels really solid though. I feel like it's perfectly balance. No understeer and very controllable oversteer. The car feels so much better with the R180 in the rear now. Next on the list is some sort of DCCD management.

 

hopefully we can take come flared coupe pics together soon

 

:bowdown:

 

Haha, hurry up and get it running! We need to do a flared shoot with Jeff's car to

 

Toua no updates? Been a while, all I ever see you on is that R6!

 

Finally saw you in the subaru the other day pulling into the hood. Was beginning to wonder if you'd crashed or sold it lol

 

HAHA STill have it James . I haven't seen yours in awhile. I drove past you the other day though in it. How's the car?

 

Clutch being a little wimp for whatever reason, otherwise great.
Put it in the body shop to fix all the rock chips and where the wheel barrow fell on the side, looks all fresh now

 

Went to the track this weekend. Atlanta Motorsports Park. Had a blast there. First time tracking my car so I took it a bit easy. Didn't have much confidence in my tires so i didn't want to push it to far. I ran in the novice group with a bunch of friends so I had an instructor with me for a session and then took the car out by myself for the other session.

Overall I'm really happy with how my car handles. The car is very neutral in turns and very predictable. I was too scared to push it to it's limits because I was so worried about not being able to drive it back home so I took it easy for the most part. My instructor actually told me to slow down HAHA. Since it was my first time he wanted me to take the pace down a notch.





The day was going great! I was really getting the hang of the car and the track and then this happened.



I blew a main fuse SBF no.5 which controls the ECU/Fuel Pump/etc. My car stop dead on the track and I had to get it towed back into the pits. I pulled another 30A fuse from a friends car that didn't need it and threw it on and it instantly blew as well. So this stopped my runs for the day.




It looks like I have a short in the system somewhere. I freakin hate electrical problems. Now I have to pull everything apart and look for any exposed wires in my system. I'm just glad that it's a wiring issue and not a engine problem. I would rather have this issue then having to replace a motor. Can't wait for the next track day. Hopefully the car will be running much better.

 

Heh, I was behind you in the tech line yesterday. Love the flares!

Dude, that sucks... I had a similar issue with clutch fluid, but my STi was still driveable, at least.

 

Ahh yea I saw your car! How did you do? There were quite a few Impreza's out that day.

 

Sorry to hear!! Hopefully it'll be a quick fix!!!!

 

There sure were!

I did decent. First time at AMP in about 3 years, so it took some remembering. Like, that I really need to cross my arms to not go off coming out of T1 like I did first session... :lol: Car was fine, it was a slight off.

By the third session I realized that my clutch pedal was sinking and not rising, either making shifting difficult, or downright impossible. A real PITA when slowing for T1! Would up doing half sessions for the 3rd and 4th, and the 5th session was basically done when the Civic wrecked (hope the driver and passenger were alright!).

I wasn't taking data until the 3rd session, but I did manage a meh 1:43. Took my fiance out and was a bit slower due to fighting the clutch pedal, 1:46 best lap.

How'd you do? Any video...?

 

Oh man that sucks. What's the cause of the clutch not coming backup? Leak in lines?

Yea I only have a video of my first session which I was still learning the track and my car so I did not go all out haha. It's kind of boring watching myself because I held back a lot. I was going nowhere near my limit. I was saving my all out runs until the afternoon session which I never got too .

I was on my way to the photoshoot they were having during lunch when my car just stopped dead on the track. Tried troubleshooting it but I just gave up after blowing up 3 other fuses.

 

I think I just cooked the fluid. I'm heading to AllPro tomorrow for a fluid flush, I'm just too lazy to do it in my garage.

Yeah, I was slower in the morning due to the dampness and relearning the lines and such. Still have a few turns I really need to work on, but I'll be back out to AMP soon enough!

Ouch... I hate it when stuff like that happens! At least my clutch issue didn't stop me from driving, just made it more of a PITA.

 

You guys should speak up when you head out to AMP! I love that track! (only one i've been to so far, but still fun!) Haven't seen any Soobs out there the few times i've been.
Sorry to hear about the clutch issues. I am dealing with one right now myself. Gonna try a bleed this weekend and see what happens.

 

So a bit of bad news on my end .

My friend and I started to troubleshoot my short issue. Thank goodness I have a friend that is a EE major LOL. He went to town on my car with a multi-meter. We at least know which harness the short is coming from, but the issue is we can't figure out where along that harness it's shorting at. We ripped everything in the bay out and all the wires looks good. Then we started to see something weird. We were seeing 3 volts that was being drawn from a fuse when the car was off and it immediately dropped to zero when I unplugged the ECU. This was a super red flag so we opened up the ECU.




Yea the short fried a diode on my ECU. I'm trying to find a replacement diode for the ECU board, but that seems impossible because I can't find a replacement part. I think I'm just going to buy a spare ECU and solder one off of a board and replace mines LOL.

Well things escalated quickly and I just decided to pull my whole dash/engine harness out of my car and re-examine the merge my friend and I did a couple years ago. So I pulled out my whole dash....Beam/HAVC/Steering colum/etc. My car is in pieces once again . Need to hunt for a short and a new ECU.


To be continued.....

 

So sad and sorry to see this man. One of the big reasons why I stayed away from keeping my old WRX and swapping to a 2.5RS. Good luck man you will get it figured out.

 

Well, that's no good... Amazing that the little diode caused all this pain and suffering!

 

Sorry for being MIA to all the great meets and events that WRXATL has been hosting haha. I've been busy these last couple of months. So let me just give a quick recap of my where about for people who don't follow me on social media haha.

I figure I would update this thread a little since I will actually be working on the car again haha.

Just a recap, my car is still down due to me having a short and shorting out my ECU. I finally sourced out a bulk 98 harness and another ECU. So the plan now is to re-merge the harness to the EJ205 harness again. I just want to be safe although this is not necessary. The only other issue I might run into is how I'm going to unmarry my AP on my old ECU and transfer the the map onto the new ECU. When this time comes I'll update the thread.

Now onto what I've been doing for the past 4 months haha. So I decided instead of dumping all my money into the car I decided that I wanted to take that money and spend it on myself a bit haha. I sold my bike to fund my trip and decided to go on a month long adventure to Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the Philippines.

I know everyone has responsibilities and their own life, but I would suggest everyone to take some time and money to just enjoy their life a little. We've all worked hard to be at where we are and it's nice to just take some time and money and enjoy yourself and all your accomplishments. I've been working since I was 17 and I've always worked worked worked. Never took a real vacation to celebrate my milestone accomplishments. I figure I didn't want to run into this routine of wake up, work, and sleep so I did something about it haha. I got out of my comfort zone and decided to stop putting things off and worrying about money and just traveled! I'll make a second post of strictly my Japan travels because I went to the Tokyo Auto Salon as well as visited the Subaru STI Museum.

Here are some pictures I took along the trip.

Japan





Thailand






Hong Kong






Philippines





Also took a business trip to Milan, Italy, but I made time to go out and explore a bit .

Milan, Italy





Subaru STI Museum in Mitaka Tokyo.

 

Alright this is my current situation with the car. I received the new 98 harness so I'm starting the process of labeling and prepping the two harness to be merged. I printed out a whole merge thread on RS25 and have it laid out ready to go! HAHA




Started to prep each harness by labeling each wire to ensure that they all match and I don't miss any wires.




Let the soldering begin!



The RS and WRX harness are 95% merged. I have a couple loose ends to tie and merge and then It will all be going back into the car to see if I actually did something right haha. Stay tuned for more pictures and videos of hopefully a startup again lol.

 

Good job bro, wiring is the worst.

 

Love the pics from your trip but even more the realization of taking some time out of normal life to go enjoy yourself. It is absolutely one of the hardest things not to get wrapped up in the day to day life. Very cool man!!! Glad you're back safe !!!

 

This is why I just swapped a whole harness in lol. Good job though, hope it works out!

 

Yea swapping the whole thing would have been another approach, but the WRX harness has a couple things that our chassis just didn't have and we have to wire in the doors and rear harness into the wrx one. Plus everything was documented so well I figured I would go this route and to top it off I've already done it once lol.

 

Have you ever considered just letting Tweakd handle the merge?

http://www.tweakdperformance.com/index2.html

 

HAHA I was talking to my friend about doing a MIL spec harness. That's some impressive work there.

 

Finally got the car backup and running! It was a headache running all the wires in the right location just finding all the plugs again haha. My friend accidentally cracked my windshield taking out the dash bar so I have to get that replaced. Other than that the car started first try! #likeaboss





The interior is still in pieces, but it at least runs. Also one of my plastic vacuum T's broke so I have a huge vacuum leak that I need to fix. I at least pulled it out from the garage where it's been collecting pollen for 5 months and washed it. Took it out for a spin and everything is still good minus running a little rich from my vacuum leak. Just happy to drive it again.

 

Sweet dude! No issues unmarrying / remarrying the AP? I know you were concerned about that.