Liltoua's Little Black Beast

where did it crack at? something a little flex piece welded in could help with? or just shoddy quality?

 

if you're leaking power steering fluid, you better fix that sooner than later, it's some of the most volatile liquids in the car. Matt ball (slowwrx) has a braided power steering line conversion that's relatively cheap (i think around $100) that will prevent your car going from OBP to charred black pearl.

goes without saying, but make sure you torque down everything right w/ the HG or you may be doing this again. Good idea to recheck all the head studs and make sure they're torqued correctly, too.

 

beautiful car.

 

Finally got around to installing my Koyo radiator. I've been so busy with work and school I barely even have time to do anything to my Subaru anymore. Finally fit it into my schedule. The fans were a pain in the ass. Thought they were gonna fit like a glove, but had to drill new holes and mount them awkwardly onto the radiator for now. Just gonna end up getting a 12inch fan and run that. Some of you guys saw it on tuesday, anyways here are the pictures.

 

Lulz I didn't even realize that.
What's the the single eyelid?

 

Exactly LOL. I've had to re double tape the eye lids 3 times already because they keep falling off. I finally put it back on right before Import Alliance, so lets see how long that last for haha.

 

Nice!

 

Thanks! Still want to see your GC8! How was the Dragon run you did?

 

Insane man! Weather was supposed to be shitty but it was dry and EMPTY! Managed to do a couple of runs up and down. Great time all in all. Need a camera next time since all i had was an iphone.

Hit me up anytime u wanna see the car man, we could do a small shoot!

 

FYI that was me driving past your house honking at you, i was in the forester

 

AHH! That was you! Dude your Forester is sweet! If I ever get a family car, that will be the exact model. It looked so clean driving by. :bowdown::bowdown:

 

UPDATE:

So summer is right around the corner if not already and I'm not going through this summer without A/C again. I've been in this car for two summers and those summers were unforgivable HAHA. I have all the lines still intact, but I was only missing the condenser. So found one floating around NASIOC so I picked it up. Apparently, the 1998 condensers are very specific to our cars, and other models are not interchangeable with the 1998. That's just what everyone tells me, who knows. So anyways I found a used one from NASIOC and picked it up, will be installing it probably sunday and taking it to my Uncle to get it recharged and see if there are any leaks in my system.




The other update I have is....I finally got one of the lips that I've been dreaming about for my car. I originally wanted the Prodrive P1 lip, but those are near impossible to find. So I found this bad little baby. There are few lips that actually look good on the GC, so I picked this one up quick when I found it. Funds are SUPER low right now, so who knows when it's going on.

TEASER

 

UPDATE

Got a hold of some nice 07 STI seats! Seats were not on my list of things to buy, but I couldn't pass up this offer. Got everything and threw it in, took me forever b/c this carpet is a PITA to put in. I still have some adjusting to do with the carpet, but overall, I'm happy with the way it looks. If I find someone willing to trade me v5/v6 seats though....these will be gone in a heartbeat LOL











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carpet almost looks like it fits perfectly
did any of the mounting holes line up or did you have to cut some out

 

It almost fits in perfect. I just made some slits where the seat belt screws in. Everything else lined up perfectly. You can see some imperfections where it doesn't line up in some places, but overall, not bad for a 07 STI carpet to fit in my coupe LOL

 

We missed you tonight Alex! Lots of trash talking about you HAHA J/k. Yea I really really want the v5/v6 seats, I really bought these to try and trade for some v5/v6, but If I decide to keep these then, I'm gonna wrap the door panels. That is a must! I might just wrap them in black....can't go wrong with that.

 

coulda came out tonight and seen them in person :|

 

No comment, just 1 picture

 

Shouldn't even need a comment. You could've told us last night as you came out to the dinner meet. :| /atlxpat

 

ooo what

 

I was going to "thank this post" for peter. However, I can't remember the last time he came out to a meet :hsnono:

 

and since when has he ever came to a meet in a subaru?
hes doing it wrong.

 

nice tires, how much and where?

 

Thanks! I got them off of Ebay, I paid $600 for them shipped.

 

In progress right now. Got a great deal from a friend of mines that is sadly selling her WRX soon. So far, having a hard time mounting up the bracket to the backing plate. I can get 1 bolt in but not the other. After much reading it looks like I'm going to have to file down the bracket a little to make it fit perfectly. I got a new brake dust shield along with my brakes and tore apart my whole brake assembly to try and install this damn thing. After 3 hours of trying to figure out how to take out my old rusted dust shield, I just gave up. I ended up drilling out the spot weld and just tore out the old dust shield and running no shield. It should all be assembled tomorrow after I figure out how to make the brackets sit flush.





Just sold the prodrives, so I have no wheels, so my car will be on jack stands LOL.

 

Finally got these bastards in. You would think it's a pretty easy process HAHA. It's probably a lot easier on the newer cars, but these damn brackets just would not sit correctly on my backing plate. It was a PITA because one bolt would bolt in just fine from the backing plate through the adapter brackets. The other side sat funny and every time I would try and bolt it up, the bolt would not go in straight and it would pretty much destroy the threading on the bracket. I would have to take off the bolt and thread it through the other side to make the threading straight again. I'm surprise it still goes in after I re-threaded the damn thing like 5 times. The other side took like maybe an hour. It's amazing how fast you can get things done after you already know what needs to be done.

So what I ended up doing was taking a drill bit and drilling the other hole because the bracket was just not lining up with back plate. The other alternative to this was to file down the bracket, but I was not about to ruin a $225 bracket. I still can't believe this bracket cost this much. It weights nothing and just comes with 2 brackets and 4 bolts LOL.

So I had bought some Goodridge SS rear brake lines awhile back and was planning to put them on....BUT i stripped the damn 10mm hard-line bolt using a flare wrench. I'm pretty pissed. so I just said screw it and just bolted the old banjo bolt and lines to the new 2 pot calipers for now. I herd the alternative to this was to use a vise grip and PB blaster. I lost some copper crush washers and the other banjo bolt that came with the SS brake line kit, so I'm trying to find some replacements before installing them.

Anyways here are some pictures of the final product.

Comparison of the caliper and rotors







Just the fronts if you haven't seen them

 

those rotors look rather trashed

 

I agree. Stress cracks and all that....I wouldn't feel safe using them.

 

Yea they are, Rotora rotors are trash! They have cracks in them. I'm not tracking them by no means right now. Maybe you could help guide me I haven't gotten a straight answer about this yet. As you can see I need to replace my rotors. I believe these rotors are 330x28mm rotors. The question is, what can I replace them with? Can I run a 330x30mm rotor? Or am I just stuck with buying Rotora rotor replacements...which I do not want to do.

 

I just recently installed the Rear 2 pot brakes with the kartboy adapters. Installed everything tighten everything up and bleed the brakes. So I've been driving it around and I guess I can feel a difference. The only problem is, when I look at my rotors, it looks like the pads doesn't even come into full contact with the surface area of the rotors. I don't know if this is a common thing with running the adapters or is this just normal. I mean the more contact from the pad to the rotor gives you more stopping power in theory. If it only contacts half the surface...is it really that beneficial to run these brakes? Or maybe I did something wrong.



You can clearly see where the pad comes into contact with the rotor. It looks like the pad is only hitting half and that outside isn't even been touched by the pads. IDK I'm lost.

 

UPDATE: So a lot of the RS guys found a cheap alternative way to a cheap front sway bar.......a sway bar off a Tribeca HAHA. The Tribeca sway bar is a 25mm sway bar that fits our N/A application. I ordered the sway bar with Energy Suspension universal bushings and it only came out to $80ish total with shipping and BRAND NEW. I also bought some Whiteline front endlinks from EJ20 Devil a couple months back and waiting to just do everything at once. I had to replace an axle also at the time so I just jacked up the car and took off both wheels and disconnected the headers to make the install easier. I would go with this approach for anyone trying to install this big ass sway bar. I really didn't run into any problems. The only thing that took me time to figure out was how the bar was suppose to sit and which way was the correct way to place the bar. You guys need to remember when installing this that the sway bar goes over the tie end rod and mounts to the outside of the endlink. It does not sit like the OEM sway bar which sucks because this 25mm bar then only acts like a 22.5mm bar being mounted the way it is. The only other problem was the Energy Suspension 25mm bracket. The OEM one has a bolt in on one side and a hook on the other side that hooks into the chassis. The Energy Suspension one has two holes to bolt on into and it doesn't really sit flush when you bolt it down either. I took them off and took a hammer and just hammered the bend in the bracket and just made it look decent. I'm gonna have to try and find an alternative way to use the stock bracket.

I really haven't been able to test it out yet. I just drove to my girl friends house and back home. The only thing I can say from the drive there was that, there is a HUGE difference in turn in's. The front end feels really stable and stiff when making turns. I really haven't tested it to the full potential, but for daily driving, this thing is a beast. No wonder everyone is doing it.

 

That endlink bushing isn't gonna last long.

 

Yea I was concerned with that too, but I would rather run the sway bar with this endlink then the stock haha.

 

Update: Okay so here is the story. I was just searching around ebay and happen to find a complete 03 WRX motor swap for sale. In the description, it said that it came with everything from the motor to the turbo to the wiring harness, a complete swap out of a working car. So I was exchanging emails with the seller to make sure it came with everything and wasn't that interested in it, but just wanted some answers. So I put in my max bid that I was going to pay for it, which wasn't much and just left it there. So a couple days goes by and I get an email saying that I'm the winner of the Motor!!!!! HUH, WTF HAHA. I had money saved up, but I had no idea that I would have gotten that whole swap for that much. So here I am, a proud owner of an 03 WRX motor.

So since I don't have the tools and resources to do the swap by myself, I have given it very good friends of mines at Vuong's Garage to help me out with the swap. They will be doing my wiring merge and I'll be there getting my hands dirty too because I want to learn the process of doing the swap. I will be working there along side with them to get my motor preped and ready to drop in. Here are the plans for the motor before it is dropped in.

Full OEM Overhaul gasket change with headgasket
Full Gates Timing belt with idlers and water pump change
Stage II:
Catless downpipe
Grimmspeed uppipe
Grimmspeed crosspipe
Grimmspeed PnP headers
Upgrade turbo inlet
TGV Delete
Phenolic Thermal Manifold Spacer
3" Exhaust
STI pink injectors
STI TMIC
16G Turbo
Cobb AP

I'm shooting for the 300 HP area so I hope this build will bring me close to that.









The motor is super dirty at the moment. It looks to be in okay condition, I wish I could do a compression test on it, but unfortunately I can't. I'm in the process of tearing it apart right now and putting it on an engine stand and pull apart the head and see how my pistons and walls look. This week we'll be doing the full gasket change and swapping out all my idlers and water pump so I'll keep you guys updated

 

Nice bout time

 

depending on how good the deal you got was, it may be feasible to get an STi bottom end if the current one is no bueno. a hybrid motor+ 16/18/20g is MORE than enough fun, add in the fact you're dropping it in a coupe you'll be set for a while.

 

Trust me, If I had more funds it wouldn't even be a 2.0 swap HAHA. I'm graduating this year and have a job lined up for me, and I really want to get this out of my system before I settle down, so maybe this will feed my appetite. I'm gonna crack open this engine and see the internals and see what I'm gonna do from there. I'll keep you guys updated!

 

Congrats! Can't wait to see this driving with the new motor

you might just keep pushing back that "settling down" thing you mentioned, just a few more years myself.. :rofl:

 

very nice

 

I wouldn't do a hybrid swap.....that 2.0L is rock solid and way way way more reliable than a hybrid. 300hp all day long. My old 2.0L rocked 350hp for 150k+ miles and everyone knows I beat the crap out of that engine.

You are going to need a crossmember iirc....the stock 2.5RS hits the headers on the turbo setup I believe.

 

Yea I'm not entirely sure what kind of problems I'm going to be running into during the swap, but I'll be finding out HAHA. I'm going to be running the 03 crossmember which everyone says will fit, but I have to trim down the bushings or something along those lines. I won't know until I actually mount it on and see.

I'm also scared to death on how my tranny will hold this power. Thankfully I don't rag on my tranny and I'm not that type of driver either(Slow granny shifts always). I plan to upgrade the clutch and just run this set up with my 4.11 stock RS tranny and see how it goes. Everyone says that this is what makes the 2.0L swap so fun, the gear ratios of the RS tranny.

 

but on the other hand, my old 2.0l setup (exhaust/topspeed tune ONLY) lasted 74k. and the current owner has a hybrid setup with vf39/topspeed tune 300/350 approaching over 120k...


6 of one, half dozen of the other. its all in how you use the car/take care of it/etc

 

Hybrids = more compression. More compression = weaker ringlands. STi ringlands are crap.....worse that 2.0L WRX ones.