The Green Turd - 23/10/19 Back from the body shop... still turding...

The mountains around Queenstown do no favours to 250T owners... An engine that already has a reputation for being 'a bit' unreliable, given to backpackers with no concept of vehicle maintenance, then flogged up and down the ski field access roads leads to some killer deals to be had, and an even worse reputation for unreliability. So that lead to me picking up a pretty mint car, for, well, $50. And the name came thanks to my mate Mitch and his coworkers who used to have a work car that was a BG9 250T, they surmised the T must stand for turd.

I bought this car with the intention of using it as a wee money spinner, a good ol fix'n'flick. I had Ace ventura (A BF3 Auto) as the hack wagon anyway... But after dropping in a new motor, I sorta though 'why should I sell this when I can sell Ace?' The turd is surprisingly full of features, this thing is bloody specced out! Full leather interior, with heated front seats, dual sunroofs, dual airbags, heated power folding mirrors, heated windscreen wipers, and cruise control to boot... Once we got this thing running, it proved to be quite a nice car! Gutless as all hell through. Still not bad for $50 of car, $100 of engine, and $160 for the rad.

Specs for the JDM curious, and nerdy
Build date: 21-02-1995
Chassis: BG9-008516
Applied model: BG9A5AE
Engine: EJ25-287134

It's running a BF5 VZ EJ20D (DOHC roller rocker HLA) now which I picked up for a hundy, with the BG9A manifold. The 250T ECU had no low down balls on this motors, so I found and installed a BG5A TS-R ECU (Added bonus of 7500 redline!), which only barely helped things out. It's quite peppy over 4000rpm though. I suspect there are some sensor or grounding issues, as it doesn't like cold running, and can even stall at idle when it idle hunts sometimes. We installed a new radiator though, and she runs cool as a cucumber, hits operating temp and glues itself there, no matter if ascending the crown to going up Fernhill foot flat in first. And the auto trans doesn't even bind!!! I have a full manual conversion for this in my storage out in Cromwell now too, but the box needs rebuilding, has play on the input shaft, and leaks out every orifice (400,000k old Hi-Lo NZ new box from a BG5). I also plan on rebuilding the dead 250T engines I have, and plonkling one back in this thing, just because they run so much better with them. The 20D is just a fucking slug when hauling a big arse BG. Fine in a light little Impreza or BC, but in the turd, it's inadequate.

Other poorly things of note with this car is the paint job is fucked, the roof is peeled to fuck. The leather is rock hard and cracking, and I'm in the process of pricing up a re-upholster with nice new vinyl (vinyl these days is amazing, and the only way I can match the grey). there's also a big dent in the passenger sill, which is pulling the skirt out.

Still not bad for a $250 car.

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IMG_9467 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

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IMG_9466 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

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At the moment, given the nature of our accomodation, I have no option but to haul the majority of my tools around with me. It handles it eeeaaaasssyyyy.... (if not a little scrapey scrape over bumps and whatnot)

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IMG_9472 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

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IMG_9475 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr


Still room for a passenger in the back!

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IMG_9476 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

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IMG_9477 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr



Current mods:
Facelift solid lifter EJ20D from a BG5B TS-R - running on a Pre-facelift EJ20D ECU. Sliiiiiight missmatch but it goes alright, nothing outside of what long term fuel and ignition trims can handle.
Added outback woodgrain air vents to complement the exsisting woodgrain (oh yeah, we're going full tacky with this baby!)(currently hunting for a center air vent cover too)
Pioneer AVH-285BT Head unit, with CS-V628 250w 6.5" speakers all round, and Fusion CPAS-1080 8" underseat amp and sub. I tried rocking it old school with the factory JDM radios, but all the CD's skipped.
BH5D GT-B muffler with the dual entry, welded open in full fart noise mode
BF5 GT turbo headers to give it that boxer burble we all love
BG5A GT spec-B (That's BBS spec, not Bilstein spec) BBS 16" wheels, wrapped in Potenza RE003's (Known as Firehawk indi 500's outside of the civilised world)
Brand new KYB Excel-G's
BG GTB 20mm front, 19mm rear sway bars
BG GTB Large brake booster
Towbar

Planned: Rebuilding the dead EJ25 and plopping it back in... Oooooor, EZ30 swap. Who knows. I have a blown 25 and a blown 30 in storage.
Conversion to N/A style crossmember, and running VZ-R style twin runner exhausts (that joins aft of the transmission, rather than under the front diff)(parts for this conversion now acquired)

What are the switches near the heated seat buttons?

One should be "Winter Hold" to lock out 1st gear to make snow/ice start easier. The other looks like it is a switch filler or an aftermarket switch as it is a slightly different color from the other switches. That position would normally be for the height control, but the 250T didnt have that.

Correct, snow hold switch, and the other is for the heater strip under the windsheild wipers.

So for the last two months we've been living in a mouldy house down a muddy driveway covered in, deciduous pine trees (i did not know such things exsisted), and it's autumn... Yeah, it's been mighty crap, and those tiny little pine needles just get EVERYWHERE!

Thankfully over the weekend, we got moved to a nice new house, which is bloody fantastic, and the best part, no more mud, no more stairs, no more fucking pine needels!!! The turd proved it's usefullness yet again, hauling an arse tonne of crap, without a care in the world. This morning I de-needled it, thankfully my other two cars never stayed at that temp house. It was a damn good feeling I tell you what. I also set about to fix the twin sunroofs, my front sunroof has never worked, there's an up-down switch for it, to crack it open, but it's never gone. so we took the switch panel off, and, well, that's all we did, it started working... must havbe been a lose connection! BUT, turns out unlike the facelifts, the front sunroof is fixed in place... Turns out it's the rear sunroof that cracks open, so you can choose to crack it open, or retract it. Interesting. Now all that's left to do is clean out the drain tubes so it stops soaking the passenger seatbelt whenever it rains!!! eeeew. At the moment the turd is the garage acting like the king of the house, while the windows are cracked open, and the passnger seatbelt is tied around the shifter so that it dries out, while it rains outside. O how we take garages for granted :(

Oh, since my last post, I've also fitted outback rear struts, to correct the ride height with the tools in the back and while towing, which seems to be it's natural state. Temp fix, have some heave duty lift springs on order, so that I may get my corrected rideheight, and still have full suspension travel (the outback struts sit the arse at the right height, but they are compressed, so have no travel before the bump stops, even though it looks fine).

It's always nice to have a beater around. The sunroof is interesting though. Really odd. All the duals we had are like the limiteds.

What's that? Front cracks open, rear retracts? That's all I've ever seen in action, but that's me only seeing them in action on facelifts. This is the first pre-facelift I've had a play with.

We only had the dual sun roofs on 98-99 BG9's. Then the BH, but nothing before that. BD and BK's got single sunroofs and those are really common, but for the most part, duals over here on a 2nd gen is not common at all.

The front glass would vent and the rear slid back. Like your GT-B.

Beast is non sunroof, I made sure of that when buying, even when they were less than 10 years old (got beast when it was 9 years old), the reputation for leaks was enough that I didn't want a bar of if! The turd is my first sunroof car!

Little update. The Green Turd seems to keep soldiering on, but the ABS issue has got worse, the ABS pump got stuck on the other day, thankfully I'm no stranger to this sorta shit, it happened right before I reached my destination, so was able to get out and unplug the pump nice and quickly. I'm going to finally fix it this weekend, cause I need to get a wof... Codes say bad voltage off both rear sensors, so at least I know where to start. I'm considering just replacing the sensors, but my gut tells me they're fine, and it's something else fucking with them... Both sides...

In other news, the outback struts did their intended job of getting me by for a short time. One was leaking bad, and they kept hitting the pumps. Couple of weekends ago I fitting some heavy duty lift springs to the original struts, and they worked a treat, looks like stock height with all my crap in the back, much firmer so drives like stock with all the crap too. Now to get some new rear shocks since the old ones were pretty knackered. Pics to come later.

Did rocker covers today. Glorious BC/BF VZ-R EJ20D, shines up nicely. Did the plugs while I was in there, found it had PFR6B-11's fitted! Luxury. None of that for the turd, good ol nickel BKR6E-11's now :D Shoved an inspection cam in, not a single cyl had any carbon scalling, goes to show my driving style gets my cars nice and carbon free. Was very surprised by the pistons though, practically the same design as the V7 STi pistons that went in beast. I wonder if these have plenty of clearance for me to fuck around with cam timing... Hmmmmmmm....

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IMG_0803 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

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IMG_0804 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

Hnnng dat alloy fill neck and breather boxes

Glorious first gen parts eh? :D

The green turd has been plodding along nicely last few months. There's a miss which has been getting worse and worse at idle. Initially thought plugs, but then remembered I've just changed those... so I'm looking at an ailing green AFM or o2 now... Bugger. And after driving the beast for 3000km, I get back to the turd and realise the heater isn't as good as I'd like it to be. An only warm blowing heater is a semi blocked heater, and semi blocked heaters lead to engine overheats. I want this car to be DIALED, so gotta do something about that before reselling.

In the mean time I'm continuing to mod it to be my own, until it's confirmed that I'm selling it. Today I hope to go get some new boot floors and a rubber mat from the farm, since I've done a pretty good job of fucking the old ones. I'm also going to be buying in a new front grille, since I found a genuine style aftermarket one still available, and for only $100NZ out of the box! And the other day the mirror folding motor decided to internally dissassemble itself and now the mirror just keeps winding, it doesn't know where the stop is, so if folds all the way forwards when you fold them out then just pathetically just jiggles about as the motor stays on... So currently is rocking a mechanically MINT silver mirror, while I wait for new glass to come in from subaru (heated glass too... bloody expensive stuff!) so I can transfer the guts of my silver mirror to the green housing, since no green power folding heated mirrors were in the wreckers circles.

Should have taken a video of it just winding all the way forwards, was bloody hilarious.

Still haven't sorted the miss... New air flow meter and o2 made no difference. It kind of got alright so I ignored it for a few months, but as the cold weather sets in it's become really rather bothersome... Coolant temp sensors next.

Few months back when the weather was still warm too, I decided to fix the sunroof leak. All sunroofs leak, that's not an issue, there's a drain pan the leak dribbles into from factory. The drain tubes from my pan had shrunk off on the front two, so parking nose down in the rain would result in wet seatbelts...

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IMG_1242 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

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IMG_1244 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr



Was really not a hirrible job, 2.5-3 hours start to finish, would do again. Got the drains back on, hose clamped them, and blew some air down em for good measure. Totally fixed the problem! Nice!



In other news, GTB front (20mm) and rear (19mm) sway bars fitted, and brand new KYB Exel G's fitted to the front (rears comming in a few weeks). Quit the improvement to handling, it's quite good now!!

Disregard those wheels... they belong to The Beast, spiffy upgrade! The turd was just borrowing them for a while.




Speaking of mods... It was unclear for a long time weather or not I was going to keep this car... I bought an H6 BH Outback 6 months ago with a blown motor... But the more I think about that one, the more I'd rather just cash in and buy a new gaming rig, rather than upgrade from the turd. As nice as BH's are, this one was a touch rougher than my turd, and let's face it, I've been a BG owner since 2005, I got a soft spot for them.

So the green turd stays, you will be seeing a lot more of this car in the comming years, as any car I own, I can't NOT modify... Mods already done are a fresh set of exel G struts, the heavy duty rear lift springs, GTB sway bars, and turbo exhaust manifold since they are a direct bolt on to 250T's. Oh, and EJ20 swap.

On the planned list:
Conversion to standard N/A style crossmember, from the factory turbo crossmember that 250T's got, and running some VZ-R extractors. These are a factory 4-2-1 collector style, where the y joins aft of the gearbox. You get these massive long runners that run from each head down each side of the trans. Quite a neat option, and are what I think is needed to regain my lost low-down torque!
Manual conversion, because fuck auto's. Already have a complete Hi-lo conversion in my storage, only issue is the box is 400,000KM old, so I want to rebuild it with new syncro's and bearings. Side note, I've yet to see a 400,000K old subaru auto with my own eyes.
Rebuild an EJ25 and convert it back from the 2L. As mentioned, lack of low down torque is a bit sucky with the current setup. Might port and polish it for the lolz, since I can.
Re-do the leather
BBS 16" wheels like the blighter has

Other than that, it's kind of good as is... The 250T is highly underrated.

Do you guy's think GT E-spec style 16 in 5-spoke mags... Or GT B-spec style BBS's? Bear in mind my BC already has the BBS's.

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I also have these wheels in my storage... they might look good on the turd too...

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I like the BBS wheels. I also like the GC wheels that you have in storage.

Well our first snow of the season is forecast for this evening, so I went out to our storage unit yesterday and swapped on my snow tyres. Naturally I picled the WRX wheels (yeah, I have a selection...) to see what they look like. I like it, very classy, ery much of the era. But I think I'd still like a set of the BBS for the summer wheels... I know of a mostly complete set kicking around at a friends farm, I'll see if I can find all 4...

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IMG_1340-2 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

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IMG_1343-2 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

The forecasters didn't lie!

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Dry seatbelts and wintermode ftw! Those wheels do look quite good on BGs, eh?

Well winter was great, heated leather is good.

Over the spring I scored a set of good condition leathers for this thing, so the drivers seat is now mint! And soft too! Gotta keep up on the conditioning though, so they can handle my dirty mechanic arse, at least the leather on these things was thick as hell!

Come December I got the A/C receiver dryer swapped, and the A/C regassed, and boy has it been a life saver, we’ve had a heatwave the latter half of jan, and it’s been amazing jumping into this thing and cranking the A/C!!!

The misfire I had last year was also sorted out, turns out when running an 89 20D on a 95 20D ECU, you MUST use at least iridium plugs to compensate for the differences!!! I used some used ones and they did alright, but 10,000km later and it’s back, so I picked up some new ones to put in tomorrow.

Busted a rear sway bar link also, alloy ones going on tomorrow too.

So yeah, it’s been nice, with the A/C fixed, now every feature of this car from the heated mirrors to cruise all work! Yea Boi!

3 generations, keepin it oldschool!
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Looking good! I so wish them Wood vents were made for the LHD Market

Oh man am I jealous of those taillights... tried to get the center garnish from japan... cracked on arrival. Then a second from japan, turned out to be a GT-B not the "E-spec or grandwagon clear". Then another cracked one from Russia hahaha I like them more than the average guy at this point. Let me know if you'd ever be up to the challenge of sending one bomb-proofed to Canada for $$$ lol

They aren't? that's a bummer, I though the wood trim was something the US and JDM cars had in common! In truth, they aren't an option for 250T's, the stereo surround, shifter surrount, and window switches were, but the vents I've only ever seen on outbacks! I took mine off an outback I was wrecking, and put them in myself. I have an centre vent wood trim piece too, but it's broken in two places, so didn't use it... I gotta find a good one one day...

New BKR6EIX-11's in today, initially the missfire was so bad after installing them that it stalled, which had me scratching my head... But after a short drive it's gone away again... This damn thing, I really must get a 2.5L back in the hole and have an ECU that matches the engine once more (it's got a 20D ECU, but it's a different generation to the motor that's on there, I don't have an ECU for the first gen that will plug in...)

Swapped out the rear sway bar C-links with some alloy ones too, both sides were fucked! While I was under there I found the left rear strut was leaking BAD, did a bounce check and it's totally gone, no wonder handling was a bit floaty recently, fucked shock and links... damn. So two new rear KYB Excell G's on order to match the front ones I put in last year... And then she'll handle mint!!! That plus the BBS 16's going on, bye bye 15" rubber...

Turd butt with guest Frankie butt!

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Oh yeeeeah, and you posted first pics of it on the new BBS’s.

And yes, the water was inviting as it looks, and marvellous to swim in. :D


Also, welcome back to NZ FWA!

More pics is good. Would love to see more of your BC and the BJ your buddy has there.

BF my man, stepped roof first gen life yo! The BF is actually my other half’s car. I don’t think he has a thread up for it on here though. As for my BC, there’s a thread link for it in my signature.

BF! Cool! So does your other half have it posted anywhere? I'm such a first gen fanboy... Beautiful cars and I'm a little envious of the kit you can get down there!

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There we are. He’s not too good at updating it! Lol

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IMG_3445 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr