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Thread: Shale's THIRD freakin' Legacy: Meet Leonidas!

  1. #31
    t3h ub3r m3mber Navi271's Avatar
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    Re: Shale's THIRD freakin' Legacy: Meet Leonidas!

    I can tell! Even what you just wrote I can tell, I need to be more descriptive it seems... And yeah, I guess he is pretty young compared to all the others you have in the family. Can't wait for all these projects to start!
    2005 Subaru Legacy GT Ltd. Brilliant Silver - 148k
    1995 Subaru Legacy L Green Winter Metallic - Plastidipped Camo Green - 189k - SOLD

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    Dirt Tech / Vendor Reuben's Avatar
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    Re: Shale's THIRD freakin' Legacy: Meet Leonidas!

    Mega bump...

    Well, comnsidering I commute this car to work now, and am constantly fixing it, I should update the thread (Was actually going to start a new thread, then thought I should probably search for this one).

    Its a long story... For literally 2 years+ this car sat, unfixed... It had got to a state of mostly complete, but due Amy working mega full time, then going to uni, me moving south the Queenstown, our mate drunken working constant overtime and cash jobs, only person left to work on it was Amy's ex, cameron... Bits and bobs happened here and there, but nothing came of it. Then Amy moved south (I should point out Amy (shale) is my partner for those who didn't know).

    Well, with Amy south, and the car still at her parents place, they got fed up, and decided to take it to a mechanic to get finished. They actually were very resonable about the whole thing given the un-usual nature of the whole thing (having a project car dumped uncompleted on their door step, and told to make it run). It eventually ran, and eventually got through compliance (a BIG ordeal here), and then went back home to once again sit undriven on the driveway... It still wasn't fixed, I can't recall exactly what needed to be done but the list was still long...

    More than a year after Amy had moved south, and then eventually to Queenstown to live with me, and after getting her two other babies down south, Frank the multicoloured GT battle wagon, and Shale the poster boy GC8, we decided (read: were told), it was time to get Leo down south... So yet ANOTHER "holiday" (read: sent back home to Auckland to fix yet another Subie)... I went up a few days early, and got started... The list involved rebuilding the power steering pump, fixing some random interior issues, and swapping the rear diff, since it made a HELL of a whine while driving (more on that later). During the process I found the engine had no thermostat, so I popped a new one in... We got the car up and running, and did a bunch of successful test drives, until the night before leaving, where we finally opened him up and gave him the beans down our favourite twisty road... No overheating! yay! Then on the motorway back... Yup... MASSIVE overheat, while we frantically dashed to the nearest off-ramp to power him off... After letting the car cool off we limped to a petrol station, with the temp gauge spiking, and dropping, and spiking, but we got there all right... Asked the guy there if he had any buckets, to which his reply was "huh?", so I emptied the tool box out, and drained the coolant into that, popped the thermostat out, and then topped him back up... In the carpark... At 2am... CHUR.

    Next day was packing and getting ready to leave, and we literally drove the length of the country in that state, no thermostat, with the chance of an overheat, and a new diff that whined just as badly as the old one. Oh, not to mention the car had (still has) stupid ricer lowering springs on the factory butter smooth shocks, so the bumpstops were ANNIHILATED...

    Picture time...
    First dawn after getting him running, back up at my parents place where he spent much of his time before moving 60km's south to Amy's parents place.


    Diff swap, Yaaaay!


    2am thermo removal... Booo...


    Yes, we had time to fit in a track day on the drive down, cause we are bowss. This was our mate joe and his RS.




    Ferry crossing




    South Island, where all the scenery is...




    WRX play mate over one of the passes. Turns out she was a chicken driver, but we'll take what we can get.


    Home sweet home:

    IMG_7912 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

    Average day at our house once the whole family was together for the first time.

    IMG_7935 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

    Leo - with the fucked paint, Our flatmates BF's foz, Frank the multi coloured wagon in the back, Lexi - our friends BE, Rusty - our other mates BF GT, Shale - the mrs's pride and joy, Beast - My pride and joy, and Blighter (unseen) blocking the whole garage for his project.

    Once down in Queenstown, the car once again, sat dormant for moths, with the threat of overheating quelled by being themostatless, stupid springs, whining diff, and all manor of other oddities... Until I decided wee Blighter was to get a K-Brace. Well, that turned out swimmingly, so Leo was suddenly yanked back into service to be commuted (Beast does NOT get commuted, forged engine go nugga nugga). It's been nice actually, the car is actually a beauty on the inside, pure factory mint condition glass, nice power from the VF8, just an all round beauty... But I got fed up with the whine, so took it to a mates workshop, got him up on the hoist, and probed around to see if it was actually the diff or something else... Well the discovery was quite a surprise. Whoever put the gearbox in didn't notice it. Whoever got the car running didn't notice it. Whoever re-complied the car didn't notice it. I didn't notice it... But the forester gearbox we put in, still had the forester gearbox mount... which has the gearbox sitting a good 5-10mm lower down than a standard Subie... And with a front crossmember factory legacy, and a rear gearbox mount forester, the gearbox was actually pointing to the ground, and put a 10-20º kink in the driveshaft!!! This in turn was making the universal joints (which are NOT constant velocity joints) put an intense vibration through the whole drivetrain at speed! Ouch! 5000km's it drove like that too! With a standard legacy gearbox mount installed that night, the whine FINALLY died, as was the binding differentials. Wow what a fuckup that was. To celebrate I went for a fang, and promptly blew up the gearbox...

    Fuck.

    Well, it actually wasn't all bad, we quickly figured out the gearbox was fine and operated as normal, it just made a HUGE GOD AWEFUL AMMOUNT OF GRINDING NOISES... A quick look in through the inspection hole found metal filings all over the torque converter and flex plate... Torque converter bolts... Whew... Since by this time it was decided Blighter was to be manual, I just stole his bolts, and fixed up Leo. He was missing two, and a third was unwound and making all the noise, and the last one was loose, but still wound in... Massive derp...


    IMG_8211 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

    One of only TWO bolts holding the flex plate on...

    IMG_8214 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr


    IMG_8217 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

    And this brings us up to date. Leo has been fixed for about two weeks now, Blighter is still in the garage getting the manual conversion, and Beast is still sitting in the drive way staunchly not getting commuted.

    Next on the agenda, FIX THE SHOCKS. We will be doing the Bilstein conversion like Blighter, and my mates BF GT got, and slowly but surely ironing out the kinks. We are going to replace the water pump, and while doing this deciding if the cambelt is new or old (unknown), and also going to install a tee-piece bridge accross the heater core hoses, as that's the second most likely suspect for the overheats. It will mean crap heating, but for now it will get us by, Blighter will be ready to go next winter, so Leo will be back off the road for 3 months during the winter. We will eventually rebuild the heater core, it's just a matter of time...

    So there you go, there's Leo, the car I'm driving 99% of the time at the moment!

  3. #33
    SLi Lurker wentz912's Avatar
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    Re: Shale's THIRD freakin' Legacy: Meet Leonidas!

    Woohoo! he's alive!
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  4. #34
    Dirt Tech / Vendor Reuben's Avatar
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    Re: Shale's THIRD freakin' Legacy: Meet Leonidas!

    Annnnd he's dead!

    So yeah, Leo's story continues...

    Last week was hectic for me, had done a cash job cambelt on Sunday, then on Tuesday I started another cashie cambelt, but kept running into issues, first night I found the oil pump needed to come off, and I didn't have the parts. Second night the teeth slipped on the crank sprocket when I was tightening up the cam pulleys, and without a vice that stopped work dead. Third night finally finished it...

    But on the second night, after work I nipped out Queenstown Motor Group (the local dealership), to pick up the oil pump seals I needed... And what should happen, well Leo's cambelt snapped of course. You know, because irony and all that jibber jabber. I pulled over after the engine had stopped, I was only cruising on frankton road, with the window down, so it was quite noisy, didn't hear anything untoward, just suddenly no power. Pulled over and tried cranking it, but it was cranking real weird.. Like REAL weird, enough to get me to pop a cambelt cover off to see if that's what it was... And sure enough...

    Friday we towed him to the industrial place where all the mechanics are and parked him up in the dead car round-about.

    Saturday Mitch and I popped down and went to go slap a spare cambelt on (one I had just taken off the cash-job car), and we got most the way there, got all the way up to putting the new belt on, before realising the old one had NO markings left at all, and I had left my paint pen at home... In the process of lining the cams up though, there were some bad noises... Not a good sign...

    Sunday after work, I popped back up and got the belt on, and cranked it by hand, and well, Leo had REALLY good compression on 2 cyls, a shame cause the belt did take out some valves on the other two, one had very little to none, the last about 50/50, would last about 5 seconds on a leak down test, but enough to run. No grinding was to be had though. So I thought with nothing to lose, I should give him a shot at running...

    AND IT RAN... Poorly. yeah, running on anywhere between 2 and 3 cyls, but ran none the less. Only let it run for maybe 15 seconds, didn't want to leave it on, should any more damage be done.

    Course of action: Going to whip the engine out and the heads off and inspect. I've already priced up a head set with MLS headgaskets. NZ Gaskets are cheeeeeaaaaaap, but amy reckons she has a set of subie MLS HG's kicking around somewhere, so we'll be hunting for those. Depending on damage, we'll either replace some valves, or slap on some ol GT heads, but I want to keep the RS heads, since, well, RS. Stealing some GT valves and chucking them into the RS heads is a strong possibilty. At this stage I have access to GT heads only.





    Question for the learned JDM scholar, BC RS camshafts vs BC GT camshafts, and BC RS ports vs BC GT ports. Any difference? Or was that 20hp more that RS's got turbo and tune only?

  5. #35
    Dirt Tech / Vendor Reuben's Avatar
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    Bump. This car still exists, and is still in the fleet. Unlike all the others that have been brought back to life, Leo sits still, with the cam belt snapped. Since then a tree fell on the bonnet, and munched up a fender, the bumper the grille and a headlight. But I have sourced all those parts as replacements, so at least we’re dent free, but now multi coloured.

    Leo may be fixed this year. Maybe not. Finances are going to be TIGHT, I have to save for a trip to oz in September, track day in the north island in November, and a trip to my brothers wedding some time in 2019 in South Africa! Amidst paying my credit card off and making life work as a self employed mechanic.

    We’ll see how things go eh.

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