amgarrety's 2003 USDM B4 - 12/24 Exhaust Question

[amgarrety]

A preface to my MR1: I am not an engine guy, therefore I don't plan on doing much with my engine in this car. I am all about how my car looks, and my goal is to make it stand out and turn some heads.

Here she is, my Subaru Legacy B4, also known as the "USDM B4":

Summer:









Winter:



Interior:





And how it looked on July 22, 2011 (within an hour of buying it):



From factory it is a Silver Stone Metallic 2003 Subaru Legacy L SE, chassis code BE.

I have a detailed excel spreadsheet with all of my current mods, and how much i've spent so far. Not my best idea

To date, i've spent $6,529.52 on the following mods:

Exterior
D-Type Turbo Hood
D-Type Front Bumper
D-Type B4 Headlights (wired to work properly)
D-Type Stock Grille
D-Type B4 Grille (spare grille)
Side Skirts
JDM Tinted Tail Lights
Chrome Marker Bulbs
OEM Spoiler
Complete Japanese Stock Badging
High Mount LED 3rd Brake Light
Hella Horns (3 Horn Setup)

Interior
JDM B4 Tinted Gauge Cluster
JDM Momo Steering Wheel (D-type with black metal ring)
Momo Shift Knob
Gauge Lighting (Blue)
HVAC Lighting (Blue)
Interior Lighting (Purple)
Painted (Metallic Charcoal) Radio/Fog Switch Bezel w/ Cup Holder
Broadway Rear View Mirror
Redline Goods Custom Shift Boot
Custom B4 Dead Pedal
WRX Seats ('02)
S401 Hazard Switch
JDM single-din pocket/button combination

Electrical
DRLs Disabled
Independent Fog Lights
USDM to BFM adapter (made by rkrenicki) (Awaiting Installation)
D-type Headlight Leveling Switch
GT/Outback Windshield Wiper Stalk
GT Courtesy Door Lights
Scangauge II ECU Monitor
1-stage unlock
Automatic up/down driver and passenger windows


Audio/Video
Pioneer Touchscreen Bluetooth Radio
Polk Speakers
GT Tweeters

Engine
B4 Hood Dampers
Grounding Kit
Lightweight Flywheel (Awaiting Installation)
"H4" Intake (Awaiting Installation)
Green Air Filter

Wheels
17" Prodrive P1 Rims with 215/45/17 Michelin Pilot Sport A/S Plus tires (Summer)
16" Stock Snowflakes with 205/55/16 Tiger Paw Touring tires (Winter)

Suspension
Tokico HTS/D-Spec Adjustable Struts
H&R Wagon (Non-Outback) Springs

Brakes
Ceramic Brake Pads
Wearever (Advance Autoparts Brand) Rotors

Exhaust
Custom SR·S Catback Exhaust

Future Plans
Engine Swap
Custom interior trim upgrade
Rear wheel spacers
Window Tint (at some point, not urgent)
Japanese Rear Windshield (with wiper) (again, not urgent)

Past Modifications
Hella 500 Driving Lamps
GT Headlights
JDM HID Headlights
ZeroSports Eyelids
Silver JDM L7 Grille
Blue JDM L7 Grille
Red JDM L7 Grille
B4 Turbo Hood (A-C type)
OEM Mudflaps

[amgarrety]

A brief walk-through from July 22, 2011 to December 17, 2011

Day I bought her:


First try with the Hella 500s:


And got them right the second time:


The new tail lights:


New radio with new wood grain surround:


All interior lighting and gauge/hvac conversion:


And my JDM Grille:


As of this point in time, I have my JDM GT eyelids, and I just recently painted them. I am just waiting for my GT headlights, which should be here by December 22. I'll post an update when I get all that fun stuff installed.

[MRLancaster]

Love it! Cant wait to see the GT lights.

[amgarrety]

I rushed to get them so my car will look nice on Jan 7th

[chrish8r]

Glad you finally decided to make a build thread on here. Lol looking nice. Im not sure if ill be at the january 7th meet but we will see

[xoSubieLegacyxo]

I was wondering how you attached your hellas! lol

[Legacy89]

I'd like that install for a couple of lights. +3x on a license plate mount.

[amgarrety]

It took some trial and error but they dont shake at all, and the holes were already in the bottom of my bumper, so I didn't have to do any modifications to my car to make the mounts work. You just have to do some creative cutting to make sure you can tighten the bolts with a socket or straight wrench.

[Legacy89]

Have to look for those holes and see if they made it over here :P

[SativaMan04]

Awesome work so far. I really like your radio and of course the jdm parts!!

[amgarrety]

Got my headlights working and had a little photoshoot today!

[chrish8r]

loving the headlights, that black outline really adds to the overall look

[MRLancaster]

Looks much better!!! Keep up the work

[STIdarkside]

Gt headlights look awesome. How hard was the swap in terms of wiring? Did you buy brand new oem gt headlihts? They look great!

[amgarrety]

Subaru no longer makes the headlights, but other companies make them to OE standards. That's what these are, brand new from a company named "Vision", but they are the same as the OEM lights in pretty much every single way.

The wiring was easy. The only thing that caused a problem was that a harness was needed to swap without cutting wires. The old harness and the lights both had 3 wires, one for hi beam, one for lo beam, and one to ground both lights. The old connector did not plug into the new connector though. Here's what they looked like:



The new connector is on the left and the old connector is on the right. As you can see, I just cut both connectors off. Other than the connectors, the only other difference was the color of the wires. All I did was test that out by hooking up the ground, and then testing each wire individually. Then I used heat shrink connectors from Radioshack to finish it all up. They work perfectly now. Here's what it looks like behind my light:




*Note that some styles of lights are different. THESE lights are by the same exact company, the only difference being that they feature a chrome housing and a plug and play connector already on the light. Scroll down to see the connectors on the back.

[STIdarkside]

Do you have a link to the website for them? Googled it but had no luck finding "vision" headlights
Thanks

[amgarrety]

I just got them off eBay. They were $60 a piece with free shipping. All bulbs included. Just search for Subaru Legacy GT headlights, and if you want, search by price, low to high. I found mine around page 23 that way.

-edit-

Actually, I just remembered, the seller was AM Autoparts. I looked up the website and found this:
http://www.am-autoparts.com/Subaru/Lega ... 56602.html

Like I said, I bought mine off eBay, so I can't say for sure they are the same exact things, but I'd imagine it's a safe bet if they are from the same company. The only thing for me was I bought the left and right separately where as that is a pair.

[amgarrety]

Look at what my amazing girlfriend got me for Christmas Yes, that's a blue emblem there.

[MRLancaster]

Very nice!!! Never seen one wit the double grill or whatever you would call it. Cant wait to see it on the car

[amgarrety]

Yeah I don't know the story behind this grille. I've never seen a blue emblem or the double chrome lines. If anyone knows about it, I'd like to know. The fact that I've never seen one before makes me feel special.

[Yamazaki]

I'm fairly certain it's from a TX.

[amgarrety]

I'm fairly certain it's from a TX.

What is a TX? I've never heard of that model. And google only shows Texas Subaru dealers for me.

[Yamazaki]

Have you looked here?

[amgarrety]

Forgot about that thread! I'm gonna have to research some more now. Thanks for the info.

[02_Legacy]

what is becoming of the old grill?

[amgarrety]

Haha I knew it wouldn't be long until someone asked that. Sadly, she is my baby so I can't give her up. I know Cervantes has a like one for sale though. I may end up switching the two out every once in a while so they both get equal love

[Yamazaki]

I looked through a bunch of sales ads and most of the TXs have the "regular" grille. Only a couple had that "double wing". I thought about it and remembered that the RS30 and GT30 grilles are double wing, but yours wouldn't fit them. Long story short - I don't really know for sure what that grille goes to.

Here are pictures of a couple TXs though:

[amgarrety]

I was actually kind of hoping to hear that. I've personally never seen it before. Anyway, here it is on my car now:









And side by side of new and old:

[STIdarkside]

The new grille looks good.

Did you keep the drl when you swapped headlights? Also do you know what the part number would be for the gt headlight harness? Was curious if it would be possible to switch from the L to GT lights without splicing wires.

Guess one could also add connectors to the existing L harness so that you could easily swap them

[amgarrety]

Yeah, I didn't do anything with my DRLs. I know they are different, but that didn't seem to affect anything.

And I'm almost certain there is a harness specifically for swapping from L to GT lights. I didn't find it at autozone, and Advance Autoparts said they had a certain harness in their computer that they didn't have in stock, hut they had no picture to verify anything. I was just impatient and spliced. I've been told there is definitely a harness out there. Some lights might even come with the harness.