Hi there, I joined this forum quite a while back when my family originally bought this proud little thing off my neighbors for $1,000.
She at the time had 220,000 miles on here, a few dings here and there, valve cover gasket leak and a clutch that was on the edge of being completely shot. But over all, not bad for a 1997. My parents originally bought the car for my younger brother to drive. So I just mainly played with it here and there, not much at the time (didn't really have any education on working on cars). I around the time had hopes of selling my S10 and buying a Subaru Legacy wagon like ours, but that didn't quite work out.
So it continued to be driven for the next several years by my brother, and eventually got parked once my parents bought a newer Mercedes to my younger brother. So the Subaru continued to sit for the next two year, falling into disrepair.
Now comes the story of where I come in, since I graduated high school, I worked several years as security, enlisted in the Army, messed by back up and got discharged, and worked for an armored ATM courier service for a year. Upon leaving that job (because they were cheating me out of my check each week), I decided I should probably go to school and do something better with my life than Security and armored courier. So I decided to go to Lincoln Tech for Automotive Repair and Business.
I started in February of last year and I needed something to drive for the winter that was better than a lowered S10 (since I would be so far away from home). SO I decided to take the Subaru up with me. And to cut this already long story short, I ended up selling the S10 and just let me keep the Subaru (can't beat free).
One weekend when I was home, I went out to the junk yard with my brother to find a replacement door for the Subaru (my borhter got side swiped a few years ago in it), we did indeed find a replacement door, but even better yet, at the same time we found a full set of BBS wheels with newer tires on them hidden in the back of a van (probably stashed by someone so they could get them later). We noticed it was sitting next to the same Legacy we pulled the door off of, so you know I had to try them, and I was very excited when I found out they fit!!! I ended up paying $127 for the door and all four wheels and tires! Thank you Pull APart!
A close up on the wheel and the door, that is the only area that got touched in the wreck other than the door. Thankfully it still shuts, and seals all the way, maybe some day I'll look into having a body shop fix that for me.
Now, fast forward 9 months, I am in one of my two shop classes and in this one I needed to get a total of 40 flat rate shop hours before the end of this class. No big deal, that's 4 weeks to get that done. So, I got to looking at the Subaru and the many things it needed in the years of neglect and got started on fixing things. I started off with the valve cover gaskets since they were leaking at an alarming rate and decided to replace plugs and wires while I was at it. Next was followed by replacing all four rotors, they were warped and cracked. I am glad the thing could still stop. After that I replaced the rear struts and replaced the bracket for the rear license plate lights. Replaced the muffler with a DC Sports muffler but decided to keep the cats for now. With all of that and several other smaller things out of the way, I still had about 15 hours that I needed. So I decided to get on to replacing the completely shot clutch.
Disassemble process.
Got the transmission out and cleaned the bell housing out (found out the rear main seal had been shot for a very long time) and the new throwout bearing in.
New rear main seal, flywheel, pilot bearing, clutch disk, and pressure plate are all in, aligned, and torqued to spec in the correct sequence.
Got her all back together and took her on the first test drive. I was very happy with the work my friend and I did.
A little bit later one of my friends was talking about how he wanted a set of BBS wheels like mine on his subaru, and I was talking about how I wanted something like his WRX wheels since the BBS wheels where a little too wide for my Legacy. We test fit our wheels on the others cars and and it ended up working perfectly for everyone. He got the style and fitment he wanted and I got the WRX wheels I have been wanting and fitment I needed.
Man, I was so happy with the trade, I love these wheels.
At this point, I had more than enough hours for my class, so now we had time to bugger around a little bit. First we tinted the rear tail lights. We used VHT and sprayed very carefully in light coats and kept testing the lights to make sure we didn't hinder the brightness of the brake lights.
Next my friend had an HID kit from a car that he just sold that he gave to me, so all I had to do was buy the bulbs.
And to top off a great 4 weeks of working hard and getting this Subaru back up and running well, I found a nice hood off of a Legacy Outback at a junk yard.
And that brings us to now. Pretty much the same appearance(until spring when I can paint my wheels). I have been having a hesitation issue on acceleration, but it seems to be at random under different loads. So thanks to the schools scanner I rulled out the MAF, the MAP, and the TPS. We checked fuel and ruled the out as well. Now we have it narrowed down to spark. The plugs and wires are fine because I replaced them a few months ago, so I looked up the specs on the coil pack and tested it. Found that it's resistance was waaay over spec. So I bought a new one. And the issue had seemed to stopped until a few days ago, it's back. Test the new coil pack again, still fine. So I get on ALLDATA and look up the TSB's and found that many people had a similar issue and the fix ended up being the ICM. So I went into NAPA and ordered a new OE replacement. It should be here in the next few days.
I'll try to get more pictures and maybe a video or two soon.