98 Legacy GT-B Limited - Daily Driver

[GShep]

...it should've been a K10 Micra, as I wanted something cheap, easy and economic for a daily driver, after having a 97 Legacy GT-B that needed some fixing to pass its next inspection, and even more work to make it look good again.
I made the decision to sell the 97 GT-B 'as is' and get a new daily...and while I was looking at small, cute Micras, a 98 Legacy GT-B Limited Manual in Pure White popped up for sale. Still in Japanland, about to get imported, converted to be road legal and inspected here in Germany, ready to register with one year used car warranty.

It was the first Manual Limited that popped up for sale since I bought my first Limited and it even was completely stock, except for some ugly, el cheapo aftermarket wheels, a turbo timer and an ETC eToll system.
When it popped up I actually was on ICU in hospital as I've had a brain bleeding end of January that knocked me with the aftermath only bothering me for three months.
So with my brain knackered I made the only possible and reasonable decision.
I bought it.


In June then it finally arrived at the dealer's, got a fog light added and headlamps changed for the inspection, got legalized and a one day dealership registration, so I simply could register it in my county without doing much paperwork I would have to do otherwise.
When I picked it up, it looked pretty used, but nothing worrysome...some piston slap going on, but nothing that made me worried really.





...as it's meant to be my new daily, I want to keep it stock, just do some light, optical mods, get it back in a better shape, remove some of the OEM extras that I think are just too much but add other things that the car misses.
I have my summer Limited with which I can do all the fun aftermarket stuff, so no need to do it with this one.

Front bumper f.e. looked pretty bad...


...insides of the doors looked pretty dirty, plus the OEM stainless steel covers I didn't like...


...floor mats were OEM, but looked pretty ugly, and here you can see the ETC card reader and turbo timer, next to the A-pillar you also can see something that was meant to be an automatic switch for the headlights, buuut it doesn't work I think... at least it didn't do nothing no matter how much I fiddled with it...


...on the backdoor trim, it had a socket for the extra lamp in the trunk. You could take it off the roof trim and clip it into the mount to have extra light behind die car.
Kinda cool, but looked pretty ugly and I didn't really need it...plus the extra lamp was going out too anyway.


Here you see the extra lamp on the upper right roof, plus the ugly, but useful OEM trunk carpet cover.
The trunk cover was missing somehow, good that I had a spare one from a parts car.


Last, but not least, it had some marks on the left side. Nothing bad and no dents, pretty much looked like it was from a traffic cone or something rubbery




On the first day, I already was rather productive. Cleaned the car out (though the interior was already pretty clean when I got it), swapped the floor mats with my 97 Legacy GT-B's, had the A/C filled by a friend (they have to empty it nowadays for import and the dealer didn't have 'time' to fill it up again before I picked it up) and put the missing trunk cover back in, as I had a spare one in the garage.
The days after, I ordered a DIN pocket at my local Subaru dealer and picked it up, replaced the OEM Kenwood double DIN headunit (it was broken anyway, only showed an error) with a Sony MD-X8790 high end 90s Minidisc radio and replaced the shot front speakers (as on every Subaru, the foam had rotted away) with the Audio System Xion 165mm system from my old daily.
Together with a CD-Changer emulator that enables the cinch audio ins on the back, I now have a really good sound system with a DSP and Aux in for my phone, for only 40Euro.



I was getting the 97 GT-B ready to be auctioned off on eBay at the same time and as I did put the rear wiper back in, I noticed that I was missing the bolts.
So I simply removed the wiper from the new Limited and while I was at it, replaced the broken (fixable, but I wanted to get rid of the socket in the middle anyway) back door trim with the one from the 97 GT-B.



The hole for the wiper I closed with the glass plug I had in my 97 GT-B...that now makes it the third Legacy it gets used in.



The other day I was drilling out some sheets on a donor Legacy, to fix the accident damage on my Summer Limited.
I took the ozone device out and let it run for half an hour inside the daily, to kill all the bacteria that could cause smells.
After I gave the A/C a Sonax treatment to desinfect it, with "Tropical Sun" scent.


After, the OEM steel trim had to say byebye... I didn't like it, but if anybody wants them, they are in a good condition.



...and since nobody ever seemed to have cleaned inside the doors, that was next on my list.



It took longer than expected tbh, but after some work with different brushes and rim cleaner (as even brushes wouldn't get all the dirt off), it looked pretty decent again.



Same about inside the backdoor...looked like it had been parked under a tree for a while, plus it had some more resistant dirt, probably some wax or something.




...after putting in some elbow grease, the inside looks fine again now.




...and finally, the rear doors.



Looking all shiny and fresh now!

[GShep]

Back in Augsut, I had a trip to Berlin planned and I wanted to get the daily looking better before.
I had already blackened a set of spare headlights when I did the ones for the Summer Legacy, but they still needed some finishing work done before they could go in, as they looked really blind, yellow and scratched.



I did sand them down and polish them back up...
I used 600 - 1200 - 2000 - 2500 - 3M Fast Cut - 3M Fine Compound - 3M Perfect it.



Didn't even take long...I usually would've clearcoated them, but had no good clear coat in the workshop...so I just put in some new, yellow bulbs and done.


Taking the old lights out, I decided to give the whole front an overhaul, as it looked pretty beat up.


As the whole bumper was exposed, I also sanded down all the scratches and chips.


...and everything taken off for paint.


With the fog lights exposed, I quickly added some black tint, to darken them... it's a really dodgy, fast job and I'll sure have to do it again, but the whole overhaul had taken longer than I expected (as always).
So with the paint dried, I was finally able to throw everything back together.



After getting back from my trip, I sanded the bumper down and polished it back up.
Unfortunately I didn't sand it down enough before I clearcoated the parts I repaired...so I clearcoated some of the grey layer on the bumper...just will have to redo that.


The difference before and after sanding on the other side of the bumper...


While I had my polish and machine out, I also tried removing the marks on the passenger side...which went really well actually. There's just two little black spots on the trim left.
(I only cleaned the area of the marks, as the whole car needs a good polish sometime anyway)



The biggest change back then, after fthe front, were the new wheels.
The Legacy had cheap aftermarket 16" wheels on it with Yokohoama winter tyres. Not bad for the tyres, but the german TÜV didn't approve of the unidentified, cheap wheels.
I had a set of OEM 17" Legacy wheels, which were meant to fix my 97 GT-B (one wheel was broken, because of skid fail in winter), but then decided to keep them as I got to know that the original wheels wouldn't come with the Limited.
It was really hard to source them here in Europe, it was pretty much the only set I found.
They were in a pretty bad condition though. First I gave them a good clean, to get all the brake dust and grease from broken CV boots off... they still looked horrid.
Looks like they also got some curb rash fixed at some point, as the colour on the outer edge was different from the whole colour of the wheel.



I sanded the insides completely down to the aluminium and gave them a coat with primer.


The outsides were in a much better condition, so I only sanded them down and sprayed them with a layer of spray bondo to get the last scratches and chips filled, before sanding them down again.


Finally primered the outside and the center caps, too.


Quick rub down with a soft sanding pad and then it was paint time!
I got some good Standox paint and clear coat of a GM (?) paint that I found on another forum which almost looks the same...apperantly there is not paint code of the original colour, so that had to do.
First I got the insides done, then the outside...


...as the clearcoat needed longer to dry though, I built a rack to place them upright and clear coat them from both sides.
Unfortunately though, I didn't add enough thinner to the clear coat and waited a bit too long for the first layer to dry, so I have a bit of orange skin that most likely can be sanded out and polished up again, but oh well... they still look good, and they're only meant for my daily driver afterall.


I did let them dry off for a week, before I then put in some new, black metal vents and had them wrapped in 215/45R17 Yokohama Advan Neovas


It was quite a transformation changing to the new summer wheels.




Later I had a little testdrive to see, if the tyres really are that good as friends said they would be...and they are!
Too bad they're not available in the size that is going on my new wheels for the Summer Legacy, but well.
Took two shots during the testdrive though that I just have to share!

[hupshall]

The before and after on those headlights is amazing.

[GShep]

They probably had been polished up at some point and then painted with a cheap clear coat, hence why they looked so bad before though.

So a day after I took that photo of both Legacys, I drove to the Ring to try out my new tyres even more.
First, they are really awesome! So much grip!
I got some really nice shots during my first lap, too:





Second lap though (at ~13:30)



Short after Bergwerk, at ~7000rpm the engine started to rattle for a few seconds, then it sounded like the rattling part ripped off and I had a wall of blue smoke behind me.
The engine shook some, but still did run. Figured it would run on three cylinders, with the piston rings on one cylinder having broken so that there would be no compression anymore.
I drove it off the Ring, fueled it up as the tank was pretty much empty. Bought a liter of oil and emptied it all into the engine together with half al liter of spare oil I had in the trunk.
Tried to drive it home, but when I checked the oil at the last gas station before the Autobahn, the dipstick already was dry again.
Since I'm a 'Plus' member of the ADAC, I rang them up, they then sent a flatbed that drove me home and dropped the car off at my place for free. Cheaper than buying oil at the gas station for the 40Km left.

Some days later, I drove it to the workshop to see, if the failure would be what I suspected it to be.
On my Summer Legacy the failure was on cylinder two and since that was the easiest to check, I checked that at first.



The sparkplug already looked pretty oily.


...and on closer inspection with the camera, the cylinder had a lot of oil at the bottom (top of the screen = bottom of the cylinder).


Cylinder two looked pretty dead.
Usually I would have used car warranty on it...even though I went to the ring. So the import shop who sold it to me would've had to get it back into running condition.
The shop didn't even reply to my messages, so in the end I decided not to go the legal way and spend a lot of time waiting for a rushed engine change for another, maybe even worse engine, I decided to rebuild it myself as good and as cheap as possible.
Found a company from Dubai on ebay.co.uk that sold refurbed EJ20 shortblocks with new OS pistons and bearings for 2000+ Imprezas. Since the EJ20 from that age should be the same, except for two more mounts for the gearbox, and that block being cheaper than getting all the parts and dropping everything off at my machine shop, getting all the work done and assembling it myself, I just oredered it.



With that finally arriving (came by air mail, only took 4 days or so ), I took the engine out...good that the wagon has quite a bit of space in the trunk.





With my goal being to get this rebuild done as cheap as possible, I didn't open either the power sterring, or the A/C system.

[Tylerhartman]

Very nice, Hopefully it's on the road again soon
I love the limited bumper so much

[GShep]

It already is on the road again since two weeks now.
Just posting the pics here now.

Had the engine out finally, so I did disassemble it in as few parts as possible.
When I took off the heads though all cylinders had oil in them, in some photos the oil already drained back into the oil pan already. So my guess is that the block was pretty done already when I bought the car.






Taking the right head off though was a bit more complicated, though I used the impact wrench (or because I used it), two bolts on the cam shaft caps decided to go round.
On one I was able to use the chisel and a heavy hammer, on the other one that didn't help, so I had to drill the head off.







When I turned the engine on the stand, I had quite a heavy clunking noise from the oil pan... which made me wonder a little, as even if the piston ring, or parts of the piston ripped off, that usually wouldn't make such a deep noise when moving around in the oil pan.
So I took it off..
Found a piece of a con rod in the oil pan with a screw hole in it... so where was the rest?
I found some more pieces deeper in the oil pan, but the baffle plate also had dents... took it off and found the rest of one half of the rod.
On the crank, the bearing for cylinder 2 was empty...
Taking the head off, I found the piston slightly tilted and stuck in the cylinder, with pieces on the front ripped off.
Hammered the piston out and well...
At ~7000rpm it was complete mayhem and destruction that happened.







My best guess is that a pice of the piston ripped off as the oil got too hot, thinning down, providing not enough lubrication.
The piece then got hammered into the head, which made the rod bend a little, and some point the piston got stuck completely, with the rod ripping off.
With the loose end on the crank spinning around for a few seconds, getting stuck on the block a few times and finally ripping off completely.
I'm quite lucky that nothing more happened and that it even still did drive...
I drove it off the ring and I even drove it to the workshop from home. 3 cylinder Twin Turbo goes, but it's quite shaky.
Seeing this, it was even better that I got a complete, refurbed short block, now this saved me even more money. I'm not sure what to do with the old block, probably have it checked and see if the scratches in cylinder 2 aren't too deep, then I might build something more sturdy for my summer Limited out of it.


Checking the heads then the left head was completely within the tolerance, but the right head suffered quite a bit from the impact of the piston.
It was pretty warped, out of tolerance, but luckily not cracked.


Before dropping the heads off for getting them skimmed, I checked the valves.
Cylinder 3 had a non sealing valve, but imho that was just caused by dirt.
On cylinder 2 all valves didn seal, checking them on the drill again, one of them wobbled pretty bad and the others didn't seem alright either, though not that bad.
No experiments though, I did some research and ordered 4 new Subaru valves in Japan. There are quite some third party manufacturers here, but of course they didn't offer that type of valve.
Subaru Japan then just was the cheaper option than ordering them here.

[Reuben]

Nicely done! You’re so lucky the heads didn’t get taken out by the piston, a few bent valves is literally the best possible outcome from a piston parting company like that! How does the new motor drive?