My latest car project for anyone interested...

I was originally a car dude before I got into motorcycles, and after getting my first bike, sold my 'nice' car and kind of lost interest all together. For the last couple years i've gotten back into cars a bit. I know i've posted up a few of my previous projects here in the past, but here's the most current. These posts are copied and pasted from another forum, so forgive the wording on some of them.


2 winters ago I did a full 03' wrx conversion in my 96' impreza wagon.

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1434059

Last winter I swapped a 06' wrx into a 02' TS wagon. (284whp/325 lbs. tq. on kito's dyno)

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1745176

So Friday I picked up this...

 

and my search for a donor car is complete.

Stay tuned for 98' forester w/ full 04' sti swap



Got some work done today.

Got the car towed to the shop Saturday, today I pulled the exhaust, axles hubs, control arms, drained all fluids, pulled the tranny and motor!

Fluids draining


Tranny out


Engine out

 

Went in today and spent a good 3 or 4 hours on it.

I was going to focus on pulling the subframe/diff, and front crossmember, but decided to strip the interior first

First I pulled the carpet. Then the dash and dash beam...


Then got cracking on the wiring harness from headlight to taillight along with the heater core/blower, pedal assembly and everything else inside the car.


EMPTY! (before i pulled the pedals )


More progress today! Got there at about noon, and worked until about 8pm... with an hour break for lunch

First I pulled the crossmember out of the STI, along with the brake master cylinder/booster and clutch master/slave cylinder. Then dropped the Rear subframe/diff/hubs/lateral links out of the STI



Once that was out the STI was pretty much totally bare!
So I pulled the forester in, and threw it up on the lift to start draining the fluids.



Pulled the front drive axles, exhaust, driveshaft, heat shields, stipped out the interior, pulled the seats and carpet, then dropped the rear subframe/diff/axles/lateral links/swaybars and hubs



Then dropped the gastank and emissions crap



And finally got the R180 diff, sti subframe, lateral links, axles, trailing arms, hubs and gas tank into it's home (in the forester!)



Shot of the hubs... proof it made it's way home Just need brembos now!



Dont worry, the stock suspension is going away for some KYB AGX's w/ jdm pink wagon springs tomorrow... until I decide which route to go

Didn't get much done yesterday... had to work last night (and again tonight), and had to work on a customers car yesterday and today.

Got the tranny out of the forester today, along with prepping the engine in the forester for removal. Gonna go back tonight after work to pull the motor and with any luck put the 6 speed in its new home!
For sale

 

So, sorry to Richard, JRod, Daryll and everyone else I usually play poker with... this for the time being has been my priority. But all the pics you see above have all been done since Monday, so not bad progress in 5 days

I'm heading back to the shop now to do some more work, and then heading to Trilogy for a round of golf, and then back to the shop for some more work. Rough day...

 

I'd be interested to hear what you were thinking, i'm pretty familiar with all subarus as far back as the early ea81 models and happen to be a subaru tech as well

Gonna head to the shop pretty soon to go wrench on the car a bit more... slacked off a bit this weekend, but hopefully will make some progress today.

 

Come on by anytime... you not working on the eastside anymore?

Beleive it or not, EVERYTHING bolts right in. Subaru's have been basically the same chassis since the 1990 legacy/1993 impreza all the way through 2007.
Front crossmember, rear subframe, gas tank, seats, suspension, control arms and even the gas tank all bolt right in without any modification.
The difficulty in doing a swap is the wiring, you basically have to merge the entire wiring harness from the donor car with the harness from the car you're swapping into. Also, i'm swapping in the Dash/gauges/center console, which requires some modification of the firewall and dash beam.

Of course. Did you never drive my swapped wagon?

Beleive it or not the 04'/05' Forester XT came from the factory with the STI motor (ej257), and in 06' they switched to the 06'/07' wrx motor (ej255), which is basically the same as the sti motor but with slightly different rods and a few other very small tweaks. The main difference in power output, is the Forester XT, and the 06' wrx have the smaller td04 turbo (compared to the sti's VF39/VF43/VF48 depending on the year).

I have pretty similar power goals once this car is up and running i'll soon be switch to a nice big turbo and shooting for about 400hp/400tq at the wheels on pump gas, and closer to 500/500 on race gas or meth. However, the 98-02 foresters are based more on the 93-01 impreza chassis, than the 03+ foresters as they later models were based off the 02+ impreza chassis. So the difference in weight is actually pretty significant, so with = power, this one should be a bit quicker.

Subarus are kind of strange, there's a few I know of putting out under 375 horsepower, and the drivers can get high 11 second passes out of them, where i've seen plenty with 500hp that are stuck in the 12's.

I'll still do some rally-x events, but the forester is going to be strictly a daily driver with auto-x and some lapping mixed in, the rally-x is duty is going towards a purpose built stage rally car i've been working on over the last year, and will take a priority once this car is done.
(it's just a 93' impreza w/ a Normally aspirated 2.5 liter motor and full cage/safety equipment)