26 replies to this topic

[johnnyfive]

Ok, so It all started one sunday morning. Was told about a Subaru GSR on trademe that I'd missed. Reserve $1.
Long story short. I won it, $46.
Got it home and shes pretty dang tidy. Will endevour to get wof'd up asap and definately convoy with ute to next oldschools.
Now its supposed to have ea63(s?) in it, which is 1400 dualcarb which is supposed to be good for 90 odd hp, and was a real speed machine according to various sources.
Instead, its been repowered sometime in its life with an ea71, 1600 single carb, unsure but probably something like 60, maybe 70 horse's at best, engine is an unknown combo at the moment tho so no idea to be honest.
Got it home, whipped battery on charge and set about getting it to run. Fired up real easy with a bit of gas down its throat and seems to purr real well considering PVC system is all over the place and vaccum advance goes nowhere/assorted other little things.
Brake booster and possibly master cylinder appears shagged, so here starts the terrible mission of trying to source replacements or rebuilds.
Any ideas anyone?
Steering rack seems possibly a little suspect, but I'll leave that up to the WOF inspector.
Plans? Get wof, get reliable, pull plows, Uh I mean hoes.
pictures!













































Werd.
Discussion
http://oldschool.co....p=224905#224905

[johnnyfive]

mmmm I like, Its like 4 by 4 but not.

Thinking once Its all legal'd up I might have to invest in some funky decals like above

[johnnyfive]

just pictures, no real update here.

[johnnyfive]

Slowly getting things sorted, a bit more urgent as the daily just died a little inside.
Whipped the M/C & Booster out of the red brumby and stuffed them in there. Stops crazy weird fast now, rears lock up under hardish/not really braking, feels way too effective --- meh, at least it stops now.
Brakes still making kinda weird noises and sticking a bit up the front, so Maybe next weekend I'll get to look at the front calipers.


Brumby M/C & Booster vs GSR one








Won't be needing these fellas

[johnnyfive]

[johnnyfive]

Discuss things here if you wish.

http://oldschool.co....p=224905#224905

[johnnyfive]

Small update- Underseal in hair sucks
Started with




















I feel kinda bad cause its a ruggedish fix, but panel beater friend pointed out a few other bits round the car which were already rough repairs.
me = happy its done/nah

[johnnyfive]

Update. It has been all road legal for the last... month or so, and is proving to be trouble free.
Nearly everything is functional, except for, stereo, rear defog, window rubbers, and some slammage.

[johnnyfive]

So I picked these up a couple months back.
Lucky find

Got a bit desperate to get them on so just have shitty balloon tyres

Just 13X5.5 again. But they fit well.
Currently thinking about shock/slammage options. With different motor in it the headers go under the crossmember, Leaving a fairly low exhaust especially in the middle theres not much tunnel to even tuck it up into. Should just sideout it.
But yeah... resonator hits anything mildly raised if loaded up/moving above 4km/h
I shall try something to fix the height in the front anyway as it is pretty shamefully high (and 4x4's quite well )

[johnnyfive]

Looong, time no update, basically because there ain't been shit happening. This post is to try and stir my motivation a little.
Drove round for a few months, but basically every bush and shock in suspension is poked, possibly steering rack also, and a bit of rust has returned in the floor. So I parked it in a barn with the Brumby to try and save a bit of money to give it a holiday.

Before parking it up I tried on a dualcarb manifold + carbs I'd gotten off trademe. Gave up with it as I couldn't get it running right, but plan on having another attempt sometime once I get a bit off my plate at the moment and get back into Subaru town.

If you weren't aware, Subaru had the excellent idea of using a stud pattern of 4x140mm, this is somewhat less than common, so anything bigger and more interesting than a 13x5.5 factory steel or alloy ain't so easy to find.
I had been pondering changing the stud pattern, but thats more than I'm willing to do just yet.

But I did manage to buy wheels off a bloke in Rotorua, he had them on his Leone rallycar.
I was under the impression they were 3 piece initially, but I think they're 2 piece 14x6. Pretty rough and poorly painted, should look a bit nicer with a cleanup, but no time soon.



I also went on an OS track day as many of you know back at a time I don't recall. It was awesome fun, but pretty shit in its current state.





Photo credits go to some people that took them.

The current plan is to get it into the shed, and start the process of finding bits, now that I have the space.

What is the best way of getting shocks and bushes for things that no-one has listings for?

Motivate me.

[johnnyfive]

So quite a while back when it was getting used regularly, lost wipers, washers, and maybe indicators and some other jazz, I don't recall exactly.
Bit of this

Resulted in this, got soldered back up and is still working, but will fail again.


Then on Sunday while at the Rotorua swapmeet, amongst all the American, British and Australian, I spied a grill which looked familiar being sold by a man that also had a chair, a shelf, well crap basically.



So he sold me a new grill and a second hand but not fucked steering column switch assembly.

He also talked forever about things that were completely irrelevant and ruined my will to give him any money for said parts.

But yeah, the grill is less busted up than mine.

Will need to attempt to swap over chrome and badges etc as seen here



Will be moving the GSR to its new home soon I hope.

[johnnyfive]

So a month or so back I fished it out of its barn and brought it to my new place where it got its own little bit of garage space for the first time in forever.
Sat around for a bit, didn't do a lot, runs like poos due to dodgy non ballast coil setup/ruined points etc.
Took >3 attempts to get the right set of points. Nothing better than owning a car that doesn't exist. Runs now, not perfect, but I'm not a perfectionist.

Front end will be next to get removed and looked at, and do some measuring as to finding more stuff that doesn't exist with a non cashmoneyhighroller pricetag.


Shed time.


Got distracted by peer pressure and flipped centre of one of the 14' SSR's for a laugh.



Grotty filth.


Probably a good 2inchs at least outside of guards, we'll see how that goes....

Then attempted to remove some of the shit and tar with some skiddy undies and twostroke mix.





Will be quietly looking for something around the 185/50-14 or whatever is close to that, even if they're bald just something to size up and work out what might be close to working/look tits.

[johnnyfive]

Have spent a little bit of time on it as of late, maybe like 20mins...
Looks like I'll be able to get away with just new steering rack bushes, shocks, tophats, cv's, springs, steering ragjoint, and maybe some other stuff. Procrastinate etc.

Also, one of the rear quarter window latches is busted, anyone got any idea for a replacement?


Closed

Open

yeah, nah maybe.

[johnnyfive]

Ok, So I said I'd be driving this POS to Nats in May. So an update or two is necessary.

I had a bit of a play with the front struts comparing them to a set of Brumby items I had. Brumby stuff is slightly longer but has adjustable height spring perch and (I assume) a heavier spring rate. Tinkered with the brumby spring length a little and chucked them back in, appears to be basically the same height, so I will review that again shortly.

Haven't had a chance/the motivation to mess with the rear of it yet.
Got a pair of 165/65-14s off trademe and down here via the OSGC courier service aka Fuel & Newbie. They were advertised as 165/60's, but regardless, they don't look tooo terrible on there. I more wanted just to get them to get a guage on what sizes would work on such a funny car/munty sized rims.

I also picked up a few extra 14' SSR mesh wheels a few months ago, again delivered via the OSGC courier service AKA brock-lee. The centres are slightly different, but having 7 of them is slightly nice.



Here I'd like to demonstrate the spaciousness of the elegant sports coupes boot. 5rims, 2 tool boxes, and a boxed 12' sub.


A pair of these now wear some pretty worn semislicks, might come in handy?

The other pair just languish away in a corner.


The worlds safest compressor





So yeah, another pair of this size tyre + remove guard gap/mudflaps scraping, and I think I'll be onto something.
Might leave the front a little higher than the back as there is a bit that hangs down/FWD drag car/so it looks like its hooning 100% of the time.

These

Are now on this,


Which is cool because I can't have that many wheels on my car at once, and it is a worthy wee vehicle.

[johnnyfive]

Ok, So needing some urgent motivation.

Some of this

Removed here

Fuck knows about this

Some shit was here




This

Turned into

turned into

into


Shocks are silly long and have toyota/kyb written on them. Bottomed out shocks but still appears to have nice clearance + travel with the right shocks I hope. Car doesn't have bumpstops in suspension so might have to ensure shocks have some.
According to my markings on splines I went 1 spline down on one side and 2 on the other, but this is incorrect. ~100mm both sides regardless.

Final result for now =


Might have some bushes by the weekend and be able to make it mobile again/slam the front.

[johnnyfive]

Oookkk...

So made a further attempt at doing the fronts, basically failure 101.

Had front struts and springs out of 4wd brumby. Same mounting dimensions, heavier springs.

Did not fully realize the difference length. Original shocks are 100fucked. Brumby struts have adjustable height spring perch, thought this would be handy for regaining captivity of springs if necessary.
Springs minus 3 coils each, juust captive with adjusters wound up a little. But still jacked as shit.

Struts look like this

Car looks like this with struts wound DOWWN.

Springs minus 3 coils are also rediculously stiff. Wouldn't mind so much if it was boned as shit, but alas, it is not.


Unacceptable.

[johnnyfive]

Ok ok.

Sooo, small update.

I can't remember if I'd mentioned, but in order to get the ridiculously long front struts out, it was easiest to unbolt the front swaybar/radius rod/gearbox crossmember to get things low enough to drop struts out.

Upon removal of bolts, found one didn't have a captive nut in the unibody where it should have.

Then remembered when I welded up the floor a few years ago some suspicious cuts around that area above it in the floor.


Turns out the captive nut had been removed (due to something being seized in it I assume) and had a replacement in there, but not welded captive.

So begun the fun task of getting in there, finding nut, and holding it still to bolt things back together.

Drive one centre punch up through floor to work out where the cavity is.
Take one of these

Do some of this

Resulting in

Fill with one grommet, and you've got a handy access panel and this problem will never occur again.

[johnnyfive]

So once that fucker was taken care of.


New shocks for rear, apparently out of a c22 Vannette Front? Got autolign to cut off the top eye and replace it with a stud.
Possibly a little bit short on extension if I do decide to go up one spline in height on the rear at any stage, and they welded an imperial stud to shocks, and supplied different thread pitch metric nut. Wasn't too bad, but when they charged what the shocks were worth just to do that I was a little frustrated....

Long story short, should be OK still.

Mounted my air line holder at home garage.


Got my 'custom' steering bushes also.
Top is steering rack, middle is old bushes, bottom is new. ~$270 for 3

But they appear to be suitable for the job so ITS OK. Steering is a lot nicer and tighter.

And heres a picture of my 18' Diddle.


Have a nice day!

[johnnyfive]

Alll riight!

So I've been busy on the car during my spare time this week.

Got the front down, got some inserts, now getting some machining done to get the springs captive.



This left about 30mm of clearance to the exhaust right in the middle.

Not good enough, got beached trying to get it on a hoist, and scraped on EVERYTHING, so I have started making efforts to get the exhaust sitting higher/less bulky resonators. Exhaust is currently tacked up so tomorrow I will pull it off and weld it up proper.
Exhaust routed like



Still ends up a little low directly behind the front wheels due to flatness of floor/gearbox crossmember, but I'm sure it'll be more drivable.

Also spent the last two days doing some UGLY rust repairs, Not too many pictures of that cause I'd mildly ashamed.
I thought I had more before pictures but turns out nah.

Front LH



Stuff in boot.


See exhaust pic for after result.

So tomorrow I will attempt to seal up repairs, seal up exhaust, retrieve struts, and if theres time left I might try and cut/polish the paint.

[johnnyfive]

Got a wee bit done today, exhaust sealed up, I reckon it sounds lol.
Layed down/up a strip of butyl patch or some shit in the 'tunnel' so should help with heat.


Coated bits in 'rust gobbler' then primed then undersealed.


Had one fuck up, brake line bracket goes over the torsion bars, turns out where I'd patched/flattened the floor I hadn't given enough clearance inconjunction with lowering it made things worse.


This

Required this on both sides.

Not ideal but get fucked if you think I'm going to re-patch that bit, I had a cunt of a time managing the shitty job I did.