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bling bling

While the wheels were off I cleaned them up fully and ceramic coated them, am hoping this will prevent or greatly reduce the build up of brake dust and general road muck. Gave the rest of the car a bit of a much needed cleanup too.

Back again with more worrys. When it went for the WOF he was struggling to read part if the VIN plate, i had a look and there was stain on it. Fuck, the battery has been overcharging and spraying acid about the front corner of the engine bay. Grand! More electrical gremlins. Got home and put the multimeter on it and was a bit shocked at what it was pumping out.. Our mate from american auto lent me a good alternator to test, went from all the charge to none of the charge. Waiting on a new Voltage Reg from Rockauto to see if that helps. Hopefully the battery isnt fisted cause its pretty new. Have cleaned up the acid burns and repainted things, added a battery breather. All cosmetic and nothing reached the outer bodywork thankfully. Not so long ago i discovered both field wires had broken off, this time my old solder repair had ejected entirely. I made a wee jumper wire and shit but its just too fragile, the brush holder started to crumble on install so ive binned this Alt. Onto positive news, i ordered a starter bendix and a set of rear shoe springs & hardware for bugger all. The starter used to rattle and sound like a belt sander winding down after use, now it sounds crisp! The one-way bearing was chooched and the outer sleeve had come loose. Theres lots of slop in these things.. if it gets noisey again ill add some more fibre washers and take up some slack

If the running in process wasn’t quite finished before, it is now! Fiat club track day! Thrashed mercilessly and made the brakes stink a lot! And realised my son is not a naturally gifted photographer… Nothing broke and many people told me my car sounds good. There were a couple of Ferraris, 3 Alfa 4C, and a Lotus Evora which was very nice. My car was one of the slowest but the only comparable OS cars out today were a V8 Fairlane, a MK2 Jaaaaag and briefly an Alfa spider. The Jag couldn’t catch me but I spent a fair bit of time being passed by modern turbo hatches. I’m very pleased with the way the Fiat handles for a fairly stock road car on chinesium tyres. Juuuust squeezed 100mph at the end of the pit straight which coincides with the red line on the tacho. If there’s a next time, I need better brake pads and I need to get the twin sideys on, she runs out of breath at 5k rpm. Son was fizzing as he got to go for a hoon in a Lancia Montecarlo race car (with added volumex).

Has been a while - I've since gone to another trackday in West Virginia and then went down to Tail of the Dragon again last month. Ahead of those events I had the car tuned and picked up 120hp/160nm after almost doubling the boost - I've got some dyno vids I've been meaning to put together into a single clip, hopefully will do that soon. In the meantime, here's pics of the brake caliper refresh - old and crusty:

Let's get way to carried away fixing the center console lid ay? Broken, like every one ever made the top of it is broken and cracked. So I spent way, WAY to long making an aluminium plate for the top. Then recessing it into the vinyl and foam cover so it sits flat. Once that was done I cut a piece of fabric out of the spare seat, washed it then glued it up with a piece of foam. It's come together really well and I'm really happy with the result. People who actually know how to do upholstery will cringe when they see it irl but I'm stoked with it, it'll do me just fine.

definitely more of a driver limitation than car limitation haha - I did have to drive the ~650km back to Toronto from western Michigan and didn't want to ruin the car haha. Being on all season tyres that started to feel super mushy once some heat got into them didn't help. I've since fixed that by getting a set of Michelin Pilot Sport 4S's earlier this week:

Having said that, finding a Kenstyle certainly isn't any easier and when they do pop up for sale they are too big $$$. I paid more than I wanted to for my Kenstyle in NZ, but still significantly less than the going rate because it was missing the regular Lancer wing base to make it complete. So enter in the Kenstyle replica, made in an initial small run of five units by a fellow Evo wagon owner in Sri Lanka who happens to have his own plastics manufacturing company. The replica is different in the sense that it combines the regular Lancer wagon spoiler into the Kenstyle mould, therefore negating the need to source a regular Lancer wagon spoiler, but also does away with the gap that is present between the regular spoiler and the Kenstyle wing that traps moisture and general muckyness: So here it is unpacked in its primer glory and will go on when I have some time to get it painted.

Sorted the overheating issue. Thankfully with the first fix. That was to swap the booster pump upside down so the outlet was at the top. Wasn't too tricky. Just extended the wiring and welded on a bracket to hold the pump. I made the wires quick connect incase I want to put in the bigger pump which I'll likely need for the heater. The car actually ran very cool. I bled the car with the bum in the air and in the morning I'll check the fluid level. It needs a flush anyway. Below you can see the temp gauge and it has hardly left the starting mark. By this time yesterday she was blowing steam and the gauge was pushing 100 degrees. The other thing I did was add some basic mesh filters. I still haven't sorted out a custom filter yet but I'll get around to it. Super frustratingly there is a vibration over 50mph. It is minor but can deffo feel it. I don't remember it being there before so what I'll do is take off the intermediate engine mount I made and see if it's still there. I don't think it's something that would stop LVV but I want it to be right too. It really really needs a wash. I ordered some new door rubbers so as soon as they come in I'll give it a decent bath.

For anyone looking, diff measurement from backing plate to backing plate is around 1220-1225mm. A MK2 Escort is about 1225mm as well. Some firewall /wheel well holes plugged up with much help, a work in progress: Some locks fitted, passenger and boot lock. One of the POs had welded a plate behind the lock holes to patch them, absolute bloody PITA to remove. We've gotten there in the end, drivers side to go. Annoying missing a door lock rod connecting everything so Ill have to fashion one from some 3.5-4mm wire.

So looks like this needs a bit of a design change. I took it for a decent blat tonight and about 10kms of 60mph the temp gauge started climbing and the overflow bottle was steaming. I limped it home and had a bit of a poke and a prod around. The rear radiator had overheated. The hose line from the thermostat/outlet was hot up until the booster pump. The front rad was cool to the touch. So I have a few options here. I have a bigger ewp I can fit. Also I can try it without the ewp and just the mechanical pump. The water coming out of the overflow was pretty cruddy so I might give it another flush. I also have a thermo fan for the rear rad but I dont think that is the problem. Might give it an overnight burp with the rear lifted too. It's pretty tricky as there are so many curves and turns in the hoses. One thing I also need to try is putting the outlet of the booster pump on the top. But I have to figure out how to do that due to hose angles. Might be easier to move it to the other side after the front radiator.

/carpeted bonnet

You're gonna have your upholstery skills down pat when it comes to kitting out your upcoming roof tent.

Not gonna lie, I adored (and regret selling) my B18CR ITR with a turbo kit on it. That thing was awesome to drive, shame I was too young to respect it and got rid of it before I died in it.

While the dash is out i can tidy/simplify the wiring. and blank off all the un needed holes in the firewall. Also temporary fuel pump setup. Moved from underneath to in the boot. Will need a surge tank as well.

The wagon has arrived and has been taken down to compliance. Going to be waiting for a big list of things I think but I knew that going into this project. So far I know the car needs a tune, needs some bushes replaced in the front as it was floating a bit on the road. Exhaust needs to be done properly from the headers back, a patch of rust in the rear wheel well needs sorting and the brakes need adjusting.

Dad finished up radiator shell number 2. Looking great.

I found a 185 at zebra so I bought a few bits and bobs. I bought another drivers seat for 40 bux and used some of the fabric to re-cover the drivers side arm rest thing. It came out pretty good, time will tell how much comes unglued and I have to fix it up but it's pretty ace at the moment. The other thing I did with the spare seat was cut the mounts off and put some spacers in to raise the seat up a bit to make the driving position better for normal height people like me. No pix of that because I didn't take any.

Best to do nothing with the rust before inspection, it I’ll pro badly get referred to a repair certifier regardless. https://vehicleinspection.nzta.govt.nz/virms/entry-certification/i-and-c/vehicle-structure/threshold-for-requiring-repair-certification

Hi Browny. I have moved your question into this thread. I think compliance has to be done an a VTNZ or VINZ site. They don’t come to you. You will want to have the car roadworthy before you take it there. What state is it in currently?

Custom sewn roof tent with pie dispenser and pumpkin minninchees

So stoked for you. Getting to use a car like this with the family are great memories to make!

Bump. New date up... 19th June

I replaced all the small vacuum hoses last night and found i had two vacuum ports switched for the breather and carbon canister managed to get my 2000rpm idle down to 1200rpm. my IAC though is closed so I still have a leak somewhere. In drive it's a 900rpm so that's bearable for moving it around. Bugger though I think I need to try a smoke test or something before mucking around with much else. No point going further with the tune till that's sorted all in all though it runs fine AFR'S as is won't hurt anything quick drive yesterday with logging on to confirm the above it's just a tad rich on boost, but using the brakes to hold at 2600rpm you can can hear a squeaky fart type sound so that'll probably be the leak. Sorry no graphs I crashed tunerpro and lost the log..... I know how oldschool people love a good graph or data log. Pft

That's applicable to a lot of cars these days tbh. I miss the days of the JDM 280hp gentlemen agreement, now it's a race to make faster and faster cars that you just can't use on the road. I have a real love/hate relationship with Subarus. Owned a few, love driving them, but owning them scares me due to the ever-looming unreliability. My STI Type R was a beast.

I'd have to counter that by saying our generation is obsessed with making heaps of power which has ruined a lot of really good 90/00's cars. If it does everything else well (diffs, gearbox etc) I don't think a GC8 needs more than 300hp which open deck will handle OK with a good tune. Diffs probably have the biggest influence on the balance in a 4wd car. Alternatively, the later model semi-closed deck S207 blocks are good for 400-450hp are also another good option. A few years ago they cost approx $4500 for an assembled long-block from Subaru so pretty cheap option. Dad's GRB Targa car runs one of these and it will peel your face off between corners. I don't think a Subaru needs 500hp+ to be fit for purpose, the beauty of them is the driving dynamics for attacking the corners (how they dip, dive & transfer weight). This was even evident back in group A days, where Toyotas had all the HP and smoked Subaru on open events, but the Subaru shined in the tighter stuff (check out coverage from 95 NZ rally Motu as an example). My experience with this car is that Subaru did a great job of transferring this pedigree into their road cars. For a production model, this wasn't really rivaled until Evo 6.5 onwards where they nailed the AYC setups.

The best generation of Impreza in my opinion. Subaru made their best looking cars in the 90s, GC/GF look much nicer than the models that followed, the SVX was in production, and even Legacy sedans were nicely proportioned. It’s a pity that the majority come with open deck blocks, PBMS give a power number that they believe is the upper limit, and lower spec WRX like mine come without any of the cool DCCD/quick steering rack/td04 and lower power/lesser suspension etc. Anyhow. Love reading about your Impretza (How the poms pronounce it), it’s high spec as it gets and you probably wont lose money on it.

Cummon Ritchie, You know you want to fit three spoon engines with MoTec exausts.......

Haha nah nah this car's destiny is to remain fairly close to stock with a suite of period-spec bolt on bits. More concours than racecourse.

Oh man, I'd be putting the stock b series aside and sliding a nicely fettled b20 vtec, with a b18 engine tag on it back in there.. the engine tags cut off pretty easily (to make your b20 magically into a b16 or b18)with some patient hacksawing.. well apparently

So this car is still a thing. There has been a bit of a speed hump which has slowed my already snail like progress. Was getting it ready to get a WOF in Feb of 2013. Had gotten it running well enough to put through a WOF inspection. Took it fot a quick hoon on Feb 13th and put it away in the workshop to do some final small jobs before getting it checked over then this happened. So yeah that fully sucked. Soggy Lancer. pulled the ecu and washed then dried it as soon as i could. drained all the fluids/waters and filled with new oil and filter. Waterblasted the interior and engine bay then got the engine running within a couple of days of it being under water and let it get up to temp a few times to get as much water out of it i could. Then let it sit until xmas time where it finally got a more love. So have recently pulled the tank out and given it a good clean out. Fitted a new fuel pump as the near new one i had in it shat the bed with all the water and crap it was sucking up. Interior is fully gutted atm and the car is running. Have started working away and creating a to do list as i go which is growing with every job i tick off but will get there. More pics to follow soon.

All done. Plugs came in and gasket came in so I finished up the install. Previous gasket was rock hard as you'd imagine and covered in gasket goop. I didn't use goop this time (time will tell if that was a good idea or not) and definitely used up some back credits with leaning over to scrape off what was on there. I couldn't get any half moon rubber bits for the back so those are still gooped in though. Perhaps I should get some manufactured. This makes me realise a few things. I need to get rid of that K-Tuned breather filter which was put on years ago because I just had it laying around and it fit and I'll need to get a new oil cap, or somehow try to restore that one. The plug leads are annoying me too because they're not actually entirely correct. Again, seems difficult to find some which are black and also to suit 2TG that fit nicely. I'd like to get the little bracket that bolts onto the top to keep them in order as well.

I’ve made a bit more progress stripping back the interior paint back to the og surf blue. I’ve tried a few different methods - a blade is definitely the fastest and works quite well for most of it but has a tendency to gouge the paint and leave small putting marks which doesn’t so hot. I’ve resorted to wet sanding the green off which is a lot more slow going but has a smoother result.

Well I’ve finally gotten around to finishing the exterior paint. Have also moved house so have a slightly different garage setup now that includes wall to wall carpet - very nic

Pulled the front out on the weekend as I'm in chch for a month doing a shop fit out.. All ball joints to be rebuilt, calipers rebuilt, new h/brake cable, new bushes, lots of plating etc.. Should be much nicer to dive when it's all back in as pretty much every joint was fucked.. Made sure I took a photo of all the bits as I don't want a repeat of the last experience.. Spent the day driving round dropping everything off, that's the one good thing about a big(ish) city..

Finally was able to sort the annoying vibration at 80-90kph. Whilst it isn't Jaguar smooth, it doesn't feel like it's driving with square wheels. Turned out to be the centre hanger bearing. The old one looked fine with a visual inspection but had a bit of flex. The new one is much more stiff (fnar fnar). Wasn't too hard to swap over. Just one of those annoying ones where you have to keep undoing more things than you expected to get to where you're going. Anyway all done and now means I can drive it much further without worrying about something breaking as much. To celebrate not jiggling in the car I dragged the drum roller to do some different type of jiggling the bush block to pack down some AP40. It has no torque at all but it gets the job done in 4th with no dramas. I asked for a few loads to get dropped off to the trucking company and they managed to drop off over 10. That will be fun come invoicing time. Anyway I made use of the Mitsi widened steelies and gave it a first pass with that with a load of gravel in the tray to give it some weight.

I changed the ignition coil to see if it had any effect. The one which was in the car looks to have been made in 1995. If it is a Lucas DLB198 coil as suggested by its mounting bracket, its secondary resistance was measuring below spec. The new coil is branded "Flame-Thrower", which sold me on it immediately. This should be its theme song. Anyway, it didn't make any difference. The car's intermittent stumbling idle remains, and its misfiring near peak power seems to be getting worse. I read a bunch of forum threads of other people who have tried to crack the bad idle problem with their AJ6 or AJ16 (the revised version of the same motor), and most people seem to test and change a bunch of stuff then give up (the threads just stop). I did find one thread where someone actually fixed it, and the problem in that case turned out to be several exhaust valves which weren't sealing well. The guy took the head off and got the valves reseated or reground or whatever, and then the car idled properly. So.... I wonder if I could have some partially burnt valves or weak valve springs or worn cam lobes or something. I did another compression test today and got similar slightly-too-high readings (190, 183, 190, 180, 188 and 190psi) to the last compression test. Might be my gauge. The spark plugs looked fine. I gapped them down to factory spec, no improvement. I have recently acquired a detailed factory document all about the engine management on the later 4.0 AJ6 which gained oxygen sensors (so many variants of this motor, grrr). The guide has taught me that my fuel tank vacuum pressure relief valve has no vacuum line connected to it: I don't know why there would be a valve if there's no vacuum line for it. Maybe it's for other markets / I hope the vacuum line isn't sitting somewhere disconnected and leaking air. This new guide has given me a thousand things to check. For example, the ECU controls ignition timing and fuel mixture based on airflow and crank position, with a compensation factor for throttle position and coolant temp and air temp, and now I have a bunch of expected voltages and resistances and oscilloscope waveforms for all of this. I just need the motivation to spend weekends chasing my tail.

been a min so lets catch up. we left on mocking up the rear wheel. it was a pretty rough rushed set up to see how things worked. i needed some wheel bearings to fit the smaller axle, smashed out the old ones got some new ones that fitted and another visit to @Kimjons we started fitting it up i also had @flyingbrick come out and we got some spacers made up that centerd the wheel and got working on how to make the caliper fit. took a bit of shaving some material off the hanger part and we were able to use the oem gsx1100 stabilizing bar on the gs1200 swing arm in the same spots. drilled the hole out a couple mm and everything worked so well! nathan also got busy on making a number plate bracket that also held the indicators going off the above image we were also mocking up the chain. i ordered the wrong sprocket as i thought it was a wider chain but the rear sprocket was a bit skinner and a 525. boyds had a sprocket and chain in stock so bought that and headed out to kims another day. had to space the front sprocket out a bit to line the chain up. put a small sleeve on the shaft and it worked out perfect a bunch of lock tight later and the nut was on! chucked the chain on and onto making the muffler fit hot metal glue later and lets roll this boy out side time to take it home and do some things i can do at home! got apex here in hamilton to make me some brake lines. they were 70 and 75 plug gst which i felt was good with some pressed ends on them. i bleed the system up and rode it in the drive way a bit but i wasnt so happy about the front master doing its job 100% here is me and my daughter wearing all the same safety gear doing drive way hoons so i went and paid a visit to my local bike wrecker and showed him what i was after and he had a vtr1000 master in stock that was in working order. slapped that on and i felt alot better about the front brakes time to pull the bike apart and get some tires and other jobs done hang it from the roof in the garage. whipped the tires off and got myself some road 6s while the tires were off it was time to finish up the rear swing arm and get @Rhyscar to weld it up. made this little pattern with tape cut it down then cut it out of some plate i got from @Kelvin used my old bike rack to shape it up and get it close enought to where i was happy with it trimmed these little peaces of box section up to re enforce the swing arm a bit more Rhys had a bit of filling to do but as per normal he smashed it out while rhys was off doing this i pulled my headers off as i knew they had a leak on them. turns out they were a but loose and probably leaking from the flange but while they were off i wanted to also clean up a few cracks from where dad had modified the pipes from ages ago. ground it all back as it looks like it might have been joined with brass or of something similar and due to that i had to use filler rod to weld it back together as i was blowing holes in it from been so thin thankfully im a grinder and not a welder. i had also filled up the bottom part for a better transition cause i was going to wrap these headers. if you are asking why, its cause they look like ass! and heat wrap makes them look better. see i told you. i put them back on with a bit of maniseal and carried on with putting my muffler on @flyingbrick gave me the hanger part that goes around the muffler cause he wasnt using it on his muffler set up he bought. i made a little bracket that goes from he oem hanger position shout out to bunnings for the steel time to put the swing arm back in. that wasnt any issue but i came into a problem with the swing arm shrinking a little bit..... i think the inner triangle peaces i had rhys weld it made it a bit tighter.... but i continued on like a normal person and struggled till i wone and boom! all together. you might see i have a white front fender as well. i got a mate to drop off some vinyl and i thought id give wrapping a go...... green fender. white fender pretty happy with how well it came out considering it was my very first time. and today i had to go buy some bolts to chuck fender on properly put those bolts on it the car park and then went to visit a mate to show the bike off. it wasnt long and we put his bike back together and we headed out for my 1st ride after all the mods had been done this is after i push started him at the servo from having a flat battery. made it over the divy and the bike went really well used a bit of the tire for my first outing and over all a stunning day for a ride we done 50kms today at fast and slow speeds. bike felt really good and very easy to throw over in the corners. over all super stoked with it! ive got a few smaller things to do like speedo and other minor problems, but it is 100% able to be riden now! ahh i also got the og black plate re instated so i can register it on the og black plates. excited about that! and to top this post off here are some old photos of dad on it or the bike back in its day while i was searching for photos of it with the black plate dads katana with my older brother on it before he got the gsx hope you all enjoyed this post.

Managed to pick up a pioneer lonesome car-boy component stack which consists of a kp-707g cassette player, cd5 equaliser, gm120 amp, I already have a gm4 amp too, and a pair of ts-x9 to top it off, it also came with a pair of small ts-1655 speakers and a Kex-70 tape player too. spent afew hours cleaning with a tooth brush and metal polish to get rid of some corrosion and got it looking presentable. tried to bench test the setup but it doesn’t seem to be playing ball, I got it all connected up, the tape gear spin if I falsely load it without a tape, but as soon as I load a tape in it doesn’t seem to have enough juice to spin the tape. I don’t know enough about this stuff to pull it to bits. I also need a volume knob as the one on my cassette player has been snapped off so if anyone has a spare sitting around would be much oh appreciated. also pulled the original floor mats out of the boot this weekend and 40 years hasn’t been super nice to the rubber on these and the drive side is starting to crumble apart but they are near impossible to find so will do for now, gave them a scrub up and they came up pretty nice.

Front bumper restoration complete. After giving the bumper a good clean, firstly with a water blaster then scrubbing with a brush and some warm soapy water, I needed to fill in some of the larger scraps and scratches left by the previous owners touch parking attempts. After some sanding and a quick clean with grease and wax remover it was time for a spray with bumper paint, 4 coats later and it was looking pretty good. I also took the time to paint the headlight surrounds, grill, number plate lights and grill. Now all reassembled with freshly painted number plates and LED indicators and DRLs The finished product

some of the quick cars there was a Lexus GS-F that sounded amazing, the CT5 Blackwing (also on Michelin PS4S's) and some large overwight mild hybrid Merc/AMG thing that somehow was the second fastest vehicle all weekend

I have always loved Advan A3As and I managed to I pick up a set of 13x6s. I got the lips fixed, painted the centres and convinced the bro to polish them for me (not a member but cheers mate). Orange and blue is a sharp contrast, but it's grown on me Which brings us now back to first sentence of the previous post. I've just driven this from Wellington to Horopito to Toyota Fest at Hampton downs and back (1300 kms) with a couple of mates. There were a couple of small issues with the KP on the trip but those were quickly and easily rectified. It might be slow, but it got there ha } Have a squiz the oldschool.co.nz sticker I got over a decade ago and never used until now. That's all for now

Elite wheels sell barrels. I beleive TWL might have trailer spec ones too? (I know @Valiant procured some 15" ones off them)

I have to control its xspower somehow

5 wings is a lot of downforce phil

Battery box with breaker mount. Need better fixings for the battery mount but works for now. I managed to get the breaker JUST to fit on the top bracket, probably a couple of threads welded on would be best to hold it down. Currently the dome head fastener has a slight protrusion into the battery zone which I don't like. The bracket I got with the battery has been repurposed to mount the ECU. This one was a lucky find for cheap off marketplace. PC680 sized mounts WILL fit a Vertex battery easily. Note, there is a thick rubber gasket layer between the battery and battery bracket.

Got the car home and unloaded it, first thing first was to clean up the interior which looks like it hadn’t had a clean since it was new. after a good water blast and bissell, with some other chemicals the difference is unreal. got really pedantic with it and cleaned the floor under the carpet, still happy to see no rust. other boring stuff like polishing the car trying to make the paint look as good as it can while I’m waiting for my savings to grow and parts go arrive. it came with a really cool old TRD gearknob that he said it had been in the car since he owned it Thats about it all Caught up, working on finding another pair of SSR mk3 for the rear but i want original lips 9j A type which is proving difficult but OEM lips are so much nicer, also saving for an airbag setup because im too old for low cars now. If anyone has a good 1gge kicking around it would be great too.