2002 WRX Wagon

[azzurro]

enjoying this, i have a stock as a rock* 02 Forester XT with 200k (EJ205 with ACVS) and keen to see what you do to give its sister some more boogie. 

Just got some enginey bits to replace some brittle hoses and seals and a general tidy up as im convinced the mesh in the Drivers ACVS feed is blocked and cant get to it without removing the timing belt and yadda yadda. Also has a shudder on the clutch even after replacing the disc and pressure plate so i wonder if its the fork is worn on mine?.

*well drivetrain anyway, has struts & springs from one of these in it it now

[~Slideways~]

2 hours ago, azzurro said:

enjoying this, i have a stock as a rock* 02 Forester XT with 200k (EJ205 with ACVS) and keen to see what you do to give its sister some more boogie. 

Just got some enginey bits to replace some brittle hoses and seals and a general tidy up as im convinced the mesh in the Drivers ACVS feed is blocked and cant get to it without removing the timing belt and yadda yadda. Also has a shudder on the clutch even after replacing the disc and pressure plate so i wonder if its the fork is worn on mine?.

*well drivetrain anyway, has struts & springs from one of these in it it now

  

3 hours ago, VitesseEFI said:

Not particularly a Subaru person but always good to see an oldish car getting a good going through. Looks like you’ve arrived just in time to save it.

High miles and still ok condition usually means that someone in ownership trail was good about maintenance, probably the same person who added most of the miles.  High miles also tend to be long distance miles, so reasonably low hours.

Keep up the good work 🙂

Hey thanks, yeah I wasn't big on WRX's etc when they were everywhere but now it's strange because these seems to be mostly gone and I want to save one. 

I reckon a lot give up when they have to pay thousands in labour and local parts prices are not worth it. 

Coincidentally I just received my order from Amayama for 20ish hoses, most are hard and cracked. But the big thing is that you can't get to them without removing the intake manifold, fuel rails etc etc.

So labour would be a killer and if you got a mechanic to do all the work they would not want to wait a month for an Amayama order so you'd be paying local pricing.

That pricing makes no sense to me, I was quoted around $175 for ONE breather hose, I ended up getting the same one plus 20 other hoses and bits (all genuine) for $260ish delivered to my door. I just had to wait for a month.

 

I bought this a couple of months ago now, and in that time I've noticed they are all gone. I VERY rarely see any of these early 2000's WRX's when they used to be everywhere. 

 

Azzurro, you just made me think I need to check to see if mine has the mesh filters for AVCS and turbo feed. All advice seems to say to just remove them if they are there.

[~Slideways~]

The drivers window did not do anything, so pulled the door card and applied 12v directly to the motor nothing at all.

So took the whole regulator out:

Weirdly the door switches are made by Nissan!

 

Went to Pick a Part on my lunch break and got a good motor for the door. I tested it using the battery from my 12v ratchet wrench and some lengths of wire. Worked perfectly.

 

There was only one turbo Subaru at PaP, an early 2000's shape twin turbo Legacy so I went to see if it had a 'boost pill' in the vacuum lines. It should have one but could not find it.

Holy shit look at this vacuum line mess...jesus christ. My wrx has one line in and one out!?

 

Got the motor installed and now have a working window. Had to Google how to make it learn it's position but then it was okay.

While I was in there, I noticed that it had aftermarket speakers. Factory looks like it would have had a tweeter in the door card but nothing there now and I think they've just connected the tweeter and main speaker wires together. Good old twist and tape too. So fixed that. Unsure if I should have left them joined or separate though, depends what the Sony headunit end is set up to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[~Slideways~]

Uppipe, up-pipe, up pipe... none look right?

 

Fit new studs:

 

The factory upthing has lots of heat shields and is close to rubber hoses so decided to wrap it, not the tidiest job but it'll do.

 

Fitted with fancy nuts.

 

 

[shrike]

Rubber factory hoses over silicon aftermarket option? or do they not do a complete replacement kit in silicon?

[azzurro]

6 hours ago, ~Slideways~ said:

Azzurro, you just made me think I need to check to see if mine has the mesh filters for AVCS and turbo feed. All advice seems to say to just remove them if they are there.

yeah, they are just fine ss mesh and plastic framed filters in the banjo itself,  pull them out with a pick and put the banjo back in sans filter (with new crush washers).

There are two (on mine anyway, i think yours is similar, marked 3 on the pic below) , one on each head, RH one feeds the turbo and OCV and is below the turbo (easy!) and the LH one just supplies the OCV but is trapped behind the intake pulley (not easy!) Definitly worth doing while you have the engine out!

 

[~Slideways~]

1 hour ago, shrike said:

Rubber factory hoses over silicon aftermarket option? or do they not do a complete replacement kit in silicon?

Pretty much all silicon stuff isn't oil resistant and almost all of these are oil breathers. I did look into it and found it wasn't worth going after market. 

 

[~Slideways~]

36 minutes ago, azzurro said:

yeah, they are just fine ss mesh and plastic framed filters in the banjo itself,  pull them out with a pick and put the banjo back in sans filter (with new crush washers).

There are two (on mine anyway, i think yours is similar, marked 3 on the pic below) , one on each head, RH one feeds the turbo and OCV and is below the turbo (easy!) and the LH one just supplies the OCV but is trapped behind the intake pulley (not easy!) Definitly worth doing while you have the engine out!

 

Thanks man, will check it out.

[shrike]

18 hours ago, ~Slideways~ said:

Pretty much all silicon stuff isn't oil resistant and almost all of these are oil breathers. I did look into it and found it wasn't worth going after market. 

 

Ahh got ya for some reason I was thinking water hoses not oil breathers 😛 

[Rhyscar]

It definitely looks like one of those Subarus that fit the stereotype of terrible Subaru owners. I guess you enjoy the challenge of diagnosing and fixing shit?

 

I would 100% avoid this car, no matter how cheap it was, so full respect to you for undertaking this project!

[~Slideways~]

45 minutes ago, Rhyscar said:

It definitely looks like one of those Subarus that fit the stereotype of terrible Subaru owners. I guess you enjoy the challenge of diagnosing and fixing shit?

 

I would 100% avoid this car, no matter how cheap it was, so full respect to you for undertaking this project!

I do like fixing things yeah. 

I've always started with something pretty bad and made it good. 

My yellow mx5 was stolen and recovered, dents and all.

200sx was a rolling body, no interior, pretty rough body, body loom hacked up, ex track car. 

Lancer awd thing was a sieve for any kind of fluid.

N360 was rusty as hell.

Purvis Eureka was rotting in a field.

Pink mx5 had the worst paint job possible.

Mr2 had stripped interior, hacked up loom, body work needed etc.

2x ae82 4age jobbies. Rust and/or BHG's etc.

I figure in most cases initial purchase price or condition means I can make it into something better or more interesting using the money saved versus forking out for a nicer but still not guaranteed car. 

Another way to look at it is, I wouldn't have owned a bunch of interesting cars if I bought the best examples that didn't need some work.

 

My old previous cars were the same, but all turned into something interesting to me.

 

Either I am too optimistic and see the potential, or I'm an idiot. 

I guess we'll never know.

 

[~Slideways~]

Plus a big part of taking on basket cases is I know I can fix it, have the tools and space (less so at the moment) and sometimes I have the time...

So I can take on interesting cars for a good price because most people don't want a car that needs $5k paint job (takes me a year but gets done) or don't want to pay $1000's in labour to get a 25 year old car up to a good state. That has to be a big part of why so many cars are gone now. Which sucks really.

I've been burned before but also have ended up with pretty fun unique cars. Sometimes I even make a a bit of money to put into the next one. 

Quick paint job on pink MX5 turned into stripping to bare metal because I quickly found that any other way would be a waste. Just means I chip away at it when I have time instead of a quick turn around.

Old FXGT was all done then it turned out the engine I'd put in had a BHG. 

 

 

This wrx wagon, I can't even find a good example let alone how few are even on Trademe or Facebook Market place. All that is left from this era are Sti's for $15-20k+ 

 

 

[~Slideways~]

Found a photo of how flat the clutch fork had been worn down:

[~Slideways~]

Spark plugs.

 

Plan to keep this relatively conservative power wise, so these plugs will handle that fine. Mainly because the 5 speed is not known for it's strength and also being an open deck block. 

 

Old plugs visibly worn, I assume they would have had the same electrode, if not that's a massive plug gap.

 

[~Slideways~]

Another good bit of maintenance is to the replace the water cross over pipe o-rings. Basically impossible without removing the intake manifold.

 

They were rock solid and had to be chiseled out.

The engine wasn't THIS oily, it's mostly de-greaser.

 

During removal of the intake manifold I soon discovered every single breather hose, and there are lots, was rock hard and cracked as soon as you try remove them.

This is interesting because this must create air leaks, being a MAF car it must also cause chaos.

There are so many breathers because it has essentially two separate breather systems. So there are 2 hoses coming from each cam cover, through complicated multi bend hoses to either the PCV valve for one system and the other to the intake tube thing before the turbo. So one in vacuum and one on boost.

Plus breathers directly from the block etc.

It is well documented that if the PCV valve is blocked or not functioning, it causes oil leaks, rough running and over fueling. So it's worth doing.

I bought around 20 hoses which took a month to arrive from Amayama but WAY cheaper than buying locally.

This is just one order:

 

 

[~Slideways~]

Speaking of power levels and keeping it conservative for reliability, I found that there were 2 very different market specs for these and earlier WRX's.

It looks like as usual, the JDM stuff was the best spec.

The USDM and AUDM (? what do we call Australian delivered cars?), seem to all be lower power and at least for the US market they had longer final drive ratio.

USDM and Australia mostly:

227HP

1.2mm boost pill

3.9:1 ratio (I wonder if this causes their belief that the 5 speed is glass, more stress?)

 

JDM: 

250hp

0.9mm boost pill

4.444 ratio (mostly), I think mine has this but need to physically confirm.

 

The boost pill is the restriction orifice size in the vacuum/boost pressure hose directly off the turbo. Without this they run lower boost, bigger orifice = less boost.

 

[~Slideways~]

@azzurro

Thanks for the scope creep.

I checked and confirmed it has 3, and possibly 4 if there is one in the banjo bolt behind the cam gear. All 3 were very clean so I am not worried about the 4th one, that'll have to wait until a cambelt job. Which was done only 30k ago.

The filter was still on the hole:

The 3 I could get to, they were very clean (now not, after collecting dust):

 

I did take the timing cover off again to see if there was any way to get to the 4th banjo bolt but it really does need the cam pulley as well as backing plate removed.

[~Slideways~]

Brittle stuff:

[kws]

7 hours ago, ~Slideways~ said:

Another way to look at it is, I wouldn't have owned a bunch of interesting cars if I bought the best examples that didn't need some work.

Pretty much the only way I have been able to own some of the cooler stuff I have. Future owners get all the benefits of my work 😅

[~Slideways~]

This had a loose sparco aluminium shift knob that I didn't like and the shifter boot was some after market thing I didn't like either, as well as the frame to hold the boot on wasn't connected anymore.

Took it apart and found that most of the plastic mounts were snapped off. 

Decided to try MacGyver it. 

Heat gun to heat up some fine thread screws:

Melt into trim:

 

You can see the last two original thin plastic posts it is meant to mount to:

Little nuts and washers:

AliExpress shiftboot and surprisingly nice leather gearknob:

 

I realised after this that the shift boot is meant to wrap around the plastic frame thing. Fixed it afterwards but don't think I have a photo.

The shift boot is ok, I meant to get suede but accidentally order alcantara type fabric. Looks a lot better than it did though.