1997 Impreza Brighton, The Scoob or El Scooberino if you're not into the whole brevity thing...

After butting in on a few build threads I figured it was time the Scoob had it's own.

I bought this car back in '03 with 83,000 miles on the odometer and proceeded to beat the piss out of it and severely neglect it. Time and money allowing I hit every RallyCross and Autocross I could. The EJ18 developed a terrible oil leak but I just tossed more oil in when it got low.

When things got serious with the wife and we were expecting our oldest we said goodbye to the Scoob at 153,000 miles and bought an '05 Focus ST which is another story unto itself.

Fast forward a bit and I spot the ol' feller sitting behind a used car dealership on my way to work. I ask about it and it turns out the people who bought it from the dealership never checked the oil and it locked up at 158,000 so they just abandoned it.

I had an '85 RX7 project at the time that I had picked up for beer money ($50) and, after much urging from the wife, I offered that plus all of my SBF parts and $250 for the Scoob.

They agreed and dropped the Scoob off at our house on a roll back tow truck, snagged my RX7 and went on their merry way. Somewhere around this point I bought a '93 Impreza FWD Sedan for the wife. It had a peppy 1.8 and a gearbox that was in great shape. It was rusty, both front wheel bearings were shot, the exhaust was rusted in half and the struts were blown. I robbed the front spindles, struts and exhaust from the Scoob to keep her's functional.

I wasn't making much money at that point so parts acquisitions for the rebuild took quite a while. I got lucky and found a '92 FWD Legacy with a fried slushbox for $300 and scrounged that for all of the parts I needed to get the Scoob back on the road. Work didn't leave much time for wrenching on the old boy so it took quite a while to get to this point:

First start vid

That was roaring out of the Legacy's O.E. "header".

Now I'm getting ready to put it back under the knife for some much needed repairs and maintenance.

It currently has braided stainless front brake lines, '05 STi front struts and springs and '04 WRX rear struts and springs along with 170,000+ hard miles.

My plan:

Replace the shifter bushings. It has more play than an old farm truck.

Gasket match and re-install the EJ18 intake.

Bushings

Fix the oil leak(s)

Either lower the rear an inch or so or raise the front the same amount. I'll most likely lower it.

Sort out the drive-ability issues. (see intake swap)

Alignment

Paint?

Interior panels?

Gearbox & rear diff swap?

(Pssst, I also robbed the hood, grill and headlights from the '97 for the '93, because the '93 just wasn't as pretty )

That had slipped my mind!

If the shifter keeps falling to the left when it's in neutral, you need to replace the external shifter return spring (I probably have a spare somewhere around here, but there's a lot of variance in part numbers on the pre-facelift Imprezas). Otherwise just do the normal bushing thing.

Good luck. I've driven a lot of reedy EJ22s over the years, I can't imagine how slow even a well treated EJ18 must be.

Start with trailing arm bushings, fresh diff bushings are hard to source for the pre-02 cars and are a pain to install.

Well I swapped out the EJ22 intake for the EJ18 intake and the throttle response improved but it still whinges.

If I stomp it the car falls on it's face but if I slowly roll into the throttle sometimes it will respond as it should. Oh well I'll get it sorted eventually.

On a side note my car will run with the injectors incorrectly hooked up.

well that's just like your opinion man...

Went to Kroger this morning and, due to the fact that I've been watching lots of Roadkill, the starter decided to go on vacation. At first I was hoping it just needed a jump but that didn't help... not.one.bit. The Scoob just said, "click. LOL." A bystander said the starter sparked.

Tried roll starting it but the parking lot is maddeningly small so that's a no go. So now, after we shuttle the kids off to work I get to either fix it today then take a nap and go to work or get lazy, leave it today, fix it tomorrow then take a nap and go to work.

I'll probably fix it tomorrow because there's still weights that need lifted today.

Finally some pics!

Time to replace the very old and very faded GRM sticker:

My son suggests a location (these are old pics, he had been sprayed while washing the cars):

That'll work.

This one was parked because it went on strike one day. If I use very little throttle input I can rev it to redline. If I floor it at any point on the rev scale it goes wooooaaaaahhhh and the revs drop. It idles like nothing is wrong...

Plugged cat, bad map/maf/tps. Any codes?

What's your fuel pressure like?

This sounds similar to what I've experienced from a dying pump that could only muster ~20psi, though they really didn't want to go to redline even then, topping out in the 5k range.

At the very least, it's easy to get to the filter to check.

Huh... I hadn't thought of the fuel pump. I assumed it was the MAF.

I'll have to see about renting or buying a code reader, it isn't safe to drive to have it scanned.

Do you have an android product? Buy a Bluetooth obd2 reader for 20 bucks and Torque app for 5 and be happy. I love mine. Helped diagnose my friends powerstroke with fuelling issues.

I had to ask the wife about android products. Apparently our tablet is. I have no blueteeth.

I'll have to look into that, thanks.

I replaced the fuel pump and sock today then started it... no change.

I thought maybe the exhaust was plugged up so I yanked off the muffler (worked for the wife's Outback) and tried again... no change.

Here we berkeleying go again....