We swapped in the Eibach springs from the silver car, with no spacers.
The brakes on it were crusty as hell, so I swapped the calipers and such off of the silver car onto FUCC. By crusty, I mean that the rears calipers were frozen and had to get beaten off with a sledgehammer, and the fronts worked for a generous value of worked. It's my understanding that stock for stock swaps are free, and brakes are free anyhow, so no budget hit on that.
It's also going to wear the WRX wheels and tires. Tires are free, but the wheels are a $50 ding to the budget.
I think it might be mobile under its own power by late Sunday- the brakes really need to be bled, since it got swap pieces at all four corners.
In any event, I think I'm sitting at an $850 car at the moment.
Once it's mobile, we'll start chasing down any gremlins it has, and when I'm motivated to do so, I'll update with some photos.
Im getting excited for you!
Random build photos.
Disgusting brake fluid.
Crusty brakes on somewhat newer rotors?
Applying the wire wheel to the crank pulley.
As an aside, when we were swapping the suspension, we did the front first. The rear was still lifted, and it had a bit of rake to the stance that really looked pretty good.
I'll post a photo of that when I get one from my team mate.
I started removing the interior, since I won't be using most of it, and figured the car could shed a few pounds. I haven't seen too many farm cars that didn't have mice, and figured the car didn't have them because it had aggressive, carnivorous, stinging ants.
Instead, I present a story without words.
Snakes, mice and ants all together? Like a whole ecosystem?
In reply to Dusterbd13 :
Yep. It was like the Wild Kingdom in this car.
Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) said:In reply to Dusterbd13 :
Yep. It was like the Wild Kingdom in this car.
You gotta call it Steve Irwin now.
The FUCC was briefly mobile yesterday, but it was very apparent that the Forester CV Axles were not going to work with the car dropped down. I'm taking the axles from the other car and putting them in. I think that's a zero budget hit swap. Somewhere near the end of this, but before the Challenge, I'll tally up everything we did to the car. I'm quite positive we'll come in under $2k but I'm getting very curious to know what the final value is going to be.
Now I'm going back outside to get those CV Axles in the car.
I was working on getting the rear CV axles out so I could replace them with the correct ones, and this happened. Apparently the bolt is frozen in the knuckle. After that, the day got much worse. I'll now be working on swapping in the rear knuckles from the parts car.
I also found out that the rear anit sway-bar was binding very badly. I'm afraid to try to loosen the nuts on the bracket, so I sprayed the heck out of it with PB Blaster until I could move it by hand.
In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :
Apparently this is common w/Subarus of this era. I watched a few YouTube videos on various removal methods a while back in anticipation of facing this myself eventually. Good luck!
Yeah. There's going to be a few nights laying on the ground with the lights on after work at this rate.
If the FUCC remains out of bounds, the line out option is to take the Freebaru and just compete.
I spent hours messing with the rear suspension. The main issue is that the Forester CV axle will not come out of the car unless you can rotate the knuckle a bit. The CV axle is frozen in the hub, and the main bolts are also frozen into the knuckle.
Having a lift and an air hammer would help out immensely, but I have neither item. If heat doesn't work tomorrow, I might be cutting it out. The silver parts car is sitting right next to it. My main concern is the bolts holding in the links are going to be frozen.
Trying to make it slightly better has turned into a huge mess. I'm worried I'm not going to finish in time.
Today it became very clear that the suspension had frozen together, and wasn't going to come apart properly.
So, I started cutting.
That got it out.
Unfortunately, I got a bit crazy with the reciprocating saw and cut into the sub-frame for about half an inch, so this had to come out. It probably wouldn't have mattered, but just the thought of leaving weakened metal in place, no matter how trivial it might seem, didn't sit right with me.
Always make sure you're aware where the full length of your saw blade is going to be cutting, everybody!
I took today off to get errands done and work on the FUCC.
I got the other side of the suspension out.
Both ABS sensors were frozen in the hubs and just broke apart trying to get them out. I'm debating running without ABS or scavenging them off the parts car.
Then, I started working in reverse. The rear of the car is *nearly* back together. The fancy lateral links out of the silver car were apparently in place to compensate for some weird geometry and didn't line up on the yellow car OR the yellow car is out of whack. I'm guessing silver car, because it has a salvage title. IN either case, the links didn't line up anywhere near to close. I ran into an issue trying to get one of them loose so I could adjust it, but it was fairly frozen. I've soaked it in penetrating oil and I'll see what happens after work tomorrow.
Ooph. This is why I refuse to work on crusty cars anymore.
Keep up the solid work! This thing should be fun when you get it done!
The differential came apart. I'm not sure exactly what happened, because it's kind of fused into the subframe, but when I took the axle out, the internals just kind of slipped out of position. I'm just glad it didn't happen at the Challenge.
This may be the end of the FUCC. I may instead just show up with the Freebaru and hope I finish.
(edit: it doesn't look like it will work)
I may have a spare differential from the Legacy GT Duster and I took apart a while back, but I'm not sure I have the time to get this done before the Challenge.
Possible Differential swap:
1999 Legacy GT automatic (4.44 final drive) or WRX manual (3.9 final drive) for 2003 WRX automatic (4.11 final drive)
Heck, at this point I'm not even sure the carriers are the same.
The only way I see this working is if I swap the transmission, too. I don't have time for that.
I also have the Forester XT that I got for $500 bucks sitting in the driveway. Again, 4.44 final drive, plus the issue of time.
Maybe a local scrap yard to the rescue! I'm not sure if it would be a $250 budget hit, since the diff blew up in testing, but I think I have room for that either way.
The guy selling the parts off of the Saabaru is really cool. Long story short, he drives a JDM Holologation Spec, tubrocharged, AWD, GTI-R Nissan Pulsar. He sold me the Saabaru, delivered to my house minus most of the Saabaru specific parts for $500. I only needed the diff, but there are plenty of parts I can use on the rest of the Subaru fleet.
The JDM GTI-R Pulsar:
I literally yelled and clapped my hands as it was driving down the road.
The real question: Can I get the differential, which is pretty much fused to the subframe, out of the FUCC, put the differential out of the Saabaru in there and debug the FUCC in a handful of days?
This is working with hand tools, in the dark, in my driveway with no other help after work.
Stay tuned!
With a replacement diff on the way, I've decided to stop whining and finish the car.
Old, busted diff is out.
It is very broken. I bet the axles were holding what was left together.
Rattle not OK.
That's MINT!!!
Im glad it came out. Hopefully not serious destruction needed to remove, and reinstall will be simple-ish.
I had about 15 minutes before supper, so I decided to grab the high speed rotary tool and see if I could epoxy the hood scoop together well enough that it'll be at least near the same plane and not flop around
Cut out a bit of the old...
Fill it with epoxy. I wish I had some silica filler to put in the epoxy, but oh, well! Get it done well enough, not perfect. I'm probably not keeping this shell, anyhow
Tomorrow, when that layer is cured, I'll sand it and fill it in a bit more.
Get it running. The battlescars add to the story!
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