Automotive Adventures in CT

Hey all,

My name is Pat, and after a decade of lurking, its time to finally share some of my own automotive adventures.  I have been inspired by many of you but some memorable builds for me are the OG tunatruck thread, irish44j's epic e30 build thread, and of course pretty much anything mazdeuce drags home.  And before I get too far, no you won't see anything quite as awesome as the FrankenFerrari, that guy is just crazy!

So what will you see?  Regular posts of modifications, repair, restoration to one star of the show (more on it later), some guest appearances from a supporting cast, and lots of adventure along the way.  You will see successes.  You will see failures.  You will see A LOT of failures.  There will certainly be some blood, some sweat, and some beers, but be assured, you will not see a 10mm socket in sight.

Alright, enough of the funny stuff, lets get into it and meet the cast.  In my professional life, I have been taught to always start at the end, with the answer.  So let's start there:

Look, its a miata!  Ever see one of these?  Didn't think so.   How about a miata with a turbo?

Novel concept, I know.  This car was amazing.  I bought it several years back and enjoyed it for two seasons (season:  the 4 month period in New England where you can enjoy a convertible but still spend your time dodging massive potholes and freak rain storms).  This car was amazing.  Best handling dynamics, best shifter and transmissions, $13 brake rotors, $75 tires.  I guess that's why they call it the answer.  When putting it away for the winter, I began having crazy ideas that it needed more power.  I cobbled together a turbo setup using a mazdaspeed miata turbo and manifold and getting a lot of help from the guys at Flyin Miata for some ancillaries.  Got it nearly finished, tuned, and driving.  It made the most amazing little tiny turbo sounds, but then...

You guys did notice I wrote all that in passed tense, right?  This answer isn't the answer for me anymore.  Fortunately, it still resides with my childhood friend, just a few miles away.  I know he is reading this, and I bet if you all chastise him enough, he will create his own thread where this tiny turbo machine will live on.

So why is the answer not right for me?  At 6' 5" and wanting to actually give motorsports (autocross, HPDE, others) a shot, it just wasn't going to work.  A super foamectomy and a flat bottomed steering wheel let me reasonably drive the car around, but I was still looking over the windscreen way too often and couldn't imagine trying to make any sort of quick reactions with my legs/feet in the driver's compartment.  Loved the car, but needed something that my large self + a helmet could actually fit in.  So helmet in hand, I went searching.

Before I get to the star of the show, let's meet some of the supporting cast.  First the daily driver:

Yup, I am a Subaru fan boy (fanboi?).  It's my Dad's fault, really, he was a salesman when I was young and I remember when the first SVXs started arriving.  My dad explained what they were and why their windows were so weird looking.  I was hooked.  I have had 7 different Subarus now and have enjoyed them all.  Yes, they will eventually spin a bearing.  Yes, their interiors rattle like crazy from Mile 0, but their style appeals to me and you can't beat a boxer growl.  This is a 2017 WRX Limited.  It has a couple of upgrades which came as part of a factory package, but otherwise is and will stay stock.  For me, this is the perfect commuter.  Reasonable MPGs, reasonable power, good in all weather and still has power heated leather seats, real climate control and modern-ish infotainment.  I can take customers and coworkers in this and look like a somewhat normal human being.  It will stay for a long time, or at least until rod knock sets in.

Continuing down turbo alley:

It's big.  It's loud.  It's rusty in all the right places.  It has a massive turbo and makes all of the torques.  This is my 7.3 turbo-diesel F250.  It is here to do all the things trucks do.  It needs lots of repair, so you will see it more than the WRX.

This post is getting pretty long now, and MrsJoolius is hangry, so I will break for dinner.  Here is a full household group shot for the brief moment in time when the miata and my new toy competed for the coveted 4th parking spot.  SPOILER ALERT, its not the mom mobile Forester.   Or is it....?

A rusty, dented Subaru Forester is the star of this show?! Before you all go running off to much better cars, authors, and pictures, I promise this is not just any Forester.  This ugly duckling is a 2004 Forester XT.  It's a 5 speed.  Well, really its a 4.5 speed, 4th gear works when it wants to.  Its plain jane silver, and if it wasn't for the gold wheels and hood scoop, it would look just like any other mom mobile roaming the streets.  These XTs were a little bit special though.  Under the hood is a 2.5L turbo, using nearly the same engine as this era's STI.  It has the tiny WRX turbo and a fairly restrictive intake/exhaust from factory so horsepower is in the mid to low 200s.  But as a Forester is just a tall Impreza, all those fancy WRX and STI parts are pretty easy to swap in.

But Pat, why did you choose a refrigerator shaped car for sporty-things??  A tall roofline and no sunroof!  Seriously, I fit in this really well.  Way better than my WRX and significantly better than the WRXs of the era.  I did consider many other cars, including but not limited to: SN95 mustangs, fox mustangs, crammits, other subarus, an RX-7, MR2s, S2000s and a new/fake GTO.  None of these was really going to work.  Either I couldn't get inside with my helmet on, or I didn't like the driving experience, or both.  As a bonus, I could justify the Forester as "not dangerous" and "not fast" to MrsJoolius's extremely conservative, risk-intolerant self since she drives a newer one every day.  She did say "you realize an SUV isn't a racecar, right?".  Her opinion on that changed a couple miles into our first drive.  She now hates it because its "smelly, loud, bumpy, and hurts my neck".  #RACECAR

So the car clearly isn't stock.  It had some nice modifications done by the PO(s) including new uppipe, exhaust, WRX suspension and STI lateral links in addition to the blingy gold wheels.  Those wheels, by the way, aren't going away.  Those are my current winter wheels, but I did pick up some alternate summer wheels.  

What does it do well?  For starters:

I can load it full of miata parts to deliver to the new owner.  Or  I can load it with 4 wheels and 4 additional unmounted tires.  Or I can load it with MrsJoolius, our stuff, and our large dog and still have room to spare.  Take that "the answer"!  In all seriousness, it has a pretty useable powerband, makes decent HPs and torques,  handles like a small SUV/Wagon/Car/thing should, and has that growl I love.  It does a lot of things poorly, however.  The brakes are soft.  The seats are torn and do not exactly hold me in.  The gas mileage is exactly as you would expect from an antiquated EJ25 platform.  The mileage, combined with an itty bitty fuel tank (weight savings though!) means this thing is friends with all gas stations.

Did I mention how well I fit inside?  That is the driver here.  The downsides can easily be fixed, but I am not getting any shorter (yet).

Over the next couple of posts, I will be getting caught up on work done to the car from the fall and winter 2018/2019.  Next up, let's sit back and relax!

Sit Back and Relax

Although it has an STI(ish) engine and WRX(ish) suspension, at the end of the day, this car rolled off the factory floor in search of a slightly more practical type of owner.  The seats, therefore, were basically recovered regular Forester seats.  They were made to be sat ON, not sat IN.  Cast your eyes below:

Being a parts-bin Subaru, there were plenty of options available.  Basically any seat from a mid-90s to new Impreza, WRX, STI, or Forester would work.  STI seats are sort of the default choice here, but are clearly the most expensive option.  The 2004-2007 variants are also blue.  I don't like blue.  WRX buckets from 2004+ all are pretty decent.  The newer models are even embroidered with "WRX" in red, fancy!  I hear that red stitched seats add horsepower, so maybe I should choose those?  Further research on the newer era WRX seats led me to figure out they will sit higher than the existing FXT seats.  That defeats the point!

In the end, I decided on 2004-2005 WRX buckets.  Style was right, materials matched my 2004 interior, and best of all, they sit considerably lower than the FXT seats giving me even more headroom!

I picked these up for ~$200 from a local junkyard.  The seats themselves were in excellent condition but the rails needed a bit of love.  Some grinding, sanding, and leftover POR15 did the trick there.  I swapped my buckles over too, as the WRX buckles and the FXT seatbelts didn't get along.  Precise measurement indicated I gained 3 adult male fingers of clearance (insert joke here), or about 2".  The bolsters fit my body reasonably well, and, having just taken the car on a ~700 mile trip, the seats are comfortable for both spirited driving and boring highway hauls.  

Now I promised failures, right?  The fail here is that the old FXT seats had perfectly working seat warmers, a god-given necessity for this time of year.  The WRX seats do not.  My behind is not a happy camper.  I do plan on rescuing the heat pads from the old seats and grafting them into these at some point, but that will be a bit involved.  

That's it for me for tonight, hope you all enjoy the first couple of posts!

Next Up:  It needs moar powaaa!

MOAR POWAAA

This will be a short but sweet update while I continue to get caught up on projects from 2018.  While browsing eBay looking for some replacement parts for the interior, I found a Version 3 Cobb Accessport auction that was pretty cheap.  Still had 3 days to go, so I threw a low number at it and...low and behold...I won!

I don't have the rest of the supporting mods (yet) but I can at least use Cobb's "Stage 1" maps to smooth out the tune.  A lot of you guys know, but Subaru turbo car tunes are pretty poor from the factory.  Cobb claims something like +7% HP increase on the 93 octane stage 1 tune.  I didn't notice much of a power increase, but it certainly smoothed out the timing a bit making regular driving much more pleasant.  Plus, now with monitoring the knock sensor outputs, I can see my  future spun bearing happen in real time!

No fails on this one, install and loading of map was straightforward.  I did take the time to run the cable from the OBD port up through the steering column panel and radiused out a hole at the panel break with the dremel. 

Up next - Let there be light!