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it was one of those rare cases where id say: easier done than said even with the window stuck on up. all done in 20 minutes. in the name of science, opened the old motor, all damage was due to water ingression, god knows how it got there

I’ve rebuilt a ton of totaled cars which many people claim is hard, terrible, and fraught with danger and potential rejection or unknown problems and the state is out to get you. I’m an untrained DIY guy, never had shop classes or been in auto business. Never had a problem rebuilding a totaled car and getting a real title for it. It’s not a big deal. I haven’t done a title-less car but after the rebuilding process I wouldn’t be deterred if the right situation presented itself. I’ve seen the process listed looking at potential buys and other car protocols. The state tells you what to do - go do what they say. In my experience the inspectors and people involved aren’t as bad to deal with as many claim. They just want to see the I’s crossed and T’s dotted and nothing sketchy and you’re good.

Z and I did some more wiring on the Impreza, will update the EZ36 swap page shortly. Non-engine swap related wiring, modified the fog light wiring a bit so they only come on with high beams rather than just with low beams. Makes it easier to switch the light bars on and off. Spliced in an extra wire to the red wire (pin 1 of connector shown below) that's grounded with high beams on over to the fog light switch. Spliced that in to the yellow blue wire (pin 5 connector shown below) that normally is grounded with low beams on. Power locks hadn't been working because the lock timer module (or whatever it's called) was still bolted to the dash. Unbolted that and plugged it into the harness and now the power locks work. RF power window doesn't seem to work at all but other than that they mostly work. The switch on the driver's door doesn't hit a couple directions so that should eventually be replaced. B fixed the broken rear washer fluid hose and modified the air box a bit more. Got the parking brake working. Z and I machined up a couple barrels for the ends of the stock parking brake cables. B welded and painted some pieces of tubing on the strut brackets. Not much clearance there to the wheel and tire but there's already less clearance elsewhere. Easier than expected really. We took the car for a test drive and tried to do a little more low RPM high load tuning. Maybe improved things a bit in that region of the map but probably not much left to be gained. Can slightly accelerate up a fairly steep paved hill from 400RPM in third gear. Parking brake works fantastic. Put maybe half effort on the handle and it locked up at least one of the bald mud tires on dry pavement. Should actually work decent as a handbrake but definitely as a parking brake. Other than that the test drive went pretty well. Still losing synch on one of the exhaust cams occasionally, doesn't really affect how it runs and resynchs when you restart it. At one point I was going too slow and stalled the engine shifting into sixth gear. When I restarted it the engine was running rough like it did a week ago. Shut it off and restarted it and then ran smooth. Sent that log to Haltech too. After dinner we worked on the white Subarus. B replaced the front pads on his Forester. We cranked in as much negative camber as possible in the front of my white Outback, which isn't a lot. I keep wearing out the outside of my tires first on all my Subarus running them at zero camber so I finally wised up and adjusted the alignment. Then we reset the toe. After that we finally fixed the exhaust. First I made a replacement pipe for the section that was smashed. Welded and painted with some high temp paint. Here is the smashed and leaky section we cut out. It probably looks worse in person but might be down to half the original cross section. B cut the hanger off the stock section of pipe and I welded that on the replacement pipe, got the replacement in place and welded it on both ends. Quieter than before. Probably added 100hp too.

So recently I did the maxima alternator upgrade. super simple. just had to redneck machine the spacer under the pulley and attach a few wires. while I was at it I unclusterfked the wiring from the guy I sold it to, the bought it back from I then replaced the redline weber adapter with the transdapt 2107. A few months ago I took it on a road rally. was a blast. And today I discovered the engine I put together which is a combination of an spfi block and the carb engine heads and cams, is high enough compression that it needs premium..

Good advice @scoobydube, but this is an eight year thread update request from 88glonthadl. Long shot to get a reply but sometimes worth asking. Cheers Bennie

I bought a set of the LED headlight bulbs that was deemed directly compatible with my OEM headlight bulbs. Big mistake. My digital dash went haywire and the engine began cutting out and otherwise ran poorly. Then the below dash relay switches were overheating and burning out. Finally, I realized that those LED's were screwing up my car big time, but only after I changed out my distributor, coil, cap and fusible links in a rain storm. Now I am back to the the OEM bulbs, have installed all new relay switches, and keep a handful of spare relay switches to pop in if I have any further problems. 524,000 miles on my 86 gl10 turbo.

The calmasters I actually had gotten from a member on here and I got them for a STEAL of a price because the gentleman quoted me a price including shipping that turned out to be way less than the actual cost to ship them (I think they came from Alaska but I could be wrong) but the person was a man of their word and wouldn't accept any more money or just give up the transaction all together either. They sold them to me for what I'm sure was quite a loss and I definitely appreciated that. I originally got them for my GL/Loyale (Leone) cars, but they wound up getting parked and I didn't want these to rust so I pulled them and put them in the basement. My understanding is they were a limited run of 4x140 wheels made by an aftermarket company out of California. Come to find the BRAT is a California model as well so they kinda seem fitting on there. I don't know. We'll see. Thanks for all the kind words

By VIN, your car uses the 040. 100 is for the 3.0 and 07-09 253 (I work in parts at a Subaru dealership). Destination code U5 is for California, even though it's a 253.

Drove the car around the block this morning, ran smooth and pulled hard. Took a log of that and sent it to Haltech, hopefully they can tell some difference between the two. Recently finished these taller castle nuts, don't think I'd posted a picture yet. We had one strip out on one of B's ball joints a while back and it could have been a lot worse had we been going over a walking pace. About twice the thread engagement if you don't count the castellated part. 4340 steel, need to check hardness vs the stock ones when I get my hardness tester back, might get them heat treated. Since we normally have to use a washer or two under the stock castle nuts with our fabricated control arms these fit instead without washers. Put one on the Impreza when we reassembled it.

I don't HAVE to be happy with the extra cats and O2s, but my neighbor does. It was his choice to buy this boat(a hole in the water into which you pour your money). He didn't have anyone to advise him against it. He bought it from a couple who moved from Calif to Montana. I think they were trying to unload the the boat. They knew it had high mileage problems. I told him that if he didn't change the oil & filter at 3000 miles I would never touch it again. That would be at 250K miles. Oh, yeah. He misstated the mileage on the odometer. He said 140K where it actually was 246K miles. Didn't find that out until battery was connected again. It does run well now with good power and mileage appears to be good, which was his major concern(?!?)

Moving forward with the reupholster of my 81 GL wagon front seats (only) going to try the Karo Madras 5710 brown plaid from Relicate. Here are some pictures of the fabrics side by side. Fyi if your drivers side seat leans to the passenger side as mine did, caused by pushing on the seat back as you wiggle in, you might have a broken frame near the adjustment mechanism it was a wonder the seat gave any support at all. Oh one more thing to remove the GL headrests you need to take the seat cover off then reach thru the front foam in two places and pull a pin, the head rest will then slide out. There are three rods for hog ring placement, the bottom one is the longest then the middle front has extra curly ends and the back top rod is the shortest one. Construction of the seat is as follows from outside in: Woven plaid material/vinyl sides A cotton or some sort of backing where your rear end sits Plastic but only on the shoulders and back of the seat. Foam molded into the seat springs Steel frame Duplicate pictures are with and without flash

and some more project Pictures