Red92

Is that $$ in face value, or collector value? It's always a shame when people cash in coin collections at the bank... all that time and effort to collect them, just down the drain. :-\

I would advise against it. What you have there would in no way work as an emergency brake. The point of an emergency brake is that it is a fully separate mechanical linkage, so that you can still have partial braking in the event of a failure of any component in the hydraulic brake system. Since this pressure lock uses and requires the full hydraulic system (the master cylinder to create pressure, the brake lines to contain the pressure, and the wheel pistons to hold the brake pads in contact with the drums/rotors), then ANY failure of the primary braking system would make this new system inoperable as well. :-\ In addition to not being an 'emergency brake', it also makes for a poor 'parking brake'. If you read up in the VW communities, there are numerous reports of these leaking and letting the brakes release, so it is somewhat risky to fully trust it to hold your car. When they leak, sometimes they even leak externally (brake fluid coming out around the knob, instead of just returning to the master cylinder), in which case you have made the situation FAR worse - you have lost brake fluid AND put a leaky piece into your primary braking system, at the same time while you don't have a secondary braking system! Personally, I would do whatever it takes to get a fully redundant mechanical emergency brake system put back in. :cool:

I saw that one too. I'm looking at my empty wallet, wondering how I could swing it. What kind of shape was the body in, rust wise?

It is, unless the site goes down from excessive bandwidth costs from people downloading so much.

The posting is gone already... I wonder if he sold it? We'll see if the new owner makes it here.

I thought I remembered seeing that bumper for sale, separate from the car at one point. Did I imagine that, or did it get reunited?

Yes, because I'm completely incapable of following the simple directions, and copy/pasting my VIN into a URL. I already posted the error messages from the sites. They're pretty clear about the error. "Sorry, the VIN passed into this page doesn't appear in this dealers current inventory." If you pass in a genuinely invalid VIN, it tells you. This is different. Google tailors search results to your region. I suspect that my first page of hits was different from your first page. That's the only explanation I have.

It depends on who pays the bills. At the $30/pop they used to cost for an individual, there's a lot of potential there. I'm sure the dealers get a discounted rate of some sort... but if the dealers foot the bill for every VIN check through their site, then the dealers have an incentive to sign up for the inventory system. If Autocheck (who sells these separately) feels they are losing too much by letting people have them for free, then they could just as easily require dealers to do the inventory list. Either way, it's not really worth arguing about, so I'll bow out here. All I'm saying is that I had my VIN rejected by the first dozen or so sites that I tried, so they are starting to tighten up the holes.

Yeah, it's hard to look at. :-\ Can you take a picture of that side with the hood open? It's a bit hard to tell what all is damaged. The fender looks bad, but it looks like it got damaged from being pushed up and out by the wheel - and not necessarily by being forced backwards. The bumper is the same way - twisted for sure, but that might have saved some of the panels underneath.

'Totaled' is almost a meaningless term with these old Subarus. I've seen near-mint old-lady cars at auction that were 'totaled' by insurance companies for a broken tail light and a paint scratch across two panels. A shell that clean could certainly be rebuilt. It might cost "more than it is worth" to an insurance company, but that's because they think these cars are worthless. :-\

That's not how this works though. It isn't a software package, it is access to a service. The service provider can change the service at any point and lock out whoever they want.

Looks great! The whole thing really is a package deal. The lift, the meaty tires, the level stance... it all works great together.

When you have it jacked up, in addition to checking for play, get a bright flashlight and look closely at the spring on that strut too. That tire wear looks a lot like a less-advanced stage of the same wear that my '94 had when I bought it. The spring was rusted, and had broken in two places. It can be easy to miss too - one of them had broken right after the very first coil at the top, and it had simply pushed up and re-seated itself, pinning that broken end up there. You would NEVER see it with the car on the ground, and even at full extension, it would have been easy to miss. But the strut spring was at least an inch and a half shorter because of it. Strut springs rusting & breaking was a common problem, and Subaru actually issued a recall for it.... but only for 1995+ models.

Scratch that. Found one where it worked. Looks like the days are numbered though!

Looks like this is done.

Yep! There's a ton of info in the sale thread I linked to.

This one was for sale on NASIOC a few years back. http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1557725 I would love to have something like this someday.

Depending on the year, you might need to be careful running something like this on a Legacy. I think it was 95-96 that had the issues with airbags going off when the front tow hooks hit the ground going over bumps or potholes. The recall fix was to remove the tow hooks, but if you hang another low piece of sturdy metal off of the front frame, you might bring the problem back. So if it's in that range (double check my years first, I'm going off of memory, and I think the Imprezas were in it too), you might be better off with something like this for lighting: Otherwise, if you're doing the type of driving where you will genuinely need the skid plate portion, you might just want to disable the air bag(s) anyway. :cool:

Well, the radiator swap didn't go quite as smoothly as I would have liked... but as of last night, the radiator is installed, burped, and ready to go! Just in time too, because we're getting snow today!

If it was off the road, I would have dropped the insurance for sure. But it was on the street, and driven from block to block at least once every four days or so to keep from getting tickets. I used it for short trips too when the Legacy was out for repairs.

I'm right there with you on that. If I had a garage, I would have bought that shell that bheinen74 parted out. Between the two, you could have made a nearly rust free, mechanically excellent 4WD Loyale for like $1200 total - in the midwest of all places. :-\

The phone number matches, so yep, that's the one. It *was* clean... for a sub $1000 car. But rotted too! It was a Wisconsin car its whole life, so the underside rusted out.... but the topside paint was pretty good, even still shiny in the clearcoat. It genuinely did drive well... tracked straight on the highway, tight suspension, solid transmission, and just a bit of a tick at startup and then it smoothed out nicely. I basically sold it for above scrap price, but less than what you could make parting it out. He got a deal for sure, I just didn't have the space or time to deal with it, and was losing money by keeping insurance on it. I suppose I can't be too upset seeing it back for sale (even at 2x+ the price) - because that means it is still on the road. I wonder if he fixed the gas tank leak and the brakes... or if he decided it was over his head?

LOL. That's my old Loyale! You could have saved over half of the asking price by buying it from me just a few weeks ago.

At just $800, if you're seriously thinking about it, you probably won't want to wait too much longer... or someone else will snag it out from under you. $800 is a nice low-risk price range too. Even if you do get complete buyer's remorse, you could always re-sell it for what you paid, or not too terribly much less. And if you buy it and things go REALLY wrong, you can sell the wheels and a few other parts, and scrap the rest, and still get half of your money back out. Did you take any pictures of the outside of the car?

I figured out that tehP's photos just had a bit of extra stuff at the end of the url... Here is part of the original post, with the photos inline: