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Murphy's Law 1988 RX


Ibreakstuff
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Starting this journal for my new ride..

 

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I ended up driving like mad to Dayton, NV from San Fran @5am last thursday in order to beat another potential buyer to it. Thank goodness I beat them there or it would have been cut up for a lemons race.. My buddy let me borrow his tow rig (f350 turbo diesel ambulance ftw lol) but I had to make a couple trips between reno and dayton to get it towed... Then the next evening, within 3 hours of getting the car into California it got impounded for being a "suspicious vehicle". I had dropped it off at my in-laws house for the night, in their driveway but next to the road (they were not home at the time).. random sheriff drove by and noticed the lack of plates and ran the vin. It came up blank since it was titled in Nevada, so the jerk had it towed ($450). On top of this I had to make another trip with the tow rig to get it out of impound.. All this plus the random engine issues, I think I'll name the car Murphy.

 

The good:

-Clean chassis with no accidents

-No bad rust in the usual places

-All stock

 

The bad:

-The ea82t has issues, previous owner said headgasket(s) are blown. But I think its actually a blown turbo with leaking coolant lines. (HG's are probably bad too, picked up some permatorques)

-Some rust/pitting in the paint in certain places

 

My goals are really just to tinker with the ea82t (my first mpfi) and possibly rallycross it eventually.

 

List of potential upgrades:

-5 lug (already have everything including the rear handbrake parts)

-gut the interior (previous owner was a smoker)

-Full reseal of the ea82t, every gasket/seal/hose to be replaced (inc tbelts and oil/water pumps)

-Dual core radiator with dual electric fans

-Friend has a vf11 with no shaft play, trading one of my spare 3.7 LSDs for it

-fab/buy uppipe/downpipe

-Racing seat/harness

-TMIC or AWIC (not sure which I should go for yet)

-Oil cooler/Bypass filter/Oil separator

-Looking for head studs and forged pistons

-Spider intake if I can get my hands on one

-Water injection

-O-ring block and/or heads

-Fuel system upgrades (whatever I can do that will still pass smog, so maybe just symmetrical fuel rails and upgraded injectors/fuel pump)

-(did I miss anything?)

 

My old ride:

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/136944-rip-3door-ill-miss-you/

 

Check out how much oil was found in the turbo and between the turbo and in the intake: (lol @ pool of oil sitting inside the turbo)

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I was the "other people" looking at that RX. We also don't have a tow vehicle so I told the owner if you "bailed again" as he put it (sorry) that I would arrange to pick it up with a friend.

Most of my drivers are Subaru Drivers (05 STi, 01 RS, 06 STi, '12 BRZ) so we've been looking for something nice and unique and subaru for LeMons.

I am not sure that LeMons is anymore wear-and-tear than rallycross!

 

Good luck with the build!

Edited by pghiocel
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Right on!

 

Sorry if I sounded like a prick then lol. I didn't mean to imply that lemons is a bad thing, I think its awesome and would love to build a car for it sometime. I have friends who have built cars for and raced lemons. But that said, it only takes one novice driver to take you out. The type of rallyx I was talking about tho is just time trials, single car at a time... autocross on dirt. Not the global rallycross beat your car up variety.

 

My real goal was to save another RX from the junkyard/crusher. I would have been interested in it even if my didn't recently total my 3 door loyale (not my fault, head on crash). I search pretty much every morning for any RX's in a 500 mile radius just looking for them. I literally sprint in a panic to picknpull if I ever see an XT or RX within a few hours drive.

 

Good luck in your adventures, I hope you guys find a lemons car. PM me if you do and I'll come out and watch you race. If you need a crew member to guard the beer, I am your man.

 

 

Update: I have my garage cleaned out, wrx is going into storage tomorrow. I'll post pics of the engine tear down in the next week or so.

 

 

I was the "other people" looking at that RX. We also don't have a tow vehicle so I told the owner if you "bailed again" as he put it (sorry) that I would arrange to pick it up with a friend.

Most of my drivers are Subaru Drivers (05 STi, 01 RS, 06 STi, '12 BRZ) so we've been looking for something nice and unique and subaru for LeMons.

I am not sure that LeMons is anymore wear-and-tear than rallycross!

 

Good luck with the build!

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Thanks much! I'm super excited to start a new project.

 

Those damn hondas. My friend asked me if the other driver was bane:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAMCCvhte1U

 

Oh i just made the connection between this one and your poor gorgeous wrecked one. Glad to see you connecting with another coupe. Just watch out for Hondas.

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