• 3D Printed Hood Scoop for...
  Forum: 3D Printing Projects
  Last Post: TheCarGuy
  06-18-2024, 01:25 PM
  » Replies: 0
  » Views: 104
• 2003 WRX Sedan Project Pa...
  Forum: 2003 WRX Sedan Project
  Last Post: TheCarGuy
  05-06-2024, 08:22 AM
  » Replies: 0
  » Views: 209
• 2003 WRX Sedan Project Pa...
  Forum: 2003 WRX Sedan Project
  Last Post: TheCarGuy
  05-05-2024, 07:57 PM
  » Replies: 0
  » Views: 202
• 2003 WRX Sedan Project Pa...
  Forum: 2003 WRX Sedan Project
  Last Post: TheCarGuy
  05-03-2024, 09:52 PM
  » Replies: 0
  » Views: 190
• 2003 WRX Sedan Project Pa...
  Forum: 2003 WRX Sedan Project
  Last Post: TheCarGuy
  04-30-2024, 09:49 PM
  » Replies: 0
  » Views: 173
• 2002 Subaru WRX Wagon Pro...
  Forum: 2002 WRX Wagon Project
  Last Post: TheCarGuy
  04-30-2024, 01:39 PM
  » Replies: 0
  » Views: 199
• 1950 Chrysler Windsor Pro...
  Forum: 1950 Chrysler Windsor Project
  Last Post: TheCarGuy
  04-29-2024, 03:45 PM
  » Replies: 0
  » Views: 184
• How Custom Auto Journey W...
  Forum: How Custom Auto Journey Forum Works
  Last Post: TheAdmin
  04-26-2024, 10:18 PM
  » Replies: 0
  » Views: 203
• 1950 Chrysler Windsor Pro...
  Forum: 1950 Chrysler Windsor Project
  Last Post: TheCarGuy
  04-26-2024, 09:37 PM
  » Replies: 0
  » Views: 193

• Forum posts:9
• Forum threads:9
• Members:13
• Latest member:Boba Fett

I have a 2002 Subaru WRX wagon that no longer have a top mount intercooler.  I decided to go FMIC (front mount intercooler).  the stock hood scoop then became useless since it was no longer bringing in air to the TMIC. 

There was once a company that made reverse hood scoops that brought in cold air to cool the hot side of the turbo and on the other side of the scoop hot air was released. ARC no longer exists and their parts are all considered rare and now super expensive. 

I decided that since i was heavily into 3D printing, that I would take a stab at designing my own part and also printing it.   I reached out to a friend in the UK to help me with designing the scoop. 

What i did was take the OEM scoop. trace the bottom of the scoop on a piece of carboard.   I was able scan the cut out the the design process started.   I also took some measurements to make sure it was exact. 
       
Once we were satisfied by the design.  I printed out a small piece to see how it would fit.  Well it fit exactly.
           

THe scoop was too big for my two main printers i use.   I have a CR10-S5 with a 500mm bed size and a Wahnao D9 MK2 with a bed size of 300mm.  I had to split the part into 3 parts.   Each part took about 15 hours to print. 
                       
Once i printed the 3 parts, I used platic JBweld to attach the 3 pieces together. I then added some fiberglass bondo to strengthen even more. 
                               
One thing I really wanted to do, was make sure the the part was carbon fiber like the original ARC reverse scoop. I did not want to try this myself.  I ended up finding a guy on facebook who was based out of Cali.  I sent him my 3D part for him to use as mold.  This was not also infused carbon like most companies do now a days. This company still does the old fashion way and hand lays the cabon on.  The scoops were now made of a couple layers of kevlar with a couple of layers of carbon.  This also made the part super strong.   I was super pleased with the finished product.  The company sent me three scoops.  1 was just normal fiberglass/kevlar. and two carbon fiber pieces. 
                               

Part 4: Steering Wheel Restoration


Part four will be pretty short series.   I wanted to make sure I got the restoration of the steering somewhere in these series posts.

The WRB steering wheel was pretty ratty.  Your hands would have black residue on them after driving the car.   One of my friends who parts out Subaru's gave me an STI steering wheel. He also gave me a kit to sew on a new suede cover.  
   

One of my friends wife does a lot of sewing and knitting and what not.  So I asked her if she could sew the cover for me.   She did not disappoint, it came out flawless.  Looks really good. and will match really well with the STI seats.

   
   
   

Part 3: The restoration of parts

In these 3rd part of these series, I will go over all the parts I started to restore.  These are the parts that came off the WRB Surbaru and will go on the Sedona Subaru. 

Ill start with the rear and front subframe of the car.  These are the two subframes that are the main ones for the car.   When I took these frames off the car.  They were full of rusting metal chips, and years of grease, dirt. The very first thing I did was spray them with degreaser.  I did this a couple of times.  I would stray, wait a couple of minutes or so and then wipe off.   Once i got most of the grease off, I pressure wasehd them.   Once the parts were full of grease and dirt, I set them on my wood stove that heats my shop in the winter time.  Figured this was the best and fastest way for these to dry off.   
   

Then I hung them up to paint them.  Usually I would powder coat these types of parts.  But i was not really wanting to take all the bushings out and replace them.  Last time I did that, it was a very long process to take the bushings out.   Instead i chose to paint them.  Nothing special, I bought a bunch of cans of Rust-Oleum Rust Reformer.  This stuff is pretty good and not bad for the price.   I did a couple of coats of this paint on both the subframes. Won't lie, but they came out great.  Was super happy with the outcome. 
   
   
   

Next thing I started was the knuckles.  These things were super rusty.  Crazy thing was that all the bearings were in good condiiton. In the end, they came out pretty good.  At least a lot better than before. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

The next thing I did was the driveshaft.   This really was not that bad,  had surface rust, but nothing like that parts I had done so far.   I quickly sanded the drive shaft and then sprayed it. 
   


There are some other parts, I need to do, but as of this moment, I have not gotten to them yet.

Part 2: WRB Tear Down

Part 2 starts with the tear down of the WRB.  Everything will come out and be put in the Sedona WRX.  I first started with the rear suspension.  Rather than taking off parts one by one, I opted to take out the whole rear suspension as a whole piece.   So that included the knuckles, control arm, both sub frames, the main and the diff. It was rather easy since I had done it 6 months prior.  When I put it all back after giving up on replacing the gas tank, I loosely put all the bolts on. The T-frame (sub frame that holds the diff in) has one spinning bolt, that I could not take out.   Remember, this bolt goes into the chassis frame,  Its a threaded hold, that thread broke off inside and the bolt just spun. Here is the picture of the rear off.   Only thing that is not connected is the coil overs.

   

One thing I forgot to explain earlier is that all of the parts underneath the car were going to get a quick restore.   That means knock all the rust off, and paint with some rust inhibitor paint.

Once I got the rear out, I started breaking it down ever further so I could sand it all down, and then paint each part.   I started with taking the diff out.  Diff was rusty on the outside and chunks of metal were coming off.   I wish I had a picture of what it looked before I painted it, but i forgot to take a picture.   Here is the diff after it was sanded and then painted.

   


I think a couple of weeks went by before I could work on the car again.  Pretty sure it was one of those weeks I had to travel to California for work.   The week I came back, my parents came to visit. Perfect time for my dad since I was going to pull the motor that weekend.  That Saturday morning, we disconnected the last couple of things before we could pull the motor. As we tried to pull the motor, the bloody thing would not come out.  I re checked everything and made sure it was all disconnected.   But now, it still would not come out.  After messing with it for an hour, I realized that the external waste gate attached was hitting something.  I realized that I needed to take the waste gate off.  As soon as it was off, the motor came off with ease.

   


Next came the sub frames, trailing arms, lower and upper control arms. Same as the diff, also rusted to hell. Then I moved to the front of the car.   The drive shaft was already off halfway since I had to disconnect from the diff. I took that drive shaft off that was still connected to the transmission.  Disconnected the shifter linkage from the car.  Rather than just disconnecting from the transmission, I unbolted from the transmission tunnel .

   

After that was done, I was able to drop the transmission.   Couple bolts and it came right down.

   

I disconnected the coil overs from the knuckles and the strut towers.  The sub frame the motor mounts sits on came out.  Then the power steering frame came out also.  At this point, everything underneath the car was out. One thing I noticed when I took the axles off before dropping the transmission, one of the boots on the passenger side was ripped. 
   
   

Part 3 of these series will be the restoration of the parts that came out underneath the car.

Part 1: The Beginning

A couple of year ago, my boss was getting rid of a 2003 WRX sedan.  It was a WRB (World Rally Blue) color, just like my wagon.   He told me that I could have it if i wanted it.  The first person I thought of was my dad, so i called him up and asked if he wanted it.  It needed a couple of things fixed on it.  The valve covers were leaking oil, and some other minor issues that I cant remember at this time.
A week or so later, after telling my dad about the car, I took a work trip up to Pittsburgh PA.  This is where my boss is located and also one of our other sites for the company I work for.  I worked out of that office for the week.  At the end of the week, I rented a trailer and went to my bosses house to pick up the car.   We drove it on the trailer and I made my way home.


Once I got my home, one of the first things I did was take it to a shop called Yates Automotive in Gaithersburg, MD.  Andrew Yates is a genius when it comes to working on Subaru's.  He is especially very good at rebuilding and building Subaru transmissions. I knew the car would be in good hands with him.  At this time, I just did not have time to fix the car myself and this is why I had Andrew Yates do it for me.   We even had him rebuild the transmission to a PPG straight cut gearing.

After the car was done, I trailer-ed it to my dads hour in NC.  He kept it for a bit and even added some more parts on it like coils overs, external waste gate,  bigger TMIC, and some other stuff.

Going forward a year, my dad wanted me to have the car back.  So once again I drove to NC and picked up the car. 

Once I got home, I drove it a couple time a week to and from work.  One day I had the car running and I got out.  I notices it dripping in front of the drivers side rear tire.  I smelled it and it was gas.  The car was leaking some gas from the return fuel line going back into the gas tank.

I stopped driving the car. I knew a buddy that parted out Subaru's, and he ended giving me a 2006 STI shell that still had the gas tank on it.  I took the tank out and prepared the WRX to do the swap. 

The way I attempted the swap was to take out the whole rear suspension to get to the has tank. As I was doing that, I noticed so much rust under the car.  We both knew that the car was rusty underneath. It did have a life in PA, and the winters are just terrible for cars. I was able to drop the main sub frame. As I started the diff sub frame, a couple of the bolts broke on the inside of the frame and the sub frame bolt just spun.  The only way to get it out was to go inside the car, and cut part of the floor to get it out.  At this point I decided that it was not worth it and put the car back together and parked it outside.

A couple months later, I found a 2003 WRX Sedan shell in Ohio.  It was a clean/rusted free shell.  Cant find those like that on the east coast.  Most of these year models are rusted out by now. This shell was a Sedona red color.  You really don't see that color to often.

I told my dad about it, and said that I could transfer everything from the WRB car to the Sedona car.  Would be a simple swap for the most part. He agreed and drove to Ohio to go pick up the car.

He got to my house a couple days later.  Left his trailer and went home.  I then started the tear down of the WRB.

The WRB tear down will be part two of these series.

                                 

Part 1: The Backstory
This project is not like the WRX project I have going on the other thread.  This car I have had for about 6 years now.   It all started when were stationed in Naples Italy.   My wife was a Navy Nurse, and we were stationed there for 3 years.   About 2 months from moving back to the states.  I started to look for a car to purchase.   I really wanted a Subaru WRX or STI. This was one of my dream cars since I was a kid.  I blame my father, who had me fall in love with these cars.
Back in 2004, The Subaru WRX STI came to the states.  This was the first year that the STI was released to the states.  I remember my dad calling the dealership (they were closing, and were about an hour away), and said he would be by to get the car.  The dealership stayed open for him. I went with him and saw the car for the very first time.  My god that car was a beauty.  

 My father ended up getting the Aspen White, with the silver BBS rims.  Originally it came with the gold BBS rims, but he wanted them switched out for the silver.
As we were driving back home in the new car, I remember the car being so fast and so loud.  (Remember 300hp back then was considered a lot for a car, especially for a 4-cylinder car. My dad was driving on the highway and shifting through the lanes, and excitedly screamed out that he could not believe we had just reached 100mph.  It didn't even feel like it.

It did not take long for my father to start autocross with the car.   He did that for maybe a year before he sold the car.   Maybe a year or two later, he got a 2002 WRX wagon, I loved this car. He had it sent down to Boxer4Racing and put a bunch of stuff on it.  Car was awesome.  That was my favorite car.   

Anyway, I found a 2002 WRX wagon for sale in Richmond.  Which was not far from where we were going to live. I contacted the guy and we talked for a bit.  We ended up agreeing on a price and he told me that he would hold the car for me until I moved back to the states.

The car had been heavily modified by the previous owner. I think he had close to 30k in parts and labor. The car had a new hybrid set up boxer motor (2.5 block with 2.0 heads), PPG gear box 1-5, methanol injection, and a bunch of other stuff. It was fast and sounded so good.   The car 400BHP and around 350WHP.

Moving forward in time a little,  I used to daily the car, but since then, I stopped using the car as a daily driver.

On the next post, I will start getting into the project of this car.

 
This is my dad in his 2004 STI.  This was our second or 3rd time at an autocross event.  As you
can see, he was going a little to fast and spun out.
   

This was the first photo I took of the WRX wagon right after I bought it.
           




New lights I thought were cool but ended up being crap.  Halos went out within a 6 month time frame.


   


   

Part 2: The Go Through

It finally came down to the weekend to start looking through the Windsor and to see what came with it.  When I originally went to look and pick up the car, it was full of parts and what not.   Didn't really go through it since I could see rat droppings in the car. Best to wait until I had better gear.  

Earlier that Sunday morning, I went to Home Depot and picked up some hazmat suits. As I started going through the car, I started to find inside and outside trim pieces that were not on the car. I started to put those aside and continue to go through the car.   In the backseat, were door cards.  They could of seen better days. The side mirrors were also inside the car. I moved all of those out and put on tractor's trailer which would eventually be brought up to the house garage attic for safe storage (This is where I keep all of my cars parts that i do not need at the moment.).

In the trunk was a spare tire in its holding area. I also found the started for the car.  Looked beat up and rusted.   Once interesting thing I did find was it had some sort of large spot light mounted to the trunk wheel well.   I have dome some research and cant say that it came factory like this or someone in the past installed it.   Maybe someone will know.

Once I got everything out of the car, I started to vacuum everything inside. I think I may have probably vacuumed a couple pounds of stuff that has collected over the years.

I will tell you this, the inside of the car is night and day once I cleared out the parts and vacuumed it up.



Things that I noticed that will need to be repaired:

1. Dash on the drivers side is rusted.
   
2. Floor boards under the carpet are crunchy when pressure is applied.  You can also see where the floor boards meet the rocker panels are rotted through.
   
3. The truck floor is not that bad, some areas will need to be cut and patches applied.
   
4. The bottom of the hood where the trip piece sits has a rust hole.
   
5. Overall, the trunk lid is in pretty good shape, but it just does not latch when closed.
   
6. Some of the steering column switches are either broken or missing.
   
7. Most of the windows need to be replaced.   The driver and passenger door windows are missing.   The rear passenger and drivers side windows are their but have cracks in them. 
   
8. The windshield glass does not look bad, but the coating is coming off. Probably the best glass that may stay is the rear glass.
   
9. The head lights are missing, and the tail lights mostly have cracks on them.
   

                                       

1. Custom Auto Journey is not like most forums.   This forum is based of each users vehicle build.  All builds are welcome. It could be a boat, car, truck, train, whatever.  Once a user is registered, they can request that a forum board be made for their specific project.  Example: 1971 Chevy Camaro Z28.  
   
2. Only that user requesting a board will be able to make threads.  
   
3. Any other user will only be able to view that thread or reply.  This Forum board is for you so you can show the everyone your project process.  
   
4. Users can request more than one board if they have multiple projects. Their is no limit to the number of boards to have. 
   
5. Users can request others users to make threads within their board in certain situations. Example: If you and another person are working on a project together and you both want to post the progress. 
   
6. Check out How To Request A Board if you are ready to tell everyone about your project. 
   

Part 1: The Pick Up

About a year ago, I found a 1950 Chrysler Windsor for sale on Facebook market place.   I think the original price was $900.  The ad said it had a clean title and, motor turned over.  It had not been run in years.   I messaged the seller and it was still available.  That was about it with the first conversation.  Over the next few months, the price kept getting lower, it went to $800 to $750 and then stayed at $600. Every now and then I would check Facebook and see that it was still for sale.  I told my self that if it was still for sale in 6 months, I would go ahead and buy the car.   Well last Sunday I picked it up.  I messaged the seller a week prior to pickup and it was for sure available. 

Last Sunday, My friend Chris (This guy helps me with all my car projects and I help him with his) and my 3 sons, got in the truck and drove to Mt. Jackson VA.  It was about an hour and half drive for us.   We got there and there she was sitting, just waiting to be brought home and restored.   Chris and I looked at it for a few minutes and said "Yes, this is the perfect project". We back up the tuck closer to the car and started to get the trailer ready to winch the car onto.  Come to find out, the control box for the winch was missing.  I borrowed the trailer from a friend since his trailer has a winch on it.  I also called him and he told me the winch was broken.   Good thing I came prepared. In the bed of the truck, I brought a 30 gallon compressor, air tools, 15000 watt generator, other tools, straps, come along, fix a flat, and other stuff I thought I may need.  Good thing I brought the come along.  We strapped one end of the come along to the trailer and the other around the front subframe of the car.   It did not budge once we started to pull it.  Of course 3 of the tires were flat.  One tire has a gaping hole in it.  We started to the generator and compressor.  Filled 3 of the tires with air and started to pull with the come along again.  It was much easier. I might also say that our come along was only rated for 1 ton and the car weighs almost 4 thousand pounds. 

Pulling the car onto the trailer was slow but it was happening.   Every 5 minutes or so we would stop, chalk it and put more air in the tires.  We did this for about an hour and a half. It was a real pain getting the car on the trailer and making sure not to hit either side of the trailer.  It was also hard to steer the wheels.  

After finally getting the car on the trailer, we strapped it down and started our way back home.  The drive back was a lot slower.  My F150 was at capacity for towing. 

When we got home, we started the process of getting the car off the trailer.  We un hitched the truck from the trailer and hitched my John Deere track to the trailer.  Then we made our way back to the other side of the yard where my shop is located. I think getting the car off was a lot harder than putting it on the trailer.   We did not just want to roll it off and cause something to break. Lord knows we don't need to fix another thing on the car.  So what we did was hook chains up to rear of the car and used the tractor to slowly pull the car off the trailer.   Once it started getting close to the ramps, we shorted the chain and also use the bucket on the tractor as a wedge to slowly bring it all the way off.

Below are some Pics of our Day and a couple of days later.   This weekend, Chris and I will go through the car to see what we are missing.   We have yet to do that. So we are both very excited to see what is in store for us. That will be part two of this series project.   I also give a little more information on the car.