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2003 WRX Sedan Project Part 1 - Printable Version

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2003 WRX Sedan Project Part 1 - TheCarGuy - 04-30-2024

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.