Well, since I am making this, I might as well tell you how I even came to owning this wonderful wagon, I like that name matter in fact.
I had a 2008 WRX wagon
I was pretty happy with the way it looks and then it got vandalized... I'll spare you the horror of seeing the damage, but it was filed under insurance and the whole car got repainted from it, besides the front bumper
Here it is the day I picked it up from the body shop.
Here it also is the day I picked it up from the body shop, less than 6 hours later
The transmission blew out the same day. Coincidence? I think not. I forgot I had launch control set and they DEFINITELY had fun with it. I went there and talked to them and they told me because I had 100,000 miles on it, it was due for a new transmission anyway. Well I was out of a transmission now.
On top of that the tow truck driver insisted I didn't need to take my bumper off and that it would be fine. Nope, he cracked my front bumper and when I complained to the tow truck company they only said "Your car is too low, it's not our fault" Well I offered to take it off and how the hell do they tow Corvettes which are low stock?
At this point I'm carless and I've pretty much lost hope in my wrx.
I sold my dirt bike to buy new transmission for the wrx and I still had about $1000 left over. What did I do?
I searched craigslist until I found the perfect car to get me around until I fixed the wrx and then to be a daily to keep the miles off of the wrx too.
1994 Legacy L wagon 5 speed with 204k miles. See the turbo hood? It's definitely not turboed though.
After doing a little bit of research I wasn't sure if this car would have the Subaru rumble with the stock header, but there was only 1 way to figure out. I didn't even have the car in my driveway for 20 minutes before me and my friends cut off the big muffler and replaced it with this ridiculous tip. It was pretty funny at the time and still is.
I told myself that all I was going to do to it is that little exhaust modification and maybe lifting it bit.
Here are both of my Subarus, guess which one has been more reliable...
I took her in my friends back yard and had fun with her
I unfortunately don't have a lot of pictures for most of the modifications until later so all of this will just be walls of text.
After I took it mudding a few times and realized it's not as fun when you're under your car trying to work on something as simple as change your oil. So I decided to lower it, how do you lower your car when you only paid $1000 and you don't want to spend any money on it? You betcha cut the springs! Oh my god. Probably one of the biggest mistakes I made with this car. The very next day I was on craiglist looking for wrx coilover. The fronts line up fine, but the rear require redrilling, if anyone needs help on how to do it, just pm me, its very simple. Line up and drill.
I'd have to say about the time I put the coilovers on the Legacy is about the same time I finally got around to installing the new transmission on the wrx. I was happy the first couple of days I had it back because I didn't have to drive that slow turd anymore that had trouble getting up to highway speeds when in the yield lane.
I realized quickly that I like the legacy more. It wasn't run of the mill like these wrx's. It was different. The wrx just sat in my driveway, perfectly fine and driveable for probably about 2 months while I was happily driving around the legacy.
The only thing I didn't like about the legacy is that it was just too damn slow. I didn't want to turbo it as it was still a "reliable daily" at this point. So I started to looking into high compression frankenstein motors. Ej25 shortblock with the ej22 heads along with delta cams. I was really dedicated on that until I realized that it would still be NA, it would never have the true subaru rumble, it will never have a turbo whistle that I loved.
So what did I do? I decided to turbo it. Getting parts for turboing it was the easiest part. I had a friend who bought a 2003 wrx rolling shell with a blown motor. He took the old motor out and dropped in an sti motor. I went over his house and bought his headers, catless uppipe, td04 turbo, intercooler, and bugeye wheels for around $250. He really did give me a really good deal. The car already came with the turbo hood too. Everything else I needed I either got at Autozone or on eBay.
So I pulled the legacy into my driveway, put it up on jackstands and started the process of turboing it. I ran into a few problems such as the header hitting the waterpump and causing a big coolant leak. But nothing some stacked gaskets and jb weld can't fix!
I have to say the hardest part about the whole thing was the oil lines. It seemed like nothing was the right size and I just ended up buying a tap and die set and going to town on all the lines and fittings.
And as for the intercooler... Well lol. I read up that you should buy a $100 Y pipe then CUT IT. All I could say is F that. I blocked off one of the ports of the intake side of the intercooler with a soda can that was cut up and just ran flexible radiator hose from the turbo to the 1 flowing intake port. As for the people wondering if a bugeye top mount can fit, yes it can. All I had to do is get a good size hammer and beat in the firewall a little bit, tuck all of the hoses and wires under the pitch mount and cut maybe half an inch off of the throttle body. Easy peasy.
Now I have the car running at 6 psi (Wastegate pressure) and no engine management. Pffft. Who needs any of that? I'm sure as hell not spending all that money just to tune an EJ22E. I picked up a spare EJ22E for $100 off craigslist. Much cheaper. I'll think about stand alone after I blow up both of these and I'm ready to drop in an EJ22T.
It made a night and day difference on this car. I can now keep up with traffic.
Here is a picture of how it currently sits. The lip is garden trim from Home Depot $10 for 20 feet. Can't beat that. And the duck tape is to cover up the mismatched fender and also to make fun of my friend who has a supra with the corvette fender stripes.
I also completely gutted the interior. No back seats, no spare tire, no carpet, no interior plastics. I did keep the front door cars and floor mats because you have to keep it some what V.I.P.
My next intentions of the car is to probably get some better seats, maybe some bride knocks offs and a 4 point harness. I'm sorry, but these automatic seat belts don't feel safe to me. I feel as if I get in a bad accident they will rip right out of the B pillar.
Weld the center diff and rear diff. RWD FTW
Paint all of the now exposed interior metals.
STI Steering wheel
Get a real intake that isn't held together with duct tape.
And to just overall make the engine bay look better(Clean, degrease, paint manifold and valve covers)
Oh and to sell the wrx and start putting my money towards the legacy.
As for having a reliable daily, I think I might get another legacy. I'm not sure on what to get. The more luxurious LSI or the Touring wagon....
But this is really all I have for now. I'm really just looking for it to be a fun RWD wagon that I can get slideways in. You just don't see a wagon getting sideways like a 240. I like being different. All you have in my area is stupid spray painted civics.
You can say whatever you want, but I'm 18 years old and single. All I want to do is to have fun. I don't party like most people my age. This is about as much fun as you can have with your pants still on.
