[esm@logic.net ~]$ _

We're about half-way through the repairs on the WRX at this point; the new cold-air intake and carbon fiber hood are installed, and all that's left is a last little bit of massaging of the front frame, replacing the upper radiator hose, and draining and refilling the coolant and oil (20W50 doesn't like 0F weather very much).

My impressions of this hood just keep getting better and better; it was, by far, the cheapest hood we could find to replace the original mangled one, and the fit and finish on it are far better than they have any right to be. Seibon definitely get a thumbs-up from me; it looks like it came on the car from the factory. My only complaint, really, is the grille mesh they used over the intercooler vent inlet; I think we're just going to paint that black, and call it a day (the idea of having something there to catch random junk isn't a bad one, but that mesh is just plain ugly).

Similar kudos to APS for the cold-air intake; fitment (even with a few items slightly relocated because of the collision) was damn near perfect, and it's certainly unobtrusive. We'll probably keep the main front-oriented air snorkel that feeds the passenger-side fenderwell with air, just because I'm a little concerned about airflow back there, but otherwise this was a pretty straightforward affair. We'll see in a day or two if their claim that no engine management modifications are necessary hold up to real-world use, but for now, I'm happy with it.

Well, some of the new goodies for the WRX arrived. First, the new hood; it's a very nice carbon fiber piece produced by Seibon that we picked up from Speed N Stylez after seeing an ad that they'd listed on IWSTI. As an added bonus, it comes with a CF hood scoop as well (in STi size, of course), so the whole thing matches up quite nicely. The only downside: there's what appears to be "gutter guard" in the inlet of the scoop. Blecch.

We also picked up an APS cold-air intake from a local vendor, GRD (the 65mm version, not the 70mm, because I don't feel like trying to tune around the airflow changes just now). That'll clean up the engine bay a bit, and positions us nicely for the APS front-mount I eventually want to talk Erica into. ;-)

Next up: get the wheels back on the Eclipse and get it out of the garage so I can put the wagon back together. I still need to track down a new set of radiator hoses too...my quest for a set of pink ones (Erica's wanting to do the full-on pink thing with this car) failed miserably, so I suspect I'll have to settle for black. :-)

So, it's midnight, and I just finished pulling at least a bit of the front-end of the WRX apart, and we're "lucky". It looks like the only real damage was the hood, grille, and upper radiator hose; there's a few little plastic clips here and there that I'll need to replace, one of the driver's-side headlight mounting tabs snapped, and the radiator definitely bowed in a tiny bit (but not nearly as bad as it had first appeared), but no real show-stoppers.

So, in the interests of saving money on this repair, I've tracked down a heck of a deal on a replacement fiberglass hood by AeroSync, and I'll probably grab one of the plethora of eBay grilles (or just go without, for that rough, Max Max-ian look). There'll need to be a bit of painting too, from the looks of things. I'll probably do an intake while I'm in here screwing with stuff, since I'll have most of the front end apart anyway. What the heck, maybe I'll get a set of those pimp little hood struts too; I'm lazy like that. ;-)

One piece that's concerning me a bit is the upper front frame member; it runs across the top of the front-most portion of the engine bay, and is basically a locator for the headlights, radiator, air intake, hood latch, and some other random stuff. I'm tempted to have a professional straighten that piece out, but since it's not really structural, and the damage isn't too bad, I'll probably take a crack at it myself. Luckily, some of the pieces that attach to it are still where they belong (attached to other locations), so I can use them for reference.

Well, here we go again. The front end of the WRX was pretty badly damaged in an accident over the weekend, so I have another project on my hands. The hood and grille are pretty much toast, but the rest might be able to be salvaged; the biggest concern right now is the radiator and A/C condenser, which appear to be bowed inward a bit. We also need a new upper radiator hose, as the alternator pulley managed to cut through the hose quite efficiently. Beyond that, I'll know more as I start taking the front apart; the upshot appears to be that the headlights and front bumper cover are basically fine (although the cover is scratched). Yay, driving in Chicago. :-P

After finally getting EcuFlash working under VMWare on my Linux laptop, I uploaded a new ECU image with a few fairly simple responsiveness improvements (remember, we haven't added any performance modifications to the car at all yet). I'm pretty impressed so far; the shuddering that we used to experience as soon as you got on the throttle is completely gone, and power delivery is as smooth as any other turbo car I've driven. That's not to say it's dramatically faster than before; it's targetting 16psi of boost now instead of 13, so there's a marginal improvement there, but the biggest improvement is that the car is much more predictable. In day-to-day traffic, I know exactly what it will do when I stomp on the gas to pass someone; previously, I'd have to wait for the bucking to stop before I'd know whether my attempted lane change was going to get there in time.

For those looking to do something like this, you'll need a few things. First, you need to hop over to OpenECU; they've become somewhat of a clearinghouse for information about flashing WRX and Evo ECUs. Next, you'll need an OBD-II cable; Colby Boles (the administrator of OpenECU.org) sells cables and reflashing connectors (you'll need both, although the reflashing connector just jumpers a couple of pins on a connector under the dash, and any old wire will do the job) through his Tactrix website. Finally, you'll want to see what other tuners are doing; on the Open Source ECU Roms website, tuners share custom ROM images, and with tools like Enginuity, you can modify and distribute your own.

After quite a bit of run-around after UPS lost our first shipment, we finally received our Draw-Tite hitch from Hitch-Finder. Installation was a bit of a pain; the charcoal canister needed to be dropped a bit, and getting it up past the tip of the exhaust was interesting. It's a VERY snug fit; in the end, the only way we could get everything to line up properly was to loosely attach one end, and muscle the other end into place and get it bolted in. The end result, though, is a hitch you can barely see; it tucks up into the bodywork very well, and the only obvious bit is the actual attachment point, which doesn't protrude at all. Overall, I'm pretty happy, although my arms are a little sore from the install last night.

It took about three weeks to get the car back, but the shop got it back to us in practically perfect condition; the body work looks fantastic, and I haven't noted any mechanical problems so far after about a week of driving it. The smell from the coolant that leaked everywhere is finally starting to subside, which is really my only remaining complaint (aside from having to fill out forms for three different insurance companies for the accident, and pay a $500 deductable out of pocket for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; bleh). So, no more rental cars. Yay. :-)

We visited Erica's family for New Year's Eve tonight, and about five minutes from their house, as we were waiting for a light, we witnessed a side-impact collision between a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Chevy Lumina that was having some stalling problems in the middle of the intersection. After the Lumina was hit from the side, it drove straight into the front of our WRX, crushing most of the front of the car; the radiator, hood, driver's-side fender, and driver's-side headlight were completely destroyed, and I'm not sure about anything else (it's was towed away by the city, awaiting a clearing up of events with our insurance company). Noone was injured, and ours was the only car that couldn't make it away under it's own power. We've owned this car for just a bit over six months now, and it's possibly already totalled. Happy new year. :-P

There's an additional bushing in the rear of the shifter assembly that we didn't replace when we did the short-throw shifter installation; we just replaced that one today with the KartBoy version, which seems to have given a bit more crispness to the end of the throw, but nothing quite as dramatic as the main bushing and the shifter replacement. One thing I did note, however: the stock bushing, after only 11,000 miles on the car, was already cracking and looking fairly sloppy. Let's hear it for quality rubber OEM engineering. :-P

Installation of this one was a little more difficult; it would have been much easier if I would have done it while I had the shifter out, as it would have given quite a bit more room to move the lower rod around to line up the bushing in place (both bolts are back behind the exhaust and driveshaft, which made for a few cuts and contortions). Otherwise, it was pretty straightforward, nothing someone couldn't do in their driveway with 12mm (OEM) and 1/2" (KartBoy) sockets and an extension or two (and maybe a crow's-foot, which might have made reaching everything a little easier).

We finally broke 1000 miles on the WRX, and to celebrate, we changed the oil and filter. We're using a cheap dino oil for the first change, mainly because it's not going to be in there for long; I expect I'll change the oil midway through vacation (which should be around 3000 miles on the odometer at that point), and then once again when I get back. That final change will be Mobil 1 synthetic, but until then, I'll use conventional oil. The filter we used was a Purolator PureOne PL14460, which is as close to the OEM filter as you can get (the OEM filter is a similar Purolator filter as well); it's got a slightly larger filter element than stock, with the bonus of having the anti-drainback check valve as any decent oil filter should have. By the way, if you're having difficulty locating someone who stocks this particular filter (the local Pep Boys didn't have that one in stock), try Sears...they had one of damn near every PureOne filter on their shelf. (Only I could write an entire blog entry about oil and oil filters. I really need a life.)

We installed the Kartboy short-throw shifter and poly shifter bushings in the WRX this evening. The shifter itself was a snap to install: unscrew the shifter knob and pull it and the boot off, then unbolt the 12mm pivot bolt and nut, "pop" out the shifter pivot ball, use a mallet to hammer the new shifter pivot ball into place, swap the pivot sleeve and bushings over, bolt in the pivot bolt, and reattach the boot and shift knob. Viola, shortened shift throws, and a lower knob location.

The shifter bushing was cake to install too. Raise the car up, unbolt the 12mm nut holding the stock bushing in place, pry/coerce the old bushing out, slide the two new polyurethane bushings into place on each side of the shift rod, slide it back onto the bolt, and tighten the nut back down.

After a quick drive, I'm pretty happy with it; throws are shorter (but because the new shifter relocated the pivot point, it doesn't require additional effort, as a real "short shifter" ought to be) and far more precise because the pillow-soft stock bushing is nowhere to be found. Despite what I expected, I'm not noticing any increased vibration in the shifter; I suspect that if we would have opted for a solid metal bushing, it would be a different story. Overall, a worthwhile modification: this is how the car should have been from the factory, rather than the imprecise shift feel that it offered originally.

We finally broke down and bought a new car: a 2005 Subaru Impreza WRX Wagon, in "Obsidian Black Pearl". For those who don't know, it comes equipped with a 2.0L 4-cylinder "boxer" engine (also called a "flat four", because it has two cylinders on each side of the crankshaft, horizontally opposed and completely flat, like a flat V8 with half the cylinders) with a pair of DOHC 16-valve heads and a TD04 turbo with top-mount intercooler. It's factory rated at 227hp. The plan is to do a few minor upgrades to open the car up a bit, then leave it alone: this is supposed to be our reliable daily driver, not a project car like the Eclipse or Laser. We'll see if we stick to that or not...the short shifter and bushings are already ordered. ;-)