Ownership Verified: The Legacy Legacy

And the whole spine.
 
Actually, once I developed a method for getting in and out of the car it wasn't half bad (I was flying solo so missing tools were a PITA). I did remove the driver's seat.

Quick and easy job to disconnect the pedal arm from the master cylinder arm. Just a pin held in place with an R-clip.

The pedal assembly is attached with 6 fasteners. 4 studs on the firewall and 2 bolts straight up. The bolts were straightforward when attacked with a battery impact. One of the nuts was also straightforward. Another yielded once an extension was added.

The shift lock control box was in the way of the other two - one quick zap with the impact and it was loose.

The other two... The steering shaft tube was in the way. The lower one yielded to a very expletive-filled attack with an open end wrench (it chowdered a little in the process, but came loose).

The upper one.... Well. The wrench could reach it, but the open end couldn't deliver enough torque because of the angles of the firewall padding. It slipped and chowdered the nut. Box end couldn't reach.

Ended up unbolting the column and letting it droop as far as it would go, taking 2ft of socket extensions to come out the gap between the top of the steering column and the bottom of the gauge cluster, hammered the socket onto the nut and ran it off with the impact. This got the pedals loose. But it didn't clear them from under the dash. The bracketry simply wouldn't fit between a computer box and the steering shaft.

I pulled what I assumed was the ECU (nice and easy plugs and 2 nuts with easy power tool access) and that made plenty of room.

Turns out, what I thought was the ECU is actually the TCU. So both electronic boxes I had to remove don't need to go back. Sweeeeeeet. (I think. I need to check on the wiring diagram for the shift lock box, since it also has a buzzer on it. I wouldn't want to lose my door ajar buzzer- wait, no, what am I thinking)


Of course, I now have to find the ECU, because there's a transmission selection wire I have to cut (connected to ground = automatic, floating = manual), and I can't just cut it at the ground block because according to the diagram the fucking O2 sensor tees into the same ground wire.
 
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The exhaust flange I thought looked a little flimsy last year broke this year. Literally twisted off while I tried to unbolt it.It's just the midpipe, which is a $50 part, but the flange at the front of it literally has no fasteners to undo.

So. Uh. That's a problem.

Might try to halfass it back together enough to drive somewhere and just weld a conventional flex joint and a flange in space currently occupied by the stupid ball and socket flex joint (which is the flange that broke).



Also had to drill out the drain and fill plugs on my new diff.....
 
Ordered parts. New brake pads (the parts store pads are toast with only 12k miles on them - all highway and 2 6/10ths racetrack parade laps.

Still cribbing a lot off the STI for the rear suspension. In particular, I'm having to resort to the WRX aftermarket to get sway bar bushings for a 98 Legacy.

I've also discovered that the first gen cars have a slightly different rear subframe, so I'm definitely going to clean up my second gen parts car subframe and swap it in the future. Same geometry and bolt locations. Main difference is some added strength and reduced diff mounting complexity - plus the diff mount bushings are NLA on the first gen whereas I can dip into the infinite supply of tuner parts with a second gen subframe.


The exhaust is going to be tricky.
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The triangular flange behind the first cat is the one that cannot be unfastened without a torch.
The next flange back (the flex ball and socket flange) is the one that broke. As this is a ball and socket flange, the next one back is also shite.
The rest of the system is continuous all the way to the tip - that rear joint was eliminated when the exhaust broke last year and I had a shop bang out an axle-back that welded straight to the existing second-cat pipe.

IF there's enough metal left in the pipes (and that's a big IF), I'm just going to have a racing buddy whack a flex joint and pair of static flanges in place. If not, I'm in trouble that starts at "forward cat back" and extends as far as "entire system from header flange back"
 
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IT LIVES.

Starts, drives, stops, shuts down, 5 forward speeds, 1 reverse. It's almost not dangerous.

Got it "aligned". They couldn't quite get the rear toe sorted even with the adjustment turned all the way. Arm is either too short or bent (I didn't look at the alignment sheet in detail because there ain't shit to be done about it) or maybe the reused poly bushings in the rear are squished in some inopportune way (they were giving us trouble seating properly). Nothing we can do about it, so I have about .15 degree too much toe on one side.

Still need to get the exhaust leak fixed. Doing that Saturday.

Still need to finish the wiring. Currently, you can start it in gear. The MT has a sender that's connected when it's IN gear (i.e. not safe to start) which is inverted from the way the electronics want it, so I have to flip the signal with a relay. The clutch pedal should also be in circuit, but I don't have the connector for that yet.

The clutch feel is AWFUL. No pedal until WAAAAAAAAAAY at the bottom of travel, whereupon it disengages. Combined with "can start in gear" this is a recipe for !!!FUN!!! Going to try to adjust that.

I may or may not sort a shift boot before leaving for the rally.

I'll take a photo tour this weekend.
 
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awesomesauce!
 
Groovy!
 
Anybody remember this?
.... Somehow, this thread is devoid of the latest chapters in it's life.....

We left off in January 2018, having triumphantly finished the transmission job.
The exhaust was fixed by a man with a sawzall and a welder
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The rally went swimmingly
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I got home from the rally and got back on with life. Hot on the heels of the rally, I got in the BRZ, drove to the airport and flew to California for a few weeks. On my way back from the airport driving the BRZ, I dozed off and had the collision that left @CraigB with an incorrectly-colored fender and the door off a Scion.
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This left me with the only practical commuter car being the Legacy. Which, hey, it's battle proven! Just finished a rally!

What I neglected to mention was that the Rally involved quite a lot of this:
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I drove the thing for the month of March and sorta forgot about the voracious need for oil until, on April 9th (why yes I procrastinated an entire month on fixing literally anything!), Uncle Rodney came for a visit:

View: https://youtu.be/W2URM602yk8
Made it maybe a mile past that video and it gave up the ghost.

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Why am I using a uhaul trailer?
I assume my trailer was also broken.



Spent the next couple months getting caught up on fixing everything else, and then I turned to the easy task of fixing the Legacy. After all, I had another engine already, from the transmission parts car!
... Which had *VERY* different heads on it, and was in terrible shape anyway, so I scrapped that idea and spent some months soul searching.

I decided the future:
Subaru FA24 engine. The big 2.4L turbo out of the Ascent and the new legacy/outback XT's. Except it was 2018, the engine just launched that year, and was unobtanium.

So, I decided to baby-step it:
1) Early 2019 - Get a functional FA/FB powerplant *of some sort* in the car and running with the 5MT transmission
2) 2019-2020 Debug the whole mess
3) Late 2020 Switch to a standalone ECU so I don't need to buy an entire Ascent, just the engine and supporting parts
4) 2021 Surely Ascents will have been crashed in sufficient numbers by this point!

Here's how that went.
Dec 2019: Procured donor car for an FB20. 2015 Impreza.
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I made the rash decision that one crashed in the front would be fiiiine. None with rear damage only were on the market.
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Jan 6, 2019 - "Well, lets get this thing started to make sure nothings broken"
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Oh. Lots of things here are broken.
Broadly:
- *ALL FOUR* variable cam actuators have their wiring smashed off
- The O2 sensor is busted
- The water pump pulley is bent
-And most worryingly... The harmonic balancer does not turn with the crankshaft. The crank bolt *unthreaded* and boogered up the threads in the crank nose (which, by the way, are some weird bolt size with an oddball pitch), the woodruff key sheared, AND the balancer itself shattered spraying metal bits into the timing chain compartment.

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So I began the process of procuring the parts to fix it.
Only two cam control dongers were available anywhere other than the dealer. So I put the project on hold pending rockauto getting restock.

I pulled the engine down to this point:
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Stripped the timing and everything. (the photo is from a couple hours ago...)

... And then life happened.

This afternoon, I gathered up all the parts and tools I'd purchased for it.... Including *SIX* cam control solenoids (two OEM, four aftermarket). No idea how that happened.

Just a few minutes ago, I pulled the timing sprocket off the crankshaft to remove the busted woodruff key and file the burrs off.

The sprocket, of course, cracked, both a tooth off, and all the way through the body of the whole thing (and on further inspection I should not have been planning to reuse it). So the project is, again, on hold pending parts. $37.11 at the dealer later this week.
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In all actuality, the whole crank should be considered sus at this point, but yolo.
 
Further, one might question the sanity of working towards doubling (likely more than that, actually) the power of a 32 year old station wagon with rust holes the size of my face.

I am on the hunt for a non-rusted chassis to eventually put all this crap in. This one is essentially just mockup and testing.
 
... My project cars take so long I forget what I was planning on doing and decide on the plan anew (the EZ36 was replaced by the FA24)
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Also, this faffing around with installing the wrong engine as an intermediate step gives friggin' standalone ECU manufacturers time to figure out that DIRECT INJECTION IS NOT GOING AWAY. Seriously. The only options are Syvecs (because yeah sure I need to buy the same ECUs as Lamborghini) and Link.
 
Haven't forgotten this, but that busted sprocket? Last thing to come off, has to be the first thing to go back on.
I in fact ordered a replacement within minutes.

However...
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The dealer finally got the part in!
I saw the email about it literally after I'd gotten back from the dealer!
 
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