5 years ago I did various upgrades to my 99 GT forester. All the regular stuff, TD04, TBE, TMIC, brakes, etc etc.
5 years and 2 kids later, It's sitting in the yard with an entirely forked gearbox, 20,000km overdue for its 300,000km timing belt change.
See how I mowed around it? Awww yeah.
It gets way better under the bonnet. It's been sitting since xmas day 2014 when the gearbox went kapoop. Looks like rats moved into the engine over winter.
I cleared the rats nest that was on top of the spark plug leads. Because I care.
AAAAAaaanyway.
My brilliant wife suggested that as useful as our 99 diesel hilux is (much winch. many lift. wow lights), it's pretty bloody miserable to drive and "why can't you just fix the forester?".
With the age of the engine and the catastrophic death of the gearbox, I suggested it would only be worthwhile if we got a half cut. (MWUUUhahahahaaaa). I jumped on eBay and found this within 10 minutes of our initial conversation:
A repairable write-off, with a severely under-utilised EJ207 long block and VF30. Everything else in the driveline is stock WRX. Injectors, TMIC, exhaust, the lot. Hence the 160kw atw figure.
A week later it was mine.
Now we're here:
Existing SF5 upgrades that I'll keep
- 3" TBE, 2.5" diff back
- Walbro 255L fuel pump
- IC waterspray w/ in-guard reservoir
- 6.5mm phenolic manifold spacers
- STi Group N engine mounts & gearbox mount
- MY02 WRX STi struts and springs w/ 1/2" rear strut spacers
- Whiteline 22mm adjustable rear sway bar
- WRX heavy duty RSB mounts
- Whiteline HD RSB endlinks
- Whiteline rear strut bar
- Whiteline FSB bushes
- Gizzmo MS-IBC boost controller + 3 port solenoid... maybe.
- 52mm boost, oil pressure, water temperature gauges
- partial wiring harness
Donor WRX parts I plan to use
- v7 EJ207
- Work Emotion 17" rims (need heavy restoration)
- Front and rear cross members
- Front and rear axles, rear diff (4.44)
- Pedal box w/ STi pedals
- Brakes: 4pot fronts, 2pot rears, discs etc.
- Most steering components
- Cruise control
- Dash, centre console, momo steering wheel (+3hp)
- carpet
- front bucket seats
- ECU + majority of the wiring harness
Part I've bought (or am about to) for the build
- Blouch TD05-18GT (8cm)
- JDM v6 STi 5speed (will keep the WRX box as a spare - might be ok, might be damaged from the rear shunt)
- STi TMIC
- GC8 STi alloy control arms
- SS catless uppipe
- 850cc injectors (undecided between DW and ID)
- cold air intake + silicone turbo inlet
- wideband AFR + EGT probe to DIY TFT display
- Whiteline HD front sway bar endlinks
- Cusco front strut bar (thanks Matt
)
- Some aftermarket pitch stopper (kartboy maybe?)
- TGV delete
- lots of poly bushes
. She didn't notice the volume or power difference when I fitted a td04, 3"tbe and wrx TMIC in one go years back. Nor the ride difference when I replaced the sloppy failed self levelling struts with 02 sti, didn't notice the nvh when I fitted group n engine and gbox mounts, etc etc.
