The DIY 2.5i project. Turbo deadline 2016.

[Surge]

Hi everyone.
Been on the forum for a while and thought it might be time to detail the mods that have been done.

I overpaid for my 2.5i when I got it ( first car I bought from a dealer). Could have got a GT for the same price.
So ever since then I've been trying to transform the car while spending as little as possible and doing as much of the work myself that I could do.

Pretty much started not knowing much about the mechanics of a car. So it was a slow start.

Initially I just learned to service it, during one oil change I 'upgraded' to a magnetic oil drain plug haha.


So after that I gained momentum, I put in new plugs ( platinum and a new PCV.


Moving forward I begun one of the more significant upgrades, a Kido tune, followed by an aeromotive 340 fuel pump to support an eflex tune from Matt.

Keeping within my original plan of spending as little as possible I picked up the 340 from the forum for under $100 and the tune from Matt I consider a bargain since it came with free retunes.

Don't have a photo of the 340 but here is a photo of my fuel filter that was changed soon after going with e85.

I would say it was worth changing.

The fuel pump install was not hard, I did it on the street. Only issue was getting the o-rings correct. Initially I had pressure issues and the engine would stall. After reading the forum further I did some more modification to the fuel filter to seat the pump better and corrected my o-rings. Perfect ever since !

Continued in next post with a cosmetic mod.

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Next I went with am HID install, purchased from another forum member. While not within my normal standard of buying second hand or on ebay, I felt I needed a kit that would be a direct fit so I bought one from HKS180.
Still good value and I felt the kit was quality.

Original vs HID:



I managed to cook my brakes one day, was scary approaching a roundabout not knowing if I could stop. So I told myself I needed some GT brakes. Paid $300 for the fronts including rotors and orange stuff pads. Then I scored the rears on ebay for $80 posted. After getting some pads for the rears (qfm hpx) on ebay for $60 I was set. Put them in and painted green. Need to paint the rotors. Also I paid $80 for some dba 4000 for my fronts ( used on ebay for 1 track day). And some hpx pads to suit. These are in my garage for when I have time to change them.



Ignore the white front lip, that has come off for painting


Cont.

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Next up I had to do my timing service.

So bought a gates kit complete with water pump on ebay for $160.

Also spent $50 for an underdrive lightweight pulley.

My only mistake was to buy a generic thermostat from repco which failed later on and maybe cost me my engine (more on this later).


Doing the timing belt wasn't hard. At the same time I did the valve cover gaskets, coolant flush (used nulon blue coolant), diff fluid and ATF. All fluids were high quality but none of which were from subaru.

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The headgasket saga...


Driving after doing the timing belt went well, until I overheated on a highway. I was doing 110 and felt the car struggle for a moment. I kept going and thought nothing of it. Later the car stalled at a light. I started it back up and kept going. Wish I looked at my temp guage but I didn't. Anyway after the second time the engine died I saw coolant go everywhere. I realised I had a leak. The radiator cracked in the plastic top.

I replaced the radiator and still overheated. I checked the repco thermostat and it was in bits. Replaced that and yet still overheated . I think what happened was the thermostat broke, causing the engine to overheat and the radiator to pop. Then due to my ignorance I warped the heads by driving in that condition.

So I decided to sand the heads and replace the head gasket after watching some youtube vids. I did it with the engine in the car. What a pain.



I spent quite some time polishing up the heads.


And I used sti mls gaskets (genuine):


But my repair didn't hold up. I should have taken the heads to a machine shop and had it done correctly. Anyway I drove around for a whole while overheating on the way to work daily.

I knew it was time for a new engine. After shopping around for half a year I bought a 2008 long block with 60,000km for $1000. Not bad.

Issues were that 2 bolts for the power steering pump had broken off and meant the pump would be held in with 1.5 bolts
Also the left pulley had a small chip taken out of it.
Lastly the coolant crossover pipe was also cracked from the impact of whatever crash wrote the car off. Anyway I was able to salvage everything I needed from my old engine. Pulled the engine out by myself in my small garage.

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Cleaned as I prepared the engine to go in. I had to use my old throttle. Look how dirty it was on the inside (cleaned after I took the photo):


New engine sitting aside and an empty engine bay:


Cleaning the block and getting the timing belt on (reused my gates belt since it didn't travel far before the old engine blew):

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Belt on:


Before putting the newer engine in, I cut a hole/notch in the crossmember with a grinder. This is to prepare for a turbo up pipe in the near future.


After I finished the engine swap I treated myself to some $500 19x8.5 wheels and tyres (bargain ):


$70 nuts going on from the friendly guys at ozzy tyres :


And to finish for tonight, my latest mod, bilstien struts:


Got the struts for free from another member,Camo66. Thanks mate.

So next up I have planned to finally get my little TD04 16g into the car. The turbo is purchased from Ozfoz for $50 (from another local).
Got my exhaust for free from Mahtava, thanking you!

Already bought an up pipe and headers ( under $100 total for both). But they are from older subarus and I'm not sure if the fit will be right . So I'm on the lookout for the correct headers and up pipe from a gen 4. Then I expect other turbo install bits to total under $100 (hoses and fittings ).

More mods to come as I find more bargains on forums/ebay/gumtree. If it's cheap enough I'd pretty much put anything on the car


Also to come, my 1992 wrx driveline converted rs wagon and my 1996 gx boring liberty upgrades and mods.

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550cc injectoes in.
New retune (thank you Matt). Feels much better.

Also picked up some twinscroll headers and up pipe.
I believe this will fit my notched xmember better than the normal up pipe as these are flatter and catless.


Looking for a dump pipe and then should be one the home stretch for this build.

Upgraded my front rotors finally to some dba4000. New pads. Just need to get my hands on some braided brake lines. Will post pics soon.

[bigBADbenny]

I've got a GT xmember, 2.7 rack, headers, up, dump, mid and muffs in the pile, all stock...
Let me know if you're coming back to Melb anytime soon

Amazing story, did you glue garnet paper to a slab of glass to face the heads flat?
That's the shade tree mechanics trick, but head machining/reco is probably the smarter option...

[HardwareBoB]

I've got a GT xmember, 2.7 rack, headers, up, dump, mid and muffs in the pile, all stock...
Let me know if you're coming back to Melb anytime soon

Amazing story, did you glue garnet paper to a slab of glass to face the heads flat?
That's the shade tree mechanics trick, but head machining/reco is probably the smarter option...

I'm guessing no, hence the failure
Machining the heads should be in the order of $2-300 - I had my astra head cleaned and machined recently for $130 for the one head.

[Surge]

Amazing story, did you glue garnet paper to a slab of glass to face the heads flat?
That's the shade tree mechanics trick, but head machining/reco is probably the smarter option...

Sadly not, I'm kicking myself that I didn't. If I remember correctly, I was quite tired and was running out of time off work to finish the job so I rushed and didn't do it properly. Lesson learned.

I don't believe I'll be going back to Melbourne until February and by then I hope to have the turbo in. But thanks for the kind offer regardless!

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Latest purchase was a nice catless twin scroll suitible down pipe $80 (gumtree).

And some whiteline adjustible strut tops for under $100 new (rrp was over $500):
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/subaru-adj-s ... true&rt=nc

Plan to get these onto my bilstien struts if they fit (and if I can find some spring compressors).

Lastly I picked up a parallel fuel rail kit for under $100 which I may end up using depending on what my tuners opinion is.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/141870258741 ... EBIDX%3AIT

No actual progress has been made due to the heat and also just starting a new job that has me doing more hours. However it is subaru related so it's awesome!

Eta is now looking like maybe within 2 months for the turbo to get bolted on.

[bigBADbenny]

Iirc spring compressors not required for install but GD tops are incompatible with BL/GR.
Hopefully you can just redrill the holes for the mounting bolts...

[Surge]

Thanks for the heads up. That helps.

I'll probably be drilling in that case. Cheers

[Surge]

Not much progress due to picking up a jzz30 soarer.

However I have just bought a 2014 wrx y-pipe and quads for $50 on ebay.

Found out today that the centre/y-pipe fits the liberty perfectly.

Will upload pics later.

Only issue is the quads hang too low because of the metal hangers. Need to have it adjusted but leaving them on for now because it sounds amazing.