club.liberty.asn.au

Thought I'd make a proper post detailing my current build, more for myself so I can reference my own post but also to show what I've been up to.

This all started with my old Business Study teacher's 2008 Manual 2.5i sedan, then after a year of ownership I bought a 2004 manual GT sedan. 6 months later I bought a blown head-gasket 2005 2.0 manual wagon and planned to pull the turbo engine out of my GT sedan but before I started I got the worst message a 19 year old can get... "Hey mate I've got a 2008 GTB wagon for sale if you're interested" Shit. Sold my GT sold my preface wagon, and bought the GTB wagon. It was auto, 380,000KM and a bit rough around the edges but it was exactly what I was after, yeah it wasn't manual but I was planning on swapping it over, how hard could it be? I got a blue slip for it and paid a shop to fit brembos to it. Put a Process West Intercooler, GFB intercepter pro blow off valve, STI strut brace, Sony CarPlay. I decided I wanted to go to my mates place to pick up an engine crane ready for my manual swap and I copped a defect. Defect had a bunch of incorrect information on it and after calling around and speaking to different mechanics they were unwilling to work on it to clear the defect. I got a letter in the mail demanding I surrender my number plates to the RTA, and I had my registration cancelled. Okay cool i'll get a Blue slip again right? no, there is only one shop within an hour of my house and after calling and asking they said they don't wish to touch my liberty after the defect for fear of loosing their blue slip license.

I then got another message about a 2007 manual GTB for sale, jumped timing and toast motor but cheap. Which is where I am today, plan is to pull my motor do the head gaskets, timing belt, and a full reseal kit so my now 408,900KM motor will live on until I have the time to build a new motor with hopefully w25 dual AVCS heads while still keeping it street legal and a fun weekend car. So below is the process of my re-shelling.

Pulled the motor out of the manual, Stripped it down to the short block to see just how bad it was...

yeah quite bad, thats the end of that


Cluster from the auto


Started stripping my nicer auto interior out, TbSTI interior pieces, audio setup, and labelled it all ready to go into my manual shell.


so yeah, thats about where I'm up to at the moment. Striping out the interior so I have a place to put all of the junk and I can send the shell to the tip full of garbage.

Continuing on with what i've been up to, Busy afternoon of teardown...

I've always had an issue with the wastegate, thought I had a good enough look and well guess I was wrong. Previous owner had spliced a T junction in between the turbo and the wastegate for a boost gauge, disconnected the boost gauge and never blocked the T. Left too much hose and over time its cracked and split open resulting in surprise surprise a non working wastegate.


The punches just keep on going, bought a radium fuel rail kit only to find out the injector spacing isn't correct for my lib. Spoke to the bloke I bought them off who swears they were liberty GTB ones and hes going to swap them for me. Fingers crossed the new ones have the correct injector spacing,


But on the upside, started assembling interior pieces, got my centre console all built with the TbSTI red stitched lid and the grey trim. Handbrake boot and handbrake look a little rough so ill try and hit up wreckers and see how I go. Bought a clock relocation kit and a nexus setup from a member, kept my Paul double din adaptor so fingers crossed everything looks schmick when its together.



But heres the Lib in it's final resting place, tore down my jumped timing block to see just how bad the damage is and it's just bad, block is cracked and an absolute write off, good thing I have a spare.

Another week, more progress...

Impulse bought The Nexus 7 from club lib. This thing has been passed around and it shows... came loaded with police scanners, Minecraft videos, 30 GB of EDM music, and a hektik video of a blob eye WRX on the eastern creek skidpan. Also picked up some better condition interior trim and a clock relocation kit. Unsure if it will work with that style of clock, my lib came with the other style and I believe this one to be a h6 clock, dunno worst case i'll just swap it at a later date.


Dynamat'd the boot and managed to get every tool except for the screwdriver... guess I'll be searching marketplace for that one for the foreseeable future, Replaced the fluffy carpet with the less fluffy carpet and managed to get a full set of clips between the two cars, only thing thats missing is the clips that hold the side panels in place, they look to be glued in so It's going to be an eventful search to find intact foam with the inserts.


All in all, got the whole boot reassembled, just need to swap out the tail lights and find new clips for the light covers and thats the boot all done! The boot itself is a preface style boot on a post face body, I'm thinking about swapping it over for my postface boot only then I'd be locking myself into a respray...

Another day off, more progress made;

3D printed some adapters for my speakers due to Subaru not using 120 degree spacing between mounting screws in the doors, installed my Alpine SPR-60C in the fronts and dynamatted the doors. Bought a new (to me) dash off of marketplace thats not sticky and less cracked than my own. Decided I'm going to remove the Aircon from my parts liberty so I can have my front and rear Aircon still as the one in my manual shell has a blanking plate installed that blocks off the rear. Hacked up my destroyed Blitzen cards and removed the alcantara inserts and got them in my nicer door cards, and replaced all my ciggie burned pieces.

The short shifter kit installed in the car is in terrible condition and is in desperate need of rebuilding so I'll have to hit up the corgi for some bushings and the whole assembly as the plastic ring the ball sits in is in two pieces. The ball is also no longer round so I'll have to see if cobb sells a replacement.

I don't like how the forum is dealing with my images, I think my phone is just taking too high of a resolution image and when I embed them they appear huge unless if you zoom out to 50% or less view so here is a link to the Imgur where I've posted this set of images.

https://imgur.com/a/ZEiQMVl

Nice progress. You just need to resize your pictures, they're too large..

Thanks for posting the photo dump, a good max dimension to compress your pics is 800px longest edge… I use “Image Size” on my iPhone…

bigBADbenny wrote: a good max dimension to compress your pics is 800px longest edge…

Ah thanks for that, I'll go through and edit out the photos and try to replace them with a smaller size. The people over on Imgur hate the photos uploaded there but if they're not marked public I cant always see them.

Just had a spanner in the works, I 3D printed 4 of those speaker adaptors only to realise the fronts are a different size to the rears which is fun... just did some Cardboard Aided Design tonight and should have a new set in the morning to install. Have you ever seen cardboard speakers in the rear for a macintosh? My auto GTB with macintosh had very different speakers in the rear and it looks like the whole door has been replaced at some point, there is overspray in the door jam and over the white plastic screw tabs for the door card mount...

Just about finished with the doors then coming soon is a rear aircon swap, blend door replacement, and then the dash can go back in, I'm excited to see the nexus and clock relocation all in with all the TbSTI trim, handed off the heads to get machined last night so hopefully this weekend I can pull the motor out of my donor, do the head gaskets and get ready to put the motor in.

Another weekend, more progress made;

Fitted the Speakers to the doors removing the Macintosh system entirely, Working on adapting the factory amp plug to my amp while retaining the original connecter incase I decide to swap out amps later down the line. Kept the upper tweeter because I don't have a non Macintosh upper part, left it wired up after watching some kiwi bloke installing the same speakers on youtube (Car Audio etc) and he reckoned they sounded alright. Removed the aftermarket wiring from under the dash, the GFB Deceptor was wired up from the fuse box over the steering column, under the clutch pedal, infront of the radio assembly, behind the glovebox and then out through the ecu bung in the firewall... because I'm removing the ashtray for the clock relocation I've taken the plug off and wired the +12v (Ignition) from there and thats split off to do the nexus and the blow off valve and keep fuse taps out of my car. The 3D printed speaker surrounds went well, nothing too fancy to them just added a layer of foam tape between the door and the mount, and the mounts and the speakers. With the Dynamat the doors sound much meatier and theres thankfully no rattles to them.

I put the TbSTI darker trim around the steering wheel and its all coming together now, looking for the STI airbag but trying to find one that isn't impacted by the takata recall, no idea if this generation of lib was victim to it but I've seen BMW put out notices from people buying M sport wheels and airbags with the takata ones still floating around and putting them in their cars, I'd like to hope I'm not putting any in my car.

Hopefully tomorrow I can swing by bunnings to get a rivet gun so I can put the Vin take off my old dash into my new one, then I can put the new Dashboard in, then the carpet, then the interior. Then it's engine time...

The Interior so far


Very fitting fake plates ft my sister's gen5


Steering Wheel all finished

Did someone say another update? yeah I think it's time for another update. Got the dashboard back together and installed, a lot easier with a mate to give you a hand. Sound deadened the floor, ran out towards the end so just a light covering. Then the carpet and under dash all went in. Got almost everything installed back in, I believe I need to clearance the dashboard so I can fit the clock relocation in, having some electrical problems with no interior lights working, however the headlights and cluster light up but not the si drive controller, also windows don't go up or down so who knows whats going on.

Dashboard installed


Sound deadening installed


Carpet and interior panels installed


Cluster lights up! ABS light, Key Light, and airbag light on. Airbag makes sense, the seats aren't installed so neither are the pretensioner. Key light has me worried and so does the ABS, haven't touched any of that stuff yet

Spent some time hunting those lights.

-The abs light appears to be due to low voltage (surprise, I was running the car off a jump pack without a battery)
-The airbag light was more than likely due to there not being any seats in the car
-The solid key went away just needed to be power cycled

Tested every fuse replaced 6 blown 10 and 15 amp fuses, Now my interior lights work, my clock works, and I have a mostly working car electrically. However some new problems have arisen.

No central locking
No windows work
No sunroof action

The FSM pointed at the common fault being the body module so I pulled the body module out of the auto donor car I have and everything that was working worked, everything that wasnt working didn't. However I know my body module in the manual is fine because when I swapped the body modules I got the immobiliser error back on the dashboard and putting the original one back in the car everything went back to normal. I found a copy of ssm3 and loaded it up on a jbhifi $50 special air-gapped laptop (It downloaded in mandarin and I had to set it to english and I don't trust it) however it is unable to communicate with the ecu despite the tatrix being an J2534 interface NOT an elm327 or a clone.

I probed the pins in the Drivers seat window controller and they all tested within the FSM's specifications, However none of my doors light up or work so whatever problem I'm having must not be specific to the doors and instead it has to be some powerline. When I stripped the car I did not touch the harness and everything that came out of it went back inside of it so when it was sent to greys it must of had these problems in addition to the blown motor...

EDIT: Didn't want to make a new post because the fix was so stupid;
opened the FSM online, read through power windows and central locking system, decided to pins on the drivers side window switch. Tested pins 11 and 14, pin 11 is directly connected to power through the relay, then B41 which is labeled as the power window circuit breaker. Couldn't find where it was so decided to test both upstream and downstream of B41, Upstream of B41 is SBF-4 and downstream is the relay which is meant to get power on pin 40 on the relay box at the drivers knees, I tested fuse 4 in the fuse panel inside the car and it tested fine until I realised where I had made an error, SBF-4 is NOT in the car, its in the engine bay and the SBF means Short Blow Fuse so it doesn't look like the normal blade style fuses. Oh shit, pop the fuse panel cover and locate it and lo and behold it wasn't fitted in the car. Pop a 30 amp SBF fuse back into the car and I have an auto light on the controller but none of the other lights are lighting up, the other windows don't work, and the car will lock then instantly unlock. I would be lying if I didn't say it took me an uncomfortable amount of time to realise I had the window lock on and of course it wont lock the drivers door is open.

This car went from the previous owner, to greys online, to a popular part out person in Sydney who sold me the whole shell for what he paid for it from the auction. We both didn't test anything on it before I had it delivered, or before I started any work on it. At some stage either with the previous owner or at the auction SBF-4 was removed for some reason and that was the cause of all my suffering.

TL;DR SBF-4 wasn't fitted in the car, I didn't notice because I never tried to lock the car or test the windows before stripping it

The wiring Problems continue;

Started off putting the rest of the interior in, got the front and rear Blitzen seats in and they're as comfy as ever with the old harnesses I made still working for the power seats. Airbags and occupancy connectors connected and heres where the problems began. In true murphys law as soon as the dashboard was fully assembled with all the kick panels and pieces I powered the car on and still had that airbag light on. I don't know much about airbags other than don't touch any yellow wire at all, so I left every connector as it was except for the seats so I could remove them. So naturally I went to scan the ECU with btssm to see if I could get the error code and point me in the right direction with the airbags...

So the OBD2 port doesn't work, at all. Tried the trouble shooting, F/B fuse NO. 4 and M/B fuse NO. 13, they are intact and both have the correct voltage at the fuse of 12V. I tested Pins 8 and 16 on the OBD2 connector (B40) and they read 12v however only when the ground source was the chassis ground not with pins 4 and 5 which are marked as chassis ground and signal ground respectively. When pins 4 and 5 are used the voltage is 1.6V instead. Which leads me to B122. I tested pins 6 and 14 and got 59 Ohm resistance then disconnected the ABS pump and got 120 Ohm resistance so everything on the CAN network is plugged in, I swapped the Body Module and ECU with the ones out of my auto shell because I know they're good, and still had the same no connection to ECU on the OBD2 port.

B40 (OBD2) Pinout

Pin.	What it is	Where it goes
1	Ground	Unused
2	Unused	Unused
3	Unused	Unused
4	Chassis Ground	B122 -> B136 -> ECU pin C6
5	Signal Ground	B122 -> B136 -> ECU pin C6
6	CAN High	Cluster, OBD2 port, ECU, Body Module, ABS pump
7	K-Line	ABS, ECU, Body Module, TPMS(Not fitted to car), VDC (Not fitted to car)
8	Vendor option	F/B fuse NO.4
9	Unused	Unused
10	Unused	Unused
11	Unused	Unused
12	Unused	Unused
13	Unused	Unused
14	CAN Low	Cluster, OBD2 port, ECU, Body Module, ABS pump
15	L-Line	Unused
16	Battery Power (12V)	M/B fuse NO. 13

So given by pins 8 and 16 reading 12V when I use a Chassis ground like a bolt in the dash crash bar but reading 1.6V when I used pins 4 and 5 for ground I believe I have an issue with B122 which is a joint connector that connects to the ECU. Upon FSB cmd + F'ing I also realised that I don't get a CEL on the cluster which I have no engine so I'd expect one. The connection for the CEL also uses B122

B122 Pinout (Pins don't matter, they're all connected together)

Pin.	What it is	Where it goes
1	ECU Connection	ECU pin C6
2	Test mode connector (Not connected by default)	B76 -> B75 (Green connectors) -> ECU pin B27
3	sheilding	"delineate" wiring diagram shows it wrapped around ECU pin A18 (ref. EN(H4DOTC)(diag)-125
4	Neutral Position Switch	B128 -> T9 -> T12
5	Sheilding	"delineate" wiring diagram shows it wrapped around Accelerator Position Sensor pin 6 (ref. EN(H4DOTC)(diag)-337
6	Cruise Control Ground	B122 -> B68 -> Steering Roll Connector (ST3) -> Cruise Control Command Switch
7	Unused/Unclear	Unused /Unclear
8	Unused /Unclear	Unused /Unclear

So all things together I believe I have a bad ground, which upon running of a bodge wire from B122 to the ecu mounting bolt revealed an infact working ECU, CEL, and flashing cruise control lights! I have no idea yet if this means I have something like a dead neural position switch or some other problem but temporarily I am very happy because I can read codes and talk to the ECU.

The airbag light as it would turn out was the previous owner took the latch off the interior fuse panel and jammed an airbag connector in the complete wrong spot, how that was achieved I have no idea but now with the donor car's fuse panel and the airbag connector (all be it a little mangled) no airbag light!

So as it stands currently as of 9PM on 4/9/2022 I have an electrically okay Liberty with an almost complete interior, just need to find a shifter boot, handbrake boot, install the nexus, wire up the nexus and the BOV controller and then its engine time!

Well now that wiring looks to be A okay its time to start the motor!
Pulled out the Auto long block, I will never understand why I never pull the CV's to start with after removing them everything is so much easier to pull out. Dump pipe defiantly does not have a Cat in it but it does have a bung for a wideband O2 sensor, praying that it will fit in the manual. I believe that manual pipes don't work on autos however hopefully the auto pipe works on manuals. The front CV's in the auto lib are basically brand new and hopefully I can use those instead of the miss matched euro style CVs that were in the manual to begin with.

240MM flywheel, This appears to be a pull type with the 9 bolt holes, I know BBB was going through some drama trying to source one on facebook or something


Stupidly hard to get to nuts with the CVs in the way, apparently "Just go in from the top" but that was so much harder to do


Motor out, almost ready to send it to scrap


Basically new timing components so they will defiantly be reused, just need a new timing cover gasket


I have an exceedy HD that was on the car and its got 5 or so mil left before the rivets, this motor only has to pass rego and then thats it so hopefully that gets me through. I've followed Uniclutch(https://www.uniclutch.com) through their testing and now their public release and Subaru support, its a cheap twin disk that hopefully I buy once and lasts me forever with all the bolt on shenanigans I plan on installing so I don't end up with a constantly slipping clutch on a built motor like a certain TbSTI.

Well, I hate removing Cam gears but that had to happen. The gears on the car were damaged and the teeth on the timing belt on the car were chewed up pretty badly. It looks like somethings gotten inside the timing cover and done a number on the gears and belt. I have a spare set of cams from the jumped timing motor and they're in much better condition than these ones were so I took the most destructive way possible of removing them...


I have a spare set of exhaust gears so I'm not worried about destroying these ones, not ideal but not the end of the world


Stripped down to a bare long block, all the rubber hoses were perished so its partsouq time unless I can find a kit with the lot


for 400,000KM those heads look great, full service history and regular oil changes and they look amazing!


What is with these head bolts though? the other motor I tore down with the jumped timing had silver normal looking headbolts and these appear to be green and have a L on them.

well... its bad


cleaned up the block so I could measure it and not dirty my hands or tools further, noticed the headgaskets looked a bit too good for a failed headgasket with no clear signs of the cylinder part being damaged or erroded. However in removing the heads I found blueish purple buckets, and a warped deck....


This was the first picture I took just to quickly tell it was warped and well, it's quite warped, cylinder 3 is about 2mm shorter than cylinder 1, guess this means I'm two for two for boat anchors for blocks.

So i've gone out and arranged used dressed long-block, I'm in talks with an engine builder near me about what my best move is, I need to get rego on this car so I can get engineering sorted so I just need it to pass. I'll put my secondary air pump removal kit on and my TGV deletes but otherwise leave it as is

Don't bin that block because of the gap just yet. Thats not exactly a "straight" edge... If the block was truely warped by multiple mm then something very f**ded has happened in its life!

Continue to strip it, see what the bearings and bores are like, then assess.