1998 Subaru Forester S - DOWN BY THE RIVER!

In reply to Papabishop :

Fluids and timing belt are next. I'm sort of going at this all willy nilly. Things need to get done and there is no shortage of things. List is getting shorter though, so that's good. 

In reply to NGTD :

Yes! But in all honesty Passing it on to Patrick makes more sense. The steering wheel I got is quite good. Send it to him and maybe someday It'll come to me anyway. The world is funny. Thank you very much for the offer. 

The drivers door handle was broken. I picked up a new one at the junk yard. When I did that I just pulled screws from the window/regulator until the glass fell down far enough that I could get at the screws for the handle. Trying to do things logically is harder. I ended up with the glass like this. I couldn't pull it all the way out with the regulator still bolted to the door and I didn't want to try and figure out how to put it all back together. This worked. 

This is the part that was broken. A more resourceful me would have tried to fix it with a bolt and some epoxy and then swapped it to a rear door handle and saved the $9.80 for budget. I didn't throw it away yet so that might still happen. 

Carpet went back in. Not perfect. Quite good. I'm not 100% sure it won't have to come out again but I need to get the seats out of the Grosh and that means it needs to go back in for now. 

All the lower trim back in and the clean drivers seat. The passenger seat and the back seat bottom have been scrubbed and are on the deck drying. I'm still going to need to pull the back seat backs, but we'll save that for another day. I'm getting itchy to drive this. 

Patrick said:

NGTD said:

Mazdeuce - I have an 02 WRX MOMO steering wheel that you are welcome too if you want it. Just pay shipping. It comes with the clockspring too.

Shipping from Canada is not cheap, but otherwise free.

I'm moving soon and the parts are going to the dump otherwise.

If seth doesn’t, and it’s in good condition i’ll throw my hat in the ring.  The one in my 02 wrx is pretty darn rough

Send me your address and I will get you a shipping quote va3cot at gmail dot com. I will have to track down a box it will fit in.

Do you need the airbag? Or is yours reusable? Can airbags be shipped safely?

WOW that carpet looks clean!  Stark difference to a few weeks ago.

thestig99 said:

Man, I'd love to find a 1st gen Forester in that condition up here in the rust belt.

Kinda funny, Foreters have always been my favorite Subaru. I'm 8 Subarus deep and I have yet to own one.

I went and looked at this one yesterday:  https://houston.craigslist.org/cto/d/2001-subaru-runs-and-drives/6542528855.html

It needs about $1400 in maintenance (axles, wheels, tires, glass, wheel bearing, suspension bushings... it all adds up) and has 300k miles but the chassis is sooooooooo clean underneath and rust free.  The midwesterner in me wanted it for that sake alone, but the seller wouldn't take under $1000 so I had to pass.  If you want a rust-free one badly enough, they do exist down here.  If you want that one and want to fly into Houston to pick it up, pm me.

Slammo said:

thestig99 said:

Man, I'd love to find a 1st gen Forester in that condition up here in the rust belt.

Kinda funny, Foreters have always been my favorite Subaru. I'm 8 Subarus deep and I have yet to own one.

I went and looked at this one yesterday:  https://houston.craigslist.org/cto/d/2001-subaru-runs-and-drives/6542528855.html

It needs about $1400 in maintenance (axles, wheels, tires, glass, wheel bearing, suspension bushings... it all adds up) and has 300k miles but the chassis is sooooooooo clean underneath and rust free.  The midwesterner in me wanted it for that sake alone, but the seller wouldn't take under $1000 so I had to pass.  If you want a rust-free one badly enough, they do exist down here.  If you want that one and want to fly into Houston to pick it up, pm me.

Ugh, with the stupidly rare fender flares too. Not currently in the market but someday the stars will align 

Seth, great turnaround on that interior! 

Thanks for the compliments on the interior. The rest of the back seats are out now, scrubbed and drying on the porch. There's not much holding in the rear carpet section now so I'l probably have to pull that out to make myself happy. 

It's been a few years since I've been in a project car like this. The Insight was along these lines, but I'm been mostly working on "nice" cars. I forget what it's like bringing home a properly cheap car and trying to make it acceptable again. There's just so much to do but the work is very satisfying. I salute those of you who regularly dip your toes in the low end of the automotive pool car and drag these cars back to acceptability. It's hard work. You guys rule. 

I pulled the rear carpet this morning. In order to do that I had to pull the trim that's around the rear windows which basically meant that everything in the rear came out. It's at this point that I realize that cars are made of lots of parts. 

Once the trim is out you also see the contrast between what the headliner did look like, and what it does look like. 

One of the stated goals of this car is to be able to sleep in the back. I could drive it with a headliner like that, but there is no way I could snuggle down in a sleeping bag and look up at that and not get the creepy crawlies. Out it came, scrubbed, hanging up to dry. I'm now fully down the rabbit hole. 

Headliner and all the assorted dome lights and grab handles are back in. I turned it from "throw it away and light it on fire" to "perfectly acceptable for a 272k mile car". 

Also washed the rest of the fuzzy stuff and it's drying. Once that's back in the rest is plastic except for seatbelts so the cleaning should go quickly.

I've clearly been delaying on the mechanical side of this but that's becasue I'm waiting for the V-wagon to ship so that I have access to the garage again. Now that it's sold I'm sort of paranoid about moving it just to shuffle cars around. I'll feel better when I don't have to worry about bumping into someone else's very expensive car. 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

I pulled the rear carpet this morning. In order to do that I had to pull the trim that's around the rear windows which basically meant that everything in the rear came out. It's at this point that I realize that cars are made of lots of parts. 

 

In the latest issue of CMS, Tim put together a list of things to consider when restoring a car. One of them is how a disassembled car takes up about 3x as much space as an assembled one.

In reply to Ian F :

That's very true and part of the reason that I'm putting the work into getting the interior back together. I need the room. 

I thought I took more pictures today, but somehow I didnt. I do have shots of the full size spare, all washed. Hopefully the air I put in will stay there. 

The plastic cover is washed and 303 Aerospaced. Shiny. 

And the tool kit reassembled. There was a T30 screwdriver in the car and that's the size for moving the rack bars so I put that in as well. 

More pictures tomorrow of a clean-ish very acceptable car. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Almost every used car I buy gets this treatment.

Pressure wash carpet, CLEAN EVERYTHING

Sort of Howard Hughes about it...but there is no other way to get a car clean.

Interior glamour shots. This is kind of significant as far as the cars future. If I couldn't get the interior acceptable then we were probably going to pull the entire drivetrain and search for a good body with a bad motor and build from there. As it is, with just a crapload of time, a $14 steering wheel, and about $4 in cleaners, I was able to make it a nice place to be. I'm happy. 

And with that we move on to mechanical stuff. At the minimum it's a timing belt/water pump and dealing with the ripped and leakey power steering. Change all fluids. All that stuff. I love my lift so very much. 

I'd call that a job well done, do you fancy popping down to Peru to do the same on the Jeep, only 145,000 kms on it, but in the dusty polluted air of Lima it looks more like double that!?

In reply to paul_s0 :

That's the best excuse to visit Peru that I've heard this week. I'll pencil you in. 

After the beauty shots this morning I got a series of emails from Slammo letting me know that he was headed to the junkyard to pull some parts off a '99 Forester with a friend and was there anything I wanted. YES! If it weren't for the district track meet I was attending at lunch time I would have gone with him, but he's a great guy and grabbed them for me. For the princely sum of $79 I have a hood, turn signal, trim piece below the headlight, and the missing airbox snorkel thingy. AND I still have a $9 core on the hood. I think I have all the pieces I need to make the exterior functional. I'm stoked. 

Dang she cleaned up nice! I wanted to replace hood and blinker when I had it but local junk yards here suuuck and would’ve cost $$$ in shipping. If you ever want to upgrade the seats I believe early wrx are direct bolt in for little more comfort

Started this morning with this. Used a hammer. Another hammer. And a slide hammer. Unbending metal is interesting. This is my first time. I think I learned a bit. 

I probably should have taken pictures but I was very mentally involved in the process. Hitting in one direction. Then another. Nothing wanting to move. Then getting one wrinkle out and having things move 1/2 inch easily. Then figuring what's holding things back. The bundle of wires for the ABS was in a fold and that needed to be unfolded to get it out. Then the hole that the ABS module plug needed to fit through was smushed too flat to get it through, so I had to mess with that. About four hours of hammering and looking and thinking before I slotted everything into place. 

Very little of this is bolted in. Adjustments need to be made. I need to figure out which plastic clips are too broken to use and how to work around that. Most of it needs to come off for final fitting and assembling the stuff that's on the inside. All in all I'm happy. Forester Tricolore. 

Wow that looks way better than I expected it to!  Nice work Mazdeuce!

On an unrelated note, since I am a fine purveyor of bad ideas:

http://fealsuspensionstore.com/wrx-sti-struts/

And they're only half of your challenge budget!

Steering wheel on its way to a new home in OH

Is this the spring type timing belt tensioner? 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Yessir, Believe it’s a one piece to the bolt to the right. All things considering belt looks in good shape!

Reference 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

It's a hydraulic tensioner.

I really like Foresters. While it isn't your build direction, from what I've seen, having mentioned the challenge, Expedition Portal built up a Forester.

In case you haven't seen the build thread is here.

Glossy article:
Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Mega job on the interior! That is seriously inspirational.

In reply to NGTD :

You're awesome and have renewed my faith in Subaru owners. 

In reply to Carson and Papabishop :

Many thanks, parts on the way! Probaby correct. 

In reply to white_fly :

Thanks, I have a few other tricks up my sleeve to top it off. I keep searching CL for dirty cars now. Getting this one back into shape is fun so far. 

There are some pretty good Subaru timing belt videos on YouTube. In fact, I pulled the engine out of my Legacy, changed the head gaskets and timing belt without buying a shop manual. I can try to find links to the videos I used if you want me to.