I'm Pickle Impreza!

Today was goodwill auto auction day. As I was sitting in the office waiting to pay for my purchase (of course I bought something), I got a text from Knurled with this picture. 

I'M PICKLE RICK!

So I responded with "Speaking of pickles..."

So now this car is named Pickle. 

I had seen this sitting in the holding lot when I was at the auction two weeks ago. It looked clean so I was waiting for today to check it out and bid on it. I ended up winning it for $750, more than I was planning on but everyone knows how auctions go. 

It is a 95 Impreza L, FWD with the EJ18 engine and 5 speed transmission. It looks to have been cared for well for most of its life until it was left to sit. 

This must have been one of the Subarus that came with optional rear wheel arches as all the other ones I have seen have nothing above the rear wheels. 

There is some faded clear coat on the roof but other than that the paint is in decent shape. 

I initially thought there was some rust on the rockers but it turned out to just be undercoating or paint that was partially worn away. 

The interior is in pretty good shape with just some wear on the driver seat bolster. 

The oil change sticker is a little out of date. I think I may change it soon rather than waiting a few hundred miles for it to hit 188k. 

It looks like some soda or something exploded in the back seat. It does need some cleaning but I have bought much nastier cars at auction. 

I took it for a drive after charging up the battery and was disappointed that the A/C didn't work. I remembered I had a can of R134a in the garage from the last time I needed to recharge an A/C system and it had just enough left to give The Pickle a full chage. Now the A/C blows cold!

$750? I think the term I'm after is "well bought." Congratulations!

I am going to try very hard to not make a joke about buffing your Pickle.

I will fail, of course.

*burp* Sooo you’re gonna have to do me a real solid, Morty.  I’m gonna need you to take these head gaskets into the shop and I’m gonna need you to put ’em wayyyyy up inside your Impreza.  

Oh jeez Rick. I really don’t want to have to do that.

Well, someone’s got to do it, Morty. I’ve done this too many times, Morty. You’re young, you have your whole life ahead of you. And your mechanical empathy is still taut yet malleable. You gotta do it for grandpa, Morty. You gotta put these head gaskets inside your car.

BTW - While every 1.8/manual/FWD Impreza that I've seen was green, they also all were two door cars.  Didn't realize this was a four door.

In reply to EvanB :

Nice. 

Daily drive? Compete? Flip? Swap/build into a fire breather? 

In reply to John Welsh :

The plan right now is to daily drive, maybe use for rallycross if i feel like it. If I find a good deal on a rotten wrx i may swap everything.

In reply to EvanB :

Whatever you do, do not look at my eBay watch list full of $599-799 EJ20G engine/trans combos.  And with a water-air intercooler, you could avoid the scoop and keep it looking sleeperish.

I have a vision of four 185/70-13s smoking in unison.

In reply to Knurled. :

I haven't found them that low with trans, only the engine (not that I'm complaining). 

The auction place’s street number is 666?

This build is already epic!

I did some cleaning and pressure washing. No pictures of that. 

I was all set to install one of my $10 Blaupunkt china radios but I remembered that in the subaru they bolt to a bracket rather than sliding into the DIN slot and the cheap radio had no place to screw it onto the bracket. Obviously the best solution was to spend $150 on a new one. 

I have been curious about these cheap android powered double DIN units and wanted to try one in my truck. I ended up not doing it since the GMC has 1.5 din and I didn't want to hack into it. This will be an experiment to see if I like it enough to move it to the truck where I'm most likely to use GPS. 

I still need to trim the radio surround since this is slightly wider than the stock radio. 

I picked up some WRX wheels from Professor Brap today. They are exactly 7 pounds heavier than the stock steel wheels with 175/70r13 tires. 

I'll leave them on for a bit to decide what kind of tires I want to put on them or if I want to go a different direction. The car was fun with the tiny dry tires and I'm afraid that big sticky ones will ruin it. Maybe I'll get some westlake all seasons for the WRX wheels since they are cheap and shouldn't kill the fun too much. 

I thought about fixing the exhaust leak today but didn't. I may still fix it but I kinda like how it sounds. Even though it doesn't have the power to back up the Subaru rumble. 

In other news, I got rid of two cars this week (both Volvo 850s) and have the 323 GTX in the garage to finally get fixed. I have been driving the Impreza to work pretty much every day and it will probably stay like that for a bit. I am thinking about buying a friend's high compression N/A 2.5rs and swapping everything over to this shell since that one can't be registered and it has rust. 

In reply to EvanB :

ooh.

Although as I recall, that car had a fuel cell because there was no way that the rear suspension was coming out to replace the fuel tank.

In reply to Knurled. :

Hmm, I wasn't aware that was the reason for the fuel cell.

In reply to EvanB :

That was the story that I remember hearing.  It's had a fuel cell since.. um.. since at least the last time I drove it when it was all wheel drive, which was so long ago that I drove my Quantum to the rallycross.  (checks YouTube) 2013.

That was also the event that the rust really started to make itself known as the bumper kind of started to rip off on one of my runs and there wasn't enough quarter panel left to ziptie it back up.

If you DO buy it, as much as it pains me to say it... you gotta use the hood.  It's too badass to not use, even if it does scream "ricer".

Also, every time I try to do a Google Image Search for that car at Nationals, YOUR car comes up.

I remember that event. We are sitting in Paktinat's wrx to do timing because it was raining and the index cards for times would get wet outside.

I drove by national trails today, the whole field is corn. 

EvanB said:

I have been curious about these cheap android powered double DIN units and wanted to try one in my truck.

I have also been curious about this and am excited to find that someone I know is pulling the trigger on one. Looking forward to hearing your impressions!

I got the second pair of snow tires today and had them mounted. After they arrived I realized that 175 might be a bit narrow for 15x6 wheels but no turning back now. 

I also decided to park in the garage for the winter because berkeley scraping ice and snow. 

On the android headunit - I haven't had a chance to try out the navigation or other features yet because I mostly just drive this to work. My main complaint is the boot-up time. It takes just under 30 seconds after the car is started. It isn't a huge deal so I can live with it. There are other ones that claim to boot in under 5 seconds but none of them had a volume knob which is much more important to me. I do have it set to sleep for 60 minutes (max time I could pick) so if I stop somewhere and start it up again in under an hour it is on instantly. 

The bluetooth pairing for music is fine, I don't have any complaints with that. I probably wouldn't buy one again unless it was a vehicle that I use navigation and possibly the backup camera in like my truck for towing. 

License plate P1CKLE is taken.  Saw it on a large gray Kia bloatosaurus SUV minivan crossover thing while I was headed to Subway for lunch.

Don't know how I missed this before, but nice snag! I used to work with a kid that had a less pickly one of these in silver; still had the 1.8, FWD, and manual. He used to beat the ever loving snot out of the thing every time he drove it. Every stoplight was a clutch dumping launch, and he drove it at 11/10ths everywhere. The car lasted YEARS with him doing that EVERY DAY.

 

In reply to Tony Sestito :

That's pretty much how I drive this. It gets terrible gas mileage for how slow it is (last tank was 23mpg). I keep looking for something else to buy as a daily but this does fine for now, the main entertainment is just hitting redline every shift, especially since it has an exhaust leak. 

That thread title gets me every time. 

So you have a 323 GTX and this Impreza hmm? My impulse supposedly has a similar rear suspension as the Mazda, and I've been test fitting 94 Subaru suspension as well. I need to find something that fits my car since there are, quite literally, zero replacement rear struts in the world for me. I was tracing KYB part numbers and I believe the GTX struts are within single increment serial digits from mine. Might I bother you for a couple of quick shock body measurements? Specifically around the lower mounts. Distance between the bolts and the width between the ears of the mount. 

In reply to albino09 :

I can't imagine going to gtx stuff for more parts availability but I'll get some measurements this weekend.