L1's Garage

an engine swap isn’t on my list of desired projects for my new daily lol. some lowering springs and different wheels will probably be the biggest mod I do.

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Fair point.

When the Miata broke, I decided I needed a daily that could be reliable. What did I do? Buy a Mercedes. Someone should cut out the part of my brain that makes decisions like this.

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Considering getting a BMW 330 diesel and make it go fast. I have a thing for diesel cars.

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Impreza or Outback Sport up through 2001.

Legacy or Outback with an EJ22 will be a complete dog, they are heavy.

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full interior gut cause yoloswaggins is a wonderful man.
weight reduction yo

I’m not serious

The difference in weight is from the steel. The Legacy platform of the era had a lot more steel than the Impreza platform. The Impreza of the same era is an inch narrower and a full fifteen inches shorter, saving nearly 500 pounds in the process.

I’ve owned three Outback Sports. They’re pretty decent cars.

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I’m in love with the legacy wagon though… idk maybe i’ll get the 04 outback with the 2.5 as that’s when the head gaskets and other issues were all sorted out.

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The Outback sedans (Legacy based) are pretty awesome. They’ve got the EJ25 and are slightly higher up than the base Legacy. Amazing snow cars. Came with larger fog lights too.

(Head gaskets are still roughly every 100k)

i meant to say wagon but i’m a derp. and I want to avoid that… from what I understand there are revised head gaskets that fix the issue so if i find someone who already had it done i should be in good shape

Hmm i saw a Mazda 6 Sportbreake today in a nice red color.
It might be a nice and reliable daily driver if i could find a nice one without rust.

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It has some to do with how the engine was designed. In terms of head gaskets on the EJ25 the EJ251 is the worst (what I base my 100k on), the EJ253 is better but will still need replacement at some point, and the EJ255 is actually pretty much okay (your WRX has an EJ255 I believe). My dad said that some cars may never need head gaskets while some needed them at 80K. Keeping up with maintenance will certainly help. Newer style of head gaskets will definitely last longer than the stock.

Sad thing is the parts aren’t that expensive, you can get the entire kit with belts and everything for under $300, but the 8-12 hours of labor can easily add another $1000 or more to the cost if getting it done at a dealership. You can make pretty good money doing head gasket repairs on Subarus if you know what you’re doing…

I knew people that used to charge $500 + parts for head gaskets and they really only had to work three days a week to be comfortable

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correct.

I had a friend with a Mazda 6. Pretty nice car, but it too was starting to rust.

I think he ended up trading it in for a Subaru.

Yeah its pretty unfortunate that they seem to very sensitive for rust.
Because otherwise it would tick all the right boxes for a first car in terms of reliability,
reasonable looks, and low maintance costs.
THey are also pretty cheap to buy aswell.

Sometimes car companies just don’t understand how to properly undercoat and rust-proof cars and/or why they should. One of the reasons why I went for the car I did is because it has good rust prevention measures. I’m quite tired of having to deal with rusty cars.

Yeah uphere rust prevention is also very important.
So i´m also looking for a car that has a decent prevention against rust.
Of course at a certain point in time a car will start to rust.
But yeah if there is one thing i totally hate is rust on a car.

But yeah finding a decent car with good rust protection,
and not suffering from manny electrical gremlins isnt all that easy.

Rust Prevention? good luck out here lol. WNY is absolutely brutal on cars.

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Here in NE is really bad too, but particularly the seacoast. Salty air and salty roads in the winter = everything that can rust will rust.

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The old Audi A4 B5’s dont seem to rust that hard,
since they are galvernised.
But yeah i´m not a huge fan of anything from VAG.

Looks like the impreza got knocked down a couple hundred bucks. On one hand, woop woop, but on the other, red flag. Tomorrow oughta be fun.

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