I would love a rally car. That you can have fun in no mater the surface or weather. I could do a GTX or GTR swap to my 323 which would make it a rally car. AWD with locking center diff.
Edit: Swap is about 2k for every thing.
Very cool. What are you thinking about putting it on?
There are no such kits for my impreza unfortunately. Engine swaps are major hurdle here in Cali.
You could get a Miata, and you and @SgtAwesomesauce could fight the forced induction vs Cali battle together.
M - Miata
I - is
A - always
T - the
A - answer
Denied
Baka
[insert pouty face anime girl]
Pretty decent looking, but I’m not sure if I like it any better then the original though.
Please stop posting pictures of your WRX.
Read: Every time I see yours it makes me wish I hadn’t got red. Tint looks good. What mud flaps are those? I see the front lip, do you haev something on the rear as well?
Agreed. It looks fat.
I like the lines of the custom one. how it goes into the wheel wells more. Otherwise, I like everything about the original more.
For the record, Flyin Miata does make a CARB compliant turbo for all generations of Miata. They do, however, only make about 175 to the wheels due to the limitations on the stock fuel injectors. I’m going to be using that with my megasquirt so that it’s easier to just swap injectors and ECU to do emissions checking every two years.
Came back from the visit and test drive earlier this afternoon. The guy is about my age and was super nice and helpful. Completely different planet from what the other dude probably would have been like.
Driving the car:
I should say first, I’ve never driven a turbocharged car before. The limits of my driving experience are my bone-stock Civic, a Tacoma with a 4-liter engine hampered by an auto transmission with Down Syndrome, and a Honda Pilot with a fair amount of kick. I’m already in love now, I really like the car. The gearbox and clutch feel great and dat turbo spool noise, doe. I reckon it’d make a great project vehicle because everything wrong with it appears to be stuff that’s within my realm of experience to fix. I looked at the Feedback Knock monitor on the access port like @SoulFallen suggested. It looked alright(?) from what Cobb has on their website (2.1 at low load, I think the fastest I went was 35mph) though I wasn’t able to take it on a highway and really open the throttle (time constraints for both parties). That was one instance though and it stayed at 0 the entire rest of the time. Though again, my experience with access ports is near nonexistent. To my untrained ears the engine seemed to run well. The A/C works very well, all the interior controls work as they should, no complaints there. The noise of the engine with the turbo spool made me giggle like a little girl, though.
The state of the car:
Despite having been in a front end collision and being written off as totaled, I have to say, structurally it looks pretty good. The front support is a little bit bent in but that’s it. The underside has a lot of what feels like a rubbery anti-rust coating and apart from a little rust on the pinch welds on the sides it looks fine.
It does suffer from rust in other areas, though. The rear sway bar will need replacing, as will the oil pan and possibly the engine subframe if the rust has gone too far into the metal. It has rust elsewhere, mostly in places that aren’t totally crucial, but those are the main points of concern. The exhaust looks like it could use some work but I think the rotted out parts are just the heat shielding.
The brakes have gone extremely soft, it has a hard time stopping. the brakes don’t start applying until the pedal is nearly all the way down, which could be down to the brake pads themselves or (I’m told) not enough brake fluid. Either way, they need work. It was in the ad though, so I knew that going in, but it’s a worse issue than I initially expected. The rear passenger side rotor has one of the bolt stems sheared off so it only has 4 lug nuts. That’ll need to be replaced. Most of this stuff I reckon can be done in relatively short order. Due to the guy needing to dash off at a certain time and me and my old man shortly thereafter, I didn’t have as much time with the car as I would have liked. I’m still really interested though, and I’m gonna see if I can go down again on Monday for another look (this time with cash) and make an offer.
If this sounds like I’m a bit starry-eyed to the point of blindness to some of the car’s issues, I am wary of that. But the quirks it had while driving, aside from making me pause for concern, just made me kinda happy in a way. The car from what I can tell needs a good amount of TLC, but to put it in a sentimental way, it’s got character.
/Zoltan post
pretty common for a modified car that hasn’t been dyno tuned. anything above 1.4 is usually considered a genuine knock event as anything 1.4 or below is usually “phantom knock”. As long as the car doesn’t knock at high load it’s usually harmless.
Thanks for the tip-off about that, m9. Those are versatile little machines.
FYI if you’re talking about this thing it can be completely removed from the car the J-spec variant doesn’t have one at all.
It’s for US crash regulations
Would I have to live in Kansas for it not to be considered an issue (or even looked into)? Gosh golly gee, living in inspectionland sure is fun!
I highly doubt any inspector would even know it’s missing if you decide to remove it.
I’m sure if they notice a missing sway bar, they’ll notice a missing subframe (or what looks like one) regardless of whether it actually serves a purpose. Maybe I just need to find a lazy inspector.
Well people around me take them out all the time for weight reduction and they can be found for like $100.
