Spinmastert's 22t Project

Tyler

Tyler

Active member
So, I can't find my original post from STM so I guess I'll start a new one. I never really got good progress pictures, but I'll see what I can find.

So it all started with a 97 2.2L Impreza L in Brilliant Red. It was my first car and I LOVED it. It came with 68k on the clock in 2003 when it was purchased. It had been in an accident but was being sold by a dealership and it was VERY hard to tell that it had been. Apparently it had a remanufactured 4EAT from Subaru, I'm assuming because of the accident. I also later found out that the car had GR2s on it when it was purchased! BONUS.

Anyway. I drove the car for quite some time ... first I had put a fartcan on which to be honest, sounded fantastic; Loud, but fantastic. I think the next mod I did was to add the RS coupe wing. I did a few other cheap mods such as painting my front emblem red to match the car and making it light up. Apparently the police didn't like that, so I took the light out. I got some graduation money from my grandparents and bought a set of 17" Gold Speedline Superturismo wheels and wrapped them in BFG KDW2s. This made the car look look completely different compared to the steelies that were on it before.

This is a picture I believe up to this point on Islesboro.

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Next I was sick of being given trouble getting a sticker with the exhaust, so I went to Meineke and had the make me a 2.25" cat back exhaust. This made the car sound VERY nice ... loud and rumbly enough, but stock looking. I started looking into intakes and found an eBay 2 piece RS cold air for like $60 and seeing I couldn't find anything reasonable for the 2.2 decided to give it a shot. I think I had to find an adapter to attach the MAF correctly. Done. This REALLY made the car grumbly and after figuring out how to keep the car from bogging, I was SUPER happy with the way the car was. Although it wasn't super fast, I enjoyed driving it. I realized just how slow it was on my first group drive with STM ...

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View attachment 3337 anyone remember this guy?

View attachment 3338 View attachment 3339good one Sergei
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So apparently I also bought those stupid eBay Morette replicas ... they SUCK horribly. I had to used high beams to see haha.

So after that I don't think there were many mods, until urabus was selling his '94 22t Leggy Wagon. I bought the whole car for $300. The swap began ...

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Out with the old ...

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In with the new ... and that's the Leggy it came out of in the background! Sometimes I wish I had just kept that!

Hmmm. I'm not finding any pictures of the wiring we did, or the dash ripped apart ... but this is what it looked like when done!

EDIT: I just found this, not much but you get the drift. This is the donor car ...

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Some diagrams:

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Notice the lack of intercooler and where the hell is that tiny little turbo?!

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Oh, there it is! (Don't mind the duct tape, I ran out of electrical tape!)

Gabe saved my ass with this hood, but I wasn't a fan of the color scheme ...

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So I painted it!

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I drove that for a while and was having issues with the transmission ... I won't even go into what the problem was but we'll just say it was stupidity/assumptions on my part.

Regardless, EvilAsPie had just rolled his OBS and picked up his turbo Leggy. I needed a 5spd and he needed Leggy parts. We did some swappage, and a bit later I had a 5 spd instead of an automatic complete with stage 1 Exedy clutch and lightweight flywheel.

(I KNOW I have pictures to insert here, however I can't find them at the moment.)

That wheel gap was killing me, so next I purchased a set of Megan Racing coilovers from the Radmeister. It was stiff, but the handling was great. I drove that for a little bit and then picked up an Invidia N1 Raceback exhaust. I LOVE this thing ... After installing the exhaust in my driveway, I went to take it for a little test drive. Backing out of the driveway, I tried to dodge a patch of ice and the passenger side front wheel went off the curb. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, but don't forget about those coilovers ... the tow hook under the car SLAMMED down onto the curb. When I pulled across the street to see what the hell happened, I was VERY upset to see this:

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How it should be:

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How it was:

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Oh yeah, here's the Invidia:

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I'm kinda tired, so I'll try to finish up quick and add more detail later.

Anyway ... I drove this for a bit and decided I should probably look into getting another vehicle, just in case something were to happen with this. Enter the Bee, my '03 WRX I purchased from Gabe with 40k on it.

After this, I purchased a set of RS brakes to do a brake/rear disc upgrade along with some stainless lines and a front set of greenstuff pads. We did the brake swap and I've been having problems ever since ... real squishy brakes which will stiffen after pumping them or holding the pedal down. If you press on the gas again, the pedal goes limp (sounds like a personal problem, I know). After taking it out for a couple test drives, while sweeping out the garage to put the car back in, the nipple on the back of the coolant tank broke and sprayed coolant everywhere. Ordered and replaced coolant tank ... while that was out, my buddy convinced me to install the td04 and wrx intercooler I purchased from Gabe. This wasn't as straightforward as it sounds because the piping wasn't set up for the intercooler and the turbo outlet was now at 90 degrees instead of the 45 degrees on the vf11. Anyway, we finished ... to a degree. We had to mess with the (ghetto) intake piping many times because it was running like ****. After having sit for about a year, the car just wasn't running right. It would idle alright, but when on the gas it would sputter and sound like a machine gun and had no power. I thought maybe I was leaking boost, so I installed a silicone kit for the intercooler to remove some of the ghettoness. It was better, but not nearly fixed. Then I came to the conclusion that the 93 octane fuel in the tank was probably pretty worn out. I had practically 3/4 tank of fuel so I got some 93 from Twitchels to top off the tank and some octane booster. The first run, the car PULLED hard, but then after that it was back to the same way it was before. After messing with piping, wiring, and everything else I finally decided I was sick of playing around with it and wanted to get it running again. I just ordered what is basically a WRX motor/wiring/ecu, minus the block. I'm going to run this with the 22t block, making my car obdII again and making it easier to tune. Sergei just came and lapped my valves and I'm trying to collect the last of the parts I need to finish putting this together. I'm going to try tearing the motor out of the car Thursday so I can start tearing that apart.

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Before

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After

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I'll try to update more as the project continues, but now you have a rough idea about the car!

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fun! although i guess i need to come up with a different thread title tomorrow...

 
haha, sorry .. actually if you have the ability, you can change mine to "spinmastert's 22t Project"

 
so you're running wrx heads/ecu with the 22t block?

i had wanted to do that but didn't want to mess with wiring; that's awesome!

 
Yeah, the wiring was a disaster last time. It's going to be a lot neater this time. It is also my least favorite part
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ugh, yeah i had already decided if i went that route i was going to pay ECS for the merge. kudos for taking the plunge

 
Good luck with it
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Thanks!

So this weekend I'll be picking up the two exhaust cam gears I will need, head bolts, timing belt, and power steering pump. I need to deal with this head gasket situation as well and to pick up some injectors. I'm hoping there won't be much more needed after that!

I'm also going to start pulling the motor out of the car tomorrow!

 
if i wasn't already planning on being somewhere else, I'd offer to come help after work just so i could see this thing

 
Well thanks for the offer! I actually wasn't able to touch it today because I went to pick up my new toy and then drove 65 miles in the wrong direction haha oops. I still need to drive back to Auburn from York, maybe I can work on it tomorrow!

 
The next time you need something picked around York, let me know. I drive through every day.

 
Thanks man! My mom actually lives in York so it gives me an excuse to go visit. The toy was actually in Claremont, NH ... I was in York because I was dropping it back off at my mom's place.

 
So, I drained the fluids and disconnected everything last week ... finally got the motor pulled today. We've got it down to the block and heads, but we didn't have the right sized socket to get the pulley off to get the timing cover off, so we just cleaned it up a bit and called it a night. I'll try to get a couple pics tomorrow. That motor was DIRTY.

 
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