Deconstruction has begun on the Impreza L to start preparing for Production GT. The carpet and flashing was removed from the cabin and trunk this afternoon. Carpet extraction required temporary removal of the seats so I am now intimately familiar with seat bolt alignment. Yay. More cleanup will be done over the next few days to remove all aftermarket sound deadening material and goo from the floor pan to prepare it for a clean repaint.

Kris, Jeremy, Andrew and I did some recce on North Mountain and South Mountain last night and, on the way home, I decided to test my brakes just to see how absolutely crappy they are. The pads and calipers seem adequate however the car desperately needs a bleed and new brake fluid. On the street and highway a hard brake stops the car quite quickly but, afterwards, there is noticable brake fade. After two or three hard pumps the brake pedal gets quite mushy. This alarmed me so I took the car over to a one mile unfinished industrial loop to really give the brakes a test.

I executed some 30 MPH panic stops and noticed the same brake fade I was experiencing on the highway. I did one lap to let the brakes cool down and executed an 80 MPH to zero threshold stop and was quite impressed with the stopping power. I accelerated to about 40 MPH, hit the brakes and the pedal went to the floor. Not good. I did another lap to let the brakes cool down and I had a nice solid pedal again.

So, either the brake pads are crap or the brake fluid is full of water and air bubbles. Probably a not big deal but worth paying very close attention to.

I have started cosmetic deconditioning of the car and tore out the rear deck and speakers behind the back seat. This was prompted by the fact that the rear deck was damaged anyway and the rear seat wasn’t even bolted in completely…it was flopping around loose. Everything is now tightened down properly and the deck is a bare chunk of sheet metal (the way it should be). Also, John and I removed about a pound of newspaper that had been jammed into the frame of the trunklid. Our assumption is that it was being used as sound deadening material for a subwoofer or other audio gear that had been in the back of the car. About 30′ of weatherstripping was also removed that served no obvious purpose.

An appointment has been made with Exeter Subaru for Monday to bring the car in for their 25 point used car check in addition to the 75k mile service.

Andrew and I drove his WRX down to Rockville, CT to meet with William and pick up the Impreza L on Friday night. The ride down was uneventful and we made rather decent time. The drive back, however, was foreshadowing things to come.

Rewind a few days…

When I had originally test driven the car I red flagged a few things that would need to be looked at immediately after purchasing. First, there was a vibration above 65 MPH similar to an unbalanced wheel. No big deal, the wheels were a little beat up, and a remount and balance should fix everything. There was also quite a bit of oil sludge completely coating the underside of the motor that appeared to be leaking from the timing chain cover gasket. It was either splattering from a blown oil filter or the newly installed cam seals had started leaking. Again, an annoyance, but not a big deal.

Fast forward to Friday…

After exchanging paperwork with William I pulled out of the parking lot in the Impreza L with Andrew and Brian chasing me in their respective WRXs. FRS radios were fired up and we kept each other awake with the usual mindless banter. After getting onto the Mass Pike, however, I announced that the car felt a little weird and, since I needed fuel, we’d be stopping. I washed the windows, filled the tank with 87 and checked the wheels. The right rear wheel had lugs that were falling off. Andrew and Brian chuckled, fetched the tire iron and torqued everything down for the ride home. The rest of the ride was surprisingly smooth with the exception of the incredibly soft 5Zigen lowered springs on the car.

The car sat all day Saturday, we took Andrew’s WRX to the Ice Racing trophy presentation, had a party afterwards and took the Impreza L up to the Exeter meet on Sunday. We drove over to Kris’ afterwards, I checked the oil and…it was down two quarts.

After hanging until early evening, Kris and I went out to oil up the Impreza L for the drive home. Pop the hood, grab the seven ten cap and…it wouldn’t come off. It had been torqued down with an oil filter wrench so hard that we couldn’t move it with our bare hands. After many obsceneties were uttered and John and Jeremy came out to make fun of us we finally disassembed the oil filler tube, removed it from the motor, whacked it with a persuader, sprayed it with WD40 and went to town. Much fighting and it still wouldn’t budge.

Finally Kris got the idea to wedge the cap under the tire and make friendly with physics. He tried and failed, went inside for more tools and gave me a shot at it. Ten minutes and a cracked knuckle later, I finally dislodged the seven ten cap from the oil filler tube and reinstalled it. I laugh, or else I’ll cry.

Oil was topped off, the car was driven home and, so far, has not leaked a considerable amount of oil. Even after the drive to and from work and school there was very little oil on the outside of the filter. The seals are obviously shot but that will be fixed at the next oil change and service in a few miles. Only time will tell for sure…

William set up a time to pick up the car so Andrew and I will be driving down on Friday evening. On a side note, I stopped by HMS Motorsport today and the Sparco EVO3 seat has been released. It lists for $599 and they have some in stock to try out. Fat drivers unite!

My insurance company informed me this afternoon that I can simply pick up the new car, toss on my old plates and immediately start driving it. I have seven days to actually do the title transfer, registration transfer and migrate my current insurance policy over to the new VIN. Much easier than I thought it would be!

I drove down to CT this afternoon to inspect the Impreza and give William his deposit. It turns out that the car needs quite a bit of work for me to consider it as a daily driver, much less a rally car. The clutch is severely worn, or completely out of adjustment, because it doesn’t engage until the clutch pedal is almost completely released. There are also signs of motor oil covering most of the bottom of the engine and headers. I could actually push in a gasket that caused oil to drip out onto my finger. Luckily, gaskets are cheap and the clutch is getting replaced with a race spec one anyway.

The body, on the other hand, is 100% worthy of a rally car. Every single panel has taken damage of some sort and that eases my and my navigator’s mind because we won’t be destroying a car with a good looking shell. Minimal shell repair is required but quite a bit of Bondo will be used, along with Krylon, to fill in the scrapes and dents and give us a nice blank canvas for sponsorship regalia.