A Subaru Love Story.. ((advice neededdd))

[CertifiedGMG]

Hi guys, this my first post so apologies if this ends up falling into a category elsewhere on the site.. Anyway with that said, let’s jump straight in.. 

So I’ll give you a bit of background on myself first. I’m a true sports car enthusiast. I’ve had too many to list and I say that in the humblest way possible. No I’m not rich, I’m far from it. Just have a passion for sports cars and I guess spend money on them when others wouldn’t 🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️😂.. Anyway, back to the point. So, around 2013 I got my hands on my first Subaru Impreza WRX. It was an 2002 “bugeye” in WRC blue. Running “280BHP” as I was told 😂😂.. I travelled to Wales from London to buy it which I managed to grab for £2000!! Was well happy. She was in need of some very minor tlc engine wise (which was GREAT but also very lucky as the owner sold it to me thinking she was a dud thus the £2k price tag and I took a GAMBLE hoping it was an easy fix... Spraying Oil leak😱), but boy did she move and that AWD system was amazing, AUDI’s QUATTRO hands down is pants compared to SUBARU. I’m just throwing that out there!!! I was hooked instantly with the feel of the WRX! That car managed to hold me down for a good year, maybe more. That’s a LONG time for me as I have been known to change cars within a space of weeks before.. I could go on forever here but I guess the point of this introduction is that out of every car I’ve owned I always end craving/needed/feeling a Subaru Impreza! 😂. The bug is real and I definitely have a bad case of it which finally brings me on to the actual point of this post....... 

Around last year September I was sitting down with the missus and said as a “joke😂” 

“I’m gonna get another Subaru like that red 350BHP one we had”

You know trying to gauge the reaction lol. She didn’t seem to react badly to the idea.. I went on to say we can keep the family car (at the time was a 2007 318i 😴😴😴) and get a fun weekend car to drive “here and there” lol.. She honestly didn’t seem to mind the idea, so the next few months I spent working hard making money and finding that “perfect Subaru”. In November I came across it. There it was. £3750 for a 2003 “blobeye” running 353BHP and boy did she look mean. This was no standard looking WRX. I call it my “dream Impreza” as it literally has EVERYTHING “I” would want on a Subaru Impreza. (Apart from two things😂🤦🏽‍♂️ Needs mudflaps lol, and the colour scheme is wrong.. WRC blue and Black for me 100%, but she’s silver and black)...

So of course I contacted the seller straight away as this was well within my budget already!! I was sceptical as it had 141k on the dash but that ended up being the least of my worries as the guy went on tell me that the car now had a new hybrid VF35 turbo installed with bigger 2016 STI internals(it does actually have this). He insisted the car was perfect engine wise and all it needed was the turbo to be finished being fitted properly (not said in ad at all) which was literally 95% done at this point as he said a buyer pulled out on the sale recently after leaving a deposit for the new turbo etc. (Damn this sounds so dumb when you type it out in hiensight lol🤦🏽‍♂️).. I asked him what he would take on it and the guy told me £2500!!!! I couldn’t believe how lucky I was!! I went over his story of why the turbo was replaced and all the other background checks you do leading up to buying a car and it all SEEMED legit.. I went to his house which was more of a mansion on a posh estate than a house lol, and the car seemed to be cool. I ended up taking it, I had seen it idle “quickly” his story checked out, he seemed decent and honest.. I grabbed my balls and went along with the sale. I Loved the car! I Hadn’t even driven it yet but it looked friggin aweeeeesommme bro! He had rigged up his mate to collect the car from his place on his flatbed truck days prior to me buying the car and told me he had to go out to a dinner but assured me that his friend would be with me by 6:30/7pm. It was now coming up to 6pm... I was happy with that. I’d been in his parents house, drank a cup of tea, done all the paper work etc. Nothing seemed dodgy. So I waited. Got to 6:30pm, hadn’t heard a thing so I called this guy, whos number I had been given.. The man on the other end told me he’s running late and is just finishing work now so is heading HOME to get changed and he will be with me by 7:30/8pm latest!!! Now I’m starting to get !Removed! off but I remain calm as loosing my temper and arguing will only result in me being stranded outside this guys house 100+ miles away from my home... So I went with it. At 8pm I called him to see where he was now.. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT THIS GUY TURNED AROUND AND SAID TO ME THAT HE IS NO LONGER ABLE TO DO THE JOB AS ITS GOT TOO LATE NOW!!!! I was shocked, infuriated, pleadful (if that’s even a word lol) and outright disgusted with how someone could mess with somebody’s life in such a way.. I tried asking this guy for a good hour, the sellers parents came home and even tried to help me persuade him but he didn’t budge. I had to leave my new Subaru on this guys drive and head back home in my BMW.. What a terrible day!! I was PISSSSSED!! So the next day I thought f*** it I’m just gonna drive back up there with my brother, fix the Subaru there as it sits and drive it back home. It’s mine now right, who can tell me otherwise?? So on that day we did go back up there. I got the bits all reassembled and good to go in about 2-3hrs. What an achievement.... I thought... So I turned her on, she sounded great, until the idle settled at which point I instantly noticed a terrible misfire. I hoped it was just the oil clearing from when the turbo blew recently as the seller did warn me it will be smokey until the oil was cleared through the system. This was not the case. I had gone and bought a lemon!! The engine was gone!! However I didn’t know this on that day. I did end up getting it back home. Just about. The car ran lumpy the whole way, it had little to no boost. Backfiring, smoking, juddering. It was bad.. Real bad.. Few weeks later I managed to get her down to a mates garage nearby. He confirmed my worst nightmare.. The engine needed rebuilding! I was gutted! I didn’t have the funds to repair the car but at the same time the car literally HAS EVERYTHING on it, so if a Subaru Impreza has ever deserved a new engine this is for sure a TOP candidate! So me being the Subaru lover I am, went about working hard and saving for my new engine. A few months later, I had raised enough comfortably to afford to be able to get the engine rebuilt/replaced... That being said I didn’t have loads so my options were still kind of limited, I had a budget of £2500. 

Were now in February 2018, I still haven’t been able to drive my Subaru that I bought in November 2017 and I’ve managed to find a company close by that have a brand new reconditioned engine they can supply and fit for £2000. I gave them the car and two weeks later got my beast!! (With a new engine, clutch kit, cam belt kit and water pump 😉) I was so happy when I collected it! Finally I could appreciate that Subaru power and roar!! (Even though the first 500 miles are break in miles).. I drove the car everywhere, completely abandoned my other car lol. But can you believe that I got to 541 miles in the new engine and the car blew itself up againnn!!! I was devastated!! I called the company straight away who were very apologetic and collected the car (under warranty of course) That was just under two months ago to this day.. I spoke to the owner of the garage at the beginning of this week who told me the cars had a dodgy custom map put on it, which is something I’ve suspected from day one. So one of the injectors were over fueling which caused the cylinder to fail.. He said the car needs to be reset back to a stock ECU setting and then remapped again! In the meantime he’s said a technician has come down and recalibrated the injector to the right value and is now talking about I could just swap out my current ecu for an STi one which apparently has all the same numbers so will be plug and play. Is this possible or am I being fed a line here? It’s more beneficial in his favour for him to sell me the remap route I would have thought as that’s £400 he said. The STi ecu is £110 “plug and play”. He says sorting this ecu issue will then make the car 100% safe to drive again. What’s your thoughts on this? What would you do? Is an STI ecu straight compatible with an WRX? Does it need coding etc?? What about gearing? STis are 6MT, WRX 5MT.. Does the gears matter in regards to swapping ecus?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you for reading!

 

Some pics of my beloved scooby 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

 

 

[savage bulldogs]

Sounds like you've had a rollercoaster entry into scooby ownership .

Although it does look like you've got a lot of scooby for your money afaik the 2013 scooby is a 2.5 ltr so the pistons wouldn't fit into a 2ltr block .

A uk sti ecu would run pink injectors and vf35 but different cams and possibly compression ratio . I also noticed that your new scoob has a fmic and that wouldn't be on a standard sti map , so although it would be plug n play I'd suggest a bespoke remap (especially if its running a decat too )

For the sake of the extra £500 a remap would not only get the most from your mods but be much safer considering it has mods and a possible  hybrid engine 😉

[CertifiedGMG]

Yh mate this time around it’s not been nice at all. I’ve nearly had the car a year now and have literally driven it for about 3 weeks and ONLY felt it’s full 353 horses OnCE!! (The following day the engine gave up again as mentioned above) but *sigh* this is what you have to do sometimes I suppose and I just keep telling myself the end result will be ammmmmazzzing haha! 

I actually went to the garage earlier today as now the guy has told me he’s had a second opinion and instead of it being a map issue it was the o2 bank sensor this whole time messing up the fuelling! So know he has said she will be ready to go by Monday once the new lambda sensor has been fitted and calibrated.. fingers crosssed.. 

oh yh and I 10000% want a nice custom dyno tune put on her at some point in the near future hopefully.. Any good places local to me? I’ve never had a remap done before! I’m in the South London area..

Cheers