Tlag

250 miles with a 1/4 tank to go! I can only dream of those type of things. In fairness, my Legacy twin turbo is a bit different to your car, but I only get about 21mpg generally. 25mpg on a long steady run. Not with use of the fun pedal though. ;) I would have thought 28-30mpg was pretty achievable on yours. Probably a few more if being careful.

As Gambit says. The easiest route is to replace the whole engine. You would need different heads anyway and with your engine having so many miles on it, it would be easier. You will need the wiring loom, ecu, solenoid sytem that controls the turbo and of course the turbo itself, exhaust manifold, exhaust sytem. If you could get an accident damaged Impreza turbo, the easiest way is to swap everything from the Impreza. The cheapest way to do this is to sell your car and buy a turbo forester. You then just need to get it mapped to get it up to impreza power.

The temp gauge needle should be approximately in the middle and should stay put once up to temp. Some sit below the middle and some in the middle. Yours is too high to be normal. Before you drive it next, check your coolant levels. Top up if needed. Then go for a normal sort of drive until at least its up to temp. When you stop, before turning the engine off, open the bonnet and lift off the yellow cap on the expansion bottle just at the top right of the rad in your engine bay pic. When you look inside, you should see a handful of tiny bubbles and the coolant being fairly static and at the normal level. If you see the water bubbling, frothy and higher than normal, you have a problem. It means you have suspect head gasket failure. The way to confirm this is to get a sniff test done at a garage. No point looking for oil/coolant mix type mayo in the oil filler cap. Scoobies dont do that very often. I think the rad on yours looks like the normal one. It dosn't matter anyway. In fact, it makes bleeding the air out much easier. Ref, your earlier comment about changing the water pump. By all means do that, but take the opportunity to replace the timing belt at the same time. It has to come off anyway to change the water pump. Obvioulsy, if the head gaskets need doing, it will all come off anyway.

That's the Alps and was taken on our Epic Run in 2011. That's Adams car behind mine :)

Thought it was about time I added to this :D Heres my old RS saloon. Badly miss it :( The old meets the new (new one is directly in front. Bips to the right)

Standard gaskets on a car of your age were the paper/cardboard type. Later cars had the metal multi layer ones which are better. The general rule is always skim the heads when doing the gaskets on Subarus.

Sounds like head gaskets again. Usually happens if the heads were not skimmed last time

That's the metallic version of cashmere. Bips is a flat colour. I think the metallic was only available as an option on the s-edition. Great looking car and rare as hens teeth. Good luck with the sale

That's the ones. They come with bushes already inserted

Sounds to me like the near side issue is a worn bush at the top of the drop link and the off side issue is the bush at the bottom of the drop link. If that's the case, a pair of drop links will sort it out which can be got from import car parts for standard ones, or upgrades from various sources.

Happy New Year everyone. 2014 is going to be a blast :)

Not really sure until I get a dashboard to pieces, how to proceed. I made a bezel a few years ago for a carpc. I was quite pleased with the way it came out. (Bezel, not the PC). I wish now that I had done it in the air vents then. The PC project failed because I used the double din slot, which is quite low in the console and difficult to see.

I'm thinking about deleting the centre air vents and setting it in that area. I'd need to fabricate a bezel of some sort for it, so it kind of resembles a modern cars sat nav/I drive type thing.

That touchscreen thing I found, the sensors are all wired to a central box which can be hidden behind the dash. Then it's one wire from the box to the screen. No messing with OBD or ecu. Sounds good to me :)

Shame they don't do HUD's for cars. If it's good enough to fly a plane at high speed low level surely it would work for cars. The only aftermarket one's I've seen was just speed or satnavs. Having the guagues on the windscreen would be so much better. Defi used to do just that. I think it ran off the controller like the gauges do. Not seen one for a long time so I guess it's obsolete

That's only a 4.3inch screen too. Plus, it's touchscreen and can take up to 16 sensor inputs, so up to 16 gauges potentially to choose from. You can view 1-6 gauges at a time I think.

Thanks for the link Savage. Those pods are exactly what I don't want :) It has however made me spend some time surfing the net today. I think I've found what I want. Just a case of where to mount it.

I've looked at these for my project but am undecided. The draw for me is my dislike for the stereotypical 3 round gauge set up. It dosnt matter how may installs I've seen, they all seem a bit 'add on'. I know thay are add ons but I want something more to my liking and so far, that single gauge is the best I've seen. I'm still looking though :)

Just seen the latest news conference by the doctors. He's in an artificial coma and they have had to relieve pressure on his brain due to swelling by drilling holes in his skull. Sounds serious. Hope he pulls through.

The off side head is the same as the Impreza turbo. The offside is also the same except for having oil feeds at the rear for the other turbo. The oil galleries are present on the single turbo heads, but are blocked off. Where as an impreza has a two port solenoid on the offside suspension turret. The twin turbo Legacy has a solenoid box. A vastly over complicated vacuum powered system that was conceived by the devil himself. The vacuum system has a tank in the nearside inner wing which stores vacuum. The solenoid box is a rats nest of vacuum hose and solenoids. These control all aspects of the twin turbo system. The intercooler has two separate feeds, one from the primary and one from the secondary. The sump and pick up is the same as Impreza. Medchanically, the heads are the same, depending which model the Legacy heads come from. GTB are shims over buckets and GT are Shims under buckets. The twin set up has no additional sensors but plenty of solenoids in that box. I will try and find some pictures. If not, I will take some when I remove mine.

I have seen Damien's wide arch work. It's absolutely superb. Not sure how that would convert to a later estate, but that's in the future after the mechanical work anyway. My current twin turbo set up is just the standard GT-B set up. The vast majority of which will be coming out very soon. Any questions you may have about it, please ask.

Thanks for the comments guys. Looking forward to a project room :)

Wasnt sure in which section to post this, so opted for here for now. I did say, I would let you into my build idea at Christmas, so here goes. :) The car as it is right now Its a Subaru Legacy BG5 Twin turbo GT-B Ltd in Cashmere yellow. Its a bit of an oddball car to be honest. One or two things didnt stack up when I bought it so a bit of research was required. First, the roof. The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the lack of roof rails. Having taken the roof lining out, I can assure you that the factory did it. No signs of any work to fill any holes. That led me to find out that the only models that had no roof rails were either the BK model which the USA got but that had a flat roof, or the BG model that they called the 'racing wagon'. These were made to order for the track. The next item we found that was odd was the interior trim. Nothing matched. The front seats, the door cards and the rear seats all have different materials. The carpets were also just thrown in and not fixed down. Under the carpets were signs of a cage being fitted. At this stage I would have said it was probably used on track and then stripped of its best bits, and any old interior thrown in, just to sell it. What stops me saying that though, is, why use a Ltd model, with the rare front bumper and special trim fascia bits? Its all a bit odd. Anyway, its only been in the country for about 2 years and off the road in my ownership for over a year of that time. We bought it as 'spares or repairs'. This was due to the engine failing to start on occasion for the previous owner and various garages couldnt work out why. He didnt want to risk it any more and we bought it. Strangely, once we trailered it home, it was fine and work flawlessly for a few months. Then, one day it wouldnt start. Lights on dash but nothing else. Despite my knowledge of these cars, we just couldnt get it started. As I had another GT-B anyway, this got put on the back burner. Then, I came across these pictures: My first thought was similar to 'I want those wide wings'. Not sure about the full body kit, but the wings are just awesome. Thats where the plans started!!! I've never been particularly conservative when it comes to altering my cars. I dont like following trends. This was my last car that I owned for about 5 years and gradually it evolved into this. Anyway, I,m still looking onto bodywork mods that may or may not happen. Mechanically, however, things are changing. This is the work done so far: Complete loom change. (never did find out why the car wouldnt start, so stripped the entire loom out and started again) With the engine out, cleaning can start. Before! After. Next stage was to swap out the gearbox and rear diff. The Legacy ones are ok for up to about 340-350bhp. An upgrade was required, so a box and diff were aquired from a WRX and fitted. Its worth pointing out that at this point in time, the plan was to go for about 400bhp by changing the twin turbo setup for a single turbo. Its was just after the gearbox was fitted that my plans changed a bit. I managed to obtain a very good condition 2.5 nitrided bottom end for a good price. The plan was to use this in a single turbo conversion with a MD321T turbo and stage one was to reign it in to 400bhp for now before increasing power later with more supporting mods. It was whilst I was looking for a turbo that things changed again, with the arrival of a GT35 turbo. It was a bit of an impulse buy and only once I had it, I realised it needs rotated up and down pipes and external wastegate. This is fast becoming an expensive project. With so many changes so far, who knows where its going? I have actually collected some bits together for the original conversion, which I am now going to have to change for different items for the new plan. I used to be indecisive, now i'm not so sure :D This wont be a quickly built project, so please dont expect updates every week, although I will update as I go. :)

Subaru engines are interference engines, which means that when the timing is out (or belt breaks) the pistons and valves will hit each other. Some manufacturers engines are non interference but Subarus are.

Yeah, those black and white hairy kerbstones are a pita :)