1987 Subaru XT turbo, progress!

[joostvdw]

Another day, more rust, more welding!
Last time I almost finished the passenger side wheel well, I just needed to rebuild the lower seatbelt mount. After that seam sealing the welds and making it all look pretty(ish)






I obviously needed to remove the carpet to be able to weld the seatbelt mount in and I found a couple of cms of water in the car  I already had the moonroof sealed shut, but apparently there was another hole somewhere. So after some searching, I found this old repair including some new holes..


Since I would’ve had to remove the entire dash to make sure I wouldn’t set the liner on fire when welding new steel in AND since I don’t have time to remove the dash, I used red-oxide paint to stop the rust and seam sealer to stop the water.

Not pretty, but it will have to do. I am pleased to inform you though that it helped and the car is dry again 
Time to move on to the other wheel well!



Look familiar?




Same story here.





Stupid double walled wheel wells..


I intentionally welded it in slightly recessed so I could do this


Then I had to reinvent the leading edge of the, eh, can’t think of the English word right now, just look at the pictures






By this time I was running out of steel, so I had to use all sorts of tiny pieces of off-cuts to weld in :roll:
Then I found some more rust, sadly, exactly at the mounting point of the rear suspension..



Just a small hole left to fill, but it was getting dark and I needed the car back together and on it’s wheels since this is my workplace

That’s it for now, feel free to comment

[CIH]

Two-Tone! Always!

[joostvdw]

Ever since I had this car I was on the lookout for a intercooler to fit since it didn't have one stock and could really use the extra cooling. So I tried a WRX TMIC, but that wouldn't fit at all. Tried an AWIC from a legacy, but that didn't fit either (no surprise there). The one intercooler that came close was from a ford probe 2.2t.



As you can see, the outlets are nowhere near where they need to be. And this is where the fun starts. I decided to try out a duraweld/alutite/alumiweld product and relocate the outlets myself.




So off with the stock outlets and some blanking plates made up.




Then some new outlets made in a different spot





And a simple check, yes, it's quite solidly mounted


But I still have my doubts about it, it seems more like a sort of glue than a weld. It doesn't seem to flow like normal solder and doesn't like to be reheated so it's really a hit or miss for the entire joint.



It does seem to fit though

[Brickborg]

Epic! I really do love this car, and it looks like you're doing it justice.

[Siert]

Nice! I've had a ride in one of the very few original Dutch ones about 12 year's ago. Not sure if its still owned by the same couple, haven't seen them for a long time.

[faiz]

That is just too cool!!
Love it! Any chance you could lower it a tad more?
I reckon a little bit more of an aggressive stance would make it look mean as hell!!

[joostvdw]

Thanks for all the positive comments guys, gives me just a bit more motivation to keep going

faiz, I'm currently looking into lowering it some more, but believe it or not, it's already about 6cm lower than original! There is more room in the coilovers to lower it some more, but suspension travel is becoming an issue. Biggest problem though are the shocks, I need to stiffen up the rear konis (thankfully adjustable) and make my own red konis for the front, but that will be after all the welding

@siert, Nice! You don't happen to remember where it was or who they were? There aren't a lot XT left so if it's still running about I probably know where it is Remember any particular details about the drive, it's always fun to hear from someone else about these cars

[joostvdw]

Today, some good news and some bad news. The good news is I have these (I do actually have 4, just couldn't find the 4th one)



I guess most of you know what these are, but those of you who don't, they are helper springs and keep the normal coil-over springs seated at maximum suspension travel. Since it's required by law here that the springs stay seated at all times, I couldn't lower my car anymore without breaking the law (oh my!). And with these new springs thats a thing of the past. I'm also on the lookout for red koni inserts for the golf 2 and jetta 2, apparently, they can be made fit in my front struts meaning a 10cm shorter strut and better dampening:)

I also finished some of my earlier welding, but forgot to take any pictures so I'll just skip to the bad news.

More rust





There is also a small hole in the front wheel well, but I haven't been able to reach it yet, so more to come on that.

And whilst cleaning it up, the knot wheels caught something, slipped out my hands and destroyed part of the wiring



Guess that can go on the ever increasing "things-I-managed-to-make-worse" list.

It really is, two steps forward, one step back on these kind of repairs. Tomorrow should be better

[joostvdw]

Another small update It's not going as fast as I would like, but since the holidays are over, I have to do this between going to college and only when it's nice outside (which it's not). But, sunday I had some more time

I decided to fix the driversside front wing, it had some nasty rot in it and I had a donor repair piece from the US to weld on. I think I must've measured it 10 times to make sure the first cut was right where it needed to be and whilst doing so, I totally forgot to take a picture of it but here are the results








It fits! It's not even bolted on yet, so it will only get better

There was some more rust on the wing and I repaired that as well:










Just needs a skim of filler and some sanding and then it will be ready.

I also had a dig around (literally) in almost a cm of filler, you can just see the hole I was digging towards. Strangely enough, it was like this from the factory?



Also, a shot of the rear sill I repaired earlier but forgot to take a picture of;)


And then finally, the repair inside the front wheel well. It was hidden behind tons of filler (the white line you can see to the left of the welded in panel is a side view (!) of the layer of filler that was on there) but it wasn't rusted and it doesn't look to bad. It was there for atleast 5 years and since it still looks good, I'm tempted to just leave it be and cover it up again. What do you think about it?

[Siert]

Some nice repairs there!

I send you a PM last week with everything I can remember about that other Dutch XT (which frankly isn't much)

[joostvdw]

Progress has been slow due to me not having a lot of time to work on it, but I managed to sneak some in between college, the weather and life. It’s a rather big update, but the pictures will tell 


After all this, the welding was done! So a celebratory beer whilst enjoying the sun was in order

All the finished corners/pieces, doesn’t look like much actually..


Then I fitted some SS brake lines, I’m hoping this will solve the poor braking.

To make sure the new sections would stay rust free, I decided to paint them using POR15 chassis paint.

The salesman advised me to put a piece of plastic bag between the can and lid to make sure it wouldn’t glue itself shut. So far it seems to work pretty well 

Since POR15 alone isn’t good enough I wanted to coat it in bodyshutz, I borrowed a small air compressor and a spraygun and got to work.


After weeks of working, the boot has become quite a mess and I decided to clean it out, I never knew I could fit so much junk in the back of my car!

Apparently I like hoseclamps or I forgot to put a lot back…

Don’t know where this came from? I certainly don’t golf.

Another intercooler I got from the junkyard, this one may actually fit without modifications

Whilst the interior was out, I decided to use a little trick I learned when I worked in a small garage years ago. The seat was sagging quite a bit and I had an idea as to why. As you can see in the pictures, the metal wires are cutting into the foam which has hardened over the years and even compressed some. These two things combined meant I lost almost 3cms of seat height! So, I cut a floor tile to size, worked it between the wires and the foam (you’ll need gloves because everything on the underside of a seat is sharp for some reason) and hey presto, a “boosted” seat To be honest, I haven’t even sit on it yet, but it even looks less saggy, so I’m confident it’ll make a difference.

To make sure the insides didn’t rust away again, I used a liberal dose of waxoyl using my patented delivery system

And then today, I spray painted my wheel arch repair, the color match is not too bad (it got better after this picture) but the surface finish is horrible. I haven’t clear coated it, I’m going to polish it first to see how shiny I can get it. Then when I paint the lower half of the car (for the two-tone) I’ll clear that whole section in 1 go.

Right, that got you up to date, hope you enjoyed reading it, there is more to follow As ever, feel free to comment.

[ettorebugatti]

Wow, not any complaints of the neighbours?

I like the monotone colour scheme, you only need to wind the coilovers down.

[joostvdw]

Nah, I live on a student campus, so I'm surrounded by students who don't care

I really would like to drop it some more, but that means instand MOT failure and I won't have any suspension travel or comfort left, so it'll probably stay like this.

[bowler]

Nov 4, 2011 0:46:07 GMT joostvdw said:

Nah, I live on a student campus, so I'm surrounded by students who don't care

I really would like to drop it some more, but that means instand MOT failure and I won't have any suspension travel or comfort left, so it'll probably stay like this.

I do care! Get that piece of rusted solid metal out of my front yard!

[ettorebugatti]

Haha, you might be carefull with saying that. Your Saab need work at some point in time.

don't see any problems for the APK by dropping it and surely it will have some travel left.

[joostvdw]

Didn't realise you were dutch as well.

If I were to lower it more, the springs are no longer seated in the spring perches and that is instant APK failure I'm afraid. I've bought some helper springs, but they are the wrong I.D. so they catch on the coil-over sleeve... I need to get it on the road first, then I'll see about the suspension, I have some more tricks up my sleeve (pun intended ).

bowler; Ssht! It's public road, not your front yard And even if it were, it's my front yard as well, so stop complaining

[joostvdw]

Long time no update as nothing really happened!

All the welding and spraying is done, it's almost rustproof (it's never completely free of rust, it's an old car remember?) but it's still not running right, I've lost all mojo to work on it since I have no clue what to do. I doesn't run right but I can't for the life of me find what's wrong with it. Ironically it did pass it's MOT/APK recently with no work/advisories. That's the pay-off of all my hard work

Last time I was investigating the coolant sensor and fuel pressure/flow. Both turned out to be perfectly fine and not the cause of my problems. It almost seems as if the only to get this thing to drive right is swap in a EJ (impreza/legacy) engine.

(I was looking for an online picture of this car, found my own thread and decided to update it. In case you were wondering why )

[79cord]

Glad to hear it's together again, even if it does still need sorting before you can enjoy it.

[joostvdw]

Looks like I *might* have fixed it!

I recently pulled the upper intake manifold to see if the gaskets have failed, at this point in time I've tried every trick in the book to check for vacuum leaks to no avail. It still did sound (and run) like it had a vacuum leak, so time to replace the gaskets then.

When I removed the manifold I was greeted with an incredible amount of hard and soft lines bundled under the intake. Some were fuel, some were vacuum, other were for the EGR system and they all had to go! So I pulled everything off and started fresh. Choosing what parts to keep, what to replace and what to throw away I ended up with the bare necessities complemented with new fuel/vacuum lines. I also fitted a new adjustable fuel pressure regulator (which I used to upped the pressure ,5 bar) and replaced all relevant gaskets.

Since then it idles more steadily, starts easier, higher engine vacuum under all conditions (except when boosting obviously) and it seems to run a lot better overall. Just need it to be a bit more frugal on the gas and then I'll be satisfied

[dikkehemaworst]

Did it work out?
Does it run?
did the intercooler stay in ine piece?
Keep the updates coming please
groet frans