On the Road

Well, Green is finally on the road, all fixed up (mostly) and legal (mostly). I'll have to say that the car is more fun to drive than I thought. Pretty peppy for a non-turbo 4-cylinder car, and of course the AWD system gles it to the road. There's a few curvy roads I look forward to trying out. I did notice a little more road noise and "feel" compared to y LSi wagon, but the cars are from two different levels, so that's to be expected. I will miss my leather seats, but the ones in Green will be fine, I think. I for sure need cruise control, so hopefully within month I can pull what I need off the donor car and get cruise working on Green. That's the joy of buying an older car: you're never finished little projects on it. But, as a whole, I suppose this is the completion of Project Green Machine...

Mini Tune-Up

Today I changed the oil in Green, replaced the air filter, and replaced the spark plugs. The plugs were Champion, so I know hey weren't the original set, but they did show some wear/age. I put NGK back in. I never had such a struggle with simple things as I did getting the plug wires out the heads on this thing. Anyway here's a few pics of the old plugs and of this handy spark plug starter tool I've had since my mom gave it to me way back during my freshman year at college.

Green Light for Green...

Well, I got word last night that all the paperwork went through at Frankfort OK and that Green is ready to legally hit the pavement. I'm going to add it to my insurance policy tomorrow and start driving it on Saturday. I've got a few little things left to do, like finish the install of the roof rack fog lights, and then re-install the center console with the new fog light power switch. The mount tabs for the grille were mostly busted in the crash (both of them), so I'll have to secure the grille to the radiator support a little better too. Oh, and the wheel swap. I'm taking the alloy wheels off my 95 LSi wagon and putting those onto Green. I had hoped to buy some wheels for Green, but these will have to do until I find a decent deal on some. My Legacy rims will look much better than plastic wheel covers, though.

See you on the road!

Almost There...

Well,Green is together...for the most part. There are still some little things to do, but hopefully the poilce inspection will happen this week and all the paperwork can be processed in Frankfort. If all goes well, I will be putting a license plate on Green this Saturday and driving down the highway. I did drive it around the road a little today, which was neat. I like the fit/feel of the car. It was a cold, windy, rainy day today, so this isn't the best photo. Hopefuly, I'll have better shots next week.

Almost there...

The weekend was a progressive one as far as getting Green to actually look like a car again. It felt great to see that it wouldn't be long until this project would soon be finished and on the road. The body work that my frame guy did was great! Most people would never be able to tell that this is a rebuilt vehicle by popping the hood.

Not Exactly a Match...

Well, the donor car was the exact same color/shade of green, but the two-tone turned out to be a different shade. This pic will show the difference. This would include the front bumper and the leftt fender. I have no plans as of now to re-paint. I will, however, pull off the pinstriping and replace with some that better matches what is on the rest of Green.

Undercover

One of the other accessories found in the 2000 OBS donor car was this nifty cargo cover. Also in the back was the rubber Impreza cargo mat. They look nice in their new home.

Light it up

The donor Impreza had a few more options than Green. One of the things I wanted was these nifty driving lights that were factory. I snagged the dash button, which already had the wiring clip in Green, so that was pretty simple. The actual wiring harness for the lights themselves had to be removed from the donor car and plugged into a clip that was at the left headlight plug. Rote the wires behind the bumper cover, mount the lights, and I'm good to go...

Timing is everything.

Well, Green was all straightened out, but after pulling back the radiator/fan assembly, it was discovered that the timing cover had been cracked/busted in a few places. So-off came the old cover, and I decided it was best to go ahead and replace the timing belt now, at 71k, than to wait 30k and have to get access to the thing all over again. It was already opened, so why not change it...