Not a fan of the gold but nice photo!

Yeah some think it looks to flashy, but black and gold on a Subaru is best I think.

I agree it looks good here, I think its just my personal predjudice against the color lol. :D

It is a hard color to pull off, I agree. My current issue with the car is the damn pinstripe that the deal put on it way back when...it has sense become one with the paint and I will not be able to remove it.

dude....fantastic! I love it, black and gold...epic combo!

It is and epic combo!

super nice. i have a question though. what do you plan on doing for suspension? my car is a everyday driver so im gonna have adjustable coil overs. i'd be able to really lower it when i want the handling, and bring it back up for ride comfort. im also gonna be rolling my fenders and running 8 in wide tires on either 16 or 17 inch rims. havent decided yet. its gonna be sweet though

oh yeah, and wanted to say its totally bad ass to find another "furry" (or whatever) on FA thats totally into Subaru's. its really rare.

For the suspension at the moment I have KYB AGX struts and Eibach Pro springs with Group N top hats, 20mm WRX rear sway bar, and front and rear strut tower braces. I hope that you know that coilovers on a DD car is over kill right? Unless you plan on tracking the car a good strut and spring combo would give you both good ride comfort and a stiff suspension when you need it. I recommend the KYB AGX struts as they are adjustable and the guys in the GC (93-01 Impreza) community love them. I would say try a OEM sized 16, 205/55/R16 that is just super sticky, such as Star Spec's, as that would be better than a wide cheap tire that has low grip, trust me I know. The 2.5 RS five spokes like I have a 16x7 wheel just FYI.

oh, its all good. a friend of mine is gonna help me out with most of the suspension stuff cause he has all the equipment, but i had all the stuff for pulling and overhauling engines, so we share. im still waiting for word on exactly "what" tires im gonna run. believe it or not i really didnt want to do anything cause im really into ride comfort, but after everything my friend did to his honda, i was convinced. oh, and im super excited cause just today i received a set of cross drilled and slotted rotors for the front and back of my Subaru. it stops fast for an older car with 4 wheel disc brakes, but with these rotors and ceramic pads, its gonna be neck breaking fast at stopping.

wow i got off track. didnt give whats going related to what you got going. since im new to the suspension and got my friend handling this (he owes me BIG time for some shit he got me in) he will be taking care of getting the sway bar, strut tower braces, and a good set of coil overs. (and yes, i actually said i wanted them for "said" reason before in last post.) i will give my recommendations to my friend and see what he says. but damn, i think the shit you told me will be alot of help. and as for tires, im actually thinking something smaller now. i found a set of 15 inch Peugeot rims that fit with modding. anything else i have to mod the bolt pattern but thats not too hard. i have i read up on it. either way everything takes money, which not all people have. my car is in the making and will probably take a year before it is exactly how i want it. but my TD04L turbo is coming next month ^.^

yeah I got my car in 08 and its still a work in progress, and brakes are fun, I have a WRX brake swap and an legacy master cylinder for a non-ABS car and now she stops like no other.

nice. thats one thing i love about my Subaru is its not a model with ABS. i have seen a few that actually have the ABS, but they are all the automatic transmission ones, mines a 5 speed AWD. i didnt have one before this, a 1987 Subaru GL with the same engine, but carborated, and it had the 5 speed dual range transmission. in 4 low, that car could go up any hill.

yeah, I am a non ABS impreza L as it was an option that they didn't get and its a 5 speed as well. Most of the 25.RS's came with ABS but most people disable it as the older ABS is a bit of a pain in the rear.

yo hey, i wanted you to hear some stuff from Subaru experts and guru's about your swap.

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum.....d.php?t=120785

oh, and if your not already signed up, this is the place to be.

Yeah not liking the vibe of people there, they seem a little arrogant about what they 'know'...seems that they dont really look at the cars in a performance aspect, rather as a reliable work horse. Not my cup of tea. I tend to stay on RS25.com, the place for the GC Impreza, and my local board.

the EJ22 is extremely reliable. dont you see. your getting the best of both worlds with the EJ22. power, and the fact that it will stay together forever even with heavy modding. my engine on the other hand.....

hey, could you post a pic of your motor. been a while since ive seen a good EJ22 ^.^

totally kept forgetting to fav this.

While the 2.2 may be reliable, as soon as you boost the N/A motors bad things can and will happen. For it to be proper I would have to pull the motor and build it then have customized engine management on a aftermarket ECU, as the 93-98 GC ECU's are not tune-able. I would rather just swap a turbo motor in and do that, cheaper, quicker and more reliable when it comes to power mods. You can see the progress from start to current at: http://www.rs25.com/forums/f145/t10.....-gc-build.html

looks great. hopefully everything goes as smoothly as it has been for ya all the way through.

oh, and i asked the biggest Subaru expert on that forum. he said you should get a EJ25D block, build it, throw out the heads and use the ones from a EJ22. he says they call it, the Frankenmotor. he says it will save you a lot of $$$ and be great for modding and reliability. just somethin to think about, ya know. its your car.

I was looking at the EJ207 as thats an STi motor that revs to about 8,000 and has a good power band. The 2.2 head flow like shit, with as high as the 207 revs that would blow the valves out and cause some major damage...I am looking to get a full V7 STi swap and call it good there, now that will run me about 5K just for the motor and trans but the EJ207 is a very reliable and powerful motor.

you be doing 4 wheel burnouts. make sure you get a pic of that for me. and you might want to stay away from that 25d. the 207 is a much better idea. plus, you should get better milage, seeing as you'd be running a smaller displacement. but turbo motors can surprise. my little 1.8 turbo can get 30mpg, but as soon as you start getting on it at all, your milage takes a huge shit. i can through a full tank in half a days worth of hot rodding, and my car runs on premium fuel. talk about ouch. anyway, good luck.

I would have to have either shit for tires or more than 1,000 hp before an AWD burnout would happen. I can get the 25D for cheap, running none the less, and no, lower displacement does not equal better millage. With a tune on E85 I would look to get about 23MPG combo, better than now, yeah, but that's a little on the low end for the EPA estimate on MPG for the WRX.

wow, that sucks. so even if your nice, your still gonna get shitty milage? oh well, thats not why i want a Subaru anyway. and i have personally seen people do 4 wheel burnouts in WRX's with only 580 hp. you just gotta make sure your torque doesnt fall behind. you gotta build the tranny and have a good clutch and such. so yeah, have fun ^.^ i know i would never have too. thats i why i have old cars -.-

Yeah, thats what happens when you get a tune looking for power and torque rather than gas mileage. If I wanted good mileage I would have gotten a Honda. Torque is more important for burnouts rather than HP, and the newer Subarus are not 4WD, we are all AWD, so a burnout is not good for the drive-train. With more power come more drive-train strain, I would be looking at putting a JDM STi 5 speed with DCCD in the car, strong and DCCD!

about the EJ207, i dont really know much about it, so i asked the Subaru tech on the forum im on and he said this:

The "old" WRX engine - that's a lot more work. He's talking about a turbo swap. Probably has no idea that this will ulimately cost more than he paid for the car.

It's an *ok* engine - if you don't mod it much it makes 235 HP and will do so for a long time. They handle some mild modding but they have all the drawbacks of any other DOHC engine - expensive to maintain and expensive to swap because of the turbo. Almost need a donor car for that.

no, im trying to be dick, im just trying to help because when it comes to car, i may not know all the goods, but i know almost all the bads. but the 207 was really something i didnt have experience with and thats why i asked. oh, he mentioned modding, im not aware if your doing modding or not, i never asked.

What board are you on, and I wouldnt trust his word if he doesnt know the difference between the EJ207 and the EJ205. I think hes was thinking about the EJ205, the USMD 2002-2003 WRX motor, and there is nothing wrong with that motor as thats the common swap that the GC guys do. The EJ207 is the 2.0L JDM WRX STi motor that is revived in the performance community as one of the best motors. I know that a turbo swap will be a lot but the 2.2 is just to slow. Those motors will take about 270-290 HP just fine on E85, we have a few WRX's and swaped GC's that have the 205 with no problems in that HP range. As for a swap, yeah you would need a donor car, but I could get a wrecked WRX from auction for 4-5K and that would have everything that I need for the swap, anything that I dont use, such as interior, I could sell and make some money back. I am modding my car, its actually rather modded from the stock L that I got initially. I know your just trying to help, but the places you go are not to knowledgeable when it come to swapping the older Impreza's it would seem.

oh, see you said ej207, not 205. you got me lost.

Sorry about that, but yeah, the 205 is a quick and easy swap, but the 207 is my dream swap!

either way you still have to pull your wiring harness. but when you know what your doing its quite fun. i have been helping a friend of mine with a motor swap in a 1991 Honda Prelude.

Yeah, the wiring will be the tough part, the mechanical stuff is easy. I have done wiring before, on a 72 Porsche, but my car has 100X more wires.

yeah, they usually do. the new wiring harness for my friends honda went in as one piece. but, taking it out, there was soooooooo much wiring that he finally said "screw it" and started cutting it all to pieces. the old one came out much better after that. oh, hey, i know this might be weird to ask (for both of us) but if you dont mind would you keep your old wiring harness and not cut it all to pieces. i would like to buy it from you cause im gonna end up doing a EJ22 swap into my 1988 GL-10 station wagon. i cant tell by looking at your pics that nothing in your car with the electrical is monkey fucked, and thats exactly what im looking for. i cant find a good wiring harness locally cause all the cars here are fucked by people who dont know what they are doing when something goes wrong, or some major part of the wiring harness got wet or severed in a wreck. so yeah. i'd like to have your old harness, if you please.

Sadly I will have to merge my harness with the turbo harness to make the whole car work and to get the ECU to work. Look in your local junk yards and there should be a clean car there with a clean harness. Thats the part of wiring that I have to look forward to when I get around to my swap.

yeah well, the easy thing about my car is that the EJ22 swap is so common, that they make adapters for it. and like i said, its almost damn near impossible to find a good one where i live. on my car i have to pull out every single bit wiring, which means pulling the dash (the hardest part) pulling the front seats, and then disconnecting every little connector in the whole car, and the wiring harness will come out as one piece. and the ej22 harness is easily adapted to the old connectors for like the dash, controls, light, ect.

Yeah we have to pull the dash, but we have to merge the connectors here as the OE GC ones match some of the newer WRX or STi connecters but some for radio and such have to be spliced in. Its a shame your not in CO we have tons of 2.2's out here that just get crushed as not many people pull the motors or the harnesses.

damn, i bet could have even bought a spare motor for cheap. that sucks. i hate hearing about perfectly good cars getting crushed. for example, that stupid cash for clunkers bullshit. did you know that when you gave your for cash for clunkers, they run liquid glass in the engine till it seizes up, then crush the cars and will not allow people to take parts from them. when the CFC (my short for cash for clunkers) happened here, there were hundreds of perfectly good old cars and suv's (and some that actually were pos) and every single car got crushed. so stupid.

Most of the cars here have rear-end damage or something else wrong with them, the number of Subarus in the yards here rival the Hondas as were the Subaru capital of the west. With the CFC the cars and trucks got destroyed, but the bodies were parted out first. They painted the motor and trans bright green and had them all in a special row.

lmao, big mess up. meant to say "not trying"

Those wheels suit it well!