It happened. On December 10th, somewhere on the eastern outskirts of the Royal Capital City of Kraków, I was greeted by the following sight:

Type R ready for pickup. For various reasons the whole thing dragged on a bit; what was supposed to be 3 weeks turned into 5, but honestly, it doesn’t bother me one bit. I really like how Mariusz worked on the car. We were constantly in touch, he answered all my questions, and every now and then I’d drop by to see the progress. And every single time it was the same: I’d say I was just stopping by for 10 minutes to see how things were going, and an hour later: “Alright, I’m heading out now, because I could honestly talk cars with you all day long”. Mariusz is clearly a true enthusiast - petrol runs through his veins - and, most importantly, he approaches everything with a craftsman’s precision and dedication.

There was already a post about the 3*555, now it’s time for another trio: the EJ20. It’s confirmed: the bearing waved goodbye.

Interestingly, it turned out that the Type R doesn’t have its original engine, one it left the factory with, but a different one, from an earlier model (93–96?). Crankshafts for those engines are no longer available, so even if I had any doubts about whether to rebuild or drop in a new short block, the lack of a crankshaft would have cleared them right up.

There’s no use crying, especially since the milk has long been spilled. The next thing I did after recording the video from the previous post was call Carfit. So, the plan is already in place: we’re going with a new short block, W20C - the strongest one.

Inside, the knocking

Bearing falls to the abyss

Silence rules - with death

It might not seem like much, but the 2*555 turned into 3. No surprise there, after all, Subaru is a disease, and it’s a progressive one. In my case, that’s definitely true. Another symptom was noticed on September 29:

After travelling halfway around the world, Subaru finally reports for duty in the Green Corner of Silesia.

The previous post gave a little teaser. The car is on its way - well, it’s pretty much here. The next port is ours. And since it had to cross both the Pacific and the Atlantic, not just the Atlantic alone, it’s high time to prepare the parts for the RHD/LHD conversion. You already know the donor: the GF, ever so slightly rolled over somewhere in the woods near Wrocław.

For now, just a teaser to whet your appetite. Tomek and I went near Wrocław to pick up this crunchy one:

It’ll be paired up with the STI (at least for a while):

Just as I started to feel like, after nearly three years with the Impreza, I was finally getting used to car’s wild character and constant readiness for craziness - I found this surprise under the hood:

The throttle and intercooler air duct hose decided to give up. The split runs around one-third of the circumference, and it looks like boost air must have been escaping through it. I’m wondering if that’s what I was sensing - maybe it was just running lower boost pressure? In any case, the hose had to be replaced. I bought this one:

To be honest, I was convinced that by this time the latent heat of vaporization would be automatically released thanks to my hobby project. However, holidays have their own rules, and the whole thing has been slightly delayed. Nevertheless, some very minor progress has been made.

I replaced the original four-liter tank with the Spec-C version, which has a capacity of twelve liters; I also removed the stand on which the smaller one was mounted - seems like a simple thing, but there’s one nut hidden underneath, in a rather non-obvious spot.

Maybe the Impreza isn’t a classic? Or maybe it’s not a classic just yet? But for sure it’s slowly approaching the “NLA” status — no longer available for purchase. And that’s exactly the status I saw while looking for 90871FE040 a replacement reinforcement panel for the scoop. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it’s been giving me gray hairs for a long time every time I opened the hood. So I finally decided to go to war with this wee plate.