Postcards from the Pleiades.
Irregular, not necessarily chronological.
Results of work or notes related to places and times, rather than strict knowledge about cars.
Primarily a record of what’s happening, but also a nod to Subaru and the wider Subie family.
Today I found a bit of time to do a conversion of JDM headlights to bi-xenon. The original headlights aren’t suitable for use on our side of the road, so the conversion seems like a good idea. I ordered a kit from HIDRetrofit, which includes:
The new wiring harness is made quite neatly, (almost) all connectors are waterproof Superseal types. However, the layout itself is poorly thought out and doesn’t make for a tidy routing in the engine bay. Number 1 in the photo below is the power supply from the car harness, 2 is the bulb connector, and 3 is the high-beam solenoid connector. No matter how hard you try to arrange and fit it, 2 and 3 end up almost at opposite ends of the loom. The solenoid connector is of particularly poor quality, to the point that the pins in the left projector completely fell apart and I had to solder those wires permanently.
Act I - Introduction
A detective and his partner: an aging veteran and his alter ego, twenty years
younger. They make a perfect duo. One night, he watches her onstage in a local
pub, playing with a band, radiant with life and joy. It’s the moment we
understand she won’t survive the next scene.
Act II - Confrontation
A murder with no witnesses, no clear motive, only a symbol left at the crime
scene, connected to a series of unsolved cases. The detective falls into an
obsessive state, trying to solve the mystery of his partner’s death.
This is a story similar to 90871FE040 – NLA. Unfortunately, the GC8 has reached the point where certain parts have simply become impossible to obtain. That’s exactly the case with 83082FA110OE and 83082FA090OE - the window switch housings for LHD facelift coupes.
Admittedly, having the switches the wrong way around is a small thing, but it’s one of those details that separates an OK car from one that’s truly worth remembering (or so I’d like to think).
For years I’ve had a keen eye for licence plates. Back in the UK I’d find myself, almost subconsciously, checking them all the time. You get so many good ones. Pure vanity aside, plates like “B16 BOB”, “BO55 MRK”, there are matching his-and-hers sets, initials, business references. Some can get super creative as well. I remember when we had windows fitted and two vans showed up with something along the lines of “S4 SSH” on one and “CA5E WIN” on the other.
64983 km
327784 km
331741 km
332430 km
342351 km
154703 km
155102 km
I’d like to think that the wheels of the TDT bureaucracy are grinding away at my application (exemption for the short VIN). In the meantime, I managed to sort out a few things in the break between Christmas and New Year. Hopefully, this will pay off during the MOT prior to the permanent registration.
First, I replaced the headlights. I’ve been hunting for original European spec ones for a long time. So far, I’ve only managed to buy the right-hand one, maybe the left will show up on the classifieds someday. In the meantime, I fitted a Depo aftermarket. To be honest, the quality seems to be very good and, apart from the branding, they’re no different from the originals. I bought the right one with electric height adjustment, so if I ever find a matching left-hand one, I might have an idea for my next hobby project.
Now all that’s left is to keep my fingers crossed. All the documents have been collected, packed into an envelope, and sent to TDT. While we’re at it, it’s worth noting the irony of living in a country where a 17-character VIN format (ISO 3779) was encoded into law, and then an institution was created to grant exemptions, yet it has only a single office for the entire country.
In Poland, vehicles with VIN numbers that do not follow the standard 17-character format must obtain an official exemption from TDT to be legally registered. Although the required documents are clearly listed on the website, the process appears to have a certain entropy embedded, both in terms of the time it takes and the final outcome.
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.