April 1, 2025

STI Spec C key plate Part II, or Muhammad must go to the mountain!

This remote kept bothering me. And while I concluded that programming it was indeed impossible, I still kept thinking how to make it work with the USDM fob. The solution turned out to be quite a hack, so a full disclaimer is in order: PCB boards suffered during the process, those of you with a delicate, electronic heart, are encouraged to skip this post.

Just as the saying in the title goes, I was determined to fit the original key’s PCB into the American one, no matter what. The first obstacle was the switches, which were permanently soldered to the board. I came to the conclusion that this was too small of a component for my skills (because although I do have a soldering iron and I’m not afraid to use it, there have to be limits), so I begged a technician at Lispol to do it for me. Big thanks to this guy - no one in Kraków wanted to take on the task, and I went to many a places, but he did and even called me to consult the length of the wires.

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March 21, 2025

Rallye Boží Bojovníci III

The time has come again. The weekend is reserved, the route, in general, is planned, the stages have been reviewed, and it’s time to begin the third edition of Rallye Boží Bojovníci. This year, we decided to drive around the Tatras, and with that, experience stages from Rajd Śląska, Rally Liptov, and Rallye Tatry. Here are some stages we’ve driven:

Slovakia is a beautiful country, and it’s fantastic to drive when the Tatras, Veľká Fatra, or Malá Fatra are constantly in the horizon. The winding, narrow, up-and-down roads are just perfect for Impreza with its 525nm of torque. The people are also very friendly and open. Honestly, I’ve never had so many people wave at me and greet me as I did in Slovakia. At every petrol station, and I do mean every single one, someone would stop to talk about the car. The best moment was when we stopped in Spišské Hanušovce, where the Impreza was idling, cooling off the turbo, and we planned to go to the Potraviny to get some bread for breakfast. Suddenly, we saw two guys walking from the other side of the road, dressed in workshop clothes, and waving at us to drive into their yard. So, we hopped in the car and drove over to them. They were from Baka Motorsport, super friendly bunch. We chatted, and they showed us what they had in their yard, which was quite a lot: from GC8 to VA, and from Evo VI who someone had managed to roll to a GT-R hidden in a storage under a blanket. They liked the Impreza so much that they wanted to buy it. They said they were going to Nowy Targ in the evening to pick up another Impreza and an Evo, and invited us to join them, so they could show us some local tricks. However, we were heading west, so we waved goodbye and parted ways.

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March 20, 2025

Aramid

I did some detective work and am 99% sure this is my car:

In those clips the first owner behind the wheel, about 16 years ago, which is just over a year after purchasing it (best wishes if you’re reading this!).

The same owner kept the car for many a years, despite driving a whole bunch of very unusual cars during that time (looking at you, Fiesta R2 and DS3 R3T). I’m mentioning this because on Friday, I removed the aramid skid plate from under the engine, a memento from those days. The aramid plate is cool, but for my usage and how I drive the car, it’s definitely an overkill. It also had one flaw: the front is securely held on with two bolts, but the rear has a, rather poorly designed, pair of tabs, which slides into holes in the plastic underbody shields (I had to have those floor pan splash shields welded back in the day). This is not a great solution. Not only does the skid plate not stay rigid and hits the underbody on bumps, giving me a mini heart attack every time it does that, but over time, it also cracks the shields it’s inserted into. I think this plate might have been a part of a bigger N12 kit, and perhaps it was better integrated with the other shields?

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March 11, 2025

Lego, or maybe Defi: Post scriptum

And it works!

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March 9, 2025

Lego, or maybe Defi

It all started when my son wanted a bit of peace and quiet. He said he would like a system that shows when he’s available, busy, and when it’s absolutely not okay to disturb him (oh, the horror of being nine!). I thought it sounded like a traffic light - red, amber and green. A trip to the electronics store, a raid on the Lego box, a bit of soldering, and this is what I came up with:

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February 19, 2025

Things that I did and did not buy

It’s easier to start with the thing I didn’t buy because there’s only one. And since I didn’t buy it, there’s not much to elaborate on — I’ll just say that I missed it by less than ¥100,000. Oh well, it seems like this is one of those situations where it’s not about if, but when.

However, I did buy something rather quite special, shown here in the brochure for the 22B:

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February 14, 2025

Service sticker

For quite some time, I have been changing the oil and filters myself. I have notes with the mileage and dates of the changes, but it always annoyed me that I had to check them to see if “it’s time.” Inspired by Boxer Beauty, who, by the way, have a lot of rare stickers for Subaru, I decided to fix this. Here’s the fix:

A single sticker is 105x85mm, the minimum order for that size was 66 stickers, so I’m good for round about 30 years.

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February 5, 2025

Engine mount subframe

During the last oil change, about 7,000 kilometers ago, I noticed that the engine mount subframe had seen better days. It took me a little while to buy them because the prices weren’t very encouraging, but in the end, I managed to get some well-refurbished ones from my local Subaru forum. For comparison, here are the old and new ones:

The hole in the picture above appeared with a light tap from a hammer during the last oil change, and I remember being quite concerned about it at the time. Honestly, I expected them to be in much worse condition.

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January 7, 2025

Wheel arch

Since the Impreza has been in winter hibernation, resting peacefully, I decided to take care of the Forester a bit. Back in November, I scheduled a repair for the right arch. It turned out very nicely, with perfect finish, and the new paint blends perfectly with the rest of the car. Maybe even too perfectly, because the Forester’s paint is quite tired, and now there’s this ideal metallic shine. While at it, both bumpers were repainted; the front one – someone scratched it in the parking lot, and the rear one – was poorly done, probably right after the car was imported from Switzerland, someone didn’t even bother to take it off the car for the re-spray.

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