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The weekend before Christmas I flew out to San Diego. T picked me up at the airport and we stopped by a speed shop that does a lot of Subarus. They had three of them and all of them were getting or had gotten engine work done. Then we went to T's house and had lunch and checked out the red Impreza. It was mostly as advertised until I opened the LR door and saw the giant patch of epoxy/fiberglass that had been added. We drove up to my brother's house. He had bought B a very nice white Forester. It only had 112k miles on it and was like new inside and out. Even our mom was impressed with how nice it was. It didn't have a hitch so B and I shipped out his hitch and my hitch ball, stabilizer bar, magnetic lights, etc. T had bought a Harbor Freight folding tow bar. My brother and I got the towing all set up. I drilled a few holes in the bottom of the Impreza bumper beam and my brother TIG welded the brackets on to it so we weren't just relying on the spot welds. The lights had worked the previous night but one wasn't working as we pulled away from the house. Turned out to just be a bulb so we got one from a parts store and swapped that out. Drove to R's on Saturday. On the way we saw a recliner in the middle of the interstate. In Arizona we hit one stretch of I10 for 10 or 20 miles where the car was wandering all over the lane even when I slowed down. We pulled over on the shoulder and everything seemed to be attached, kept driving to the next exit, cars still wandering around. We tightened the bolts for the tow bar tabs as they'd crushed the bumper beam some. Got back on the interstate with the same problem. My brother noticed when I was off to the side of the lane riding the stripe it seemed more stable, then we realized it was because the right lane was badly rutted. The rest of the way back we mostly forgot we were towing a car. Once it got dark we saw a large hay bale that had been run into/over countless times in the middle of the interstate and a guy towing a side by side in the second lane from the right at a snail's pace with a strap in Phoenix. We got to R's and worked on the WRX a little bit and then went to sleep. His shop is spacious, well lit, well insulated, and climate controlled. I brought my normal Subaru tool kit but he already had almost everything we needed. We swapped out the steering rack, both front CV axles (boot on one had just torn), one of the lower balljoints (couldn't loosen pinch bolt on the other one), shifter u-joint, oil cooler gasket, and catless uppipe. All of these parts have been on the car for 19 years and 230,000 miles. When R showed me the new shifter u-joint he got from the dealer he said “look, this one has bushings in it.” We had to do a little mini lathe work I think to make a rollpin install tool for the steering u-joint. Over half the man hours were in replacing the up pipe. We didn't break any bolts but a lot of sea foam deep creep and heat was used on many of them. Had to remove more of the exhaust than R expected to remove so we had to get some more gaskets. Those, an O2 socket, ball joints, and a few other things required about a half dozen parts store visits. Fortunately most of them were fairly close by. I still think it might have been easier to remove the engine despite R's skepticism. We wound up removing the U brace to swap out the rack following slammo's advice, that turned out to be pretty easy. Went for a late night test drive and everything seemed to work fine. I was quite worried that the rack or a CV axle would puke its guts out but figured at least most of what we'd done would be a good fix. R's first reaction was that it was quieter than before, we'd fixed some kind of exhaust leak with all the gaskets we'd replaced. He's super happy with the fixes, says it's like owning a new car. Monday morning we packed up, welded the tow tabs on the Impreza with R's flux core welder, and headed east. So we used a Bridgeport, TIG welder, mini lathe, and flux core welder all in the same weekend. Stayed the night at a cheap hotel in Vega, Texas. Kept driving the next day, had dinner with travelvw. Got home the next morning. Didn't use any oil the whole trip or have any problems once we got going. Thursday morning slammo was in town, we troubleshot the white Outback's brake lights. A couple bulbs were burned out but the main problem was the switch was mostly not working. We swapped out the bulbs and one of the housings that was cracked. I got a switch in town and put it back together and they seem to work now.

that intake is completely off the chain!

you know what happens when you assume, LOL and yeah, that price sounds about right if memory serves..

As far as I remember, it only installs one way due to the bolt pattern.