Leaderboard

Hi all:) As a teen of the 80’s,was occasionally allowed to borrow my dads, then new,84 Touring Wagon to take mates skiing. At the time here in New Zealand,after years of struggling on the ground in the slush and mud,it was quite the novelty to bypass the snow chain car park ,and do the royal wave as the attendant waved you uphill due to the 700 stickers on the gen 2 Subaru Touring wagon that denoted it had 4wd,wow! A few decades on,nostalgia kicked in,so after 25 years of restoring early two door range rovers,dumped that marque and went in search of a 80’s high roof touring wagon. Having driven or owned most of the later models,still came back to that unique and fun driving experience in the Gen2. Joined up on bookface to put the word out on a kiwi old school Subaru group,and after a month or two one popped up that was exactly the year and model I wanted. Bought sight unseen,had sat outside and undercover for 15 years but in the photos,looked ok,,,how naive! Anyway,thought I’d post up a timeline of what I’ve learnt and done so far. (These are the pics on bookface for sale 500km away) (The site can’t currently process a membership upgrade to increase pic data,so have had to remove some posted images to complete rebuild thread )

Front Valance. First big use of the donor was to rebuild what was left of the original lower skirt panel. blood spilt cutting both away in one piece. Cut and paste (jb weld) and eventually tack welded back into place,already paid back the few hundred spent on the donor:)

I soon became aware that in order to restore a complete vehicle,I’d need a source of parts. Then the realisation I may have picked the wrong car, discovering that they stopped making many of the things that wear out circa 1999,,oh joy! Add to that being down here in the antipods,very limited resource as most had dissolved decades ago. The only saving grace was the bookface old school Subaru group,an awesome group of like minded souls dead set on keeping these early cars alive down here. In a moment of kismet and karma a slightly used gen2 popped up on our version of your junglebay. Perfect solution,then there were two:) The seller was again a sole owner since new,a mowing contractor who promptly removed the back seat squab in 1983 and tucked it away,,mine was missing one,nirvana.. Isn’t she a gem..

Initial Inspection walk around As you all know,,you only see the top of the icebergs… “Here Mousey Mousey”

It took some time ,but eventually tracked down the original owner.Now in his 90’s,this was his wife’s car,Marjory,so literally one lady owner since new. He had issues with it idling and was starting to develop some rust,so it failed a warrant of fitness check and was parked up since 2009! Some years ago, he rang a wrecker to collect it for metal scrap,the truck got lost as they were rural in the wop wops so it sat again for many years until a contractor working on the property said he’d take it,and that’s where I saw it posted up for offers. Towed back to mine using a mates custom made triangle metal frame that attached to the front towing eyes. This was the sketchiest thing I’ve done for a long time,took all the slow backroads as best I could as any hint of a corner would send the freewheeling front wheels hard over until some speed straightened them out!! Had a cop trailing me for a short time,until he hit the lights and sirens and gunned it past me to something more important,,don’t mind saying that raised the heart rate. Anyway she looked pretty good sitting on the drive back at home.

Update: after disconnecting the driver's heated seat, the code has not come back after several drive cycles. The bottom heater element has been broken for about a year, maybe it finally degraded to a point where it was causing interference. 🤞

Phyregold's proffile: Location Delaware Vehicles Outback 01 So my fortune teller's guess is his car may be a Studebaker (turbo)

INTERLUDE: Doing the Shocks! While I gather up the funds for the last couple parts I need to start putting everything in the car: new shocks! Well, not new new, at least in the front, but certainly better than the popped ones that are in the car right now. I had the good fortune of grabbing some spare parts with Gladys when I bought her, including 2 sets of front coilovers, and since a pair of brand new rear shocks can be had for $50 off Amazon, I'm replacing all four once the rears arrive on Friday. In the meantime, I've grabbed the front ones from my parts stash. Funnily enough, the pair I grabbed are KYB GR-2s, which means that with the Excel-Gs going in the rear, all four corners are gonna be on KYB struts. I dunno I just think that's neat. Here's the new(er) front shocks loaded up for transport to Gladys in The Imp, my GFC. In other news, I just got back from the junkyard with a couple of parts which'll be very useful if I plan on stopping the car A vacuum pump and reservoir, which I pulled from a Volvo, but it's the same model used in 2014+ Foresters and the Tribeca (which I was originally gonna harvest this one from but someone beat me to the one on that lot) Also on the lot was this weird little thing: A ZAP Xebra, a weird little 3-wheeled electric "car" from the late 2000s, with a top speed of ~40mph and a range of 20-40 miles depending on the model you got Anyways, update over, I'll be back on Friday with a report on how the shock replacement goes!