Which Doors Will Fit?

[lostinthe202]

The teenagers of a friend got their '97 4door impreza wagon busted into.  Passenger's side front window, electric.  Of course being teenagers, insurance is just liability so no help there.  Pricing replacement glass from just about anywhere is more than the $50 we can get an entire door foor from a junkyard and either get lucky with color, have them not care because they are teenagers, or pull the glass out of the donor door and replace.

 

Question is, will the front door from any 4 door impreza work or does it have to be a 4 door wagon as well?

 

Thanks!!

[idosubaru]

all 93-01 impreza front doors will work except 2 door coupes.
www.car-parts.com

 

not all are electric windows.

 

if swapping glass is an option that's probably the best bet - it'll match and all.  that may even be shippable if the door is not.  yards won't ship doors...maybe glass?

did you price new glass, ours broke in our 1997 OBS and i was surprised how cheap the glass was.  i just paid them the insanely low price they were charging to install it too. forget price but it wasn't much, but it was a rear door glass i think.

 

97 wagon is an Impreza OBS - Outback Sport which has cladding/paint schemes only available on OBS.  97-98 are direct matches...96 & 99 may have a match/close depending on color.

 

you could swap the OBS cladding onto a non OBS impreza, i'm not familiar with what's involved in that.

[lostinthe202]

How do you get car-part.com to show you which years will work?  I use that site all the time, and I see that they show different year cars and I know that they have an interchange database, but I can never seem to get it to display and the listing is always something like, "impreza, front door, green" or whatever, not much detail about the car.  I tried calling two places to find out what other years would work, still hoping not to ship a door or pay the "they-pull" price and got various responses of "my computer tells what will work."  Is there a menu or option or something that you're using to determine this?

 

I see windows online for a decent price, certainly close enough to $50, but they live in a badish neighborhood and the longer the car has no window, the more it presents itself as an easy joyride so we'd like to go pick something up.  We probably will install the junkyard window in the car, even if we end up with a door. 

 

Thanks Gary!

 

Will-

[idosubaru]

i didn't use that website for interchange info - it's not for that, can't do it....it can help, but not entirely.

 

you can search for a part and quickly see...if the earliest year is 96 and the latest 98 then you can assume the database thinks 96-98 interchanges (on models with enough samples, if it only shows two parts then not so much, but imprezas doors will be flooded)...but the interchange is usually broader than what Subaru or the databases or junkyards know.  they really don't know - they just look at a computer...which would never tell you that and EJ22 is plug and play in an EJ25, that you can use EJ25 turbo headgasket on a EJ25 non turbo engine, that you can bolt EJ22 heads to EJ25 blocks, that you can bolt Phase II heads to Phase I blocks....etc. 

 

the most complete interchange/options will simply come by experience which is why you search online or ask here.

 

i wouldn't ask those places what interchanges or works, most don't know, they simply read whatever the computer tells them, which is right but often misses lots of other options.

 

i've never found a junkyard that would ship a body part and i've tried a few times. i've begged, said i'd pay for insurance, said i don't care if it gets damaged and they won't do it.

[rxleone]

You'd be best off just swapping out the glass - it's really quite a simple thing to do if you take your time and pay attention to how everything fits in. Had to do it a couple years back on my Legacy. Good luck.

[lostinthe202]

Thanks fellas,

 

Yes rxleone, that's the option we're leaning towards, unless like I say we get lucky and the door is a color match.  It's a teenager's car and as such it was "driven by feel" enough that a different fade on the paint won't make any more difference then a mosquito biting a blood donor.

[lostinthe202]

Found a '98 Impreza,.   We ended up just pulling the window and got it for $27 which is a better price than any I had found online so we were pretty happy.  Getting it out was a bit of a pia though and I'm not looking forward to getting it back in without damaging anything.

 

Thanks for the help!

[johnceggleston]

regarding door glass removal,

 

does the glass have to be up or down to remove?

i need to do it on my 98 obw.

a plastic piece is missing / busted of the rear most roller in the horizontal track and the window gets cocked when going up.

i have a parts car, but i have never removed the glass or the hardware / regulator.

 

thanks.

Edited June 15, 2013 by johnceggleston

[lostinthe202]

Well, I'm not sure about requirements having never done this before.  The window was closed when we began the removal, but once we removed all the hardware securing the window track from the door panel, it seemed that we could move it up and down and around quite a bit so I'm thinking it might not matter.  Though if it's all the way down I could see that as being a pain in the arse.

 

Though, there are large gaps in the door panel and you very well might be able to get at the roller in question without removing the window from the door.  Once you remove the door panel and take off the plastic you'll see what I'm talking about.

 

Wish I could help more, good luck!

 

Will-