Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

What engine swap would you be doing?

Forrester STi's look super good.

My friend has a Classic Impreza wagon that might be coming up for sale soon...

Hoping to do a 1UR engine and transmission swap from an LS460, obviously an ambitious swap and it wouldn't happen overnight but that's the plan!

RWD or AWD? Sounds sick tho. Are you planning on keeping the engine stock or will you try and get more power?

Hopefully AWD and I'd like to keep the engine as stock as possible.

A stock 1UR with a good exhaust and intake should make about 400bhp though so I think that should do nicely! They make 388bhp in the LS460 and the exhaust is supposed to be extremely restrictive to keep it quiet and refined so it doesn't take much to open it up.

Ideally I want it to be super reliable and usable while still being able to move!

Yeah, 400bhp ain't exactly sluggish! Sounds like a fun project. How common are the engines?

Not terribly uncommon but I'm planning to just buy a Lexus LS460 as a donor, there's enough of them around here in Ireland thanks to the Celtic Tiger and nobody wants to pay the tax on them anymore so they're not expensive. I saw one sell recently for about €4000 for a fully functioning road legal car with not outrageous mileage.

The old boy driving this debussed his dogs from it for walkies around Ascot racecourse. It sounded lovely.

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Ah fair enough! Saw 70-80k as release price and couldn’t put it together. Almost sad about the mini, was enjoying watching it come along.

And the back

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The Mini isn't sold just yet!

E46 has started making a vibrating noise - like riding over a rumble strip - just before 2k revs. Any ideas?

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Hopefully AWD

That's going to be an interesting packaging exercise. On the Subaru 4WD gearboxes the output shafts for the front wheels are just behind the bellhousing, so the entire engine is in front of the front axle line. A 4.6 litre OHV V8 is going to be both longer and taller than a flat 4 by a considerable margin.

I always fancied building an EZ36 Outback for these reasons (with an aftermarket Turbo kit obviously)

They own 'lucas' name for putting on whatever junk they find now, assume some of the other brand names are just that, trademarks they own and can put on anything. Some of the stuff is on the same level as the cheapest ebay stuff.
Makes buying used cars fun, need to see the actual receipts to see just how many parts are going to explode in the 1st year of use. "nah its all sorted mate, replaced all of that suspension stuff last week, will fine for years" Nope.

Slightly better vid. Noise happens twice towards the end.

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this is excellent

Heeded this advice and got some genuine Volvo mounts through a specialist (Amber in Shoreham). Hopefully fine for another 100k

Get a Forester @Nahguavkire I've got the n/a 2.0xe same year SG (facelift from 2006 to 2008, slightly lighter, small BHP upgrade) as mi7rennie had but without the bonnet scoop and attendant 2.5 turbo issues. I love it. There's an excellent Forester owners forum. Also to enjoy the remarkable tale of Foresters being cleverly marketed to US lesbians (with full Subaru Japan/Fuji Heavy Industries old-fashioned company sanction) aka the Lesbaru: https://priceonomics.com/how-an-ad-campaign-made-lesbians-fall-in-love-with/

Neat plate

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I love that Subaru has that connection... 🖤🖤🖤

It's smartest campaign ever in an industry devoted to dinosaurs

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And they sell an absolute ton of them in the US, many many times more than here in the UK

Ok... last one...then back to speed n thrills and high insurance bills

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Autodoc and another 2 websites all lead back to same company. Always been slow, I've always paid the £3 (?) for 'free' return postage. As often buy a stack of parts in one go for multiple cars, often something to send back that wasn't needed, system works OK mostly.

Had an issue when rebuilding a cyl head, needed valve stem guides, on that particular engine they are a slightly different size (volvo specced a larger ID than VW), had the right Volvo part number, and its corresponding VW part number (from an 80's performance variant that had the same part), ordered those, what turned up was the wrong ones (the common ones), sent them back, explained to the 9th degree how they were wrong. They sent out more wrong ones, and a third time, on the third time they refused to take them back, said it was the Volvo/VW factory database that was wrong and not them.
Got some from local TPS (VAG parts place) on the given part number, exactly right part turned up the next day. Price was substantially inflated though (and thats with a tps trade account, cash account or retail from a VW parts desk would have been offensive high), but got it sorted.

I knew about Lucas, crossland and and quite few others, but even the brembo branded stuff is fucking shite. Have had brembo discs and pads and the disc have excessive run out.

ECP are a brembo supplier, so what is going on. Never a fan of ECP after buying vw bits off them preferred German and swedish. But the drive for parts was further.