y.m.m.v

Justy #440

^Props to Jalopnik

Land speed record for a 1.0 liter Subaru Justy ? How about 123.224 mph ?!

Suspended Weekend

I’m sore. Various muscles are sending nastygrams to my brain, all due to my weekend spent working on my Subaru’s rear suspension.

Last July 1st, I broke the rear left damper on my wagon, going over a long speed bump, which induced an exaggerated oscillation that popped the damper.

A few weeks later, after scrounging the correct parts ( a pair of rear damper inserts still sitting in a RA Spec C sedan strut body ), I went to a garage to have the work done. And they managed to cock-it-up. In short, they failed to remove the damper inserts from the sourced sedan units and swap them into my wagon ones. This small detail rendered the rear into a Frankenstein like mess.

To allow me time to regroup, I placed 20kg sand bags into the footwell of the rear seats for winter and hoped to come to terms with this work in spring. (unintended pun)

And it finally came to pass, the weekend was spent on learning-by-doing. A guide found on ClubWRX gave me confidence that I could accomplish this work. A colleague lent me his spring compression tool. I was ready!

Or so I thought. It took 5 hours for one side, being both careful and lost. But I was confident the next one would take much less. I didn’t count on the timesink a single overtightened bolt could be. A 19mm lower strut bolt was tightened to somewhere north of 250 Nm. In the end, a jury rigged breaker bar came to the rescue. Oh, and my father, who produced said bar.

Finally, I switched to summer tyres and the work was done. So was I.

Aches and pains aside, I feel great and the car is doing much better as well. There is something magical about learning to do something so fundamental. Removing a level of intimidation from a mechanical subject leads me to try my hand at much more.

In the fall, I will go through the process again, since I will repair and assemble the correct wagon spring/damper/strut, as per my original plan. It will consist of STi V7 wagon strut body, STi V8 Spec C damper cartridge, STi Wagon “Pink” springs and a Group N tophat. The last two parts will be ordered via Jamie Subiegal from subarugenuineparts.com.

In closing, I must say that now I have even greater respect to those who manage to swap out a suspension correctly and fast, and even less for those “pros” who seem to botch the job.

Sake, a drivers alternative ... fuel

Gotta love this idea : pour the sake into the car

I like it! Then again, I like sake. What’s next ? Mooshine for NASCAR racing ? Why not, it started as a racing series by bootleggers.

Sustainable local bio-fuel sounds so much more PC then “moonshine”. :)

Tesla Coil Car Defense

I’m filing this under safety … as in “do not attempt this at home”.

My buddy Dave decided that this item belongs on this blog, and he has a point. We all want to keep people from stealing our beloved cars. What better then a Tesla Coil to do it with.

Striking Ferrari

No, it’s not about the shape or colour.

No, 80% of the employees at Ferrari’s Modena factory, where they build the F430 and 599 GTB, went on strike. UK’s Telegraph has more.

Chop Shop

CTV.ca reported yesterday that in Laval, the northern neighbor city of Montreal, police found a monster sized chop shop. Many of the stolen automobiles were brand new, with close to 0 on the odometer.

Worth a read.

Exelero

When I first wrote about the Maybach Exelero in 2005, the car already had connotation of Batmobile to me. Autoblog leans more toward a car for Darth Vader.

Either way, enjoy the video.