MY99 Heritage Wagon - Blue Samurai

[DJB]

Hi All,
Firstly thanks to both Al for suggesting this section and Bosco for putting it up.

This thread will be a little bit like a blog for me about my car. I'll continually update it with what I'm doing on it at a high level. What I do at each stage will be linked off to a separate thread though.

After spending $3000 on my old camry in 6 months I decided that I'd best get a new car. I'd been posting on here and learning about Liberties and had decided on a blue GenIII wagon if I were to ever replace the old CC (www.custardcamry.com) and occasionally looked on line for them.

I spotted this in the TradingPost on line 3 days after deciding to get a new car, got an NRMA report done offered !14,250 and flew to Sydney (Nowra) from Adelaide to drive it home again. It was sold with 128K on the clock.

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l236/DjbLibHeritage/My%20Liberty/Original%20Photos/misc068Small.jpg

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l236/DjbLibHeritage/My%20Liberty/Original%20Photos/misc069Small.jpg

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l236/DjbLibHeritage/My%20Liberty/Original%20Photos/misc072.jpg

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l236/DjbLibHeritage/My%20Liberty/Original%20Photos/misc071Small.jpg

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l236/DjbLibHeritage/My%20Liberty/Original%20Photos/misc070.jpg

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l236/DjbLibHeritage/My%20Liberty/Original%20Photos/misc068Small2.jpg

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l236/DjbLibHeritage/My%20Liberty/Original%20Photos/misc067Small-1.jpg

Cheers
Darryl

[DJB]

I bought the car with the plan of doing a GTB conversion to it.

I saw Mickey's (RxLiberty2000) conversion about a year or so ago and got very Jealous. I wanted to start with leather already in the car so I don't have to track it down and I don't really like the B4 seat colour schema and the punctured leather either so this car was perfect.

The gearbox has a problem so I figure I'd rather drive it now with a busted box and convert it later as torepair the box ~$800 repair. That'd be my exhaust paid for.

Cheers
Darryl

[DJB]

Just after Christmas I bought my baby a present, clear side repeaters.

I made a DIY thread that can be found here:
http://www.ozliberty.com/forums/showthread.php?p=32159#post32159

Before (With faithful assistant):
http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l236/DjbLibHeritage/My%20Liberty/Mods/Side%20Repeater/Photo_0006.jpg

After:
http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l236/DjbLibHeritage/My%20Liberty/Mods/Side%20Repeater/Photo_0011.jpg

Cheers
Darryl.

[rs guy]

very nice man would make a very nice conversion :D
awwwwwwwwwwwww cute beagle to mate :tu

[hyde]

Looking very nice mate. Very clean. Totally stock?


asdfasdfasdf
?? Lol.

[DJB]

very nice man would make a very nice conversion :D
awwwwwwwwwwwww cute beagle to mate :tu

Yeah he's asleep next to me now. He's got me through a lot of tight and bad places. It's true a dog is really a mans best friend. Maybe a dog and bourbon and red wine.

[DJB]

After fitting the clear side repeaters I decided that I needed to get back to what the CC was like and the ability to tow stuff and carry stuff on the roof would be awesome.

I installed the roofracks (talked a prominant CBD roof rack dealer down to $240). The price for a 2nd hand set on ebay was $220 including shipping and I figured I'd rather go brand new for the extra $20. The Rolas went straight on no problems at all.

I'd ordered a 2nd hand towbar through a suburban subaru wrecker here in Adelaide. The towbar installation was a little more difficult than the first.

http://www.rslibertyclub.org/forums/showthread.php?t=68367

Photo's to come later

I found out later that the towbar is from an Outback and that's why it hangs down so far. I really want a Lib one so it looks a little more discrete.

I also did my first oil change at about this time and found that the connectors to the sparkplug were oily, I ordered some parts and did this HowTo:
http://www.rslibertyclub.org/forums/showthread.php?t=68366


Cheers
Darryl

[Jim]

looks great dude , gen3's look so good with gate spoilers .. love the interioir of those too .. conversion ftw :D

[mitch]

nice colour darryl, pity it's missing a turbo :wink:

[DJB]

nice colour darryl, pity it's missing twin turbos :wink:

^^^ fixed. <Duke Nuke'm 3D voice> Mmmm much better </Duke Nuke'm 3D voice>

Cheers
Darryl

[Mickey]

Very nice ride.

Now for the conversion :D

[DJB]

More customisation to come Mickey. I'm slowly changing bits over and upgrading stuff when it breaks. eg. The Rear tyres are fugged and I wanted a new set of rims anyway

I put this thread up and to decide and fell for the Silver MY01s
http://www.rslibertyclub.org/forums/showthread.php?t=66585

I've now bought a set of MY02 WRX 17s from a dude on rexnet and am getting works courier company to get the deliver them from Sydney at company rates (my wallet througH) for $50, Vicfast wanted $113 and TollExpress $230. Giddy Up!

I've since fitted the rims and the car looks sweet.

Cheers
Darryl

[DJB]

I recently went on a hunting trip up in the Flinders, the rear springs were so shagged that i was riding on bump stops through most of the bumps. I decided 2 days afterwards I'd get some new suspension for the car.

I was originally thinking go full GTB spec, Billstein's and low coils. I went down to my local suspension place (Car Torque) and had a chat with them about what I wanted the car for. They suggested that Billsteins would be overkill and I'd be better of getting BOGE struts and putting the extra cash into and Anti-Lift kit (adds castor) and a rear sway bar). After a day or too thinking about this, I decided to go with lowering the car ~30mm as well.

The final shopping list looked like this:
Whilteline GEnIII Subaru Liberty BH5 Anti-Lift Kit
Whilteline GenIII Subaru Liberty BH5 Rear Sway Bar
BOGE Subaru Liberty BH5 Struts all round
King GenIII Subaru Liberty BH5 Low springs all round

Total cost ~$1400 inc fitting.

Here are the final pics (with new rims shown as I never got around to taking a pic of them after I fitted them).
Front View:
http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l236/DjbLibHeritage/My%20Liberty/Mods/BOGE%20Suspension/IMG_0774.jpg

Rear View:
http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l236/DjbLibHeritage/My%20Liberty/Mods/BOGE%20Suspension/IMG_0775.jpg

I'd just finished washing the car this morning (yes those are all Meguire's products in the bucket you can see).

Here is the thread that describes in finer detail what I went through to get the job done (It was a little bit of a heart ache):
http://www.ozliberty.com/forums/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=59063


Cheers
Darryl

[BigWillieStyles]

looks great, did the handling improve significantly with the suspension mods?

Any updates :)

[DJB]

looks great, did the handling improve significantly with the suspension mods?

Any updates :)
Talk about raising from the dead, this thread hasn't seent he light of day in ~4years.

Yes handling improved a heap. I remember clearly I took it out 2 nights after I did all the suspension work on my testing road (Old Norton Summit Road) and it was awesome.

Since then a whole heap has changed, ie.
- TT conversion (Incl Bonnet)
- auto -> 5MT
- Billstein suspension (came with the sedan I stripped for the conversion)
- short shifter mod (ala Billsy)
- ECV and Primary wastegate porting (ala Billsy)
- new rear bushes
- parallel rails
- Wallbro fuel pump upgrade

So yes I've done a heap of work on this thing. I haven't had the budget to finish it all off though as in the interim, I lost my job, bought a house, got married, moved towns and am trying to prioritise my spare time on finishing my PhD. I'm a Uni lecturer and my teaching load is supposed to be ~0,4 (what I get paid) and I work ~0.8; so don't have much spare time (PhD work insn't counted in that equation).

Niggling issues I've finally sorted (in the last month) were:
- Broken wastegate flapper in ECV (was bouncing around) caused all my ECU errors
- fitted an Manual ABS controller (should have done it at time of conversion) was causing ABS error
- found eposed wires that were shorting out causing me to loose my night time lights

Things still to do:
- Switch out TMIC core (current one is cracked and I suspect is causing my boost leak (only getting ~6psi ATM))
- Fit new rims as current ones are cracked (sourced just need to get back to Adelaide next week to pay and pickup)
- Fix PS probelm (really stiff ATM, suspect dead pump on way out)
- Fix side skirts (been hanging down for ~12 months). {Need to pull off, plastic weld new slots/fix split existing slots, buy more clips]

[matkandu]

Hey mate,

I'm looking at getting new struts and got a really cheap quote on boge struts.
$140 a pair

was wondering what you thought of them and how they performed for you? the guy gave me the same price for them as ultimas so i'm a bit skeptical on quality to be honest.