A few hours of body work

With such great weather today I had to get out there and do some body work on the TMBLER.  It’s been in rough shape ever since those damn thieves did their work on it.  Of course, right before that happened, at the end of last summer, I was right in the middle of fixing up some body work on the rear of the car so that I could give the car a fresh coat of paint and have it appraised.

So today I got most of the drivers side body work completed.  All of the rear quarter panel is smoothed out to 200grit and there’s a couple spots left to finish up on the front and rear door.  But overall a good 3 hours or so of filling and sanding.  Those DuraBlock sanding blocks worked like an absolute dream, making short work of the sanding.  I honestly don’t know how I lived without them before.

I also had a chance to get started a little bit on blocking down the passenger side.  There was a lot of work to sand down the Norton adhesive and I’ll start in with the body filler tomorrow.  My goal is to get all the body work finished tomorrow topped off with a couple coats of primer.  Then it will just be a matter of finding some time and space to roll it in for a fresh coat of paint.

The COBB AccessPort speed density tune should be coming up shortly.  Planning some time for the car to get tuned, and then pull the parts off to get polished.  The piping and intake will be re-routed a little bit as well to make it look a little more tidy.  Can’t wait to have the car idle well and pull like a freight train 🙂

I’m trying to focus my time on getting the Subaru back on the road before turning my attention back to the BatBerry.

Headlights are now Working

I managed to figure out why the headlights weren’t working… I tried bulb changes yesterday, and so today I started looking at the wiring and fuses.  I figured I would track it down systematically.

The fuse box is tucked away down in my fender and sealed from water so I pulled off the front bumper and started with looking at the connections first.  I figured that since I was getting power to my high beams and signal lights that it must have something to do with the connections and not the fuse.

Turns out I was right. Some of the plugs were corroded and not getting a solid connection. I scuffed them up with a little file and some sandpaper and voila… we have headlights again 🙂

I was also able to patch the area around the gas cap. This area had a couple of small holes where the flares met the body and if they weren’t patched properly, rain water would get into my flares.  That wouldn’t be good at all.  I’ve already pulled the fares off and re-done them once, I don’t want to do it again for a long time if ever.

Of course it started to get cold out again when I was working on this area, so I had to hold a heat gun over the fiberglass resin and cloth to get it to cure properly.  But it was a successful afternoon.  I even replaced a few engine bay bolts with some fancy fasteners 🙂

Tightening up the Engine Bay

One of the things I want to do when I get the Speed Density tune done with the COBB AccessPort is also tighten up the passenger side of the engine bay.  Currently it looks a little lob-sided with all the intake and piping on the passenger side.

Goal is to tighten up that piping so that it’s closer to the engine itself leaving more room between the outside wall and the engine.  I was able to find a picture of another Subaru engine bay to show what I mean.

Goal would be to then tuck the power steering braided line underneath the intercooler tubing so that you wouldn’t see it as much either.

I’ll be likely using the built in air temperature capability of the MAF sensor for the speed density tune. I’m hoping that if I’m just using the air temperature aspect of the sensor, that I can spin the intake tube around so that the sensor is at the bottom and isn’t showing when you’re looking at the engine bay.

We’ll see how this all works out.. sounds good in theory 🙂

Back out of Storage

Finally the car is back out of storage.  This winter has been a long one and I’m glad that it’s finally starting to warm up again.  As you can see the car needs a little bit of work 🙂

I was in the middle of fixing up some of the body work last summer before the car’s clutch failed, and then all my parts were stolen off the car.  I literally drove the car back from the shop into storage last year at the end of November.

Looks like it wasn’t the bulbs that were out. I’ll have to pull the front bumper and check all my connections and fuses.  Weird thing is that the high beams and signals work, but not the low beams. If it does get up to 15 tomorrow I should also be able to finish one of the needed fiberglass repairs and possibly a little bit of body work. I also need to pick up a few nuts for the rear bumper, but I’ll likely wait until I’ve finished the rear body work before putting it back on.

I was also able to do a little bit of work with a hammer and dolly to fix the area below the drivers side door handle where they tried to pop it off with a screwdriver.  It will need a little bit of body filler to get it perfectly straight, but I’ll likely either need a new door handle or fix something inside the door.  Not sure yet until I pull the handle off.

My COBB AccessPort speed density tune should be happening in a couple of weeks which will make the car idle a lot better and also achieve the top end from the new turbo.