Guitar_Guy

Where are you getting your deals? Set me up!

I went from 6 speed STi to 2004 3.0R auto wagon. Reasons: - Auto was waaaaaay cheaper at the time. Saved $3k+ which was more than enough reason. The whole point of selling the STi was to get some coin back and buy a cheaper car. - For a daily that I had no intent to spend money on, I really couldn't justify the price difference. - The girlfriend can't drive manual so auto was on the table anyway. - Towing the boat, much easier on a slippery boat ramp with an auto. - Super easy going and nice to cruise in. - Less tempted to give it heaps so saves me some gas, I drive it like a nana. Reasons why I would change my mind: - Auto is pretty boring to be honest, I like to be an 'active' driver so I use the tiptronic a lot to make myself feel better. - I'm now shopping for a manual turbo BG5 wagon to tidy up and have some fun with on weekends to keep the turbo/manual part of me happy.

I recently did this but in my BP5 3.0R. I would like to think the wiring side is very similar as I also have an OEM sat nav that I kept as it displays petrol usage, volt meter etc. The way I did it also integrated the new headunit with the factory McIntosh sounds so it was a win win. Thread is here: http://clubsub.org.nz/forum/showthread.php?48404-Guitar_Guy-s-2004-Legacy-McIntosh-Stereo-Hack-Pic-Heavy Hopefully there are a few clues to help you being an older model

It's a mint little car, looking at putting it on the market though as the girlfriend wants a small SUV (Forester). Only 83,000kms on it but auto. Let me know if your interested.

It's an LXA 1.0. This but in 4 Door, or 5... counting the boot. Needing a new boot lid and we'll be sweet

Is it dark purple and from a guy called Andy by chance?

Got rear ended last weekend in my girlfriends Daihatsu Mira so been spending a bit of time putting that back together. The joys of being hit by an unaccompanied, uninsured learner driver while waiting at the lights. Bumper flexed and came away with slight warping so bashed all the metal back into place behind it, sanded and filler primed the bumper ready for wet sanding and paint tomorrow. We got pretty lucky considering the other guys car was potentially a write off.

Whoops... didn't see the Chch forum section part, my bad!! I'm also from the North so wasn't familiar with Stubaru.

Hard to suggest a place to get serviced as you haven't put your location But as far as the service goes... I'd be looking at belt, tensioners, idlers, water pump, fresh coolant (some people reuse the old stuff), cam seals, I think that's about it? Probably set you back $1250 - $1500 depending on the place, I paid $1100 a couple of years ago for all that on a non-turbo 1994 Legacy if that's any help price-wise.

Ah very nice, makes me miss my old Glory DH1. Good times....

The **** kinda bikes you transporting with that? Holy crap!

Actually really like this! Looks mint!

Cheers man! Yeah did see that one, might look at getting one 3D printed even... aiming to make this the cheapest conversion I can so will even consider fibreglassing my own. Once I mess it up so bad that its unfixable though, I'll buy one of these

Haha yeah, I thought about replacing the lot but I really had no budget for this so when a free head unit came up and all I needed was a few hours and to buy some RCA plugs it seemed worthwhile having a go. The thing about is that the McIntosh factory system is really quite nice and I didn't want to waste it if I could utilize it but there isn't a single forum thread that's done what I've done (atleast not that I can find and that covers ClubSub, LegacyGT, NAOSIC and others) so I really wanted to do something would help other people wanting to achieve the same thing. Will definitely check out eBay for for a top half fascia bit though!

So after 6 months of dealing with the limited McIntosh system I finally got around to replacing it. BUT... I wanted to do something that nobody else seems to have done and that is to fully integrate the McIntosh amp and factory speakers with an aftermarket head unit. After hours of forum searching and research, I could not find a single thread that achieved this without bypassing the McIntosh amp and/or replacing it with an after market amp but I was convinced it could be done. What you will need: - Screwdrivers - Soldering Iron - 5x Male RCA ends - an aftermarket headunit that supports 3 sets of RCA line level outputs, mine was a fairly generic Pioneer that my old man had lying around (score!) - Patience My project began by removing the McIntosh head unit and fan controls from the car. Once this was out and fully unplugged, I sat down and started pulling it apart... like completely apart. Breaking down the plugs in the back from left to right: Far left is the aerial, next is the factory Subaru 20 pin DIN which provides constant power, accessory, earth and illumination, then a single earth tab (I think), then a 10 pin DIN which integrates the factory Sat Nav system into the stereo for DVD playback/the beeping noise when you touch the Sat Nav, then a single green wire into an 8 pin DIN, possible a handbrake sensor for DVD playback but I really have no idea.... underneath is the multicore which joins through a 20 pin DIN, this connects the head unit to the McIntosh amp under the seat, and last is the square DIN which was't used in mine (stolen pic). Once I worked out what each did, I continued removing bits to break it down into core components. First I took off the DIN rack side thingys... Next, I separated the fan controls from the Head unit. Now the front on the head unit comes off, couple of screws needed to pop this off, not hard to find, then it unclips from the front fairly easily. At this point I removed all the screws to separate the head unit section from the CD changer. NOTE: In my pictures, I have already removed the McIntosh multicore cable that is dangling out the back (we'll get to that soon). Now the top comes off the head unit section and reveals a whole lotta fun bits.... A couple of other screws come out and then the top bit pops off... Underneath.... Now, onto the McIntosh multicore cable which would be dangling out the back if I had taken my photos in proper order... Here it is, wired on the circuit board... 14 connections in total, these are: - Front Left + - Front Left - - Rear Left + - Rear Left - - Front Right + - Front Right - - Rear Right + - Rear Right - - Amp On (remote cable) - Earth - Subwoofer + - Subwoofer - - Centre + - Centre - (these do nothing, they only integrate with the factory Sat Nav which I wasn't worried about). Next, I flipped over the board and found they were all nicely labelled for me, SCORE!! It was going to be a nightmare otherwise. At this point, I used a soldering iron to melt the joins and pop all the pins out, adding tape to the loose wires as I went to make ID'ing them easier for the next part. Next I bought some RCA plugs with no cable (I lie, I bought a 3x male to 3x male set from Dick Smith with RCA plugs that I could unscrew and removed the wiring that came on them to use for this) So with that, add an RCA male to each set of these wires, we'll need to use the aftermarket head unit's RCA outputs so its line level for the McIntosh amp. Obviously, Front Left + and Front Left - are wired to one RCA plug and so on, you should end up with 5 in total. - Front Left - Front Right - Rear Left - Rear Right - Sub (mono) and tape off the Centre speaker wires, as above they aren't required. Please ignore the visible tape, these were my labels incase my connections failed and I needed to open up the RCA plugs again. All my joins are soldered and not taped up with masking tape... haha.... seen it done before, not pretty! At this point we have done the hard part but we have 2 wires left from the multicore, the Earth and the Amp On signal wire. I bought 2x ISO harnesses from Repco/Supercheap, either will do. 1x Subaru - ISO 1x ISO - Pioneer This gave my aftermarket head unit power, an earth, illumination, etc etc. The speaker output part of the ISO harnesses is void as we are only running out of the RCA plugs to the McIntosh amp. I then tapped the Aerial/Amp power cable on the ISO harness (blue colour usually) and soldered the Amp on signal cable from the McIntosh multicore to it. See the light blue cable tapping onto the darker blue cable on the ISO harness... excuse the tape, had no insulation tape handy bugger it, connections were all soldered though. I also tapped the earth cable on the ISO harness (black) and soldered on the remaining earth cable from the McIntosh multicore. See the red cable (McIntosh multicore earth, why is it red? I don't no, earths are never red....) tapping onto the black cable on the ISO harness. At this point, everything is now wired in and should be good to clip into the car again. Aerial cable goes back into the new head units aerial socket, 20 pin Subaru Harness clips straight into the ISO harness we bought for power etc. The McIntosh multicore clips back together and thats about it... Power up the new head unit and you should now have an aftermarket head unit fully integrated with the factory McIntosh amp and speaker setup. As for the Fascia, I am going to cut a hole in mine to mount the new head unit as I'm not forking out $600+ for new fan controls when mine are separate to the head unit section... will up date later but for now the aftermarket unit is screwed into the DIN rack thingy with no fascia. Good luck!

^let me know how you go with this. I'd like to do the same thing.

^^Mine automatically disengages if I give it a bit of snot to over take, then re-engages once it settles down again. It also disengages when I use cruise control which is kinda frustrating.

1994 Legacy TS-R - 254,000kms (30,000 done by me) - Car Jam now reads 284,000kms. 2000 E-Tune Legacy - 185,000kms (26,000 done my me). 2004 Forester STi - 128,000kms (10,000 done by me). 2004 Legacy 3.0R - 139,000kms (6,000 done by me).

Haha I guess so, pleased to hear they will be a viable option again after lots of emails basically telling me there were no alternatives unless I wanted to pay a premium price. Too bad I sold the car though

The biggest problem you're about to run into is that they no longer sell that product, only the WRX kits. I wanted one for mine this time last year and they said they no longer stocked the Forester kits nor could they get them at all. Disappointing that they still haven't removed it from their website

I left mine for three months, didn't do anything special, had a mate drive it once while I was away and that was it, no problems at all.

Depending on what sort of budget you have, I think a lot of other people (myself included when I owned a TT) would run with the opportunity to do a single turbo conversion or replace it with an STi motor. Definitely not the cheapest option but you'll be set for a while and won't want to upgrade. The only reason I bought the STi I had a while ago was for the running gear and if I had it in my Legacy I wouldn't have wanted the upgrade.

Erm..... http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/73994001/stolen-car-leads-police-on-loud-pursuit-through-southern-christchurch

^^ Haven't tried the Whispbars as they were a bit out of my price range at the time and couldn't really justify the extra expense. But I will agree that the P-Bars (P15 bar model for us I think....) are quite noisy. I have mine on permanently as they bolt on to the BP and around town they are sweet but on the open road you know they are there, not a real nuisance unless you like 100% silence.