boon

My bone stock 96 (MY97 though, TD04 blah blah) boosted to 14psi. However yours is a MY96 so probably different...

Howdy folks, My V7 is misbehaving slightly. The feel of the brake pedal is really, really inconsistent. Often, if I haven't braked for a while, I'll get close to half the pedals travel and nothing happens, then when it does the brakes are kinda spongy. If I lift then tap them again they're pretty firm and then if I lift and get back on them they're super firm and responsive like they used to be. They're Brembos, obviously, with what I think are reasonably new Brembo pads all round, OEM rotors in the rear and Znoelli Slotted + Drilled rotors up front. And just to make this a slightly tricky one, I just had them bled like 4 days ago to try and solve this issue, and they're still doing it. Vaccuum leak? Buggered brake booster? Ideas?

Call me paranoid but EFE981 (http://www.carjam.co.nz/car/?plate=EFE981) takes 3 bits of white tape to turn into FFF931 And it's a dark coloured subaru, reg'd as a saloon though.

Oh they detect Police. They detect them real good - if there's a Ka band radar being used within 2000-odd metres of a Bel STI it'll be beeping like crazy. The problem with that is the cops who are actively out trying to catch people use instant-on where the radar is kept in 'HOLD' mode, non-transmitting. Then when they spot a car, they flick it on and it will pick up your speed within ~100ms. Points to note, they're only useful within about 400-600m range depending on conditions. To pick one of them up, you have to be driving in the right traffic conditions so that you can pick up reflections from them checking cars ahead of you on the road, so that you can adjust your speed accordingly. If you come around a corner and a cop car turns on any form of speed measurement, pointed at you, you're nicked. That's if you're speeding of course. Unless you're using a high quality laser jammer. The top of the line ones you can probably sail past the cop and their gun will just show jamming codes on the screen.

70mm welding cable guys. 50cm of it, strip a few cm off the end you're not holding... I sleep so light. Used to leave $$$$ worth of stereo equipment in a car parked outside my window, at night now if a car even comes down my street I'm awake and peeking out the window like a grumpy old man.

Howsit folks, The old man's looking for a new car and he's off to check out a 2004 Outback this weekend. 3 litre (EZ30 is it?) with the tippy gearbox. ~65000k's Anything to look out for on these? Cheers.

There's a virtually unstoppable way of beating alarms. I just hope the crims haven't thought of it yet. In fact I assume quite a few have. Short of pulling out your coil-pack whenever you leave the car it's damn hard to stop someone a determined professional crim driving off with it. Sirens are a tricky thing. By their very nature they're not hard to find, you just go looking for the screaming thing. There's ways to deal with them without even ripping them out, even battery backup. Again, as usual, I won't go into it in details.

IMO an alarm's ability to save your car is 90% install, 10% alarm. The best alarm in the world isn't going to save sh!t if they find a bundle of black wires under your dash, tug it, and the brain falls down into the footwell. It is also worth noting that the best ever installed non-battery-backup alarm is a waste of time for anything more than giving your mum's car remote central locking. As it sounds like you have been Shale, you've gotta be creative with the install. The longer it takes you to put in (and the more zip-ties and tape you use) the longer it's gonna take to get past. If your hands get cut to sh!t installing it or you end up with 3/4 of the cars interior sitting on the floor of your garage then you're probably doing well. The thieves all have their little tricks too, it's a game of cat and mouse to find innovative ways to protect your car and then they find ways to get around it... and vice versa. I've worked in car audio/security and you learn a lot just from seeing what the munters have done to cars they've tried to take... some of it makes you raise an eyebrow, they can be pretty innovative for a pack of brain-dead mongrels. I'd love to make a list of sh!t they do and how you can counter it but a. it would be giving away a lot of 'trade secrets' and might annoy any installers that read it plus b. I don't want some crackhead to read it and get any new ideas.

This, this, this. The f***ers have seen under your bonnet before they came after it. Do you have pics on the net or anything with the siren visible? I've never heard of car thieves ripping the scoop off a car. They knew exactly what they were going for, at least when the siren lost it's 'dont scream' signal it went off... EDIT: ;/ Be careful what's visible in your pics guys! EDIT2, ninja power: Yup, I found everything a car thief would need in your build thread. Paranoid ka-pow!

Way old but was gonna say, they'll have ripped off the positive or negative on your battery in the hope that your alarm doesn't have a battery backup. Then under the cover of the noise of the shitty weather they go looking for your alarm brain. 1. Bonnet sensor, and if you put it above the headlight you may as well not have one. And be careful where you run the wiring for it. Adjust/cut it so it triggers if you open the bonnet even a tiny bit. 2. Get a chain style bicycle combination lock, shorten the chain on it, then put it from the bottom of the bonnet to something solid-ish. Don't let it open more than you need to get your hand under there and undo it. Then when the fackers pop the bonnet with their devious tricks which I won't go into, they can't even get at your battery/siren to do something about it. Car with mysterious non-opening bonnet and screaming alarm = too much trouble to bother with. By the time they figure it out and get the bolt-cutters out of their little bag of tricks you should be standing over them with a 4x2.

I have a V7 STI sedan. I really, really need a fold-down arm-rest in the middle so I can shove skis through there. I understand that the V8 STI had such an arm rest. Does anyone know if it's possible to put a V8 seatback in a V7? If so, I'll chuck an advert in the Wanted, hopefully someone has one from a wreck or race car...

My STi does about 15L/100km overall, I would say. Thirsty thing. Gets as bad as 20L/100km if you, erm, proceed at pace.

A courier mate of mine was parked outside McDonalds on Manners mall (on the pavers, haha) while he ran into a building to deliver something. Van was locked and alarmed, this is like 1pm on a work day. Came back and someone had smashed the window and grabbed his V1 ;/

Just to bump this up... my friend who lives in Northland told me that a WRX wagon got dumped and torched up the road from his house the other day, I hope this wasn't your car

That carpark is TERRIBLE for it. Avoid, avoid, avoid. Then again I'm pretty sure I drove past a guy carrying a screwdriver in the Reading Cinema carpark a couple of weeks ago. And my car has a whole bunch of chips in the passenger front window that I'm sure weren't there a little while ago

Nah dude. Held them in with blu-tak and zip ties. Cut off 2 of the studs, should be grouse right?

I've just installed Cusco adjusties on my GF8 wagon and naturally the camber is way out both front and rear. I now have plentiful negative front camber and a touch (0.5-1 degree?) of positive camber on the rear. I'm pretty sure the rear camber is due to the crowbar used to get the old struts out so I'm hoping it'll just tweak out however I'm hunting down camber bolts for the rear and the fronts have adjustable camber plates. I'll be taking it in ASAP for a wheel alignment and obviously camber adjustment. What should I be aiming for? Driving will be almost exclusively street with the occasional bit of 'spirited' driving in the twisties...

Yep, frameless windows are a bit of an issue. I think the rear drivers side window is coming away from the rails too, I can pull it back and forth about 2 inches with the door open (thankfully not with it shut!!!) The rearview has unscrewed itself from the roof and the rear windscreen seals are falling out. Stupid bass breaking my car to bits Fortunately no issues with metal or glass ripping/breaking yet although the other day it managed to unexpectedly pop the rear hatch open...

Simple. Just subtract the back seats and add the biggest sub box that will possibly fit through the hatch. My poor little car Some of you may have spotted/heard this if you were at 4&R Jamboree. 6 Digital Designs 2515's on the thick end of 10,000wrms making for what is almost certainly the loudest stereo ever installed in a Subaru in New Zealand. And possibly also the slowest ever WRX.

Bait car time. So bad. Put a vented bonnet on someone's mum's Impreza 1.5L, park it somewhere dumb then hide in the bushes with a bunch of big buggers with metal bars.

Pretty sure the same thing happened to our old Legacy when the pulley snapped off the end of the crank... but I think that was a pretty extreme case...

Well it's in for new front tyres and an alignment as we speak. Driving it to Taupo this weekend and I didn't like the look of the worn shoulders. This is my first car... they're just endless black holes to throw money into aren't they ??? ???

That'll be it! The front tyres have quite strange wear on them, corners quite worn while middle great - indicates it needs an alignment badly? Hrmmm I wonder if I can get these new tyres before the weekend... is there any point getting an alignment before tyres? But yeah, shortly going to apply bulk Nolathane, vital fluids, etc etc. I'll check the PS fluid colour when I get home tonight, a friend suggested it might be the PS pump on the way out with the wierd steering behavior. Would make sense.

Hey folks, Searched to no avail ;( I've just bought myself a 1996 V3 WRX Wagon. All going pretty well except the steering seems just a little bit funny. When you start to turn it's almost a little stiff but once you get past a certain point the wheel turns very very easily. There's also a reasonable degree of twitching/rumble through the wheel when braking from 'higher' speeds. I've been told it could be a wheel alignment issue or worn bushings in the steering assembly. Is it time to apply liberal amounts of Nolathane to the car? It has 122000km on it and I have no idea if they've been done. I'm putting new tyres on this week so I'll get an alignment at the same time. Any other ideas about what it might be? Still perfectly drivable but the twitchyness under braking especially is a little disconcerting. I'm not overly concerned about the variable steering feel but resolving the twitching would be really good. Cheers