boon

Believe it or not, Subaru built your car with a wideband, narrowband, oil pressure, oil temp (I think?) sensor and wired them all into your factory ECU. As above, gauges are eye candy at best. Why bother? You can't use CANBUS gauges because you don't have a CANBUS. If you have an aftermarket ECU with CANBUS you can get some - CANBUS is like a data network for cars. Then the gauges are just a display for some network data; they don't have to be connected directly to the sensors or anything.

Standard configuration with 2-port external is that you plumb boost to both sides of the actuator. When you want to build boost, you put equal pressure on both sides of the diaphragm, so the spring closes the wastegate because there is no pressure difference across it. When you want to control boost, you remove the boost from the "close" side, so the boost on the open side acts against the spring to open the gate, at somewhere around the pressure of the spring. Again, all things being equal and working correctly, you should be able to get as much boost as you want with a pretty boring spring rate, because when you want the gate shut there is no pressure difference across it - once more, other than exhaust pressure acting on the gate's valve and trying to push it open. EDIT: With a 3-port solenoid you usually have "Normally Open", "Normally Closed", and "Common". When you have no power applied to the solenoid the path is open between NO and COM. You plumb the gate's "close" port to COM and NO goes to atmosphere or your intake pre-turbo; when you want to build boost you cycle the solenoid so that NC, plumbed to a boost source, is open to COM, which fills the "close" side of the diaphragm and cancels out the boost pressure on the "open" side. You can have 20psi, 40psi, whatever, it effectively disappears because the pressure is equal on both sides of the diaphragm. When the solenoid turns off, the "close" side dumps boost to the atmosphere/intake.

When you cycle/power the solenoid, you bleed boost away from the actuator's diaphragm, allowing it to pull the gate closed. A higher pressure spring just gives you a higher base boost pressure if your solenoid fails or something. The only time they're useful is if you have such a high pressure differential across the turbo that the gate starts to blow open from exhaust pressure on the gate, in which case your turbine wheel and/or housing is too small anyway and you're putting a bandaid on the problem. The spring rate in the gate makes no difference to anything practical with a correctly setup electronic boost controller (such as the factory one) because it should have essentially atmospheric pressure only when the solenoid is powered on (essentially creating a boost leak in the intake, hence the restrictor pill in the factory setup) and when the solenoid is off you want it to push the gate open anyway, right? The only way you'll get the gate creeping open from the actuator is if you have so much boost pressure that you can generate >7psi through a restrictor pill into a hose that has a vacuum (assuming you're still running AFM and have the boost solenoid plumbed back to the turbo intake) on the other end. Big gate springs are a relic of the days of rising rate fuel pressure regulators, boost taps, and janky EFR controllers that did bad things to your AFM signal, not modern cars with modern ECUs and 3-port solenoids.

LVVTA flip-flop between being excellent and f***ing useless. Examples include the driveshaft hoop rules when re-shelling (now fixed), and their deeply stupid Facebook post about needing to cert brake rotors. A lot of LVVTA grew from old dudes with epic beards building ropey kit cars and hotrods in their sheds, not bolt-on modification of modern imports, and it showed. A lot.

Looking great. Makes me really want to get mine sorted out

1. A class MA vehicle first registered or manufactured on or after 1 January 1990 is not fitted with one high-mounted stop lamp. If you remove a wing that has a high-stop in it, you have to add another one - usually on the parcel tray or stuck to the rear windscreen.

Feels like putting lipstick on a pig, is there something wrong with the stock actuator?

Strict interpretation? It's illegal, the end. Real world, depending how you do it and where you get your WoFs they might not notice/care. People who think there is wiggle room in the VIRM are wrong: 19. An overlay has been applied that reduces or distorts the light emitted from the lamp (eg a tinted cover).

What swap? Just stock for stock or something radical? Stock engine out for stock engine in, assuming identical motors, is not a huge job - a solid weekend, fairly basic tools and an engine crane.

The V7 wheel is super clunky. I never really worked out the exact answer to this. I think the easiest way is to get a V8 wheel with clockspring and inflator. I still intend to do this to mine.

How on earth would ECU ever get picked up?

Is your Link even using the O2 sensors any more? V7 has two, one at the bottom of the headers and one after the turbo, nominally to monitor the cat is working properly. I can't remember which one is also used for narrow band AFR adjustment by the ECU, funny feeling it's the bottom one. Reasonable chance your Link has them disabled, and if it doesn't you can just go turn off the bottom one and delete it if your tune isn't running closed loop.

Sadly no more info about the car. It was just a pic from some car show, I was searching on the number plate. The bottom half of the bumper seems super familiar but I can't quite work out what from. Keep in mind that a large part of the look of that car comes from the widebody, which is a massively expensive undertaking even if you do it the cheapest way you can. I'd probably just hunt out a nice JDM or Prodrive bumper and call it good... you can't see it when you're sitting inside it anyway, and $4k would go a long way in terms of making it drive better.

Internet seems to think the 8/9 tooth ones are interchangeable. 9 tooth was on the '01-> WRX and STI but they're hideously expensive. Legacy from about '05 on seems to have a 9 tooth as well but may be a completely different starter. Sorry I can't be much more help than that.

Found another pic of it: God that bonnet gap really is bad. I can't quite put my finger on the donor bumper. Maybe Skyline?

Donor bits would probably be $1000 or so. Then labour + paint? Probably $1500+ I'd budget $4k to get it done.

It's either a really bad photo, or it's one piece. The bonnet gap is also kinda disgusting but that's more like a "the owner cbf adjusting it" thing

Hard to say without another angle. The front guards look like generic WRC clone ones. The bumper is a custom one. The one piece bumper-grill-eyelids is not something I've ever seen before, especially not specifically set up for the Morette headlights.

Side note, lol 40 degrees... the steepest street in NZ (ooh actually the world) is about 21. I'm going to say option 1 is probably user/driver error, option 2 is you fouled the plugs and it will fix itself after you get the engine vaguely hot.

What's the reason for redrilling the knuckles? Touching anything cast is basically a gigantic no-no for the cert rules.

What I really want is a magnetic disconnect hidden in the front bumper so I don't rip the CTEK off the wall when I forget about it and reverse out of the garage, and I don't have to open the bonnet each time.

10 will be a beast. We have a couple of 5's for things that don't get used often. As mentioned, they pull off some Lazarus-grade resurrection of batteries. I've got a battery that hasn't been used for 5 years on "Recon" now, will be interesting to see if it can get it usable again.

Amayama has all of what you need in stock. Also, for probably everything except the Brembo bolts, Pickapart?

I'm going to say the AE part will fit because the tie rod end that it connects to is the same part number for cars listed as using both the AE and FE inner tie rod?

I used a KKL 409.1 VAG-COM Cable successfully with FreeSSM and my '05 Legacy. Been ages, but I remember trying to get the drivers working was a gigantic f***-around. I'd probably skip the scanner and work out how to get the dash diagnostic codes to read properly.