boon

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.

That guy's a dreamer. To be fair, so is @Niran and what he's selling is way tidier. But who knows, maybe someone spectacularly optimistic will pay asking. People mistaking immaculate, completely original, 25000km cars for their daily-driven, somewhat modified, obviously "used" 120000km+ cars.

$1500 is for a long motor that the seller thought was toast. Which is about the value of the things that bolt onto a dead long motor. Used low-ish Kms EJ205 long motor, let's say $2k. Gaskets, seals, odds and ends that you would want to refresh, coolant, oil, probably $1k, 1.5k if you want to do the cambelt. Can you do all the labour yourself? If not, engine out, refresh replacement motor, engine back in, probably $2k+. So you're looking at $5k to revive it. If you went to a 207... shortblock or long motor? If I remember right the shortblocks are a couple of grand, then all the misc you would have to do, at least a couple more grand, then labour, a few more, then you would presumably need a retune as your compression is probably different, I'd say $10k all done and you would have probably the same performance as you do currently. EJ207 long motor, let's say $4-5k for the motor and bits hanging off it, $1k refreshing it, $2k labour, $1k tune (or maybe you could swap in an STI ECU?) - $8-10k and you would get EJ207 performance. But you would be better off selling yours before it blows up and buying an STI.

Part the car out, or buy a $2k wrecker motor and cross your fingers. Converting to anything STI is going to be a very expensive journey.

It's a stock-ish WRX. Don't ruin it with racecar spec stuff.

Get an electrical wiring diagram for the car as a start. Is it a continuous beep or a beep beep beep beep?

To be honest it sounds like you've made a mess of the alarm removal. First place I'd be looking is the door sensing. It sounds like the car thinks the driver's door is open.

I feel like a '98 may be too old for FreeSSM. re. the cable, I used a VAGCOM cable with an obd2 connector with my '05 Legacy and it worked well. In terms of which connectors need plugging in to put it in diagnostic mode... ugh it seems to vary hugely even with supposedly identical cars... different markets, trim levels... first get confidence in your reading equipment, then you just have to experiment until you get the output you expect.

The genuine price for the Brembos, last time I looked, was pretty vomit. I'm running Znoelli slotted cross-drilled rotors cos that's what the last owner put on the car. So it's fair to say I've had epic mileage from them. They stop good enough but make an annoying buzzing sound if you're driving alongside a wall such as the median divider on the motorway. (They look pretty racecar too) EDIT: Just had a look, Brembo front rotors >$1000/piece, no thanks.

I had Prova equal lengths on mine. Good header with a stock turbo, honestly I thought they sounded decent too. Had a tendency to crack once I went to a big turbo. Gains were, as described, likely minimal on paper but the car felt nice to drive. I've gone to Legacy Twin Scrolls + up-pipe on the latest attempt at making the car better, had to change sump, dipstick and dipstick guide tube, and the pickup.

The best out there is the AVO one. Deletes the little elbow that goes the airbox as well. It has ports on it for every single connection though so if you're deleting stuff it may not be useful. Every "Samco" one I've seen has been a fake pile of s***, be careful if you go that way. If you just go pipe... have someone weld one up for you. Keep in mind it has to do a little shimmy back to the left (looking at the motor from the front of the car) to line up.

There's about 2 on the market that aren't pieces of complete s***. The non-brand ones are utter garbage and will collapse if you pull too much vacuum through them.

Everything up to November '00 uses the snap-ring setup. I'm not 100% sure about seals on either side of the bearing as there are no less than 3 seal-looking things on the parts diagram.

Lugging matters if you do it for like.... kilometres.... every day. Not once, up a driveway. It would just stall. There's not even enough force to make the engine keep going around, let along damage anything.

From talking to some people who spend too much time around dyno bays, often the no-name stuff is no better than stock. s****y fin density in the cores, or s***house welding and poor fit/finish let them down badly. It's not a cheap car - my 2c is if you're going to do it, save up the pennies and get a PW.

0.5 bar is wastegate pressure if I remember right, so either it's plumbed wrong (possibly a restrictor pill missing), or there's a faulty solenoid, or it's in limp mode.

Have you already got spacers? After a decent drive mine would be too hot to comfortably touch.