James' Subaru Liberty 3.0R-B Wagon "SKD55S"

[applegeek897]

July 2017: So my initial plan for my brakes has changed. Basically just doing Brembo's for the front with new calipars, painted new pads and rotors I'd be looking at over 2K, now considering I could do new pads, lines and rotors front and rear for half the price it really makes more sense, specially when there are other things that money can be spent on. So at this case I'm just waiting for my tax-return to enter my bank account and the second it does that will all be ordered.

I've been trying some new car-wash and wheel cleaner lately, it wasn't easy switching from what I've been using for years but I'm absolutely love the Super Syrup products so far, the names will forever make me laugh.



It ended up doing a good job.



Again once the tax-return comes in a plan on doing a extremely major in-car-entertainment overhaul, but while that will happen in due time anything over 5 volume is completely unlistenable. I'm under the understanding that the factory Macintosh system while somewhat decent is pretty weak and very common to blowing. I was lucky enough to find a mostly good set of factory speakers uber cheap from a mate, so at least in the meantime I can have somewhat half decent speakers.

Door card off.



The amount of factory sound deadening is actually fairly impressive.



Man oh man these were BAD, basically torn completely all the way round.





While I was there and considering I also had them I replaced the 4 inch speakers, the passenger side was fine but the drivers side needed doing.





Rinse and repeat for the other side.





Holy balls the difference is huge, amazing how good working speakers are (mind blown).

A decent set of OEM floor mats recently popped up for sale and I was very keen to burn the old Supercheap Auto ones, mats that actually clip in is a nice thing.





Luckily it was a complete set front and rear.





Something I've been thinking about doing for some time is to remove all the stickers on the car. I liked them at one point on the car but they don't really do it for me anymore and removing them will really help clean the car up I think anyway.

Started with drivers side, before / after.





Passenger before / after.





Front before and after.





Rear before and after.





I had to keep the chopped sticker.



I need to remove a small amount of residue but otherwise it's looking much cleaner.



Lastly after a quick trip to Pick n Payless I managed to find a couple gen 4's, while most of the good stuff was already gone I managed to find a decent set of front guard liners which I really needed.



I also grabbed a bunch of these plastic devil screw clip things that should help to replace the missing ones in the car now.

[applegeek897]

August 2017: I finally had some time aside today to fix the steering wheel. I seemed to have been around 2 splines off being perfectly centre, not a huge deal but I did want to fix it.

This was basically what true straight looked like.



Having done this before it was a quick and easy affair, airbag off and out.



Corrected



And back together, I took the car for a drive, besides the fact that the car could barely keep itself running, something that is normal for me when putting the battery back on, it actually felt strange having the wheel straight and it going straight. I just got so used to it.



Also gave the old girl a quick wash. I really need to raise the car a bit too.

[applegeek897]

August 2017: Time to hopefully sort the front of the car out a-bit, basically the entire front end was held on with two zip-ties on either end of the car, bad show.



Lots of this.



While I did get a whole heap of plastic clips from Pick n Payless it was fairly rushed and I didnt know what I really needed. So the front end came off and the digging began.





The drivers side was the main culprit, as that was the side that took the hit while in the hands of the previous owner.

Zip-ties or nothing.





Then we got to this. The previous owner had rigged the fog-lights to only come on when the high beams were activated. This was done because high-beam HIDs were installed and they would be too bright anyway, but one, I dont use fog-lights at all, as rare as that might be for a Subaru driver and they didn't work with that setup anymore anyway, plus I thought they screwed up the rest of the headlights but more on this in a moment.





All the unnecessary stuff was removed and I returned the wire to the way it was, mostly, I couldnt find my soldering iron so crimps and tape will have to do for now.



Yay for single foglight, the other side doesnt have a connector at all so that will have to be obtained from a wreckers.



Moving on to fixing the headlights, they have been like this for some time now, the high beams on low, drivers side on low and passengers side on normal.



Then it hit me, fuse?



Yep there is was, drivers side headlight fuse blown.



Quick pop down to Supercheap and a new fuse was acquired.



What do you know, perfect now.



Lastly the suspension. After finally getting the car into the air with my shitty jack, I straight away saw the problem.



For what ever reason, despite being setup and alignment by pros, it seemed like the shaft was self lowering if you will.



It ended up being a good 25mm lower then the other side, which was so strange because everything actually felt really tight. Regardless I raised it back up to level we shall see how that goes, I will certainly being going back to Heasman to at least get it setup again, they are welcome to have the car for longer then they had it last time if that means the job will be done better. Hey maybe there is something wrong with the coilover, we shall see.



Inside of the guard was not happy.



Sitting better now.

[Tizzle240]

It looks amazing, How do you like having the boxer 6? i was thinking of trying to swap in for my outback?

[applegeek897]

It looks amazing, How do you like having the boxer 6? i was thinking of trying to swap in for my outback?

Thanks mate, its truely insane. I think its an engine what really flies under the radar, so underrated.

[Tizzle240]

Thanks mate, its truely insane. I think its an engine what really flies under the radar, so underrated.

Im going to have to take a look, i need the 240 running first so i can pull the engine on the subby, i have the SOHC EJ25 and it just doesnt quite have the power/torque i need to feel comfortable overlanding.

[applegeek897]

August 2017: Tax came in today and I didn't want to waste anytime, so I went straight from work to Ryda to get the bulk of everything I needed to do my entire Audio overhaul.



The main bulk of the stuff includes,

Headunit: Sony XAV-AX100
Front Speakers: Morel Hybrid 6.5 Two-Way Component
Rear Speakers: Morel Tempo Ultra Integra 602 6.5 Two-way
Amplifier: JL Audio HD900/5 HD 5-Channel Amplifier
Sound Insulation: DS18 sound deadener bulk pack (2x)

The fronts are on order but should be here on Thursday to make for a weekend install. More on the components another time though.

Something I do want to get started on is the headunit, I truely hate the current one. This is such a nice little unit and very reasonable priced all things considering, plus most importantly CarPlay!





Comes with everything I need except a reverse camera which is fine as I can use the current one.









It's such a nice little unit, should fit nicely in the car.





Kinda strange it being a double din with single guts, but I suppose considering it doesn't have a CD player and being modern it doesn't need the extra space.





Goodbye.





With no surprise they was quite the wiring job inside. The previous owner had hooked all the extra bits up to work like the parking brake and reverse camera, both a good and bad thing I suppose.





The kicker amp that was in the car doesn't use RCA cables and instead uses this block thing, it'll stay for now so that I can use the current setup until the new front speakers arrive and I replace everything.



I was hoping the connector was the same considering they were both Sony but no, so chopped it got. Colours were the same though so that was a bonus.



Quick bit of wiring and everything is good. At least most of this will be replaced and significantly neatened up with the new install, considering it will only be in for a week of so it'll do fine.



In she goes.



With the fascia back on it was way to deep and needed to come out a bit.





After redoing it and bringing it out as far as possible it looked good but due to the design on the unit the actual fascia won't go all the way in, damn.





Because of this the trim doesn't go back on correctly so I will have to either go halfway in-between with the unit sitting a touch further in, which could effect the nob, or trim the fascia. Tomorrow I will attack this but for now, the drive to work will be like this.

[applegeek897]

August 2017: So something really shit happened, but I'm extremely lucky it happened while reversing into my car spot rather then happening driving on the highway, because then things could have been much worse.

So while entering my garage and turning to reverse in I heard a large clunk and the steering felt super weird. I straight away got out and could see something was clearly wrong with the drivers side wheel. After jacking it up I quickly saw that I had broken a endlink.





But then I noticed this.

Yeah completely rooted control arm.



Again I am extremely lucky this happened the way it did and not at any speed, because it's very likely the car would have been written off. Anyway after hours of completely blocking my garage a tow truck driver came so I could use their go-jacks, because it was Sunday evening and everyone was closed, I could push the car into my spot so I could fix it.



While it isn't great that they broke, the car is just about at 350,000km and something like that was bound to break, rest assured I will be having a very good look around the car to see if there is anything else like this that could fail in that way.



Thanks to the CorgiWerx team I was able to sort out a replacement set of lower control arms.



They might have looked pretty dirty but after a clean they are looking decent.





I've ordered both Whiteline W0506 lower inner front bushes, KCA334 lower inner rear bushes. Plus I thought hey, while I'm there lets get a KCA313 Front Roll centre/bump steer correction kit, apparently 'essential for lowered cars' but it also means fresh ball joints and tie rod ends and the car will be going in for an alignment anyway.

[applegeek897]

August 2017: So time to fix this thing, after a couple of days of running around to find parts its time to get started.

I started with a quick trip to Pick N Payless to grab some end-links.





Once I got home it was time to start on the work.



After it was up on stands I could get a proper look with how bad things were.



And to no surprise, things were truely munted.





Time to fix it all, starting with the end-links a 14mm socket and some WD40 helps crack the nut.



While a 14mm ratchet and a hex-key did the main work.



Out they came, not looking good.





Then the ball joint comes out, this was surprisingly quick and painless.





Followed by the lower inner rear bushing, interestingly it does seem to have a aftermarket poly unit, likely Whiteline but not the KCA334.





Lastly the star of the show, these also seemed to have a whiteline unit in it.





Certainly wasnt in good shape.





Once everything was out it was a rinse and repeat affair for the other side.





While I could blame the end-link breaking on the other side, the passenger one was extremely loose.





With the old arms out it is time to get into the good stuff.



The KCA313 looks great, hopefully we should be seeing a nice change with these, even if for just a fresh set of ball joints and tie-rod ends.



Ball joints



Tie-rod ends



One of the very strange things I noticed is that for what ever reason one of the bushes was missing the metal thing in the middle. Who knows, I imagine it didnt help things. *I actually found it later.





New stuff certainly looking better then the old.









Getting everything back in the car took way longer then I originally thought, which was very frustrating but oh well. With the help of a shit tone of the high performance lube the arm ended up in.





Once that was done it was time to get the ball joints in, after a quick sand on the inside to clean any debris they slotted in nicely.





The tie-rod end was a bit of a ***** to get off but eventually it came loose.





Goodbye old and rubbish.



In goes the new one.



Once that was done it was another case of rinse and repeat for the other side.





After all the components were in it was time to time to torque everything done.





Pins in.





Then to finish everything up, end-links.





Wheels back on and done.





While this was certainly an unexpected event it gave me a chance to do some upgrades and I cant say how lucky I was that this didnt happen at speed.

[applegeek897]

August 2017: Before I take the car for its first drive since doing the suspension I though it a good idea to quickly to an oil change on the transmission, something that I actually havent done at all on the car. According to the book, I believe its been over 50,000km so well overdue, for me anyway. I decided to go with Penrite Pro Gear 75W-90.





After a bit of quick reading it seemed that I needed to get a Torx T70 to get the main drain plug off, this was so difficult to find, no one stocked them surprisingly but finally Sydney Tools had a set, which I really didnt want as I actually have any other size anyway, so yeah 90 bucks later I got this.





Car off the ground.





Torx ready to go and thats when I saw, it wasnt -_-





So yeah turns out its actually a 21mm, oh well, could be worse. Once it was off, the oil came out nice and easy and happily the drain plug looked pretty clean.





Next up was this 14mm which basically instantly melted and rounded off, really felt like it was made of jelly, so yeah thats another thing to deal with, but for another time. I feel like I got most of the oil out but before my trip in October ill do it again and address that issue.





The 6MT's dipstick seems really poorly placed there is just no room. So some of the intake had to come off.



Once that was done and filled I took it for a drive and instantly noticed smoother shifts, so much nicer.



Then the car was off to Heasman to get the alignment done and a small height and coilover adjustment.

[applegeek897]

August 2017: Once again, Heasman worked their magic on the alignment and the car is driving amazing, certainly better then ever before. They did mention that that even once fully tightened they could still move the body of the drivers side coilover. They have put this in writing for me which should help in hopefully getting it replaced, cause quite honestly, its pathetic for an expensive and vertically brand new product.

Anyway, finally I can get something, that thanks to the control arm fiasco, I was meant to get started on weeks ago. This car has been crying for a proper stereo since the day I got it, finally its getting one. Be prepared there is going to be ALOT of pictures and info.

Time to go through everything. Starting with the least interesting, for me anyway.

Despite knowing that they would basically be useless, I grabbed a set of universal 6.5" 16mm thick MDF spacers. They were $8.00 and made it easier to do a nice circle, but otherwise, no help getting the speaker actually secured to the door.





I knew that I would need a somewhat half decent roller for the sound deadening. There were plenty going for well over $40.00 which I refused to pay for something like that. I ended up settling for this Roadkill unit. Its utter crap and the one screw on it kept falling off. Oh well.





While the roller didnt feel like quality, this wiring kit does. This is a Rockford 4GA amplifier Wiring Kit.





9.1 meters of super beefy 16 gauge speaker wire, there is heaps here but I can already see myself running out.





Nice set of RCA cables.





4 gauge power wire with a nice fuse holder.





4 gauge ground wire, nice and short. Ill likely throw this on the passenger seat mount as this has worked well for me in the past.





Also comes with a REM wire and a few other goodies.





I needed three sets total of RCA cables as Ill be using a five-channel amp. So I grabbed two sets of Stinger 3 meter RCAs.





Due to the fact that the Sony XAV-AX100 has a single RCA for the subwoofer I needed to grab a two into one, again another Stinger unit.





For sound deadening I decided to go for some DS18, hey it aint Dynamat but it also isnt the price of Dynamat so itll be fine. I grabbed two bulk packs so Ill have plenty and dont have to worry about being frugal with it, plus any left overs can go in the daily.





Now onto the good stuff. Starting with the amp, I was not in the slightest interested in the idea of running two amplifiers. So that meant running a five-channel. Plus the car was designed to have one amp under the passenger seat anyway. I ended up with a JL Audio HD900/5 900W five-channel amplifier. Its such a nice looking unit but surprisedly compact, although super dense, this was a heavy bastard.





Nice to see all of the tuning controls are actually hidden behind a panel so there is no chance of screwing them up.





The amp uses these fancy quick disconnect things for easy removal.





Plenty of I/O ready for tunes.





Next up was the rear, I didnt need anything super special but I wanted something decent for some fill, plus the rears were blown anyway. There is only one space in the door for a single 6" as the original was a two-way. I ended up with a pair of Morel Tempo Ultra 602 Integras. These are super reasonably priced and should do well in the back. Ill see what theyre like, might be a great option for the daily.





Nice.





Lastly what I hope will be somewhat of the piece to resistance. A nice set of two-way 6.5" Morel Hybrid 602s. I was going to go with the three-way versions but they couldnt get them in stock and Im kinda glad about that because it means the install is going to be way easier because of it. These things are like mini subs.





They even feel quality.





Tweeters.





Bug-looking crossover.





So thats basically all the parts. As for a subwoofer, the car already has a 8" low profile kicker unit in the factory location that even at this point I have to have on -5 because the rattle is so bad. So for now Ill leave that in and see what its like running off the amp and after some sound deadening.

[applegeek897]

Time to get onto the install.

Door card off.





Speakers ripped out and vapour shield off.





I decided to start with sound deadening before anything else, at least on the inside. Due to the fact that I had so much of it I decided to do both the inner and outside skin of the door.





I used three main big chunks and then filled some gaps with some off cuts.





Now onto the inner but before that I gave it a good clean to make sure I had good adhesion.





Slowly but surely it all came on.





While I might be approaching diminishing return I had it, so may as well use it.





With that basically finished I needed to get the new speaker wire through the door grommet.





With some whiteline high performance lube I managed to negotiate this high tech tubing up the grommet.





With the cable through to connect the crossover to the amp I needed to sort the wiring for the speakers and tweeter. Time to get the crimps out.





Tweeter and speaker wire sorted.





Once that was done all the old wiring could be deleted.





Once that was sorted I could now find a place to mount the crossover. This seemed like the best place.





I was recommended to actually use the DS18 to mount it, strangely though it actually started to somewhat sag and fall down so I had to re think it.





Some 3M Dual Lock seemed to be the perfect way to mount it, doesnt look like its going anyway.





Before I continue on that I need to make an adapter to mount to the speaker to the door. Im happy to see that there isnt much of size or height difference between the two which should make, making mounts a bit easier.





I had a butt tone of 16mm MDF laying around which was certainly convenient. Quick trip to Bunnings and a jigsaw was purchased.





Using the original mount I measured out onto the MDF.





Started with a rough cutout and then using the cheap universal spacers a what mostly looks like a perfect circle was cut out.





Mounting holes were then cut and on the speaker went.





Size ended up almost prefect.





With the issue of mounting the woofer I needed a way to mount the single tweeter.





3M Dual Lock to the rescue again.





Perfect.





Thats not going anyway.





Woofer in.





Then onto a touch of cable management.





Much better.





So basically thats everything that needs doing on the one door. Ill fill the last whole in the door when everything is tested. Now it was time to remove the passenger seat to get to the old amp.





Looks like the previous owner had the amp purely for the sub and even more strangely it had two pissy wires for the power and ground each. Happy to see this out.





The amp will be a perfect addition for the daily once I get a better set of speakers for it. Thats it for the day. Hopefully I can get a few hours in during the week and fingers crossed have everything in by the end of next weekend.

[applegeek897]

August 2017: Let the install continue. After a recommendation, I thought I would paint the spacer to reduce the chance of it disintegrating due to moisture.





A quick trip to Bunnings and a cheap can of matte black was acquired.





Itll do the job for a quickie.





Anyway, back to the car. This mess needed to be sorted asap.





Ah, much better.





Next some of the trim and rear seats needed to come off so I could free the carpet.





So nice of Subaru to leave plenty of space to route more wires.



Now it was time to remove anything that would no longer be needed from the old system.



Started with removing all the speaker wire as it wont be needed anymore. I remember the previous owner saying that rerouted the wires to go directly to headunit so it would bypass the amp.





While it was nice to finally clean the wiring back there two things that have taken up some room, which I never really looked into. First was this Response AA3074 which after a quick google turned out to be a device that apparently helps reduce noise through the system that can be caused by power to the headunit, rather then screw with it, Im going to leave it there, everything works so rather then possibly brake something and then not get it working again itll stay.



Then I found this, looks like this was the way the pervious owner had hooked up the steering wheel controls to work with the aftermarket headunit. This stopped working a couple months after I bought the car, which I imagine must have just been from a reset headunit. Itll also stay and Ill see if I can make it work with the new headunit.



With all the old speaker wire out I could get onto the RCAs



Man they were long, especially the Rockford one. I get it though, they must do it for people wanting to do a boot install, so cable management will certainly need to be done.



Then they needed to be run through the carpet.





Before the headunit went back I needed to add the single RCA converter for the sub.





Next was to route the power wire through the firewall.





Once again Subaru was nice enough to leave a grommet in the perfect place.





Once I mocked it up everything came together.





Once again heaps longer then it needs to be but Ill cut that in the morning. Thats it for today, more tomorrow.

[applegeek897]

September 2017: The work continues. Before continuing on the wiring I thought it best to move onto the drivers side door.





After a clean it was good to go.





Old connectors also cut off.





Inside and out done.





Speaker wire routed through.





I was hoping I wouldnt have to bother but the drivers seat had to also come out. And another good cleaning.





Once that was done it was time to make another adapter/spacer.





Having the old one made it a much quicker process.





Splash of paint and done.





Tweeter was also done.





Back to wiring, driver side speaker wire routed through the tunnel area.





Cable management was next on the list, starting with removing most of the old original speaker wire, although at least for now I will actually be keeping the rears as despite having a shit tonne Ive already run out, oh well should be fine for the rears.





Crimps and crossover also went on for the drivers side.





Power and ground next, there was a perfect place for the ground on the handbrake cable mount.





Then power.





These quick disconnects are awesome.





Ground and REM next.





Followed by sub and front speakers.





In she goes.





RCA were also somewhat organised and plugged in, man these were so long, one well more then the length of the car.





Fuse could then go in for amp power.





After hours of adjusting things like the cross over and wiring in the door I could finally get the door cards back on after testing the sound.





Then some of the trim could finally go back on.





So the front is pretty much complete. Likely some fine tuning to do but well see. Even not at all being tuned it sounds freaking amazing. Tomorrow Ill attack the sub area, it needs sound deadening BAD!

[applegeek897]

September 2017: So while I would love to be spending time on getting the stereo finished, of which it almost is, I was surprised with this.



While this was something I really wasnt feeling like oh well, off to Pick n Payless.



After raiding that sedan for its cat-back and an old GC8 for its mounting hardware, I have a nice stock cat-back to hopefully get me under noise limit.





Straight home to install, car up in the air.





Parts out and WD at the ready.





Goodbye for now.





The hangers were stubborn but WD like always did the trick.





Off they came.





It was at this point I moved onto the centre section which to my extreme frustration it wasnt close to going to fit. Everything lined up but the flange was about 45 degrees off. Id just have to hope its fine, so the rear mufflers on their own went on. Yuck.





Later that afternoon I dropped by a place that does testing and, it failed. Just. 89 on the acceleration and 97 on the deceleration, all because of the rasp from the hotdog muffler in the X-Force Mid section. The rasp was BAD, the system overall was much quieter. Man it was strange driving the car. Anyway, so now off the Best Mufflers so Chris can work his magic and get it perfect.

Chris got straight into cutting the flange off so he could rotate it. Some modification was needed to make it fit perfectly to the custom mid section, and off the xforce centre came.





On it went.



Then we noticed this, yeah, thanks to my new lows and the coilovers dropping the car got to the point where this happened. Blew both gaskets from the headers to cat pipe.



Looks like it was in bad shape anyway, these were the supplied ones. New ones were much better.



Fixed and were done.





With all the leaks done, everything was sounding much better, or worse depending on how one looks at it. Its soooooo quiet but also no rasp, I cant believe how much of a difference that centre muffler makes. So we will have to see in the next couple of weeks if its fine, it really should be. Luckily he also has a entire front section with all three cats if they give me shit for the high flow cats, again. Hopefully not.



In better news, Show Me Your Tints came round to do my mothers new car and I had him tint the sunroof, how didnt I do this before.



Before



50/50



And done, so good.