1991 RC recovery mission - "Rebel Scum"

underscore

Well-known member
Not the best pictures, but it was cold and I was trying to figure out the rough idle issue it developed while parked at the ski hill. Turned out a vacuum line came off so it was an easy fix. Also rear strut tower bars are higher inconvenient for getting skis inside.

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underscore

Well-known member
Lately I've been trying to decide if I should take more of a loss to get the car sold, or bite the bullet and do a bit more work to it to make it exactly what I'd want it to be. There aren't many cars that would fulfill my requirements (AWD, manual trans, 4 doors, newer than 2000, Japanese, decent ground clearance, under $20k). I have a pretty substantial dislike of Subarus but an Impreza is one of the few vehicles that ticks all the boxes so I test drove a 2014 WRX and I was genuinely amazed at how bland it was to drive. I told my wife I would go for it if we really needed me to have a more family-friendly car, but I wouldn't get any enjoyment out of driving it. She told me to keep the Celica (I'm a lucky man).

The tl;dr is the car is still technically for sale, but someone has got to really want it and be willing to pay for it to get it away from me.

I've also noticed a lot of people looking at the car while driving, and today I had a guy asking me about it while getting gas. I generally don't care what people think about my car, but it's still pretty cool. I highly doubt that would happen driving a bone stock Subaru.

In other news I finally got a chance to give it a nice wash. Work will slowly be continuing on the car, I've already got a pretty long running list of plans in my phone and I'll be updating this thread as they happen.

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FC Zach

Active member
underscore":1mzbf1hj said:
I've also noticed a lot of people looking at the car while driving, and today I had a guy asking me about it while getting gas. I generally don't care what people think about my car, but it's still pretty cool. I highly doubt that would happen driving a bone stock Subaru.

I get this on occasion and although it's typically only from people who know what they're looking at, it's very rewarding to receive any compliment no matter how small. . . it sure makes all the hard work seem worth it :) I'm sure you (and others) could say the same.
 

FC Zach

Active member
underscore":54x8iac2 said:
There aren't many cars that would fulfill my requirements (AWD, manual trans, 4 doors, newer than 2000, Japanese, decent ground clearance, under $20k). I have a pretty substantial dislike of Subarus but an Impreza is one of the few vehicles that ticks all the boxes

I can't say I share the same thoughts on them. . One of my favorite cars and the only body style Impreza I really like is a two door first gen WRX STI. But I can definitely see where newer models could seem more cookie cut and bland due to technology and creature comforts.
 

underscore

Well-known member
FC Zach":1y3n1bgj said:
underscore":1y3n1bgj said:
I've also noticed a lot of people looking at the car while driving, and today I had a guy asking me about it while getting gas. I generally don't care what people think about my car, but it's still pretty cool. I highly doubt that would happen driving a bone stock Subaru.

I get this on occasion and although it's typically only from people who know what they're looking at, it's very rewarding to receive any compliment no matter how small. . . it sure makes all the hard work seem worth it :) I'm sure you (and others) could say the same.

I've only met two people who knew what it is, the guy at the gas station initially asked if it was a Supra. I'm always curious how many people are looking at it thinking it's just a Celica with a funny hood.

FC Zach":1y3n1bgj said:
underscore":1y3n1bgj said:
There aren't many cars that would fulfill my requirements (AWD, manual trans, 4 doors, newer than 2000, Japanese, decent ground clearance, under $20k). I have a pretty substantial dislike of Subarus but an Impreza is one of the few vehicles that ticks all the boxes

I can't say I share the same thoughts on them. . One of my favorite cars and the only body style Impreza I really like is a two door first gen WRX STI. But I can definitely see where newer models could seem more cookie cut and bland due to technology and creature comforts.

I don't mind the look of the first gen coupe or the third gen hatch, I would imagine the first gen is a more sporty car given that it's from the 90's, but if I was just going to get another 90's coupe I'd buy a 205. I would expect a base model of any gen to be pretty meh but I thought the WRX and STi were always pitched as sports cars with that silly engine providing a low center of gravity and stuff. I can rant for quite a while about why I dislike Subarus but I figured I should put aside my biases and give the third gen WRX a chance and see if it was fun enough to overcome my dislikes. In traffic it was hard to judge but when I took it out to some twisty backroads it felt like driving the colour beige. The low rpm power was nice but stuff like the steering feel disappointed me pretty badly, to the point where I caught myself driving below the speed limit on a deserted back road and understanding why people buy automatics.

Obviously that's just my opinion, and opinions are like buttholes (everyone's got one, and most of them stink), and I seem to have slightly unconventional ideas on what makes a car interesting. But I'd genuinely struggle to understand how anyone could consider driving one of those cars as fun. Maybe there are some mods that improve the feel of it but I would think you'd have to make pretty big changes to make it feel significantly different from how it feels out of the box.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Well now that I'm fairly set on keeping it, time to start getting the stuff I need to get the car exactly where I want it. After someone on Facebook posted up about ordering a bunch of ST205 intercooler plates (which are now sold out unfortunately) I ordered a few spare OEM parts from Amayama, and stumbled across these snow version decals:

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I have no idea what they were originally used for as I've never seen them before, and I don't know what exactly I'm going to do with them, but they seemed neat so I bought some.

Also going off the suggestions of a few posts on this forum and a couple others, I ordered a Vibrant Ultra Quiet resonator. I tried an insertable silencer which helped a little but it kept breaking and rattling around in the muffler which was even worse. I had zero objections from my wife about ordering this for the car haha.

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underscore

Well-known member
I took an evening and replaced the capacitors in the spare ECU, start to finish it took around an hour but a good chuck of that was me finding tools and remembering how to remove soldered components. I'll swap that one into the car soon and then repeat the process with the original ECU.
 

FC Zach

Active member
underscore":2swdfbun said:
I took an evening and replaced the capacitors in the spare ECU, start to finish it took around an hour but a good chuck of that was me finding tools and remembering how to remove soldered components. I'll swap that one into the car soon and then repeat the process with the original ECU.

Awesome, I look forward to hearing the results. Was this a repair or preventative maintenance for your spare? I ask because if it's repair work, I'm curious which caps and on which board failed? I have been keeping up with other's failed caps and it seems that it's almost always the 10uf50v caps. I have only replaced the failed pieces but I'm tempted to replace all as a PM.
 

underscore

Well-known member
A bit of both, I ran the ECU last winter and it worked fine but when I looked inside last fall I could see two of the caps were starting to leak. I don't recall exactly which ones but I can check, one was on the main board and the other was on the smaller board.
 

FC Zach

Active member
underscore":3vxg8t1b said:
I don't recall exactly which ones but I can check, one was on the main board and the other was on the smaller board.

Awesome, it was two caps and on both the top and bottom board for me as well.
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underscore

Well-known member
Going from memory I want to say it was those same two. Maybe they were just of a lower quality than the others or they're more prone to leaking vs drying out for whatever reason. Either way 30 year old capacitors are due for replacement in my mind.
 

underscore

Well-known member
I got the resonator in so I can confirm the Vibrant will fit in the stock location at the rear beside the driveshaft. I managed to get it in with clearance to everything, but I decided to rotate it slightly to get more of a gap to the driveshaft just to be safe and it shifted to touching the rear crossmember slightly. I didn't have the wiggle room to get the leverage to move it enough to clear so I'll just spacer the crossmember down a hair with some washers for now.
 

underscore

Well-known member
I pulled my original ECU and swapped the caps in it as well, the same two were leaking and the second I touched them each had a leg fall off. Considering the vibration inside a car I'm amazed they still seemed to be working. After seeing the same caps leaking in several ECUs now I highly recommend anyone running a stock ECU of any gen open it up and replace all the caps. If you aren't familiar with electronics yourself a shop should be able to do it for peanuts.
 

Corey

Active member
Incredible the car still runs with bad caps like that. I'll definitely be taking a look at my ECU soon.
 

underscore

Well-known member
According to another thread I think the two that have leaked only deal with the CEL circuitry, so the caps themselves failing should only take out the CEL. Where is gets bad is the fluid inside is corrosive, so it will eat away at the PCB and cause other damage. In my main ECU you could see bare copper where it had already eaten away a bit of the PCB.

They can also dry out internally which doesn't make a mess but is hard to diagnose. Considering even the newest ST205 ECU is 20 years old now (and the oldest 165 is 30!) in my mind $20 in components and a couple hours of my time is no brainer preventative maintenance.
 

underscore

Well-known member
When you accidentally break a clamp, turn it into a bracket. This will hold the relays for the intercooler sprayer and driving lights.

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underscore

Well-known member
It's super dirty it's just a shit cellphone snap but driving it for the first time since March was pretty nice. The softer front springs and Vibrant resonator are a huuuuuge improvement so thanks to everyone who suggested that and helped me sort out how to install it.

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My coworkers minty Audi for reference of how nice a black car can actually look lol.
 

underscore

Well-known member
The tablet mount finally came in, so I had to try mounting the Asus Transformer laptop/tablet. It can be used with a full keyboard for doing all the calculations for the TSD events and then mounted in the car and used with a bluetooth keyboard so they can make adjustments for any delays without having to do it by hand. Since it runs a full Windows OS I put the Alfa rally factor calculator program on it and I'll put the .pdfs of the Celica manuals on there just in case. The mount seems pretty solid but we'll see how it does bouncing around on forestry roads.

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