Bought this car back in summer of 2012, didn't know a thing about DSMs at the time. This was my first turbo car, my first AWD vehicle as well. It came with a built block (stock crank, eagle rods, weisco pistons) and a rebuilt oem head (all stock) as well as a godspeed ebay turbo kit. It was nice looking on the outside and it was running and driving, boosting hard. After a couple hiccups, (snapped belts, intercooler piping coming apart, finally rod bearings) I decided to re-do the whole car. Some pictures of when I got her:

Previous owner gave me this sheet of mods done to the car, no receipts, and upon tearing down the whole car....dude was actually telling the truth. Too bad all the bearings on the crank got roasted (found mitsu bolts on the aftermarket rod caps, think they were reused and all the bearings just got hammered on)

Main reason I believed the guy is because of how fast this car was at the time. HOLY SH!T was it fast. Like, chirp the tires going into 2nd fast. Can't reach the dashboard fast. I was blown away.

Here's the only video I have of it:


Then I bought these rims for it, Enkei RSF5 17x7.5 +40

Only when I first had the rims, my brakes were all grimy and dirty and my stock shocks were worn and looked like crap. It just didn't look right to have a nice rim over top of all those old ugly parts. So I redid the brakes, got new rotors and ss lines, painted them orange, etc....then came the coilovers.....then the new control arms/ball joints.....and it kind of took off from there. Before I knew it, almost the entire car was taken apart. I'm just finally now starting to get it all back together after a fiasco I had with a shop(long story).


So here we are, this is what I have to work with:




It kinda sucks to see the engine bay so bare. This is what it looked like right before I got bad news about my bearings, and what I intend to bring the car back to:

Too bad I got the car back in pieces, ah well. Want somethin done right, gotta do it yourself. Oh yeah, this is my first build(go easy on me!) only the machine shop assembled my block and valve train for me, so a lot of hard stuff is out of the way

All of this stuff was left in the hatch loose, I get to make sense of the bolts and whatnot. Should be fun!


My messy-clean work space I get to do everything in. It's organised trust me.



And this is my current daily driver/parts getter. Without her this project wouldn't be possible. It is a European market 1996 Subaru Impreza GT AWD. Pretty rare car to have in North America, she's left hand drive Profile




At the current moment I'm just finishing up a balance shaft elimination using a new front case with OEM Mitsu parts. I'm waiting on the crown nut/plug and o-ring.

Nice color

Small bit of progress, still missing some bolts for other things. Gotta get a list together and source new ones for the tensioner, water pump etc.

So did you sell the 98 to re-purpose the funds into the 97?
Car looks good!!

Pretty much! I thought it would be sweet to have a modified one and a stock one, but yeah funds got low so I had to lose a car. Sad to see it go, I hope it doesn't get riced out

Slowly but surely....

Cosworth timing belt installed

This is crazy sexy!!

Keep us updated !

Looking good man keep up the good work! looking forward to following the rest of your build.

making some good progress. What a killer looking engine!

Keep up the good work. The struggle is real, trust me I know.

Some more progress:

What OFH is that?

It's an EVO IX OFH

Two more gauges to replace the center vents

A little bit of grinding n welding and bam, front mount modified. Before and after pics:

Oil cooler mounted using brackets off of a parts car evo iv. I'm gonna get that oem plastic scoop deal and snug it up

Drilled/tapped a pressure source for the mbc

This project is being abandoned and scrapped for parts.