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Hey everyone,

I recently purchased an '88 Leone that turns out used to belong to a member on this board (previous build thread:showthread.php?t=3410)

Here's a couple of pics though (ignore the '01 date... Must be the compliance date):



To be honest i'm a complete Subaru newbie, I've always owned Honda's, except for a Cressida i daily'd around for a year... Here's my current stable:

My daily:



and my life partner:





but i found a couple of things about this wagon that were really appealing.

1) it's ridiculously quick.
2) it's ridiculously quick.

So i brought it home last Thursday, and finally got some time to start tidying things up. My plan at the moment is to daily it. Although i already have a daily, so i'll need to sell that first to put rego on this one.

One thing that my daily must be is clean, maybe i'm OCD ... So that's where i started. First some pics to see what i'm working with:



Hmmm 8 image limit, i'll start a new post in a tick.

I don't even want to know what these stains are, lol



Lots of soiling on the carpets, like on the side of this doortrim:



Looks like this door trim has been getting plenty of sun time... Going to have to do something about this later...



How sick is this decal!

First thing i wanted to try was this stain:



And i couldn't believe how good that turtlewax upholstery cleaner is... Couldn't recommend it enough:



Stain?



Gone!



Carpet?



CLEAN!

Hmm, i noticed all the center consoles were varying shades of blue and grey. So i bought some trim paint and decided to do them black.



I figured it would match the stereo surround and the Legacy gear nob.... Out:



Also the things that you pull up to push the rear seats down were deteriorating hard, everytime i touched them they would flake off onto the seat



So i dremel'ed off the oxidisation and painted them black to suite the rest of the trim. (pic from halfway through dremelling)

Also, this bad boy was starting to rust and was looking shitty:





So i sanded, rust converted and primed it up for paint:



Installed:



And some final interior pics:







I'll be moving on to the outside tomorrow hopefully... Thanks for reading

Wow thats clean, looks like the photos from the original sales brochure from Subaru.

I also notice this has climate control, does it work? Can you take a detailed photo of the control panel please?

I've got this pic, i've left it full res so you can zoom in.

http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/2/img9531q.jpg

Everything appears to work, fan kicks on when you hit auto. I need to find room in the engine bay to fit the condenser though. I had a brief look today, and there's not much room in front of the radiator (space occupied by a couple of thermo fans).

Hoping to work something out though... I want A/C!

I'd be all over this car if it was for sale here:)
I too want that auto climate control setup:)
Love the factory spot/fog lights:)

Very nice. Great to see someone that takes care of his cars and appreciate what he has.

For that empty hole under the climate panel. Maybe just get the std knob of a std L series and even it its the right part and doesn't work, it will at least look better:p

Keep the pics coming.

P.s I've got that front RH Fender plastic trim thats missing if you need it

I say get some quad lights for it Like i did on mine. That car would have a killer look with them:D
Some pics so you have an idea.

Thumbs up great car. Every lseries owners dream L

Thumbs down to the headlight downgrade.

Sent from my HTC Velocity 4G using Tapatalk 2

Alex wrote: Thumbs down to the headlight downgrade.

Hahahahahah, I knew that comment was coming.
Lets see what he thinks. I think you and Paul are the only two on this forum that hate the quad lights...

Love the car & great job at getting the jiz marks off the back seat but 5 stud with MY00 WRX wheels, what running gear is under it?

Edit..... Saw the build thread.

d_generate wrote:Love the car & great job at getting the jiz marks off the back seat but 5 stud with MY00 WRX wheels, what running gear is under it?

Edit..... Saw the build thread.

Yeah, lucky for me Chris was persistent enough to swap in a twin turboss legacy motor. I'm actually wondering whether to swap back to steelies and hubcaps for that ultimate sleeper look, haha.... It sits so nicely on the rex wheels though - hmm.

guyph_01 wrote:I'd be all over this car if it was for sale here:)
I too want that auto climate control setup:)
Love the factory spot/fog lights:)

Yeah they're neat as!

Very nice. Great to see someone that takes care of his cars and appreciate what he has.

For that empty hole under the climate panel. Maybe just get the std knob of a std L series and even it its the right part and doesn't work, it will at least look better:p

I'm going to make a block off plate i think.

P.s I've got that front RH Fender plastic trim thats missing if you need it

I may just hit you up for that! I might scope the local wreckers out first, i need a couple of other things as well ie: a rear bar, that light up thing on the fender that's been smashed off.

I say get some quad lights for it Like i did on mine. That car would have a killer look with them:D

Alex wrote: Thumbs down to the headlight downgrade.

lol... The civic guys do this conversion as well, always heated debates on the Honda forums over them!

I think it looks tough with them, im trying to go for an understated grandpa wagon look though. What do those quads look like with a set of headlight covers over them? I reckon that would look neat.

Thanks for the kind words everyone, will be more updates this afternoon.

okaaay. Didn't really get as much done today as i would have hoped. Not a bad day overall though. Mainly just pottering around and cleaning up things that caught my eye... It's a public holiday here in QLD, so i was in holiday mode, zzz...

Started off just cleaning the glass, and got to this:



Took it out, and the plastic was really... Porous, like you could scratch it off with your finernail - just sun damage.



Unfortunately i had to ditch the seal, but i may just cut one out of rubber later. Sanded back the plastics and polished them up, came up ok. Also sanded off the part number so the surface is nice and flat:



Hmm, e85 splashed everywhere haha. Also some rust on the neck part:



Took it out, sanded it back, kill rust and prime+paint... Didn't get it as clean as i wanted, and some of the paint started to come off Definitely better though!

Started moving on to the rubbers then....



The mudflaps were still in surprisingly undamaged condish, just faded. So i polished them with just a plastic polish... Came up mint!



Next was the trim pieces... The surface was too rough to polish, even with a light sand...



So i painted them instead:



Also i mentioned about making a blockoff for that fan switch hole...

There's still loads of things on my to-do list... But thats it for this weekend. Hopefully next weekend i can start polishing the paint, maybe even get to detailing the engine bay. We'll see... Here's some pics as it currently stands though.









Notice i masked the 'leone' decal before painting the trim:



Foggies in action!



Thanks for reading

Great work with the car getting it to the best it can be without going crazy like full respray etc. This makes a huge difference. One area that i always take time to clean is the side of the doors and the A pillars for the front and rear doors. Getting rid of the grease and mud etc make a huge difference to how the car looks.

Since your car is the high roof touring wagon you could use a early 92 liberty cap and bolt it on so it does this like i did:)





Keep the pic coming:p

P.s what brand of plastic polish did you use on the mud flap? did you have to sand it a bit?

oh that's cool.

Yeah, you can see in the pics that are on a big angle the doors are quite faded. But i polished a small portion today and it came up really nice. Unfortunately i was racing the sun though and had to put everything away, haha.

I really like the white rims. Never saw them in white before. Really nice...

I really ,really like what you've done to this wagon, it's good to see it went to a good home and everything you've done is an improvement, rather than butcher it.There's probably less GT2's around than RX's so personally i think you should keep it as close to original as you can and keep with the clean n mean look.You can always get a another garden variety L to play and modify.

Just out of curiosity, what are the specs of a GT2?