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Front back together and looking a bit better than it was... bit of bling too...

looking better then it ever did, good job on the fix up.

Looks like you will have meny more years of MY driving.

Rik.

are the headlight surrounds just painted? or are they off a special model? they look chrome

All twin headlight MY surrounds are chrome underneath the black paint. They chromed the whole thing originally, just so they could produce the thin chrome strip top and bottom. Masking off just the top and bottom strips, the rest was painted out in black. You'll be surprised what treasure you'll find if you're prepared to dig...

Surprise, surprise... My car is now fully converted to manual. Vowed I'd never do it. But busted the diff in the auto reversing up my girlfriend's driveway, when the car was fully loaded and I gave it a bit extra throttle (very steep driveway). Ripped the pinion to pieces, forced the diff sideways and busted the casing open. No spare autos laying around at the moment so decided to do the conversion to manual.

This all happened about 5 days after shoehorning in an EA82 motor from a very well kept L series with only 125,000 k's on it. Obviously it has a few more herbs than the tired old EA81 and the gearbox admitted defeat...

So now the car has the EA82 with power steering pump added, L series 5 speed dual range box, Liberty gear lever, MY 4WD lever shortened with Liberty knob, Liberty master cylinder and booster, extensive work on new exhaust including a DNA muffler (a copy, by me), and full custom linkages, cross members and associated stuff. It's a totally different car now, with much bigger kahunas, a very deep throb from the stainless tailpipe, nice low-range grunt and fantastic power and fuel economy.

All round, pretty bloody happy, especially considering the whole conversion came in somewhere around $150...

Steve - that manual conversion sounds great - manuals are awesome, no two ways about it!

Got a question - did the EA81 with all that sexy turbo piping make it to the engine bay at some stage or are you still running NA? I'd be keen to know how the setup went and I can't find any details after re-reading a few pages back...

Glad to hear you're mobile again though!

Cheers

Bennie

Things are happening to my poor old neglected "Tank". The return of rust in a couple of areas that I fixed years ago (in the rain) has meant some stripping and upgrades are in order so I can put her back on the road.

So that I have a safe and stable platform to work on I made these stands out of scrap steel scavenged from around the yard. They position under the heavy duty lift points I grafted into the car some years back.



Then I had to find a strong enough point to hoist the car up by. So I knocked up a nudge bar from 6mm plate and other thick stuff. This will have a towball mounted on it for manouvering my trailer/crane easier...



Up, up and away...



A quick look underneath, showing the whole thing mounted to bullbar mounts and cross member.



And here it is with work underway. Sills and front valance cut away, with 100x50x2 RHS and 35x35x1.6 RHS stacked to form the new sill sections. Front valance has now got 50x50x2 RHS welded in (not in pic)...

Impressive stands!

Hope it all goes well and the work you're doing now lasts a lot longer than the last work done!

Cheers

Bennie

Dont think SCA will be selling stands like that anytime soon lol

Hope to see some photos of the sills/valance....

Great to see you on the forum again, and fixing old Subarus Looking forward to further updates.