You’ll get there Subyroo! Basil has an extra ten years on your Subaru so “there’s still time”
For a long time now Basil sported some offroad expeditions with my sister, well one actually…
Late last year I tapped out the ding in the rear quarter that made him look way better even though he’s now got all the small little hammer marks from the inside if you really look at the bodywork. A week later I learned about a trick of putting a deflated basketball in the panelwork and inflating it. Bummer.
Anyway while at pick a part late last year I grabbed some parts to replace the story board that made him look like a real beater when viewing the LHS.
Decided to do it on the hottest day of the year so far, peak temp at 39°, under a tree on our street (no shed!) streaming the 2003 hottest 100 on double J that I missed yesterday. That helped the work in the heat! If I didn’t get stuck into it the work would continue to linger and possibly never get done.
I found some rust at the lower guard area behind the front wheel, not sure if this is normal for these models (also 20+ year old vehicle so it’s doing well!) but it turned out to be quite superficial after running the wire wheel over it and giving it several good coats of rust converter.
Here’s the before:
And after:
I had to swap the glass over due to the window tint. This task took ages as I basically had to strip the door to get it out. I swapped the external door handle over as well as it was missing the lock barrel and I didn’t like the look of it.
It’s 90% done now. Hanging the door, setting the door gaps and “tuning in” the stop point of the glass took a while. It all worked out well though.
What’s left to do now is replace a bit of wiring for the tweeter and swap that over to this door with the original door card as the other one was not the same style. The original speaker’s days are numbered too. It’s lost the outer support part that holds the cone to the outer ring. Both speakers were in the same condition. Still sounds ok, it won’t win a sound comp though.
Wiring looms were the same which was good and less work.
That’s it for now. Odometer is nearing the golden 500 with it being over the 494,000km mark now!
Cheers
Bennie