Project: car

The Project Car idea was started as a way for me to keep track of personal projects ive had over the years, stemming from journals on forums such as RS25.com. With the invasion of facebook in recent times thats led to the downfall of most forums, ive decided to put my work into a website/blog format. Here you’ll find DIY’s and write-ups that ive gathered from years of reading forums and websites, working with members of various car communities as well as my own personal input from working in the auto industry my entire life. Project cars are what im all about, whether its american, german, or japanese, its a プロジェクトカー.

Use the menu at the top or right hand side of the page to navigate the site

12/5/24 – Wire merge guide updated!

With the recent I-Wire announcement about stopping their harness merging end of the business, ive updated my wiring guide and posted it around a bit. Check out the updates and let me know what you think.

11/20/24 – The Garage Power update!

I wish i had more interesting shit to post up in the months between updating the site, however fixing cars is boring and i dont have the patience to work AND film what im working on, so some little posts for instagram is all youre getting for now. That being said, ive been working on a ton of little things most of which are going to be parts/service im offering next year. The Garage Power brand is where all parts and services will be offered! During the car build process there’s lots of little things that are addressed from updating older OEM parts to something from a new model, adding in wiring upgrades when fiddling with harnesses, or installing totally new parts, a few people have asked about some of these things to purchase so im going to work on making my stuff available to everyone that works on their own cars.

Billet parts are still in process, lots of early Impreza suspension pieces are almost done with the design and ready for prototyping, im also going to be working on non-cnc’ed parts like tubular arms, lateral links, plate steel mounts and adapters, all things to minimize overall cost as raw material prices are at an all time high. Wiring bits and bobs are coming as well, replacement harnesses for MAP-DCCD units are ready to go, ive been getting 6MT swaps where an old harness that was hacked up in the prior car ends up being more headaches than its worth so new ones from MAP-DCCD are $65 and a week or more out, im aiming to sell these at roughly half that price.

And finally in the spirit doing everything myself, ive invested in a vinyl plotter for some projects, the flip side of that is now i can offer that as a product/service as well. I can make anything from number plates/class decals and track stickers, race team decals/banners all the way up to full vehicle lettering. Its a really fun little machine and im hyped to make some cool stuff with it.

4/7/24 – Billet parts are cookin!

Ive been working over winter designing some products for older Subaru models, starting with GC/GD suspension parts. First up on the block are billet sway bar end links with spherical bearings, bulletproof and american made. These are designed by myself and machined right here in the US of A, they are 100% rebuildable for years and miles of abuse. Ive been beating the snot out of these since i built my forester, now with hundreds of thousands of miles and track/dragon trips on them, im offering them for sale. I aim to build and sell the best quality product i can, with help from the best people our local car community has to offer i can now make that happen.

12/8/23 – A whole page of Impreza race cars to drool over

I finally finished up the majority of a page dedicated to old Impreza race cars, the first installment is the infamous Syms Racing GF from the late 90s, ive actually had a stroke of luck doing some research on the car and am now in contact with multiple people from overseas, theres a dim light at the end of the tunnel but im trying to track down what happened with the car over the last 20 years.

More service manuals were added, again if you have a request for specific models let me know and i can upload them.

Now that were approaching the down season ive been getting requests for wire merge guides, im a little tight on time for it but ill try to work on them and have info uploaded when possible.

10/23/23 – Tech page update

Added some updated content to the Technical Info page such as service manuals, tutorials and part number references. A store page will be up shortly containing a few products for early Impreza models, more to come over winter to gear up for track season next year!

3/24/23 Update

Ive been slacking last year with posting updates, i am adding things to the site such as new projects you can check out HERE as well as updating my parts pages, number reference charts and adding new pics to my galleries. I spent a lot of time learning some CAD processes as well as working on my own parts to build and sell, so thats going to be the the focus going through the rest of the year. Some easy fun parts like fog lamp kits for GCs, rad and hood scoop shrouds for GC/GD/GR platforms and im also working on some composite body parts for a few cars as well.

9/22/21 Update

So with covid bottle-necking the entire world for the last year and a half, ive had the opportunity to travel, drive and build some fun stuff, so ill be working on adding everything to the site piece by piece. Ive also had a few people provide feedback to the Wire merge guide, some even finishing their swaps with it, so that will be updated as well.

11/16/20 – Painting the GF

So this summer i was laid off from my job, in combination with breaking my foot (on the job of course) i had some time to work on things at home and in the garage. I decided the only real challenge ive never tackled with cars was bodywork, mostly because of the time involved with getting things correct but later i found out that money is also a big drawback of doing your own bodywork. So i spent the last two months practicing on minor issues around my impreza wagon and as of three weeks ago i tackled painting the entire car, by myself, at 3:45am. Read about it by clicking the image below:

8/3/20 – A review page is in the works!

The first post on the Reviews page is a slick trick for cleaning some absolutely gnarly wheels, check it out here

6/20/20 Update

Ive been working on a spreadsheet that will be at the top of the Tech Info page called “Subaru Parts and Charts” that has everything you’ll ever need for Subaru parts reference. Bolt sizes to touch up paint, fluid capacities to batteries, reman axles to trans gear ratios and more. If its not on this chart, you dont need to know about it! Its uploaded in XLS (Excel) and will be on a google shortly. Im currently working on the bolt threads/lengths page, if you have any info that you’d like to see you can send me a message but only if you’ve personally confirmed the data yourself, im trying to keep this guide 100% accurate.

4/24/20 Update

The tech info page has quite a bit of content and i will be adding more in the coming days as im working on a quick reference spreadsheet for part numbers, fluid capacities, part numbers etc for most modern subaru models.

Pages with project and video content will be updated once i can get around to editing a ton of video that can be organized and hosted online, that may not be until summer.

Parts projects for sale will be uploaded soon as im currently going through my garages of parts to make room, for more parts.

The page with my swap wiring guide is about halfway done, im working on some photos right now and the spreadsheets with pinout/wire information are being buttoned up, im still looking for anyone currently doing a swap to provide feedback as i dont have any swap’s planned out soon.