I thought i could post a little project thread about my "new" car, a Subaru Legacy Turbo, a car ive been looking after for a long time, they are quite rare in Sweden and most of them are rustbuckets.

So i bought the car, and the first thing i did was to rip it apart. I dont want this one to get killed by the rust.

Here are pictures before i started working on the car:





And ive also had time to drive two runs at a slalom course, it was VERY fun!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkBSxuU2HOA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll7BhKIneTw

And some acceleration videozz:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DRFHZgbFjA

Firstly i removed all the boot mats etc, to get access to the inner rear arches:



Here you can see the seamsealer that is the reason for the rear arches on the Legacy and Impreza to rust from the inside out, witch is very common sadly:



All cut and scraped of, its very time consuming and very tight to get access but very important if you want the rear arches to last:



I removed the seamsealer all the way down, as you can see the rust is starting to develop in the seam:



Then on to the sanding part, there are some small amount of rust left but it is nearly impossible to remove that, no more crappy seamsealer that get moisture behind though.





I use a 2 component epoxy primer that is very good, epoxy is the best to have on bare metal, and it seals so i it wont let moisture through and will hopefully stop the rust completly even if there are some small amount of rust left.



The other side:



Right, that was the most critical part on the inside of the car, lets get over to the real fun if looking for rust on the outside and under the car!

Ripping the rear dogleg plastic protectors off the drivers side (left side) was not so fun, i found this:



The only thing to do was to cut as much of the arch lip off as possible:



Then trying to bend the outer and the inner arch lips to get access behind them, and try to sand of as much rust as possible:



After that i painted with my epoxy primer and then bent the lips together again, hopefully that will save my dogleg.

The other side after painting:



Ive also sanded the inside of both rear arches back to bare metal, and put epoxy behind the inner and outer arch plates.





Also up at the rear strut top mounting there where some amount of rust staring to develop, this is a classic place for rust on all Subarus with the same chassis construction.



Sanding it down to bare metal and put epoxy primer on it:





Ive also removed underseal and sanded behind both rear wheel wells:







Another place with quite bad rust was behind the rear bumper:



After rust removal:



The rust was starting behind the front fenders as well, not bat at all but the primerpaint had started to bubble a litte, taking it back to bare metal and primer it:



Before i put new underseal on the car i painted with a 2 component paint that is very durable, to protect the primer paint:



I used a thin rustwax before i sprayed the thick product.



After two layers of the thick rustprotect-product.



Ive also completly sanded down the front fenders on the inside.





After epoxy primer and one coat of paint:



Hopefully this car wont be eaten by the rust for a long time now

I have maaaaany more pictures here:
1st: http://www.garaget.org/mypage/galler...48&album=21964
2nd: http://www.garaget.org/mypage/galler...48&album=24647

The car will get a full respray and ive started to strip the car now, all will be removed (doors, boot etc)

 

Blimey thats dedication!

 

I love these Legacys, the Subaru that got me first interesed all the way back im 1993!

 

Proper effort made there

How you can drive with such a small steering wheel im not sure

 

Your not the first to comment on the steering wheel, but in fact its a Sparco R383 and they are 330mm, most if not all WRC cars use 330mm wheels, and Colin McRae used a 330mm Momo wheel in the Group A Legacy back in the day.

But a agree it looks very small on the video, but i think its due to the Gopro HD camera, and i have quite big hands.

Next step would be 350mm, the difference is not that big i think..?

 

Nice!

I had an H-reg 2.2 GX saloon in that colour - and had to replace a front wing - takes me back - wasn't quite that keen with the anti-rust regime though

Also had an M-reg Turbo version - brilliant car for 6 weeks... but we won't go there

 

Right, ive got the car back from painting now...

Some pictures of the work the paintguys did:













































Some trim refitted

 

Now that is nice!!!!

 

Top work, love these sort of threads and keep the updates coming.

 

i have two of these legacys. love this thread

 

Thanks guys! Alot of people at my work think im crazy that im spending so much time, effort and money on a old "VW Beetle" as they call it, or "Toyota Corolla with Beetle engine" as one said. =) These cars are really really rare in Sweden in acceptable condition, and i have looked at ebay.co.uk and pistonheads and they seem to be very rare in UK also? It took me ages to find a nice one, so im so happy that it turned out so nice after all the work!

I just need some nice tires for these rather nice rims for the Legacy... =)

 

awesome, want one of these more then i wana finish my impreza ha

 

yum love it

 

Subscribed. Awesome rebuild mate! This is the one that started it all.

Nice bit of driving there as well.

By the way, what epoxy primer did you use? I don't have much experience with these things, but they seem to take forever to dry. Maybe i'm just applying it wrong..... You mentioned that you used a 2 component paint on top of the epoxy primer? Did you sand down the epoxy primer first?

 

Its called "Hagmans CA Primer" and Hagmans is made in Sweden and i dont think you can buy it in UK, but i bet there are many other paint brands that do proper epoxy primers for metal, although not many car painters use epoxy becouse its quite toxic and also takes some days to fully dry through. But it should be dry on the surface after about 24h, did you mix the base and the hardener right? If you use to little hardener it will never dry.

The epoxy i use becomes quite matt in the finish so i only matted it down very lightly with 120 paper before i painted with the other paint.

 

Love it, i think a modded legacy can look better than the impreza's most of the time just because its different.

 

nice looking legacy you have there buddy good work,i know what to look out for when i restore mine.They are quite rare in the u.k also too more estates than the saloons took me ages to find 1 ended up going over to northern ireland to buy mine

 

Thanks!

Ive done some more work, im waiting for my doors to be redone and then i can continue to assemble the car.

I did scrape of the seamsealer in the rear arches, and sanded it down and painted with epoxyprimer (as pictured in this thread), and now i have sprayed the thin rustprotectant licquid that is based on oil and wax, and does stick really well to painted areas!





I have also sprayed inside of the front rear wheelarch (the dogleg), inside the sills and other places, but you cant see that in a photo..

Also mounted some coilovers that i bought for my Impreza but since that is a never ending project i thought i could use them on the Legacy instead!







The topmounts are "the wrong way around" to be able to increase the caster angle, you can still adjust very much negative camber if you max it out down at the hubs.

 

The rear:





Some Brembos on this car would be awesome, but I think Impreza 4 pots front calipers will do for now.

 

Fair play, as I`ve scrolled through its gone from a tidy original car, to an awesome one.

You`ve done underneath what I would love to do, as the underseal protection isn`t great on these older cars.

 

hi oskar great thread and a lovely motor fair play to u a lot of time and effort as u say they r getting harder to find i have had 1 for about 7 years now all though its a wagon i love it

 

Are you guys on uklegacy aswell? Theres some guys over there that'd love to see your work.

 

Wow, this is fantastic! I wish mine was even close to as clean as that! Its a lot of dedication to strip it right back, but I'm sure it will last a real long time now! Keep up the good work, now subscribing for updates

 

wow great job it looks amazing m8ty well done

 

Thanks!

Its slowly getting there..













http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQMLMKJD0No

 

Very impressive

 

The slalom runs look like fun! Were they timed?

Do you find that steering wheel a little small? Looked a handful at speed in the corners.

Nice work on the body - is the engine standard?

Chris

 

Thanks!

Yes the runs where timed but i missed a few cones so it didnt count. Here is a video of my passenger driving his own car and he has got the record in the swedish subaru club on that track, i think he id down at 1,24.xx now and the video is a 1,26.xx time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2gIHyh0JKI

The steering wheel is a standard size 330mm, same size as most rally and race cars use, the gopro camera has so wide angle that it looks really small but in reality its not so small, however i borrowed that wheel from my Impreza-project and i have now changed it to a Momo wheel in 350mm instead in the Legacy.

The engine is standard inside, but it has a TD05-16 turbo (V2 Impreza STI Type RA), VOS chip, 3" exhaust and a inlet pipe resonator delete. Should have around 280-300 hp.

 

Love it!

You must have big hands!!

 

Great project thread this.

I see bodywork bring pretty much done? What's next?