Previously, the shell swap was finished. So what's this "one more part" about? Well, that's not the end of the story. You see, there's a lot to do after finishing "put it together" for a project like this.

Unlike every other post, I'm dividing this one into two parts which will somewhat overlap chronologically, but will make the post a lot easier to follow. The first half is the fresh "new" car itself.

The first issue to appear in test drive(s) was that the horn didn't work. After much troubleshooting (including going deaf after accidentally setting the alarm off inside the closed garage, I determined that the clock spring (one of few parts not swapped from the other car...) was bad.

Fortunately, when you just finished putting a car together from its component pieces, this sort of thing is easy to swap out. The good clockspring in fact fixed the horn (and cruise control) so that's good.

Around this time I noticed as well that I was leaving power steering fluid anywhere I stopped. A quick investigation pointed to the double crush washer on the pump outlet. I'm 60/40 on reusing such things, and this was the 40% that leaked.

Once again, easy enough to fix - I took the crush washer(s) out, got it red hot with a torch and let it cool back down to anneal it, and reinstalled + torque to spec. No more leaks!

Next up? Alignment.

My favorite alignment shop was booking three weeks out, so in typical fashion I said "fine I'll do it myself" and broke out the toe plates, string, and camber gauge. The string is still necessary to set the thrust angle (i.e. make sure the rear wheels are pointing straight ahead), and gives a nice sanity check on toe.

I did end up having to buy camber bolts for the rear to take camber out of it. These springs, while OEM parts, lower the car over an inch (depending which forum thread you read, they're either STI springs, re-branded Eibachs, or both). Stock there's no rear camber adjustment, but I don't have enough stock in rubber companies to want to run nearly -2deg of camber on a daily driven car.

Here's the results for the curious. It's worth noting the "before" is after I roughed the front end a day or two prior to get the wheel almost-centered and address the 1/2" of toe out it had. Angles are camber. I didn't even measure caster since there's no adjustment for it.

That means it's done, right? Not quite yet. Next up was an oil change (no pictures because it's just an oil change) and making a mess of the underside - i.e. spraying on a heavy layer of fluid film to help stave off the rot. I'd been doing inside panels/cavities/etc. as I went, but this was the "all over" underside application.

Successfully made it a mess, which will help repel the evils of the salt and radioactive brine that coats everything here for the next several months.

Anyways, at this point there's just one more thing. I had alluded to a functionally necessary but aesthetically optional upgrade coming for this. As I've mentioned, winter is approaching so I need to put the snow tires on. These are quite sensibly on steel wheels from last year, but they fit weird (offset isn't quite right) and look not-great. I think I have a solution for that...

Much better.

So anyways, that wraps up the car - it's entered "drive it" phase and so far, so good. The emissions monitors passed and I have plates/registration on it, so all is well. I even added the most important part, saved for last:

The second half of this project epilogue addresses the elephant in the room: the rusty shell. So many good parts, so little structural integrity.

As a reminder, this summarizes its condition:

The plan? Remove all viable parts to keep as spares or sell, and scrap the husk.

Delicious!

Fun fact: the total wiring from this car (all harnesses) completely fills two 48-quart plastic totes.

Unfortunately, the left fender was completely rotted off at the bottom, so while the upper 3/4 is nice, it's destined to become a fridge or whatever they recycle stuff into these days. The doors have all gone off to my storage unit. Everything else has been removed, roughly sorted, put in bins (if it fits), and awaits a chance to become useful again or be recycled (cue brave little toaster in the scrap yard).

(This is nowhere near all of it, just one load to storage plus a yet-to-be-filled tote.)

Which leaves this:

Yes, the chassis is sitting on furniture dollies. It rolled around way easier as such than it has any business to do so. Shortly after the above photo was taken I rolled it outside and easily could have taken it down the street. The stripped shell is pretty light, I could pick up either end by hand.

This brings us to the close. As of today, right on the anniversary of picking up this car from @Eury and bringing it home, it left for good.

Farewell, rusty ol' pal. You've done all you could, and so many of your parts will live on.

So, the big question - Would I do it again?

Absolutely, but not on such a tight timeline. It wasn't unreasonable to finish this in 3 months, but there definitely were times that, say, not being up against the weather to finish paint would have really been nice.

I'm not going to delve into the financials of this project in detail here but I will say this - my total cost on this project (including the southern shell) is maybe 50% of what I'd expect a car such as the one I've built would sell for, if that's your sort of thing. If we exclude "nice to have" like the new wheels, exhaust system, and paint... it was downright cheap to do this - just lots of time.

Thus concludes the Great Shell Swap / Shell Swap '22. I hope you had fun following along, I know I enjoyed this overall.

Last time we left off with the exterior very nearly done and the interior completely undone. Let's pick up there.

We'll start off with the tint on the rear window. Being old cheap tint, it was faded to purple and was pretty bubbly/wrinkly. Unacceptable, and must be removed. This proved to be a lot more of a venture than planned, and I knew it was going to suck to start with.

At first, it seemed to be going fine - the film was pulling up readily with the head gun, but it was leaving the glue behind no matter what. Not the end of the world, as acetone takes the adhesive off without issue. Except...

It wasn't adhesive being left behind (well there was some, but it came off readily). No, while the purple tint ended just shy of the black paint at the edges of the glass, there was another layer of some sort of thin, clear film underneath, extending 1/8" over the black painted edges. It was wrinkled/bubbled as well.

This wasn't normal tint, either. At room temperature it would not come off whatsoever, even with aggressive razor blade work. With some heat, you could get tiny pieces to peel. With enough heat to risk cracking the window (and burning your hand on the scraper) it would melt and could be scooped off the glass.

I ended up buying a half gallon of straight ammonia and putting it in a spray bottle (hoo boy is that a strong cloud of spray). I found that coating the inside of the window with ammonia, then slapping plastic over it (to hold the liquid on), re-applying after a couple hours, and letting it soak for 4-5hr would let the razor (barely) scrape off this clear, very thin, brittle film.

What. A. Pain.

This was, by far, the worst part of this whole project. TBD how much of the defroster grid still works, as at times it took some serious razor blade action over the lines. There are no visible gaps in it, but I wouldn't be surprised if some/most of it needs repaired.

With that debacle taken care of, it's time to put sound deadening on the roof.

It made a big improvement.

Fortunately, the tint on the front windows came off in the normal way with just some heat, patience, and acetone to clean up spots left behind.

In a complete change of pace, how about that much-needed coat of paint on the wiper arms?

Much better. Trim Black is good stuff.

Anyways, let's get on with that interior. For starters, scrubbing the carpet with a brush attached to the drill and a citrus cleaner.

While I'm at it, I wonder if the carpet front mats that came with the shell will clean up decently (fun fact: the rusty car had all-weather mats in the front and carpet in the back; the shell had carpet mats in the front and all-weathers in the rear... so I now have a full set of each).

From here on out, any fabric/carpet you see going into the car was cleaned with the same citrus fabric cleaner and any hard surfaces with my regular interior cleaner stuff.

I guess while things dry, let's put the trunk innards together!

I then put in a dash cam (minimal pictures) since this was the opportune moment (there's no trim or headliner in the way! Easy access to permanently wire it into a switched circuit!).

Time to get the interior, well, in. This took longer than expected.

Headliner...

Rear trim / shelf / CHMSL / etc...

Dash and some of the center console...

Can YOU guess which of these two rear seat back came from the southern shell?

Surprise, it's the much less faded one. The awful tint did its job I guess. This is the only part (other than the top of the dash pad) from the new shell's interior to go back in... after a heavy cleaning.

Getting there...

And it's... done?!?

At this point (last night) it was late, dark, and raining. That said, I did at least open the door and start the car for a function check. I'm happy to report that all the lights work (though I now realize I didn't test the fog lights) and all seems well so far. May need to bleed the brakes more, or the pedal just has a lot of travel, TBD (the old one was like that, maybe they just are).

The vehicle also has, for the first time in who-knows-how-long, moved under its own power... about a foot backwards and then forward again to make sure the clutch was working (it is). I'm also happy to report that the backlight on the radio works, which it didn't before. So that's neat.

So... what's next? Test drive, maybe bleeding the brakes some more (recall I did change the master cylinder so there could still be air up in some line, though the pedal doesn't pump up like it's air so who knows... need to drive it to see how they work vs how they feel). Need to drive enough to get the emissions monitors to clear so I can get e-check, then plates. Alignment, too.

In the meantime, there's still the rusty shell (visible in the background) that I would really like out of my garage so I can park inside again, so wrenching focus will go to stripping the rest of the usable parts/spares off of that shell and getting it sent away. It's given all it can.

Oh and there's one more functionally-necessary aesthetically-optional change coming... but you'll have to wait and see on that one.

As the close followers of Oppo goings-on may recall, @Eury recently bought and decided to sell a rusty but otherwise pretty-good 2002 WRX. I finally took my own advice, and bought it.

Friday afternoon, I worked a half-day, then went to the local u-haul and picked up a trailer. Came home, had lunch, packed up, and headed to a friend's place in Erie, PA for the night. The first leg of a long trip.

Saturday morning, I pick up a different friend in the area at 7am and set the GPS... 600 miles, estimated 9 hours. It's rainy, but otherwise not too bad of a drive - pretty much I90 for 500 miles, then a jaunt north from almost-Boston up to NH. It was snowing in Buffalo because it always is. There were some significant storms in central MA, but then it finally cleared up as we made it into town around 6pm.

Side note: what is it with people in the eastern half of NY and in MA that will pass you, then even though the next half mile of road in front of you is clear, merge over approximately six inches from your front bumper? This happened literally at least a hundred times on this trip. I'm pulling a heavy-ass trailer, I'm not going 10 over the speed limit.

Finally, Sunday morning. We check out of the hotel (which had very chunky milk with their breakfast offerings but was otherwise nice) and meet up with @Eury himself. The car is, frankly, better than he lets on. There's rust in the rockers and rear quarters (and a couple badish spots underneath) but it is completely stock, starts on the first turn, and the interior is near mint.

The drive back to Erie was overall better than the drive out, since it wasn't raining the whole time. The truck did well pulling 3000lb of car on 2200lb of trailer, got a good workout but never missed a beat or so much as budged the engine or transmission temperature needles past normal. Then about 50 miles east of Buffalo... it started snowing again. This would continue until about 50 miles south of Buffalo, where it switched back to rain/snow mix. Other than periods of lousy visibility and the snow/ice caking over the headlights (because it was dark by now, of course...) it wasn't too-too bad. Could have been a lot worse.

This morning I left my Erie friends at, once again... 7am. After driving 100 miles on Friday, 600 Saturday, and 600 Sunday, the 100 miles home flew by. The weather was very nearly clear. I was home around 9:30, unloaded the car, and returned the trailer. I then grabbed lunch... and headed into work for a half-day because the world is crazy. Final trip odometer-of-towing (reset when I picked it up) reading: 1498mi. Not too bad for about 100 gallons of gas and half a quart of oil.

It's home, filthy, but good. I'm working on a shortlist of what it needs. There's a spot or two of rust that needs addressed before they become structural issues, mainly. I'll be keeping an eye on the coolant/oil/etc. to determine what's going on with the suspected headgasket leak as well.

With the Oppo Heritage of this car, you all will be the first to hear as things develop/progress (it'll get a sticker once I've washed it beyond a quick clean-the-windshield-so-I-can-see-to-get-it-inside).

Yesterday after work, I finished putting the rx7 back together (just had to put in the radiator/fan/shroud/etc. so not a lot), filled the fluids, turned the key... and it started. Checked the timing (close enough), monitored things as it got up to temperature and burped the cooling system, and shut it off. After a thorough investigation, it was determined there were no major leaks. By this point it was a significant storm outside, so a hoodless test drive was out of the question.

Fortunately, today at lunchtime I managed to con a coworker-friend into swinging by to help put the hood back on.

Today after work, I re-checked fluids and tightened one weepy hose clamp. Hopped in, turned the key... and it started. After warming up, I adjusted the timing (it was really close but now it's dead on), closed the hood, and backed out of the garage.

Went for a short drive around the neighborhood, getting back as the rain started (noticing a trend here? This has been all summer - it's hot and sunny until about 5:30 then storms, except for the weekends when it just rains all day). No major issues, seems to run about the same as before. The new clutch feels much better than the old one, which wasn't worn too badly when I took it out, but felt like it was on its last legs.

I've parked over a sheet of clean cardboard (a rarity!) so I can identify any leakages. I expect a little from the coolant hoses, as those usually take a set after a cycle or two and need snugged up. I'm also still very strongly suspecting that the oil pressure sender is leaking from the seam in the body, but haven't had any clean oil come out of it yet, so it could just be the old goop trapped in there getting hot and running out.

In any case, it's currently a whole lot better than it was (previously this exercise would have resulted in 3-4 dollar-bill sized oil spots on the floor by the time it even warmed up).

Trying to do the blasted wheel bearing on the WRX, and step 1 isn't going so well. The axle nut is unsurprisingly very stuck (it's been re-used too so extra rust-seized). None of my impacts did anything, nor did the big electric one I borrowed from a coworker. Time for some

My 24" breaker bar was starting to bend at the head (dumb design, the handle narrows to go inside the head rather than get wider to go around), so I got out my shorter but much better made favorite breaker bar. That didn't go so well either.

Now, this nut has been soaked in various penetrants for days. As a function of safety, I don't have acetylene in my garage. The currently-available-excuse-for-mapp-"map-pro" doesn't do much.

Time for the big guns. A good opportunity to buy a 3/4" drive, 36" breaker bar. I have doubts I'll break this one.

I'll be picking up a 3/4" drive 32mm socket at lunchtime tomorrow. Let's see what lets go first.

Alright then. Last time, most of the drivetrain was in the new (technically older) shell. Since then, much has happened and some gambles have not paid off.

How about some odds and ends in preparation for an engine? Things like new battery terminals (the old replacement ones were pretty beat), new fuel hoses, and putting the comically large stock intake resonator thing inside the fender.

Anyways, with all these odds and ends prepared (there's more but not all completely documented), it's time for the fun part - actually putting the engine in.

This went fairly smoothly, all things considered. The "I did this less than a year ago" factor is helpful.

Many more odds and ends followed, including a new clutch slave cylinder (the other shell had the wrong part in it, worked but required hard line connection, which is... no) and braided flex line.

This led to a mostly installed engine.

It was at this point I attempted to bleed the clutch and found out that there were many things wrong. To make it short, not only were the seals in the clutch master probably bad, but the linkage had been butchered, including a delightful home-made clevis on the pushrod which had ovalled out and destroyed the pin for the pivot.

After much heavy sighing, the clutch master cylinder and basically the whole linkage from the other car was moved into this shell, restoring proper clutch operation. I am not sure how this could have been working before this car was parked, but it sure wasn't working well.

I then moved on to Very Important things like painting the upper radiator support (the pictured washer fluid is not the summer stuff, it's the mostly-winter-mix that I drained out of this car a month ago, it was re-added shortly thereafter).

I then... evacuated the a/c lines since the air (and subsequent moisture) in there isn't doing anything any favors. I'll pull it again before charging later but for now it's a lot better than just airy. I also changed the oil in the transmission since 1/3 of it had already leaked out on me when moving it between shells.

After that, the rest of the engine bay could be assembled!

Exciting stuff. What's after this, you wonder? Well much like the coolant being in the battery tray above, the entire suspension is inside the car.

Borrowed the springs from the rear for the new struts; had new ones for the front (same as what was on it, but not rusty - came with the car )

Then assembled the everything.

But what about the brakes? Well those were installed, too (including new flex lines not pictured, they went on last).

That's all well and good, but where does that leave things? Well this is when another gamble did not pay off... at all.

I was able to bleed all four corners without issue, starting with a gravity bleed while doing other things, then moving to the power bleeder. Steady flow from all four corners without any bubbles - great! Except when I got in the car to see how the pedal felt... it was rock hard. Not in a "firm brakes" way - in a "this is stuck" way. I pushed harder... and harder. With a metallic screech, it pushed down an inch. The pedal now moved freely to this position. More stomping, more screeching, until the pedal was able to limply flop full travel, while applying zero pressure to the brakes. The master cylinder is completely seized up internally.

Now, I hadn't swapped over the brake master - the one on the old car always felt a little spongy (though that could be other things) so I figured I'd leave this one on. As a professional idiot, I never even poked at the pedal until now. This means that instead of swapping out the MC in a basically-empty engine bay, I now will be doing it with nearly zero access. A new one has been ordered, stay tuned.

But it's not all disappointing news. With the fluids filled and the battery installed, there was only a tiny bit of prep work before starting it - mostly flushing out the fuel line since it was full of who-knows-what. I stuck the end of the feed in a jar and turned the key to prime the pump. I turned it and... nothing. At all. No pump. Kept going, no crank.

Dash lights looked reasonable, so I went under the dash. Eventually I found, on the far passenger side, a plug just kind of hanging out. After comparing under the dash of the old shell (this is a huge convenience) I confirmed it needed to be plugged into A Thing. I did so, and tried turning the key again - and the fuel pump primed! Still no crank, though.

It acted like the clutch wasn't down, but it was. After hanging out under the dash for a little while, I found the clutch safety switch (cousin of Seat Safety Switch) and unplugged it. A small wire acted as a jumper to simulate the switch being closed (as in, the pedal depressed).

Time to turn the key again. Now, I had conned a coworker into coming over to hold the brakes while I tightened the front axle nuts (didn't happen because no brakes, but he stuck around to chat and try to help troubleshoot) who I instead had take this video:

So there's still a lot to do, but this is a big milestone. It's loud (exhaust ends after the cats) but running well. I burped the cooling system, bled the power steering, checked for leaks, and made sure I can run it through the gears.

Big open item is making the brakes work so I can finish torquing up the front axle nuts, and there's a couple other smaller odds and ends mechanically to address before it can move under its own power (the real excitement!).

Once that happens, I'll be changing gear a bit to address the needed bodywork on this thing, all while racing the clock/calendar for "this needs to be done before it gets too cold to do so" - wish me luck. This will probably be a slow week since I'm waiting on parts, and physically need to dial it back for a little while after spending the last several days straight wrenching.

@nermal I dunno, I seem to still be encountering my fair share of ass wipes every time I leave home?

When you last checked in, I'd just finished clear on the WRX and was waiting for it to cure. Since then, many things have happened, which don't look like much but have taken some time.

First, the masking came off. This went well and took a lot longer than anticipated, for some reason. It may be that there was two layers on a lot of it since I re-masked (over-masked?) between primer and paint.

That includes the mirrors and grille extension/filler things, which have a better finish than the rest of the car, somehow.

Time for odds, ends, and underbody - starting up front with the fender liners (post-fluid film on the areas behind them of course) and fog lights.

And the undertray...

And of course that other thing that goes underneath a car, the long shiny bit.

Being (from what I can tell) the quietest readily available quality replacement unit out there (and with dual tips rather than a big dumb "cannon" - I'm not 17) a Borla "Touring" (formerly called "Hush") system was installed behind the cats. It went on fairly well, and after some finagling lined up with the mounts, has enough clearance to wobble around, and didn't need coerced with a hammer. I consider this a good thing considering this series of tubes cost damn near as much as the shell of the car it's going on.

Moving on to things bottom-adjacent, how about some rocker trim? New rubber "seal" was installed along the top (missing from 3 of the 4 I have, and the one that had it, it was trashed) and ready to go on.

It didn't fit as well as I'd hope for OEM parts on original rockers with fresh clips, but it's on there and isn't going anywhere. I'll get used to it being a little "out" in the rear.

There is something that the rusty WRX didn't have that baffled me for a car used in the winter a lot. To remedy this, I procured the correct option - bigass rallyarmor mudflaps.

Install went well and it uses clips and existing holes so that's nice. This should help keep a lot of snow, salt, rocks, and other crap off of the metal. Looks pretty good, too. At this point, the stock wheels (with summer tires... won't be on there long) went on, and the car was lowered to the ground for what I hope is the last time in this process.

More odds and ends - one of the most important parts this time: moving the trunk light into this car

Fresh bulbs for the headlights...

Hey it's almost a car again!

Yesterday, a nice guy showed up and put a windshield in. I learned a lot about windshields and their adhesive (and tales of how awful new cars are to do them with all the crazy sensor/camera calibration required afterwards, etc.).

Today was the rest of the exterior trim, weatherstripping, mirrors, and the cowl trim. The wiper arms are pending a coat of paint this weekend when it warms up; otherwise the exterior is... done? That's a weird thing to say.

What's next? Well for starters, removing this AWFUL purple tint which has been burning my eyes the whole time I've been working on this. This will be "fun" for a while...

Also sound deadening on the roof, which I've had sitting here for months but not had time to do - it's now due so I can put the headliner in (after wiring up a dash cam). Then I'm going to scrub the carpet while everything's out, and it's "just" a matter of moving... the entire interior into this car (and going to get temp tags to be able to drive it to get e-check/plates).

@GibbsEmphasis Are you suggesting they should sell their nuts in a sack?

As planned, some friends and I went on a mini-vacation to the greater Nashville area (more on that later) and combined the trip with some truck shopping. Both parts of the plan were a success.

Having prioritized my saved links, we went to check out the first truck on the list (which was the most appealing option). It was everything the listing claimed, spotless underneath (those of us who live in the salted lands understand), and a fair-for-the-asinine-used-truck-market price, so I bought it.

It is everything I was looking for: single cab, short bed, 4x4, zero rust, maintained (single owner, dealer maintained, was a company truck of some sort, has corner strobes), has a/c and cruise control, and I could afford it. It has some miles (179k) but for a work truck of such age is in good shape. The steering wheel is a bit sun damaged but the interior is otherwise pretty good (and basic! crank windows!), there's a spray-in bedliner and toolbox in the back as well.

The only missing nicety is that it is the 3.7 and not the 5.0, but at least it isn't an early ecoboost (concerning) or a 3-valve 5.4 (even more concerning). Having driven 500 miles home, the V6 is definitely adequate (and gets decent mileage), so I am very satisfied. No signs of issues with the waterpump that these can develop. The six-speed automatic is a six speed automatic and always wants to be in one-too-high of a gear, but that's how anything is. It kicks down if you ask it to; foot on the floor it revs to seven thousand RPM. In a truck.

The chrome hubcaps, smoker vents on the windows, and questionably-legal-here tint are on the short list to address (aka remove). Otherwise, it doesn't really need anything beyond a normal new-to-me round of fluids and filters and a couple stone chips touched up before they rust.

The trip overall was also excellent, I'll post more about the two main Oppo-interesting places visited later.

@ITA97 said in Busted: Temp Tag Counterfeiter:

@Nicky-Chagrin-Janitor-of-SHIELD This is rampant in the El Paso area. Got a car that can't pass an emissions and/or safety inspection? There's no shortage of places that'll sell you a temp tag or fake registration sticker.

When I lived in PA it was even easier - if you car wouldn't pass inspection you just had to go to the right shop and it would pass inspection.

@RallyDarkstrike I'll take care of it, not difficult.

@awesomeaustinv said in I got a job today!🥳:

@HoustonRunner Ah yeah, any tips on machining?

I'll be starting on the lathe because they need a lathe guy and I have some experience with woodworking on the lathe.

Feed & speeds, and all the numbers you need are in the handbook.

Well, Oppo, it's been nice knowing you.

@RallyWrench I actually looked recently and there isn't anything around here for rent under like 4k square feet which is way too expensive for me. Bummer since I was hoping to come across something in the size range you mentioned.

Meanwhile the city won't let me build the pole building I want to put up (thanks to ordinances which came to be after I moved here) but that's a whole separate post I need to make to solicit ideas from the oppo hive mind.

@Pixel Aluminum + stainless is not a good combination (hello galvanic corrosion) but if you make the tube from mild steel you can still weld it but it should be fine (painted) with an aluminum button.

@SilentbutnotreallyDeadly

@Pixel That doesn't seem too bad. So basically 4x 5/8" thick 1.25" diameter slugs with a blind threaded hole on one side (1/4-20?) and the corner broken on the not-drilled side, plus a similar piece but with a through-hole in the middle?

Next question is if it has to be stainless or if aluminum would be okay?

@AestheticsInMotion Ignoring what they claim is the price and dividing out the bottom line by the consumption I average around $0.13/kWh here. My house is a similar square footage to your apartment (plus, you know, basement and garage) but my bill is a lot lower - I do have all gas appliances where possible.

@i86hotdogs Yes. Do it.