I have had a few fender benders (broken bumper, fender) since moving here thanks in no small part to the overwhelmingly aggressive drivers who are too busy text messaging to care about driving. Anyway, the first body shop I took it to was an absolute disaster of epic proportions. We’re talking bad on a biblical level. I had never had an accident, and the cop at the scene suggested the place. They were nice, polite, and it took them three freaking weeks and I still had to drive back for a new side skirt. It was miserably. Three weeks for a bumper and fender?

So when the same side was hit again, I decided to look around. I asked, and asked, and googled, until I got a suggestion to call some random tuner shops. I opted to call up Boston Sportscar, as they are pretty cool guys, and people who own a Ferrari are more likely to be as anal about their car as I am. A quick chat with them and they suggested Boyle’s Body Works. I called them up and set my appointment, and the repair was smooth and taken care of in under a week even with the insurance adjustment taking until Wednesday to go through! Without a doubt, if I have any more body work needing done I will be calling them. I’ve already pimped them to my coworkers who have similar issues with their cars.

Anyway, the buildup of the story is done. I had my damage repaired, and we fast forward to about a month ago. I get in my car after a particularly nasty rain storm only to find the rust damage cause by the windshield replacement had gotten bad enough to leak. I quickly purchased a car cover and setup another appointment, this time to fix ALL the rust. So I brought it over to Boyle’s, and Dave set about making me out a quote. I was expecting a ridiculous price, since I pointed out every single spot of rust on the car. I was prepared to write the car off at this point since funds have been tight lately, but his quote was right on the money. I even threw in some fog covers I purchased off eBay to get paint matched.

I could ramble on and on at this point about how it’s not a full repaint, but the rust is gone, the cost was this much, and so on and so forth, but I won’t. The bottom line is, it was less money than expected, and it renewed a lot of my enjoyment in my car. The car still has battle damage and scratches, but I think having those allows me to be willing to park anywhere and not baby the car. It looks really good now by comparison though. So without any further rambling:

I basically had him fix the roof, all four fenders, repaint the hoodscoop/vents, and fix a few other small rust spots. The fog covers will go on once mounting hardware has arrived from Japan. Here are some in progress pics I got to give you an idea of how bad it was:

The car no longer leaks, and smells like fresh paint. I will be a bit more diligent about washing it now, but truthfully I think it was less the lack of washing, and more the living in Maine winters for years. I really can’t get over how it looks now by comparison. Oh oh, and I also re-did my six spokes at Rim Pro before this, and they went from bent silver rims to shiny gunmetal rims. They are the same color as you get on an E46 BMW M3. All in all, it’s been a good year for visual appearance. I have more plans in the works, such as finally removing the 2.5RS badging, and I have some KYB AGX struts looking for some springs to go with them.

I think with money how it is, and life how it is, the car won’t be raced much before it’s on it’s death bed, but I will keep putting parts and money into it until that day, since it’s never given up on me.

As a random final note, my buddy Dan let me borrow his MazdaSpeed 3 for the two weeks I was without my car. It was really nice of him, and I appreciated it. I also appreciated my car more after driving it, since my car is no longer just an RS, it’s not even a WRX, it’s something totally different. The MazdaSpeed 3 was fast, had better creature comforts, some more low end torque, and a lot fewer quirks, but once I put the throttle down after two weeks without my car I wouldn’t go back.

Anyways, here come the pictures. I will be explaining as I go, since I skipped that the last few rounds of pics, and these need explanation.

Well okay, that doesn’t need explanation. Those are some race cars.

This is a VW rabbit with no roof whatsoever. Amusing to say the least.

This I am too sick to remember what it is.. I am sure someone knows. It’s probably some form of MG or Triumph. I am sure someone will jump and say it’s a 1972 MG Spitfire Bumblee Mark II Triumph Ultramax Six, but for now just assume it’s a race car and we’ll move on.

Well, if you couldn’t tell I really like the more current renditions of cars Porsche has made. The 997 GT3 RS is a personal favorite, and this car resembled that so much I eye-humped the bajeezus out of it. He was doing brake work when I was there, so it made it easy to get tons of pictures. I was pretty impressed by how much access the paddock access gave us. I wasn’t hassled or asked to show my tickets. I just walked around and took as many pictures as I could.

We spent some time on the second day looking for other places to take photos of the cars, and I was able to snag a few different good shots. I took hundreds of photos, but these were the ones that really stuck out for me as decent shots. I am sure during the LeMans race it’s quite a bit different there, but I enjoyed not having the crowds of people and poor seating and visibility. It made it more enjoyable. I’ll definitely go again or make a trip to another track, just to experience this kind of event again.

Here’s the obligatory group shots of me and a bunch of random car nerds. Scott (far right) was the one who housed us for the weekend in his Georgia McMansion. He was gracious enough to put us up with food and shelter while we fell down hills, cut ourselves shaving, and got terrible sunburns. Thankfully I didn’t do any of that, and I just ended up with some great photos from a great time.

Oh, and of course Jon took the photos for this, so we need the weird awkward shot of him posing:

He’s very manly in this photo… or something.

After this was all said and done, we headed back up for another 17 hour road trip, and spent some time driving in traffic. I of course did all the rush hour driving, because apparently Rich and Brian hate my soul.

We’re going pretty much 0 mph. I was able to idle us forward on downhill momentum for about 15 minutes straight.

Ugh. This only took us about a half an hour or forty-five minutes, but I could have done without it.

We opted to take the Blue Ridge Parkway on the way home, and we saw a truckload of Corvettes while we filled up on gas. I had Brian take a photo while I added more fuel into the wagon. I then spent 400 hours inside trying to buy more caffeine. Seriously. Longest line ever.

Here’s the last photo:

it was night time by the time we finished it up, and we saw a fantastic view of Roanoke VA at night. I took some photos, but none really do it justice. You could see every star in the sky. Afterwards we invaded an Applebee’s at 11pm, and continued the final legs home. We were all pretty beat by the time we got home, but it was worth it to drive. I won’t drive again, but I don’t regret the attempt.

..and I didn’t get a sunburn.

I will post pictures later. This is going to take a while.

Anyways, it’s the end of day one. We watched some qualifying and practice today. I spent some quality time getting some sun (probably too much come tomorrow) and watching some loud cars go by. The track was very similar to the racing games I’ve played, but there were  a few elevation differences that need to be seen in person to be understood.

I will likely post something tomorrow after we begin the drive home, but otherwise I will post a post-trip wrap-up in a day or two after I get home. I took 300+ photos today, so I have a lot to sort through. So, without anymore rambling, here is a good set of teaser photos:

Oh yeah, and we kind of drove on the track

That’s all for now, I will go through these with explanations maybe later, or maybe not…

Anyways, it was my turn to drive during this stint, so Brian manned the camera while I hooned about in a WRX. Hope you enjoy the photos! We’re now on our last stint, and it’s too dark to take pictures at this point. We’re not sure if we’re going to tough it out until 5am, or stop for the night, we’ll see how tired we are in a bit.

No, but really.. enjoy the pics. There’s more, but these summarize this round of driving.

Yeah. I know. Badass. Make sure to highlight the pics for comments, since it’ll explain a teeeeeny bit about it… anyways.. I’m out for tonight!

We’ve passed throug Connecticut, New  York, and we’re currently in New Jersey. We’re taking our time, mostly because it takes me a bit to update this from the seat of the car in a Fuddrucker’s parking lot.

I am going to include this batch ofictures in no particular order, since it’s my turn to drive, and I am ready to be doing something besides sit here.

Anyways, enjoy!

Rich thinks we could have been in Delaware by now, but I am making him wait for me to  post this.

and now it is my turn to drive! Peace!

He ended up showing up a bit behind schedule, but with a trip this long, nothing ever goes according to a schedule. The trip is somewhere around 1,052 miles, not including our side trips for amusement.

I have opted to be the super-nerd for this road trip (I know, crazy right?)  and I brought along my new netbook, geek penis (smartphone), and portable internets.

I bummed my parent’s camera in order to take as many*good* pictures as possible. I have no photography skills, but I will just take a metric ton of photos in  order to make it easier to have good photos.

Anyways, without further ado, we’re off to Road Atlanta!

As you can see, we have a metric ton of shit in the back of a sub-compact wagon. We’re currently in Connecticut and heading west a lot. This will not be my last post today, since I have internet everywhere.

It’s very hard emotionally to own something that you care very much for and see it suffer through car accidents, rust, broken parts, and all the while you’re literally powerless to fix it. I have enough money to live, but buying car parts is something I can only sacrifice so much of that life for. I walk the line very close some days, and I definitely take care of the car’s internals as best as I can, but it’s not so easy to come up with a few grand every time someone decides to take a key to my car, or the minute rust rears it’s ugly head.

My love for my car is likely very different than a lot of people’s love. I don’t work on it endlessly, I don’t pile up the credit card debt to make it faster, and I don’t keep it locked up in a garage. I wish I could leave it safely in a garage until it was time to race, and I wish I could spend double what I make on it, and I wish I could make it perfect, but I can’t.

There are only two times I know I love my car beyond what is considered the norm; when I shop for a new car (not that I can afford one mind you), and when something bad happens to it wherein I cannot fix it easily. So far every car I have looked at new does not have 300hp, All-wheel drive, with $0 monthly payments, and anything even remotely in my price range sits well below the horsepower and features I have.

When something beyond my control happens to my car I get upset, when something beyond my control happens that I cannot fix easily (rust for example) I lose all of my self control.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t baby my car. She’s been my daily driver since December 21st 2001, and I don’t wash her enough, but my love isn’t one that fits a stereotype. It’s less of a “look at my pretty perfect car” and more of a “my car is faster, cheaper, and it has been for years.” Function over form.

Anyways, enough with my mindless rant that no one but me will understand. Watch the video.

My car is throwing a couple of check engine light codes now. One is because with a WRX swap you either swap the whole gas tank or you shut off P1446. That code was turned off with the swap, and turned on without realizing it when it was reflashed. I already called DSG and I am heading over soon to have it re-cleared.

I am also throwing a P0546, which is because of me having a catless up-pipe. I will have that disabled if it isn’t already, and I plan on putting a resistor in the sensor to stop it from causing a code. I’ll go into that later. I need to take a trip to Radio Shack and an auto parts store.

So, anyways, without further ado:

http://impreza.megalixir.com/images/Buschur1.jpg

I had my exhaust + uppipe done at DSG with a dyno tune after. I have been jaded after doing my own car work for so long, so it was nice to drop it off. They ended up having to weld, and torch, and cut just to make it all work so it worked out well for me in the end. The exhaust I ended up going with, as I believeI have mentioned before was the Buschur Racing turboback. It has a highflow catalytic converter, and I picked the quiet muffler based on this video:

YouTube exhaust note

However, after it was installed it sounded a lot closer to this video:

Real exhaust note

Anyways, my idea of “quiet” and Buschur Racing’s idea are world’s apart. Don’t get me wrong, the car sounds *great* and I gained power, but it’s loud. I’ll set off car alarms easily once more. This just goes to show you, DON’T LOOK UP EXHAUST VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE. All you get is the tone, but not the sense of noise.

Okay, so now on my way up this morning I got a check engine light. After some driving around looking for free WiFi I looked the code up. I have my resident P1446 hanging around as usual because the WRX emissions expects a WRX gas tank and I don’t have one, so it throws a code. That was turned off by ECS. Theother code I have is P0546 which is related to the EGT sensor in the uppipe. A resistor fixes it, so it’s minor, and I can clear it in the ECU as well with OpenECU, so I will be doing that soon. I need a tactrix cable to perform the latter.

Now, to present the picture I do have and stop my incessant rambling:

Remember, the stock car made:

The graph for the new curve starts a bit later, but you get the idea. A stock 2.5 liter WRX put down 198 wheel horsepower, and I’ve seen a stock STi put down 220. So I am not doing too badly. I need to rebuild my transmission still, that is next on my list. After that it will be freshened suspension and paint. I also need to fix those CE lights permanently this week.

More pictures should follow soon.