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Monday, August 5, 2013

One fully packed day

Puyang and I had the day off today, and we felt that it was a great day to clean and work on our cars. What seemed to be an excellent day ahead quickly made a turn in the opposite direction, I'll list them as I write.

We began with a very nice car wash and interior vacuuming. I took some extra time to clean off the gold BBS wheels from all the brake dust generated by the Hawk HP Plus racing brake pads. During the wash, I had my hood opened, and for some reason I placed my sunglasses near the hinge of the hood. Later when I closed the hood I crushed my sunglasses. Don't worry, the car was not hurt in the slightest, but my sunglasses on the other hand... (Disaster #1)

Puyang vacuuming the interior of his 2012 VW Golf GTI.

If you don't already follow us on Facebook, please do, we post mini updates on our weekly shenanigans and crazy banter. If you indeed follow our feeds, we found this very nice unpaved parking lot this weekend. It is laid with dirt, gravel, and rocks. The shape of the parking lot was very odd as well, and by odd I mean awesome, it looks like some of the twisty areas in rally courses seen in Croatia. Long story short, I took it for a spin and practiced some dirt drifting. It was so fun! It was so addicting that I wanted to do it again, so I've asked if you guys were interested in seeing a video of it. Most of you guys said yes, so we'll be making a video on the STI going sideways!

Some dirt that clung onto the wheels from the drifting.

After we've washed our cars, we took our cars out for a nice photo shoot to really capitalize on our hard work. You know, I was so addicted with the drifting, I attempted some tarmac drifting after the photo shoot too! However, the weather was so hot, the very sticky Bridgestone Potenzas clung to the ground like glue; I couldn't really get the tail out, just lots of understeer, sadly.






I really wanted to take advantage of this fantastic weather that the Lord has given us, so I wanted to do some modding and filming. The autumns and winters here are very wet; I mean rain nearly every day. The hood liner gets wet from time to time, and mold begun to develop. Today was the day I decided to just remove the entire thing.

Hood liner is super moldy!

Hood liner removed!

The hood liner is designed to keep engine noise to a minimum. You can do this research online, but removing the liner will not add any negative effects to the car. Check out the built rally cars and other race cars, they won't be sporting a hood liner. The hottest part of the car will most likely be the turbo charger not the front of the engine itself. (Observe the hood liner location.)

While I was removing the hood liner, I got clumsy and dropped one of the retention clips into the engine bay. Not like that little plastic clip could mess up my car, but I just didn't like the idea that I lost something in there. I looked around, and after fifteen minutes or so I found it. It was caught between the subframe and an axle. I got it out after a couple of minutes, poking at it when a stick. (Disaster #2)

There was still a couple of hours in the day, so I decided to get to my rear differential fluid change. As always, we were filming an episode as I was working on the car. I cut myself during this, stupid on my part yet again, and bandaged myself up; you'll see the bandaged hand in the video. (Disaster #3)

I bought a $10 pump to get the fluid into the differential, and that thing broke on the second pump! LOL.(Disaster #4)

If you have read everything up to this point, I applaud you, because as I'm writing this, I'm laughing on the inside. It's just too ridiculous. The story isn't over yet though. I finally get the fluid in there, everything seemed to be coming to a close. I got the fill bolt plugged up, and I set the torque wrench to the service manual's specifications: Tighten, tighten, bam. The bolt shears off. (Disaster #5)

O__________________O

At this very moment, the car is sitting in the garage waiting to be fixed. I have to give Subaru a call tomorrow to order the part. It will be around $100. What? For a fill bolt? Well, I didn't tell you the entire story. When you replace your differential fluid, you can either use a 30 mm wrench to remove the fill bolt, or a 19 mm wrench to remove a rear differential temperature sensor which is embedded into the 30 mm fill bolt. I didn't have a 30 mm wrench handy, so I went with the sensor route.

Oops. My mistake just costed me $100. Ouch right? Expensive mistake. :(

At the end of the day, did it suck? Yeah, pretty much. But I thank God that this day didn't get any worse than it was. I'm talking about losing a limb or something. lol...

3 comments:

  1. What part of the car needs to know the temperature of the diff and why?

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    Replies
    1. Having a rear diff temp sensor lets the driver know if it is overheating. Overheating the rear diff can cause severe damage. A light will turn on if the sensor reads a specific temperature reading. The driver should be advised to stop the car, letting the rear diff cool off. The temperature sensor is built in because the STI will most likely be raced.

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