What have you done to your SVX (or other Subaru) today?

[Conn SVX]

SOCAL1200 r
Yea my dealer charges $95 an hour. I took my Honda to a dealer to replace a rear license plate light $50. I looked at it. It was only clipped on. ( they said it was accessible through the trunk.) I pooped it off and even replaced the bulb with and LED. ( dealer said not a bulb it is a single plug in unit no bulb ) shows what they know. $8 and fixed . Sounds like a good deal at $800 that includes the parts. Wow!

[Conn SVX]

Do u guys remember the Dodge Grabber or the shaker hood. Drawing cool air into the engine increases HP. Also cool moist air is even better.
Think of air as a pipe filled with water. Or a hose. The column of air is there all the time, the tube is full. Don't believe distance of 2 feet will make a hair of a difference. The cool air will make up for it 10 fold. JMHO

[SVX_MY_BABY]

Originally Posted by Conn SVX

SOCAL1200 r
Yea my dealer charges $95 an hour.

Try 130.00 hr here plus 1% for shop supplies and 15% tax.

[socal1200r]

Originally Posted by Conn SVX

SOCAL1200 r
Yea my dealer charges $95 an hour. I took my Honda to a dealer to replace a rear license plate light $50. I looked at it. It was only clipped on. ( they said it was accessible through the trunk.) I pooped it off and even replaced the bulb with and LED. ( dealer said not a bulb it is a single plug in unit no bulb ) shows what they know. $8 and fixed . Sounds like a good deal at $800 that includes the parts. Wow!

$800 is labor only, I bought the parts...if I had the skills to do this work myself, I'd take a Saturday or Sunday and do it, but since I don't, I'm trying to find a place that I feel comfortable with doing the work.

[socal1200r]

Originally Posted by Conn SVX

Do u guys remember the Dodge Grabber or the shaker hood. Drawing cool air into the engine increases HP. Also cool moist air is even better.
Think of air as a pipe filled with water. Or a hose. The column of air is there all the time, the tube is full. Don't believe distance of 2 feet will make a hair of a difference. The cool air will make up for it 10 fold. JMHO

The shaker hood isn't a good analogy, because those were the days of V8's with a big 4-barrel carb right there in the middle, so the hood scoop was literally right on top of the carb, hardly any distance at all for the air to travel. I still think there's a physics principal of some kind that has to do with distance and volume, or distance and pressure, or something like that. Again, think of sucking air in thru a straw. You can't tell me that sucking in air thru a 6" straw is the same as thru an 18" straw...

[socal1200r]

Replaced the Spectre gauze cone filter with a Uni dual stage foam filter, part number UP-4300AST, less than $20 on Amazon. It's 3" ID, 4.5" wide, 4" tall, with a 15-degree angled neck. One of these days I'm going to take off the inner fender liner and see how I can get the filter on that side, instead of the engine side. I think it might even fit right there at the fender opening, and all I'd have to do is run a short pipe with a coupler to the MAF.



The MAF adapter is a Spectre part, #81413, about $14 at my local auto parts store. Two of the slots line up perfectly with two of the holes on the MAF housing, the ones that are diagonally opposite from each other. So all I had to do was mark and drill two holes for the other bolts. I put a light coat of grease on the rubber o-ring on the MAF to keep it from falling off when I attached the adapter. All's good so far, just have to block out some time and take a look at that inner fender...

[socal1200r]

Did a few things, one over the weekend, and another today. Went with a pipe to connect from the airbox inlet at the fender up to the MAF, with a coupler at each end. Ended up using two plastic strainers I found at Home Depot, and cut some blue Scotchbrite pads to use as filters, one at each end of the pipe. The blue Scotchbrite pads aren't as coarse as the green, seem to be more dense. I used some Uni filter oil to spray the filters, worked the oil into the filters, wiped off the excess, the fit them against the strainers on opposite ends of the pipe. Should work fine as a filter media, certainly better than just the plastic strainers themselves. I also ended up cutting about 1 3/8" off the end of the pipe at the MAF end, to make the whole assembly fit better with having to force it in.

Went to a muffler shop today, and had them remove the small resonator that was between the cat and Stebro muffler at the back, replaced it with a section of straight pipe. Gave it a little more volume at lower rpms, certainly nothing too loud or ricey. Sounds good with the louder intake noise.

Lastly was replacing the stock hi and low beams with some Hella bulbs I found on Amazon. I usually go with Sylvania Silverstars, but figured what the heck, Hella is a name brand, and these are supposed to be VERY white, and they were half the price of the Silverstars. The bulbs in the pic are the ones that were replaced, the Hella bulbs have a blue coating on them. Also ordered the Hella 55w yellow bulbs to replace the white driving bulbs, those should be here in a day or two. They're going to take some time to replace, with the wires and clips and such.

[92 SVX]

Originally Posted by socal1200r

Did a few things, one over the weekend, and another today. Went with a pipe to connect from the airbox inlet at the fender up to the MAF, with a coupler at each end. Ended up using two plastic strainers I found at Home Depot, and cut some blue Scotchbrite pads to use as filters, one at each end of the pipe. The blue Scotchbrite pads aren't as coarse as the green, seem to be more dense. I used some Uni filter oil to spray the filters, worked the oil into the filters, wiped off the excess, the fit them against the strainers on opposite ends of the pipe. Should work fine as a filter media, certainly better than just the plastic strainers themselves. I also ended up cutting about 1 3/8" off the end of the pipe at the MAF end, to make the whole assembly fit better with having to force it in.

Went to a muffler shop today, and had them remove the small resonator that was between the cat and Stebro muffler at the back, replaced it with a section of straight pipe. Gave it a little more volume at lower rpms, certainly nothing too loud or ricey. Sounds good with the louder intake noise.

Lastly was replacing the stock hi and low beams with some Hella bulbs I found on Amazon. I usually go with Sylvania Silverstars, but figured what the heck, Hella is a name brand, and these are supposed to be VERY white, and they were half the price of the Silverstars. The bulbs in the pic are the ones that were replaced, the Hella bulbs have a blue coating on them. Also ordered the Hella 55w yellow bulbs to replace the white driving bulbs, those should be here in a day or two. They're going to take some time to replace, with the wires and clips and such.

Try the LED bulbs, they give very very good light output.

[Conn SVX]

Grabber and shaker hood refer to the COOL air not distance. . On a damp even rainy day u could feel huge increase in power. Also I have no resonator in my exhaust system. . Sounds raspy but not offensive.

[socal1200r]

Originally Posted by 92 SVX

Try the LED bulbs, they give very very good light output.

I saw some of those on Amazon, where they put out thousands of lumens, now that's bright! But what's up with those finned turbolator gizmos at the base of a lot of those LED bulbs? They say it's for a fan to keep them cool?!

I don't really drive the SVX at night, so I think I'll be good with these Hellas. From my past experience with LEDs, they're more pinpoint, don't have as good of a spread as "regular" bulbs. 'Course I suppose this could be fixed with the right bulb housing, or how the LED bulb is configured, but I think I'll be good with the Hellas.

Besides, I don't want to be THAT guy who's driving around with the retina-burning headlights!

[socal1200r]

Got all the Hella bulbs installed today: 55w low beams, 65w high beams, 55w yellow driving lights. They were less than $20 a pair at Amazon. Low beams and high beams went in easily, the driving lights not so much, but they're in. The white low beams and yellow driving lights make for a good contrast. Also painted the "SVX" emblem by the rear side windows red, to match the red Subaru emblem on the wheel center caps, and the red AWD badge on the front quarter panel. It's subtle, but enough to help break up all the black on the car.

[92 SVX]

Originally Posted by socal1200r

I saw some of those on Amazon, where they put out thousands of lumens, now that's bright! But what's up with those finned turbolator gizmos at the base of a lot of those LED bulbs? They say it's for a fan to keep them cool?!

I don't really drive the SVX at night, so I think I'll be good with these Hellas. From my past experience with LEDs, they're more pinpoint, don't have as good of a spread as "regular" bulbs. 'Course I suppose this could be fixed with the right bulb housing, or how the LED bulb is configured, but I think I'll be good with the Hellas.

Besides, I don't want to be THAT guy who's driving around with the retina-burning headlights!

The fins and fan are the heatsink, LED's stacked up like they need to be for headlights get hot, not at the bulb though, and the stacked led design will give the light output where it is designed to go, and in our projector housings its actually the best light output without blinding oncoming traffic.
But your likely correct what you have will be good for your night time driving.

[SVX_MY_BABY]

Took out the rear seat, side panels and package shelf ahead of replacing a top strut mount.

Also sanded, compounded and polished the headlights, corner lights and waterfall grill to get rid of the yellowing. Polished the rear lights as well.

What a difference!

[SacSVX]

[IMG][/IMG]I was bored after work and just wanted to do minimum work so I spray waxed my svx even though it was already clean.



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[SVX_MY_BABY]

Looks great SacSVX.

Got in spired and did a complete "Mothers 3 Stage" pre-wax clean, seal & glaze and wax this week.

Hmm, It's about that snow they're forecasting for next Saturday.