The new addition

In our quest to find a suitable donor vehicle for the 4wd project we have just been and bought a SUbaru WRX Import Wagon with a suspected head gasket gone, it still runs but has a fault code warning lamp lit so am dubious if its actually the head gasket - no milkyness on header tank cap - no bubbles forming in the header tank etc etc. Only time will tell I guess.

So here she is.....






Its actually quite sad that the wife and I could use a wagon like this as our everyday car but needs must so shes going for the chop!

After towing her back to her resting place, I mean place of transformation the partnership was formed.



Basically we are going to be taking the 205 back to a shell and then seeing how the subaru sub frames sit or probably more like it, dont fit. Youd never believe it but the distance between front strut tops is almost identical for both cars so hopefully just some minor adjustments needed for the front strut tops. Obviously front wings and iner wings will need chopping quite a bit as the track of the car is 5cm wider each side.

Looking at the engine bays the task ahead begins to really show itself!

From this



To this



So todays activities

Simple and pretty boring things obviously at the start of a project sad.gif So we pumped the fuel tank dry which actally resulted in a quarter tank of fuel to be used elsewhere - £15 paid back smile.gif keep it coming.
Next stage was to get ready to drop the engine out. As we are not using anything (well thats the plan) from this 205's running gear etc we decided to just pretty much unbolt everything and drop the lot. So off came the exhaust at manifold. All the loom was disconnected and water pipes to radiator / heater matrix taken off. Strut tops undone and up onto axle stands ready for the big drop. Next step will just to undo the subframe mounts and engine mounts dropping the front down as an assembly. Unfortunately time has stopped work for today but a pretty good start for a short working time. Oh and the radiator and cowling was removed also.

This is how it all looked by the end of today - ahhhhhhhhhh



Im going to try and keep log of the hours which go into this conversion as its always very difficult to remember how long youve ACTUALLY been working on something by the time a few months has passed.