Ooops! Won my donor today

[billjr212]

So, my wife may kill me, but I kinda sorta accidentally won my donor this morning on Copart. Non-running 2004 WRX with about 90k miles on it. Lots of good looking body panels, lights, etc to sell over on NASIOC. I'll know more next week when it gets to me and I can dig into it a little bit.

My membership to Copart was expiring today, so I threw out 1 final "low-ball" bid on a car, thinking I would never get it...and bam! Victory! (and at less than my low-ball bid maximum) Hooray, I think!? Haha.

Once I get into it, I will decide to either list the donor (with much better details on its condition) or list my Roadster. Either way, it's a win for the community!

I will keep this thread updated when I find out more and have questions.

[flynntuna]

Pictures? Price? It helps the rest of us in our bidding.

[billjr212]

Absolutely. I had a little snag because Copart pulls the lot offline right after someone wins, but I was able to download the pictures from another site.

$1,200 was the winning bid. Here she is.

26891

[Xusia]

Wow. Good price!

[Wayne Presley]

Plan on pulling the motor down, you have bent valves, need at least 2 sprockets and half of a timing cover set.

[billjr212]

That's kind of what I had in mind Wayne, but thanks for confirming. I haven't even ordered my Kit yet, so I will have lots of time (calendar wise, not so much day to day wise) to fiddle with the donor.

[billjr212]

The delivery truck arrived way early (yesterday afternoon), so I was able to spend some time poking around the car this morning. Confirmed the timing belt was broken in the crash. Steering rack, abs distribution block, airbox, and fusebox all appear to have survived. Also discovered the previous owner was simultaneously a slob and a neat freak. There were easily 20 empty water bottles and 40+ water bottle caps on the floor, but also an empty canister of armor all wipes and the dash/trim was fairly clean, so he actually used them. Fascinating.

Anyway, I'll update again once I manage to extract the bumper beam and radiator out of the way and get a closer look at the damage.

[billjr212]

So I have started selling off parts and I stripped off the front end for easy access to the engine. Going well so far considering I have mostly been working on it for 30 minutes to an hour at a time.

I ordered the new parts I needed for the timing belt yesterday (full timing belt kit with pulleys and water pump, plus new timing belt covers front and back, and ordered a lightweight crank pulley from Nameless while I was at it). My understanding is that I will need to replace all these first so I can get everything lined back up as I replace the valves and re-check clearances.

As established above, I'm assuming I have a few bent valves. Any suggestions on how to go about this and what parts I should go ahead and order ahead of time? 3rd party sites such as rallysportdirect.com sell full sets of just the valves at a good rate, and then the Genuine Subaru parts type websites seem to sell them individually and then separately sell the seals, springs, collets, etc etc.

I'm assuming I should just go ahead and get the full sets of intake and exhaust valves, stock length, plus new head gaskets, but curious how many of the "other" parts I should just go ahead and order now. Obviously the goal isn't to save $50 just to have a major headache down the road, but also not looking to spend the extra $50 just to find out that in order to replace those items, I also need to replace X, Y, and Z other parts and related gaskets!

Thanks!

[mrprgrmr]

Why not pull the heads and verify the valves are actually bent? Sure, they probably are but if they're not you might save some $$$ for other stuff. As far as gaskets, you might consider buying a complete engine gasket set. You may not use every gasket but I'll bet it ends up being cheaper than buying individual gaskets - which is what I have been doing :(

[Pearldrummer7]

Killer price! Enjoy. I've found the worst part so far is selling parts on NABISCO

[billjr212]

Complete gasket kit such as this? Part # 10105AA560
http://www.amazon.com/GENUINE-SUBARU-COMPLETE-ENGINE-PACKAGE/dp/B00ESGDA90/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396027956&sr=8-1&keywords=10105AA560

I thought we had a Subaru dealer as a supporting vendor on here, but lost them somehow.

Seems like overkill, but I suppose the head gaskets are $40 a pop anyways, so you are probably right that I should just jump to that.

Thanks.

[Bob_n_Cincy]

this was my order from rockauto for my 07 NA impreza 2.5L
Bob
27343

see this post

http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?10401-Finished-my-disassembly-the-day-the-manual-came-out&p=102764&viewfull=1#post102764

[billjr212]

Bob - that is super helpful. Thank you. Good call on changing the spark plugs while you're there anyway. I definitely would have forgotten.

[billjr212]

The motor is alive (sort of), parts sell off has been going well, so I have created a build thread. Here we go...

http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?14043-BillJr212-WRX-818-S-build-thread

Thanks again for the advice so far.

[Jvalgardson]

Nice Score on the Wheels! those alone are worth more than you paid for the car! Unless they are replicas...