Quick + Dirty Boot Install...

Decided to make a neat but cheap install to hold my heavy subs in place without having to screw through the under-tray. Having already bought the electricals, this tidy install didn't cost me a penny to make...



I got hold of a large sheet of thin plywood being thrown out at work, laid the Subaru boot-mat over the plywood and drew round the mat to make a template. I then cut the shape of the boot-mat out with a jigsaw.

This won't fit into the boot in one piece, so I cut across the wooden floor left to right just before the point where the floor starts to widen out. The back-piece now forms a fixed base for the subs to sit on, where the front-piece can be still be lifted out to access the spare wheel. The subs can only go back a certain amount before the width of the twin-box hits the corners of the rigid section under the parcel shelf, so I measured the optimum depth of the back-piece while still allowing enough room up front to life the spare wheel out. The subs are still proud of the back-piece by about half a cm, but this makes a nice lip for the front-piece to slide under.

I cut a section from the left side of the front-piece about three-quarters of the way along to become a base for the amp to sit on, which is also fixed in place. The entire right side of the front-piece lifts out and I drilled two holes and inserted a blue cord to make a handle to lift it, which was an old lanyard-cord, also scavenged from the skip at work.



I screwed some 2cm x 4cm strips of boxwood along the underside of the back-piece, (which were, along with the screws again filched from the skip at work) and two long strips at the left side that continue forward to the back of the boot for the amp-piece to screw onto. I finally put two strips on the right front-piece, one either side of the spare-wheel well so the different floor heights match up. This meant I could drill holes for all my wiring and hide it away underneath the wooden boot-floor, as shown in the pics below, a really neat touch.



So there you go, reasonable install at nil cost.. and no more sliding sub-box! I have now also got hold of a roll of some very nice light-grey acoustic carpet from, yes you guessed it, the skip at work hehe, so I'l be covering up the cheap plywood look as the summer gets going.

Project so far...

Bought the car mid-February, here is a list of items i have already bought for the car in chronological order:

Avon ZZ3 Tyres - W-rated, 165mph on the standard 205, 16" rims. 3 of the 4 tyres that came with the car right on the wear-bar so I promptly replaced all four - got a deal for £300 at my local National. I had the new tyre fitted to the bare 5th alloy I also got with the car so I could keep the one good original tyre as a spare.

New Battery - Not cheap at £66 from Halfords and the battery I got with the car was fine, but I needed it to get my BMW started and sold. As a model specific item the new battery has a high price tag, but it's a lot taller and chunkier than the old one and I'm sure this can't be bad for the Scoob.

Wiper Blades - Old ones were splitting at the edges so better off replaced, only £9 from Halfords.

Alpine Subs and Amp - Got two 12" Apline R 1000W subs and an Alpine V12 1000W mono-block amp from a friend at work, all like new, for just £80. He also threw in a giant power-cap but its not needed, the Scoob electrics are perfect!

Fuel Filler Pipe - I noticed a petrol leak when filling up and it turned out the filler pipe had rusted through and had to be replaced. After a £200! part quote from Subaru I tracked down a used, but good condition, Jap import part on eBay for £58 delivered! ...although it was a pain to fit, which I'll cover more later.

Spray Paint + P38 Filler - Halfords don't stock Subaru paint colours so they had to mix me up a can of my Light Silver 406 in store while I waited outside and ended up cutting my hand to pieces tidying up the cage around the stereo head-unit. I then had to go back inside with my hand dripping blood to pay for the paint @ £12.99, which is'nt bad at all, but it's still nearly twice the price of a Halford's own Audi or Ford silver and for half as much paint!

Iv'e also bought a tube of P38 body-filler to have a go at the scrape on the rear wheel-arch and three giant stone chips on the bonnet-lip. I got to grips with curing rust and re-painting with the BMW, but this is my first try at body-filling and re-shaping the car.

About ScoobyLab.co.cc

I started Scoobylab simply to keep a diary of everything I've done, as its been such an immersive experience. WRX are wickedly complicated cars and there just isn't enough of them on the road to generate a support base [no dealerships or Haynes manual!] so I've had to find most of my parts and advice on web-forums.

I've worked on my cars for years, but I'm no mechanic, so I've posted detailed walkthroughs in layman's terms of every job we've undertaken as we've figured it out and, hey, it turns out Scoobys share tons of common problems so I hope they might come in handy one day if you have a Classic yourself.

The cult following of these cars means there is a wealth of information available online, from sites devoted purely to Impreza mods to Scooby encyclopedias, but this also means its hard to pinpoint specific problem fixes and makes waiting for message-board replies the only option, so I'm also trying to include as many of these useful nuggets of information [like reading your own fault-codes, getting the right part, etc.] in one place.

**This is the date I started posting pics on the blog, which got the ball rolling on ScoobyLab. This and all earlier entries are a back-dated permanent/sticky post of some kind. Thanks for reading!**