Project: 2012 DGM WRX

[JPolen01]

Two MMers hit in the same spot (although different sides) on the same day by people running red lights/stop signs. Strange.

[FlaakCM]

who else

[JPolen01]

Adam Lee in his sweet ass Camry.

[Jeff]

Man that sucks. Assholes can't drive for shit.

[FlaakCM]

True. Dealing with insurance now. Gunna try and get a diminishing value payout too.

[Mike]

uggggg gl.

[FlaakCM]

The whole ordeal almost makes me want to sell it (i owe about 7k below the market value) and get something else.

[navin]

Just a flesh wound brotha -- well it looks like it, anything else damaged?

[FlaakCM]

hopefully not. its at the shop and they havent started yet, so im not sure of the full damage.

[WRXtranceformed]

Ouch dude that is the worst feeling! Sorry! It's almost impossible to keep a nice car in good shape unless you never drive it

[FlaakCM]

Ive actually been garaging it a lot lately and barely driving it since Grace and I work at the same place, we usually just carpool and take her car. What was awesome was coming out to my explorer to drive to work this morning to see it had been egged. So i had to stop at a self wash on the way in to clean it all off. It had baked on with the ~100 degree heat.

[FlaakCM]

Estimate for the work is $5,314.14, not including 2 wheels or all 4 tires

[Mike]

ow.

[premiershine9]

So it on the tumblr man, sorry to hear

[WRXtranceformed]

Ouchhh

[FlaakCM]

Work should be all done. They are still awaiting the wheels to arrive from overseas before they can add the tire and alignment. ETA is at the end of this week. I am going to take it over to MachV next week and have them look over the suspension and make sure everything checks out.


I have to be honest, the thoughts of selling it did race through my head with the intent of replacing it with a e46 M3 SMGII (for the girlfriend to be able to drive). But then i remembered one of the main reasons I wanted to get the WRX, the AWD. Although we dont typically have bad winters, for the few times we get a lot of snow, the AWD is nice.

Looks like i am planning on keeping the car and will continue to mod it some after we close on the new house.

[Dave]

When you pick it up, go over everything very thoroughly. When my wife's car was repaired from hitting a deer, on three separate occasions they said it was "done" and I was able to point out things that were still note done. It was infuriating when I would point things out, get the call to come pick it up, and issues that were literally written down were still not fixed. Hold them to the repair - it's your only opportunity to make sure it is back to the condition it was before the accident.

[FlaakCM]

Thank you for that. That is a good point.

[FlaakCM]

Picked up the car last night. It is showing a CEL but I cannot pull the code on the AccessPort. I scheduled to have the car taken to MachV for them too look over the car for any suspension damage that mightve been missed and to correct the CEL. Guy said that it most likely is a bad speed sensor.

[FlaakCM]

Well I really haven't kept up with this thread, have I?

It’s been 5 years since I have made an update to this thread.  In those 5 years, I have moved, gotten engaged, married, bought a family car, moved again, and now have a 2 month old girl.  Through all of that, I still daily drive the WRX and generally love driving it.  I have now put roughly 41,000 miles on it after ordering the car 6.5 years ago.  

I never did another track event with the car for the fear of crashing my daily driver.  I ended up selling the RPF1s a couple years ago.  Moved from the Dunlop Direzza ZIIs to Michelin Pilot Super Sports after some poor traction experiences with the rain.  All said though, I have been really happy with the Super Sports.

I upgraded a couple items on the car over the years but really stopped modding about 3 years ago as I kinda did everything I wanted to do without going down the built motor path.  I ended up selling the TBE due to increased frustration with VA safety/emissions and now just have the CBE.  I "detuned" from the "stage 2 93oct" to the "stage 1 93oct" COBB Mapped Tune and actually found the car to be smoother with really no noticeable power loss.  Go figure.

I added front and rear sways and an anti-roll kit, upgraded my headlights to hid projectors from an S2000 with TSX lenses (5000k) and painted the inside of the housings a flat black, and installed a DAMD flat bottom wheel which I absolutely love .  I went with the flat bottom primarily for looks but it actually gives me more room to move my long legs when engaging the clutch, so that's a nice plus.

Now on to our other car purchase.  My wife's car was getting long in the tooth so we decided to look into a new car for her.  Given that I had sold my 1999 Explorer XLT, we were down to 2 cars and missed the ability to carry larger items.  This coupled with the fact we were thinking about family planning in the near future, we looked for something with more carrying capacity.

I originally wanted a wagon and had spent a couple years getting my wife to agree that wagons are cool.  I really liked the look of the GTI Sportwagens and when I saw the non-stateside R trim, I was in love.  I figured I could mod it to make it look similar to the Sportwagen R.  However, as much as I have always drooled over German cars, as an adult, I cant get over their high maintenance costs, the general unreliability, and the purchase premium.  I find it hard to justify it to myself to spend the extra money on a depreciating asset.  And as much as I love the idea of a wagon, we would be using this car to make driving trips to Florida to see my parents a few times a year and wanted something with a bit more height for visibility on 95.

Having grown up with Fords, I swore off American cars for when I got older.  Not that there was anything wrong with them.  In fact, I loved my Explorer but I just didn’t think that American cars were up to the same quality as other countries when it came to interior designs.  Because of my swearing off American cars and not wanting to pay the extras for German cars, it really limited me to Japanese cars.

I had narrowed it down to the Toyota 4-Runner (TRD PRO), Toyota Highlander, Mazda CX-9, Subaru Forester, Subaru Outback.

As much as I have always liked 4-Runners, the interior was too boring on the 2017 model.  I also didn’t like the price premium for the 4-Runner.  We sat in the Forester and just hated how the center console is configured.  It was too low to reach down and grab a drink from the cup holder without looking while driving on an interstate.  I really liked the CX-9 but the front grill/bumper kinda rubbed me the wrong way.

This brought me down to the Highlander and the Outback.  Given that I had the WRX for 5 years at this point with no additional servicing other than fluid changes, it was hard for me to look away from Subaru again for our replacement.  The Outback also came fully loaded at 37k while the comparable variant of the Highlander was well into the 40ks.  So we went to the dealer to sit in and test drive the 2017 Outback.  We both agreed that the car worked really well for the both of us at our height differences, me at 6’2’’ and my wife at 5’1’’.  Since it was to replace her car, it was more important that she feel comfortable with it.

We ended up placing an order for a 2017 Outback 3.6R Touring in Black with a Java Interior. I was able to talk them down to 35K and added in a tow hitch and a bumper cover which was installed at port.  We took delivery a couple months later and we both absolutely love the car.

I think that about catches us up.  Now to go another 5 years without an update.