My Unicorn Adventures

[rim32]

So I ve been on this forum for a while now, and at some point even tried to document the build of my Stagea. Unfortunately being pretty busy, I let it slide. Now that I am traveling and got more time, figured I d get it done. Hope some of the stuff comes in handy for someone on here, I know I got a lot of handy info from this forum.

[rim32]

So starting at the beginning, before I decided on the wagon life, I had a prelude...

Not really my first choice for a car, but I just got my first engineering job and I needed something to get me from Nelson to Hamilton. Picked it up for 3K, got it serviced and drove it up to Hamilton. Over time I did a few things to it, nothing major. At some point decided to respray it, just because I wanted to see how it went. After that I sold it.

Edited March 4, 2015 by rim32

[rim32]

The prelude did the job, got me around town, and even fit my snowboarding gear to take to the hill, but i always wanted a nice wagon... and so the search began. ended up finding a gem in Tauranga.

Here is the beast, 1996 RSFour, bone stock. Perfect

Apparently the engine has had some problems, and the loom was replaced. Wasn’t too fussed, I wanted a project car anyway so I figured that ll just give me something to tinker with. The plan for it was just to get some good suspension, wheels and that’s it. I guess that’s how everyones project start right…

[rim32]

I was pretty stoked with the newly acquired wagon, and was looking forward to giving it a good looking over. Took it to a mates work and got it up in the air...

standard 10 years of wear everywhere. tried on some rims, and had a look at some suspension options...

ended up going for the same wheels, but in red. ordered those and some BC golds and began the wait.

[rim32]

my goodies arrived

rear suspension ended up rubbing the wheel so some spacers were in order. Got them sized up and ordered. in the mean time ended up driving with stock rears for a while.

got to test the wagon on a few occasions... moved my girlfriend from one house to another in one trip!

also managed to get some time up the mountain. everything fit awesomely in the back

[CaSilvia]

What size and offset are those rims?

[rim32]

What size and offset are those rims?

Advanti Tech-x 18x9. +15 offset

tires were neuton nt5000

[rim32]

while waiting for the spacers to arrive, got myself some rear camber arms.

and here are the spacers! 20mm front and 15mm back.

set about getting the spacers on...

before

sorta after

guards needed a roll...

[rim32]

so one issue that the car had is a mean misfire under load. As with most RBs, it can be traced down to the coils. So I decided to give it a go at fixing mine up...

Cleaned the coils up. A few hairline cracks, some hot spots that look like they were getting pretty brittle. I got some insulation spray and gave them about a million coats.

Misfire problem solved.

[rim32]

One day driving back home from a trip down south, the water pump/alternator belt exploded and left us on the side of the road late Sunday afternoon. With the nearest town 10 minutes away, we were still out of luck as everything would be well shut by then. We did have a bed strapped to the roof so at least if we had to sleep there it would have been comfortable! Long story short, we got super lucky, got a tow into town from some nice old fella right to the shop, where we were again super lucky as the mechanic was just coming back into town from a trip. He popped in, put a new belt on the wagon and we were on our way again. Big thanks to that mechanic in Taehape. The resulting damage was only a cracked radiator. A new aluminium unit was purchased. Also a new transmission cooler was required as the original was part of the radiator. A neat little SAAB unit was found on trade me and with the radiator and oil cooler, the replacement began. No pictures unfortunately, as it was a job that had to be done quickly and I ended up having to do it in the middle of the night, in the rain.

the oil cooler I ended up getting was a used piece from a SAAB. mean little cooler, fit perfect and did the job.

after the radiator got replaced, nothing new was done for a while. Everything was working and I was pretty happy with the car.

[Trex]

that saab cooler looks like a good bit of kit, you'll definitely notice the time it takes to get into lockup.

not much room on the guard wheel and shocks hey haha, after rolling the lip up you may be able to find a sweet spot with the offset bush and camber arms to give it just enough neg camber movement on the downstroke to clear the shock and guard.

coming along nicely mate!

[tooleyrs4]

Looking good man! Get some pics of the installed locations up

[rim32]

Looking good man! Get some pics of the installed locations up

unfortunately this is the only shot i got of it actually on the car. you can see it on the bottom right of the licence plate.

[rim32]

Not too much stuff was done to the car for a while. I was pretty happy just driving it around and I was also pretty busy with my project bike at the time.

had some interesting plans I wanted to try with the bike so that took a good bit of time

[rim32]

eventually it came time for the first WOF. Nothing too major, and nothing too unexpected. CV boots needed replacing, and some ball joints needed replacement. This is when i found how hard some of the parts are to find for the stagea. At the same time some parts are piss easy too because of Interchangeability.

[rim32]

sometime after the wof, I ended up moving flats. Got our own place with a good size garage!

now with a new garage, it was a good time to work on the suspension. after gathering all the necessary bits and pieces, the work began

...and then photobucket shat itself. rest of pictures will come eventually

[rim32]

cant say quantitatively, but sure felt like there was more lock.

[Trex]

Have to be happy with that garage.

Are you going to push the front wheels out more to match the rear? Or using them as your camber adjustment? Looks like fun man.

[rim32]

Have to be happy with that garage.

Are you going to push the front wheels out more to match the rear? Or using them as your camber adjustment? Looks like fun man.

yeah that garage was pretty fun! I just used the LCAs to adjust the camber. Was going to get adjustable UCAs to push them out but never got around to it.

Edited March 24, 2015 by rim32

[rim32]

so at this point, the original plan of wheels and coilovers isnt doing too well...

next on the to do list was a small project of replacing the foot hand brake with a hand one!

got the hardware

got the car ready

leftovers

handbrake bracket

spotwelds drilled out

and this is the piece we are interested in

clean up the area of interest a bit... the bracket was removed.

check fitment

get your welder to it

and its done

next challenge...