My Son’s First Car… Project Car That is. He Has Work to Do

My first car was a total POS!! Ya it looked pretty cool but didn’t have enough power to go over 55mph. 1984 Nissan pickup extended cab, with a 4 inch lift and 33 inch tires. It was silver with a giant yellow bondo spot on the passenger side. That thing could go anywhere… just not very fast. I may or may not have jumped it a few times but that’s besides the point. Going around a turn you had to hold it in second gear or it would pop out of gear. No rear bumper but it did have one of those sweet gator nets in place of the tail gate. The rear jump seats were removed and a giant speaker box installed with 2-10inch subwoofers and 2-12inch subwoofers, combined with 2-6x9’s and 2-6-1/2’s the stereo system kicked ass!! On occasion my rear view mirror would fall off due to the bass shaking the whole truck. That was cool back then… what can I say.

I swear kids these days live in some sort of fantasy land. Thinking they are gonna get some $20-30k car for their first car… HA!! Yeah right!! Not around the Splatts house anyway. I was gonna give him our 2005 Lincoln Navigator, yeah it’s not in the best of shape but runs and driver great. Fuel mileage ain’t the best and for a teenager… he is probably gonna eat through the fuel.

Well a guy at work bought this Subaru Outback about a year ago. After owning it for about 6 months, he thinks the engine is done for. It’s a 2.5L boxer engine with 175k miles. Crazy to think and engine would die at that mileage. He offered it to me for $600 and after looking at it and seeing it’s condition… I went for it.

A couple minor scratches, interior is super clean with seat covers. (Yes I looked under them 😉) No tears in the upholstery, and everything works great… except the engine. It’s in really good shape for it being a 2006. Except it’s got a really nasty “knock” in the engine and needs rebuilt or the engine swapped out. What a perfect project for my Son and I to tackle. It looks like a miniature version of my 2001 Ford Excursion. LOL

It would be fun to take it all apart and rebuild it. We would both learn a lot. Yet, it would be easier to just yank it out and find a low mileage engine somewhere… At this point I am not 100% sure which direction we want to go. Gotta do some digging and searching and see what I can come up with.

If I can either rebuild the engine or swap it out and stay around $3,000… I think this is a good score. I’m a firm believer that you work for what you get. I’m not doing anything on this car without him either doing it or watching me do it. Most likely I’m gonna tell him what to do and make him earn this car. I believe he will appreciate it way more is he put some work into it and busted some knuckles in order to get it running.

I told him to wash the outside of it this evening then we will pull it into the garage and start draining the fluids. I’m going to do my best to document this whole project. It should be a lot of fun and hopefully it all works out in the end

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