Location? Fostoria, Ohio. Time? Shortly after nine o'clock in the morning. Objective? Drive as quickly as possible through a cone course in a beat-to-hell parking lot. This was my second autocross event of the year and, just as I had hoped feared, I improved in almost every way did nearly everything wrong that I possibly could.

So, rather than mope for a few paragraphs, I've decided to share with all y'all some photographs I snapped. I was mostly trying to capture the vehicles in motion, which is a technique I've not had much opportunity to use in the past. Although 90% of them came out like rubbish, the remaining 10% were at least half-decent, and, of those, 50% were actually pretty sharp!

Here them are:

FRIDAY.

It is Friday. Was, rather, it was Friday. Last day of the week, a day when literally anything is possible.

I chose this day to --

THE PAST.

Pardon me, but I've forgotten some necessary back-story.

See, in early June I'd attempted to replace the easily-pliable, ten-foot-long springs on my WRX with a set of progressive lowering springs from Epic Engineering. That didn't go so well off the cuff, but after a week I managed to get my replacement shock (to fix the top hat perch I'd snapped) and camber bolt (to replace the one I'd stripped to hell), and got the car back on the road.

All was well for about 15 miles, at which time I noticed that the car was encountering bumps -- bumps which were previously merely noticeable -- in a way that I would have to classify as "frighteningly jarring." (And, no, not "my car has been lowered and I notice things more" jarring, but rather "my car has fallen off of a cliff and onto a bomb" jarring.) I was pissed. Got the car home, jacked it up, pulled off the front passenger-side wheel, and very quickly noticed the cause of my discomfort: oil and more oil bleeding out of the strut.

Bitching.

Checked the other side, which was fine, put things back together, and went inside to seethe and consider my options. Koni had announced pricing and ship dates for their new Sport adjustable shocks and strut inserts, and said pricing was very reasonable (thank you, promotional sale). The only other option (aside from reordering OEM units, which were upwards of $220 or so per unit) was a set of as-of-yet-unreleased shocks and struts from Bilstein. These were not adjustable, and were much more expensive, and were also unavailable, so Koni it was (no hard feelings, Bilstein). Unfortunately, the Konis were on backorder for another month (thanks again, promotional sale). Whatever, I clicked Buy.

Then I waited.

Then, after a couple of weeks, I began to notice this weird kind of ticking from the front passenger side, which I attributed to a CV joint or wheel bearing that was becoming increasingly agitated by the harsh impacts it was having to deal with. And, to my great delight, it was getting worse. Like, "I am afraid to make left turns for fear of losing the whole hub" worse. Equal parts infuriated and terrified, I cut driving it back to the bare necessities.

Well, eventually that "weird kind of ticking" had evolved into a nearly constant grinding noise that only went away when exposing the wheel to positive or negative acceleration (lateral forces had little effect). It had became so bad, in fact, that I could no longer ignore it, and so I called up Subaru to have them take a look (it was time for the first round of maintenance anyway, so what the hell).

But even after setting up an appointment, I was so mad at myself for being unable to pinpoint the issue that I relaunched my search and stumbled upon this archived post from the SaabCentral forums, which described my issue to a T. And, what's more, it didn't have to do with costly CV joints or wheel hubs! Unfortunately, it did have to do with me admitting to being a totally absent-minded amateur (I am).

I was missing a lug nut, and I had been for easily a hundred miles. The result? The lug nuts adjacent to the absentee had also worked themselves loose, and the grinding was actually the sound of the wheel lugs getting very cozy with the lug holes to the tune of 800 rotations per mile. "FML," as they say.

Anyway, long story short, I had Subaru slap a new lug nut on there when I took it in for maintenance. They called me back and said, "Your car is done. Also, you've got a nail in your tire and will need a new one." In response, I bought a full set of Star Specs. (Buy my old tires.)

My problems had been solved, or so I thought.

AS I WAS SAYING: "FRIDAY."

My Koni Yellows finally showed up around the 20th of July (45 or so days after blowing the passenger strut, which was slowly joined in its grave by the overworked driver's-side unit), along with a slew of Whiteline bushings and some RalliTek sway bars and end links. I was going to fix my problems!

Fate, which had apparently not had enough laughs at my expense by this time, thought otherwise. I lugged all my crap over to mom's garage, unloaded, and was beginning to remove the front wheels when...

Sudden stop. The lug nut which Subaru had replaced wouldn't budge, and neither would the other two on either side of it. My thoughts at this point are, "What the shit." I had a torch, I had penetrating oil, and I (of course) had a big ol' breaker bar, but I was hesitant to try to force the things off. Why? Well, the threads had obviously been damaged during the many miles I'd been driving short a lug nut, and putting the new one on had cross-threaded some pretty mangled metal. What if I couldn't get them back on again after removing them? What if I broke the studs clean off? I didn't want to be without a car altogether (I'd already spent 16 years of my life in that situation, after all).

So, in a dazzling display of good judgment, I replaced the lugs I'd removed from the front, and shifted operations to the back. That end was easier anyway, since I wouldn't have to do any drilling and cutting (which frankly terrified me).

There's not much to say about that, either. I removed the old shocks (which were in fine working order), swapped the springs onto the Konis, reinserted in the vehicle, and bolted everything back up.

Oh, there is something though. You may (but shouldn't) recall that, last time, I had a hell of a time with a bar trying to pry the rear arms down low enough to get the shock assembly in and out. Well, this time it really was not looking like I was going to be able to get things out at all in the first place (my bar had gotten bent last time, and I was therefore down on leverage). Fortunately, I found that the scissor jack, when turned upside-down, fit neatly between the body of the car and the upper arm, allowing me to very easily maneuver the arms however I needed. Worked like a charm.

Some say wussier swaybars can't even be conceived.

So, right, that was all taken care of. Had some extra time what with not having to do the struts, so I took care of the sways and end links, packed up my stuff, and headed out.

FOR THE LAST DAMNED TIME, FRIDAY.

One week had elapsed, during which I'd gotten new wheel studs in on the front passenger side and replaced all damaged lug nuts (four, as it turns out; thanks, service department of Ganley Westside). It was Friday yet again, and I was back on the road to mom's place, car loaded down with new things for me to break.

And yet, amazingly -- flabbergastingly, even, if that is possible -- I didn't break shit. I know, I can't believe it either!

So, right, the fun stuff. Pulled off the struts, and this is the condition in which I found them:

McHydraulicfluid

This was obviously no good, so I proceeded to drill out the bottoms and drain the hydraulic fluid within. Fun fact: I've heard this is supposed to be some of the most foul-smelling stuff that could conceivably come out of a car, transmission fluid included. I figured that was mostly rubbish, since they only had about three thousand miles on them. However, as it turns out, the stuff does in fact smell like a gigantic smashed ladybug (if you're not familiar, the short of it is, "Yes, it's the worst"). I didn't have a proper container into which to drain the vile stuff, so it took the place of an 80-degree cup of fast food soda.

After that came some pretty straightforward (but tedious) hacksaw-ing off of the tops of the struts, followed by gutting and further draining. In case you don't know how to imagine a cut pipe, here's a photograph:

Decapitation was the only suitable end for this rat bastard.

And that's that! All that was left was to slip in the new inserts and bolt things up. Oh, right, except my hex wrenches were too small, and by this point it was 11:30pm. Well shit.

SATURDAY.

New inserts, old bodies.

No sob story here: I went out in the morning, bought a set of standard and metric hex sockets, and returned to the garage. I reassembled the struts (which turned out beautifully, thanks for asking), put everything back together, and packed back up.

I twisted that thing.

And that was that! The car handles like all the dreams, even moreso after having ridden on what was essentially a leaping, crashing dolphin for the 45 days leading in. Even after all the hassle and idiocy, I am nothing but thrilled: I learned loads, got a lot of new tools, and improved my car.

But what was the biggest lesson I've learned? That vertically-oriented photos are a bitch to arrange in an attractive fashion in a post like this.

So, this weekend I thought I would make a nice little project out of putting some new springs (a new release from former Prodrive engineer Dan Antonielli's startup, Epic Engineering) on my car (a 2010 Impreza WRX). My goal with the car is to make something that, as I see it, could (and should) be had from the factory, and that means keeping every new part below the "XTREME" line. So, that in mind, today's adventure is ironically not brought to you by the letter "subtlety."

As it was.

To the left you'll find a photograph of my car before I got my stupid ham-fists on it. It is calm, it is serene, it is unadulterated. It's sitting in my mother's garage in this photo, and the trunk is popped because it needed to be de-carpeted to allow me access to the bolts keeping the shocks from just falling out.

Now, I'd like to point out that I've never really done something quite so mechanical as disassemble suspension components before. I have replaced hoses, spark plugs, ignition coils, and other such lean-over-and-un-screw-some-things parts before, but this was breaking new ground for me. That said, I knew I was probably going to be in a rather foul mood and spouting all sorts of appropriately foul words in no time, so I wanted to put myself in a place where people generally aren't (hence mom's garage), put on some R.E.M., get mad and dirty, and make a day of it.

Well, I forgot the R.E.M., so I moved straight on to mad and dirty. In retrospect, I don't know why I didn't just throw on one of the many other CDs I cart around with me, but I guess I was rather stubbornly set on R.E.M. That's probably a good point to take away from this: I'm awfully stubborn sometimes.

Anyway, things were going along reasonably well. Yes, I had to compress and decompress that first spring about a billion times, and then another billion after that getting the new one on because I would always wind up having the long end of one of the compressors in the way of something necessary, or needing to move out of some small gap that I needed to get the vice grips through, or... well, really just those two things, but I found myself in one of the two situations so constantly that by the end I was turning into a crazy person. Also, due to the rear suspension being a rather compact multilink setup, I found myself using every available limb on my body to pry things down and wrench at things in order to get the shock assembly in and out. At one point I was actually on my back, using my right leg to press down on a pry bar, my left leg for leverage for said prying, and my arms to jam the assembly back into place before the bar slipped and everything closed back up.

But, one run to the store for a deeper socket and some PB Blaster and a whole lotta swearin' later, the driver's-side rear was done and back in. And I was thrilled.

Subtlety was not here.

The second rear was loads easier getting out, and things seemed to be going quite swimmingly until my grandpa wandered over to try to convince me to wrap things up because it was getting late (it was not getting that late, but I do not fault him; he just did not want me to meet an early end at the hands of falling-car-syndrome). Anyway, at this point I was about to separate the top hat from the shock itself, so I had the assembly across my lap and my ratchet on the lock nut. Now, I don't know if I had bumped the ratchet from "loosen" to "tighten," or if I merely thought I was loosening and just paying no attention whatsoever, but, whatever the reason, I was unable to turn that nut at all. So what did I do? I didn't stop talking for a second to think about what I was doing, I didn't check to see if I was even trying to turn the right way (something which I'm typically a nazi about with other people); no, instead I reached for a big-ass length of copper pipe, slipped it over the end to give me a ton more twisting power, and just cranked away. And wouldn't you know it, it actually began to turn, and it continued to do so until the pressure of the now way-too-tight lock nut split the top hat seat clear down the side.

It was at that point that I realized that I was a dumbass.

Rather than learn from that and take the hint that I had fried my brain with heat and cusses, I decided to solidify my position as a dumbass and "fix" this broken perch with what else but a zip-tie. I figured my apartment was close by and the roads en route were smooth, so I'd just limp it back and leave it in the garage until I could get my hands on a new shock (I do not believe that little perch can be had individually). So, I reassembled everything, got it all back in place, and took the car down off its stands. This is what it looked like:

Imperceptibly lower.

If you're looking from this picture to the one up top (which you probably aren't) and are unable to tell the difference, well, neither can I. It'll settle down in a week or so, though, and then it'll be nice and ever-so-slightly less SUV-like.

At this point I was pretty mad at myself, so I took my grandpa's advice and headed indoors for the night.

THE NEXT DAY.

I was up early to finish things off. I knew the fronts were supposed to be easier, and my head was no longer so full of thunder and lightning, so I was in pretty high spirits. Got out there, took things apart, put things back together, and all was fine and dandy, until...

Hang onto that "until" for a second while I provide just a bit of backstory. See, I had a largish brass pipe that I was using as a cheater bar with my smaller ratchets (the very same pipe which so readily facilitated my first failure). It slid on and off those smaller ratchets without drama, as should be the case with a cheater bar. However, the deep sockets I needed for this required my larger ratchet, which was just a little too broad to fit in the pipe. Turns out my hammer thought differently, and a few solid swings later I had effectively fused the two together for all of eternity. What does this mean? It means that whenever I had to use a socket that required the permanently-lengthened big ratchet, I had at my disposal way more twist than should ever be applied to the shitty bubblegum metal bits that Subaru uses to build their cars' most critical components.

You can probably see where this is headed (quite literally, in fact; there are pictures).

Things were going really well with the front end. Like, so well I was singin' and (ever so slightly) skipping around. The end was in sight! I would soon be free of my comical wheel-well gap! So great was my enthusiasm that it bade me forsake discipline and leave my torque wrench on the sidelines, relying instead on my "skills" to tell me when the very last bolt was properly tightened.

Nor was it here.

As it turns out, "properly tightened" when translated by a three-foot breaker bar becomes "stripped." And not only was this a stripped bolt, but it's a stripped camber bolt which cannot be found on the shelves of your friendly neighborhood hardware store (at least not my friendly neighborhood hardware store).

So, the last thing between me and slapping the wheels back on and driving (gingerly) away is presently chilling in the parts bin of a closed-on-Sundays Subaru dealership. I guess that's probably for the best since it rather forces me to buy a replacement shock instead of relying on the makeshift zip-tie cast holding the rear in place.

And that is the story of how enthusiasm ruined everything forever.