32 Mods for my 32nd Birthday - A Retrospective Documentary

This is a tale of epic automotive geekery and obsessive compulsive disorder that's now famous in the car community. Well, the Subaru car community anyway. I'm turning 33 this weekend and don't have nearly as insane as this planned so I thought I'd at least post up the story. I've been asked to do this a number of times for folks outside of Nasioc (that's North American Subaru Impreza Owners Club - I know, the name sucks) because people at work and my parents heard about it but scrolling through tons of posts on a forum they weren't a member of blew goats.

So, for posterity, and to commemorate the effort, here is the tale:

Introduction

This weekend I will turn 32 years old. Normally on my birthday my wife and I would just go to dinner and have some champagne but this year I am in a particularly stir-crazy mood. I've been working long hours. I feel like doing something selfish and exclusively for my enjoyment. Then I got a great idea: why not try to do 32 modifications to my car over a weekend to really celebrate my 32nd birthday?

There’s almost no way to do that during a weekend especially considering my cars current state of modification so I booked vacation on Friday and Monday and invited my inlaws over to help my wife take care of the kid while I did my own thing. Don’t get me wrong – I am first and foremost a family man. However, I think everyone deserves some “me” time once in a while.

I started wrenching on cars when I was 16. I started because I was poor and my car was an utter piece of crap. As I grew older and my income went up I stuck with it because I thought it was fun. I’m a Subaru enthusiast and currently own a 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX. I like the WRX because they’re small, fast, cheap and dependable. I’ve owned at least one Subaru for the past 15 years.

Subaru’s are great cars but they’re far from easy to work on. As an example, changing the spark plugs, which on almost any other car is a twenty minute job, takes at least twice that long on a Suby and that’s if you’ve done it a couple of times. I’ve heard of it taking newbie’s over an hour and a half. You have to remove the air intake box, battery, and washer fluid tank to even get at the plugs and once you’ve managed that you still need to contort your arms into ridiculous positions to even turn the wrench. No normal person would ever want to work on one.

Since I’m not normal, and by not normal I mean crazy, and by crazy I mean irretrievably and totally bat-shit crazy I love working on my Subaru. How crazy am I? Wait and see.