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The Zen of Using Used Parts

A nifty red APS intake that works like new

It's with great pleasure that we can report our successes with used parts. We still need new parts retailers for everything else, but the coolest junk just might be found online, in a buddy's garage or hiding in a wrecked such-and-such that somebody parted out. Reach deep into this miasma of availability and you too can find a few of the extra-cool whatevers you need, perhaps used but still useful.

Intakes for Bonzo

What part? An APS fender well intake for our '02 Subaru WRX. It's a piece of tubular cast aluminum finished in the same red crinkle finish as Subaru's other underhood hot bits—that's right, STi red—so it matches the spider manifold we picked up a few months ago not without the pulling of some hair. The APS intake is also available in a short-ram style that puts the filter element in the engine bay, but that design sucks hot underhood air into the engine, and we all know cold air is better. The longneck fender-well unit terminates outside the engine bay just above the passenger-side wheel well, behind some plastic shrouding, and delivers ambient-temperature air to the engine.

Now, this isn't one of the high-demand JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) bits that you find circulating the web with exorbitant, unreasonable prices. The V7 Spec-C S202 STi manifold, which we hunted down previously was about as obscure as JDM gets. In this case, the availability and excellent price of a quality used hi-po tweak (built in Australia—they've had the WRX for a long time), not to mention the matching crinkle red, had us forsaking JDM for AUDM and U-S-E-D.

We'd originally been quoted $150 for this APS fender well snorkel (retail was somewhere in the $300s), but with a touch of grinding and some icing on the deal, the seller let it go for $100 plus and a box of car care products we'd been saving for a rainy day. Seller Guy was an old race buddy and eager for the car care bonus, so we met him at the RaceLegal drags on a Friday night, exchanged stuff and said our seeyas.

The APS intake was dirty but in good shape. Looked like it had been sitting in a box with a bunch of other dirty WRX parts. Seller Guy had de-contented his own WRX prior to unloading it, as he was returning to the rock-crawler ranks with a 4.0-liter Jeep Cherokee he was building. Fabrication guys have all the fun, building cool long-travel this and tube-framed that. You see a lot of that sort of rig in the San Diego area. Sorry, got distracted...Anyway, Seller Guy's subsequent removal and distribution of hot-rod WRX bits was our gain, as they usually won't add much to the resale value of a car or truck. Thanks, pal.

Bolt This On

The only involved part of installing a longneck intake that locates the filter in the wheel well (always choose the cotton K&N-style elements, as foam does not protect as well, and will deteriorate when exposed to certain underhood chemicals) is disassembling the wheel well itself. The rest is nut and bolt stuff, really simple. If you crank the front wheels hard over to the left, the front of the passenger-side wheel well becomes easier to get at. In the case of the WRX, though, the plastic fender liner is essentially a one-piece unit that stretches from front to back. Adding to the difficulty rating are about 15 fasteners that must come out to release the well liner enough to install the APS intake's filter element once the body of the unit is in place, so we yanked out the Ro-Ja forged 17-inch and Dunlop SportMaxx tire for access.

Originally equipped with a few brackets that suspend the APS intake in the engine bay, Seller Guy had misplaced a few bolts and a bracket. We hand-fabbed a slick replacement support out of some mild steel found in a box of old door hardware left over from our last home remodel, and hid the bracket in the wheel well so it didn't detract from the underhood appeal of the crinkle-red finish. The missing bolts were easier to recreate, and we scored two matching metric pieces in one of the ubiquitous drawers o' bolts that inhabit the parts bins living on our Frankenshelving. They were a little long, so we threaded nuts onto them to cinch the bolts down against the intake housing. This also left room on the bolt bodies to mount something in the future.

Prior to installation, we spent a few minutes with a cotton towel removing grease and dirt from the APS intake. You'll want to test any cleaner on a relatively unexposed area of the cleaning subject, even when using innocuous agents, so you don't blow the lovin' finish that adds so much to the part's G-Factor (that's G for Groovy). But for a few scratches (it is used, after all), the intake shined up nicely.

We had to slip the intake into place from the engine bay (not the wheel well, as other kits specify), but that was only a matter of removing the OEM air box, attached sundries and relocating a few hoses. One of the supplied APS brackets was designed with a receiver for a factory Subaru keeper that suspends these hoses out of harm's way. The OEM mass-air meter fit the APS snorkel so cleanly you'd suspect that a professional designed the intake. Even missing a bit or two, the APS intake went in easily, intuitively. Could probably have done it with one hand. Used parts rock. Now to install the 100-hp worth of other used parts hiding in the garage. Okay, some of 'em are new.