Lilchopshop’s Subaru Conversion Project, Making it up as I go Options

[Lilchopshop]

Hi All,
My name is Aaron. I've been lurking on this site for years, learning from all of you who are kind enough to share your projects and the challenges that go along with them. In an attempt to keep me motivated on my project and as a way to create a place for me to ask questions as they come up (which they will, frequently), I decided it was time to start a proper build thread. I’m not a novice when it comes to tools, fabricating and most things automotive, but I’ve never attempted an engine swap before, and most things electrical tend to stress me out. That being said, I love a good challenge and I’m not afraid to fail.

I purchased this car in February of 2020, just before Covid lockdown. I got off to a pretty good start repairing the rust and trying to make a solid chassis for what I thought was going to be a stock-ish restoration (some of that work documented here: http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...ty+jack+points). Then, after watching all the great engine-swap builds on this site, I changed my mind. I knew I wanted more horsepower, but I couldn’t justify the cost of an air-cooled Porsche 6-cyl and I didn’t want to lose the trunk to a big V8. For a while, I was considering keeping the original engine from the car and using a tunable fuel injection package, but for the total cost, the bang for the buck just didn’t seem there. So, I settled on the Suby engine. After some research and some purchasing mistakes, I ended up buying a 2002 legacy outback donor vehicle with an EG25 engine. I harvested the engine, the ECU and whatever else seemed valuable. After selling off the old Porsche engine, transmission, all of the FI components and the saleable parts from the donor Subaru, I probably ended up in the black, financially.

Since buying the car in 2020, I’ve gotten pulled away by many other, more important projects, so I’ve only been able to do little stints of work on the car. I’m optimistic this time, that I will be able to finally dedicate some quality time this winter and hopefully make some real headway. I haven’t been great at documenting the little things I’ve done on the car in the last 2 years, so I’ll start this thread off with some of the things I did actually get pictures of and a summary of where I’m at now.

The day we met:
The first attempt at a Suby Engine (EJ22):
The second attempt (complete donor vehicle):
My crazy, home-built cable shift linkage:
My home-built engine cradle:
Shifter from a boxter (slightly modified):
Some suspension ear reinforcement:

[Lilchopshop]

Next up, I thought I’d start figuring out radiator mounting. Originally, I was going to use a Mishimoto radiator and fans for a Celica like others have done, but I really wanted to be able to keep a spare tire in the frunk and I don’t like the idea of the collapsible spares. So, I bought a smaller, Scirocco-style radiator from Amazon. There are lots of variants to choose from and I ended up going with one that had mounting points for fans on both sides of the radiator. Before I started cutting big holes in the frunk, I made some cardboard mockups of the spare tire and the radiator to see what this might look like.



Satisfied that there was a way to make this all work, I went all in and cut some holes.




My plan is to run both cooling hoses up the drivers side longitudinal. This portion of the chassis is still wide open from the rust repair I have yet to button up. With this plan, I wanted to keep the radiator inlet/outlet on the drivers side. But with the radiator configurations I could find, it was going to be tricky to route the hoses this way without a lot of clunky hose bends and fittings. So, I cut the hose fittings off of the radiator and had a welder buddy of mine weld some AN16 bungs in place. This gives me lots of options for AN elbow fittings, etc.



While working in the frunk, I realized that there was some mediocre repair to fix some front end collision damage sometime in the past. The chassis supports near the headlight buckets were not straightened very well and were poorly re-attached to the front cross piece. Also there was a lot of Zeibart coating under the headlight buckets that was bugging me, so I decided to pull out the chassis supports, straighten them and clean under the headlight buckets.



I ordered some Spal fans, some AN hose fittings and I made some parts to mount the radiator and mount the fans.







That pretty much sums up where I’m at now. Hoping to finish the hose routing next and start on the heater core build.

Happy 914-ing everyone!