You can get the whole bracket kit for $249 which includes a crossbar that is built to bolt to a Vanagon. However, I later found out that you can purchase just the two brackets that bolt to the engine block for ~$190. Give them a call, they can hook you up with what you need.

-Britain

Great work, Britain! I'm amazed that you're doing so much, so quickly. And it looks like quality sh*t too! Where do you find that kind of time? Keep it up.
And if you decide to come back down to San Diego this year, let me know. I'll come out and crew for you. Go get 'em, bud.
Mark D.

Impressive work in such a short period of time.Look forward to seeing car run at '11 nationals.Good luck with the sorting.Small turnout of 914s last year.

Few updates. Took a few days off work to make some progress before the holiday season gets underway. I also got a lot of parts in and I couldn't wait to get them mounted.

First off was to mount the pair of Turbosmart wastegates and finish the exhaust plumbing. Here you can see the general location of all the components.



Both wastegates will dump back into the exhaust stream so that I can control the output noise levels due to sound restrictions at some venues. Both wastegate dumps are 1.5" and then merge into 1.75" before being dumped into the exhaust. After several hours of fab work with a "metal master" buddy of mine, it was all completed. Just have to get it professionally tig welded to call it done.





Here it is mounted in the car to ensure that everything clears and fits in its respective location.



The location of the turbo and the mess of the header and exhaust plumbing has made it impossible to run the stock shifter bar. Therefore, I have adapted parts of a cable shift set-up to handle the shifted duties. If you remember, I only have 2 gears in my transmission and therefore only need to shift forward and back...pretty simple. Here is the transmission side.

Because this engine is "special" and has the TGV delete manifold, the Aeromotive fuel rails interfer with the AVSC solenoids (blue plug).



However, by spacing the intake manifold up ~16mm I was able to clear the plug. I order a set of 16mm phenolic spacers from KSTech and everything clears like it should.



The second problem with the Aeromotive fuel rails are the mounting brackets. Again, because they are supposed to be mounted to a TGV they don't fit my Spec-C manifold. Therefore I had to fab up a pair of brackets to secure them. Here you can see the difference between the new brackets and the ones that came with the kit.



Here they are on the engine...all good.

I usually don't like to show new parts until they are installed, but I had to show off the custom Griffen radiator I got in yesterday. It is going to fit perfectly.





I also got in the ice box from Frozenboost.com. If you get to take a ride, this will be between your legs. Maybe I can hook up a "cool" suit for that hot days...hmmmm.



Ok, back to the garage to continue working.

Awesome.

Looks great! Interesting how everybody has a slightly different take and process on fitting the Subaru engine. That header is wild!

How did you go about spec.-ing the radiator with Griffin? I notice it has unusually narrow end tanks - I guess to provide more core room? Did you make a model and sent them, or just sketches? I'll be going through the same process soon.

Jeff

Dude , You have some serious Planning & Fabbing Skills ,Wow !
truly asome ,
Bill D.

Looks like your having fun.
Let me know if you need an extra set of hands.

I'm putting the finishing touches on the shop. Plumbing in the compressor air lines overhead. Driving by about every other day.

Just about ready to start working on my daily driver. Oh yeah, I did buy an enclosed trailer. 20ft. Haulmark. TTYL.

You have probably researched this and thought it thru already, but since you are in the install/set-up/plumbing phase, how about preping for E85 and getting a hot tune for that corn hooch. I'd bet 400hp easy.

It has been discussed. Brit is taking a conservative approach by waiting to see what breaks. The 901 is still there....tho first gear is safe cause it's in a cardboard box. As for the R&P......

The fuel system is prep'ed for E85, however I am going to continue using my 110octane leaded fuel for the time being. It will give the same performace gains and I have ~30gallons left over from last season. Not going to get 400hp, but hopefully close.

-Britain

My son has been hotrodding his 04 sti since he got it new. He's a mechanical Engineer with our hotrodding exposure from my and his toys. We aren't track guys though. I started with a new 02 wrx motor in a 901 tail dragger dunebuggy but decided the 914 was a better way to go. I have been planning and scrounging parts for a long time and soon may get to start the real deal. When I studied the smartcar vss a few years ago I bought one but my understanding it is only to make sure the car is in motion, it will not replace the speedo feedback. I guess you know what you are talking about on needing the two waste gates. My thought is the inlet side using two waste gates might reduce the surge of the turbo better but the pulses from each exhaust port would seem to me be better controlled after the turbo wheel rather than before to get the quickest spool time. You are doing great though and will be a very valuable source on what works at high rpm in the 914 high g suby configuration. The suby uses more oil than you will think at high rpm and high oil temps so monitor it very carefully. Now that the twin scroll exhaust is removed I would tackle the oil pan and try to get as much more capacity as you can. The oil pickup is a very critical spec on the suby motor, there is a lot of variation in the oil pan tp pickup clearance. The external oil cooler is really necessary, get a oil temp sender and good gauge. The good thing is it's a race car and you can change over heated oil pretty regularly. You also may have considered a turbo blanket I hope. Are you going to learn to do open source programming on the oem ecu also? I am anxious to see if your radiator is going to be big enough. If the boost is laggy you might want to check the exhaust back pressure at the turbo. The exhaust on my son's sti is at least 3.0 all the way with straight through muffler and no cat. Your exhaust is shorter though. I do wish you had gone with the suby tranny also.

Yea, that is my thought as well. However, using the Small Car Performance speedo sensor kit I should be able to get relative speed numbers and I can feed that into my AIM dash for datalogging.




The wastegates go before the turbo and the blow-off valve goes after the turbo. I need two wastegates because I have cylinders 1 & 3 and 2 & 4 entering the turbo separately (twin-scroll) and the two wastegates will keep the exhaust pulses independent. Wastegates control the amount of exhaust gases that go to the turbo and therefore control the boost pressure. The blow-off value is between the turbo and the throttle body to reduce surge of the turbo when the throttle is closes...the pressurize air needs somewhere to go.



Yes, I am also concerned about oil pick-up under the conditions that I run. I have an Accusump plumbed in and will be address the oil pan after the engine is running on the dyno.



Yes, I have considered a turbo blanket or heat shield...we shall see how things go on the dyno.

Yes, I am using Open Source tuning...however this will be done at Cobb Tuning.

The exhaust is 2.5" all the way back and with the smaller turbo, it should be fine.

I might be changing to a different trans, we shall see how long the 901 lasts.

-Britain

When the vss was sold to me I think I remember it gives way less pulses than the suby tranny. It's not enough to run a electric speedo so my thinking was it won't run the ecu for any more than fail safe limp home avoidance.

I wouldn't start the motor without veryfying a good pickup clearance if it was mine.

My son uses open source also and I am planning on his support on mine but it isn't going to be avcs although we do have his original low miles 04 sti motor complete in my garage.

My understanding of twin scroll is the ports were put in the tubes to keep the velocity up and the pulses smoother. Smaller tubes is more velocity and putting the ports in the tubes that way means smooth pulses. We will see, thats the good thing about hot rodding and all the good ideas. I personally like to keep it as simple as possible to eliminate things breaking.

Couple of updates while the engine is out a shop getting all the exhaust tig welded.

Some of you might have noticed in the previous picture of the radiator that the fan was mounted about an inch from the radiator. Not sure why they built it that way, but I modified the fan mounts to move it about 1/4" from the radiator. This will be much more efficient. I also had some tabs welded on for the mounts to the chassis.



Also made a bracket to hold the three master cylinder reservoirs in the front. I am mounting a Tilton brake pedal assembly and converting the clutch to a hydraulic throw-out bearing hence the need for this set-up.



-Britain

Made a lot of progress today. It is always nice to start bolting things back up to the car.

To mount the radiator, I had tabs welded on the core and made some nice brackets that I welded into the car. Here are the brackets:



And with the radiator installed and radiator hoses hooked up.





I made the bottom radiator support elevated off the floor to ensure that if the car bottomed out or the floorboard got dented then it wouldn't destroy the radiator. The center section of the mount bar was notched to clear the tow hook hump in the sheetmetal.



Then I worked on how I was going to fit the fuel tank. Admittedly, the fuel take was small to begin with however this was too big to fit in the small space left in the front trunk. I therefore cut off the back of the fuel tank to follow the contours of the trunk floor.



I need to get some more aluminum, but this will be welded up and will work perfectly.



There will eventually be a nice shroud to vent the radiator out the hood. As you can see here, everything should clear nicely. I will make a fuel tank filler neck that will extend back and enable filling the tank without having to take off the shroud.



I also was found a nice place to mount the accusump tank. This will be activated by a manual pull release that is just long enough to route to the front.



Ok, headed back out there now to continue working.

-Britain

Quick question...for the fuel tank I would like to be able to determine the fuel level without having to put a stick in there. Does anyone know where I can get one of those liquid level sight tubes like the one below...preferably in aluminum and compatible with fuel.

There's one on this site that has a thermometer built in as well.



To fab something like you pictured, just pick up some compression fittings and PVC tube from McMaster-Carr.

Keep them coming , VERY COOL PROJECT!

Don't use PVC tube. It will melt! (Edited to correct)

The sight gauge you are showing looks like it uses Legris push-to-connect fittings and probably a clear nylon tube. We use them for fluid systems at work because they are low cost and pretty reliable (leak-free) fittings.

Search push-to-connect in McMaster and pick out the desired fitting. They sell elbows with one NPT end and a push-to-connect end as shown, so you can just have 2 NPT bungs welded into your tank, screw the fittings in, and be done.

Compression fittings will also work, but I don't have a huge amount of faith in McMaster's stock. They might work fine, but when I'm shopping for compression fittings I always go to Swagelok since the prices are comparable and the Swagelok parts are significantly higher quality.

If you want to go compression fitting, the P/N for an aluminum Swagelok elbow with 1/8"NPT on one side and 1/4" compression on the other is A-400-2-2. To switch to stainless change the A with an SS. If decide to go that route their website has a selector which has all of the fittings you could ever want.

BTW: The project looks good!

Hmmm, I found a ton of different references to using PVC on fuel tank sight tubes.

Wow...I think I read PVC this morning and thought ABS; my mistake. ABS is what you really don't want to use, though PVC is also rather brittle and can weaken in the presence of unleaded gasoline (per Cole Parmer who has a really complete/accurate chemical resistance database). IMHO the best thing to use is a clear nylon.

I edited the above to avoid any future confusion...

Not like you need more projects, but...

Ducting the back of the radiator out the hood is a great idea, don't forget to duct, or seal the front of the radiator to the front of the car. It may not seem like it would make a difference, but air WILL take the path of least resistance, and around the top, bottom, and sides of your radiator will be that path. Block off those sides, bottom, and top from the first pics of your post 68. Not just with some sheets of aluminum, but include foam to make it as airtight as you can. This comes from a friend of mine who works for CAT making cooling systems for the big diesel engines, intercoolers, oil coolers for earth moving equipment. In his world, with limited ground speed, the airflow needs to be generated by fan speed, and surprising enough to me, they face bigger challenges keeping the fan noise down to meet sound regulations than they do the engine noise. So making the most of every puff of air moving toward the radiator is important, and loosing any of that cooling breeze makes the system less efficient, louder, and more expensive.

Yep, the radiator will be completely ducted front and rear. All that will be completed after the engine runs on the dyno.

-Britain

For the fuel site gauge look at custom motorcycle suppliers these are installed on bikes all the time.

link1

ebay link

You may be able to put one together for less than these two links, but thought they may help ya.

Jim

I would consider modifying or adding some kind of rubber spacing on the radiator. It all looks to be hardmounted. If you get flex up front with it hard mounted your radiator won't last to long. It needs to have some mounts that allow for flex. I know that was why renegade went to a floating radiator setup. Still pretty firm in place but does move enough to allow for flex .

Of course most of what you are doing is over my head anyway . It being the shitbox it is probably reinforced up there so flex isn't an issue. This is as close to helping as I will probably get

The mounting points have rubber isolators, the radiator is not hard mounted.

-Britain

Nice work, I was thinking about mounting my turbo in that location for a while, looks great!

I figured I should have kept my mouth shut .You do everything so nice I should have known. I just didn't see them. Conversion is looking great

Thanks. I went through your thread many times before starting my conversion. Like you, I like to do things a little different

-Britain

No worries Jamie...feel free the chime in anytime.

-Britain

I had the day off work and was able to get a couple of things done.

First off, I had the backside of the fuel tank welded up and some tabs mounted.



With a set of brackets made, the fuel tank now fits perfectly in the available trunk space.



I also got the engine back to my garage after having all the exhaust all tig welded up. I added a flex joint in-between the two wastegates to aid in installation.



Overview shot of the engine...almost ready to go, just a few more things to do.



Some of you might know, but I have a special 2-speed transmission in this car. In addition, the placement of the header and turbo make it virtually impossible to pass a shift bar through to the transmission. Therefore I have converted to a cable shift set-up. Here is my new shifter I built today.



I will need to have a pair of small spacers made tomorrow at the machine shop to correctly position the hem joint, but the functionality works. Here is a short video of the motion.

Britain's Shifter Motion

Finally, I started working on the placement of the pedal assembly. Does anyone have any experience with mounted a set of these on the uneven floorpan. I haven't decided if I want to mount them to the aluminum or just cut out the raised portions of the floorpan and weld in a flat panel.



More to come...

I hope your are planning a Ken Block-ish kinda debut - filmed @ packwood maybe ?

Ha...that would be fun!

Bump.....Brit is now back in the USofA, but he'll prolly be talkin' Texan for a few months & will have to relearn typing.

Sure like the way the SB is being put together Britain. Every step / challenge you've encountered has been solved (very) smoothly.

Can't wait to see that baby run.

Whole new experience I'm thinking.

Being out of town for a week got me out of the groove for a couple of days, but I started back in it last night.

The first thing that I tackled was the routing of the coolant lines for the turbo. The stock routing simply would not clear the firewall, here is how it originally looked.



After a little cutting and welding, they are now routed properly.



And here they are with the coolant hoses attached. The feed line comes from the reservoir tank and the return goes to the stock location at the back of the head.



In a previous image, you may have noticed that rubber coolant line ran very close to the exhaust downpipe...a little too close for comfort. I therefore constructed an aluminum coolant line that routes farther from the exhaust.

Here is the original rubber coolant line in place.



And here is the aluminum coolant line.



Another item that I had some comment on was regarding the structural integrity of the square tubing engine mount bar. I had plans to reinforce this from the beginning, but I needed to finish the mounting of a few other items before constructing this plate. It is 3/16" mild steel cut out on a waterjet and stitch welded across the entire length.





The aluminum coolant pipe will be supported with a bracket hanging off this plate.

The last thing I started work on was the mounting of the pedal assembly. I explored the option of bolting it to an aluminum plate then securing that plate to the floorboard, but the entire thing was going to raise the pedal assembly an additional 1/2" off the floor. I have now decided that I am going to weld in a steel plate in-between the floor ribs to reinforce the floor pan and provide a flat surface to bolt the pedal assembly in.

Here is the floor pan in the pedal cluster area, you can see the multiple ribs and recesses. (Ignore the brake master assembly in there, I haven't lifted the car off the lift to pull this out yet)



Here is the steel plate that cut out to fit, there will be some vertical plates welded to the bottom of this to account for the variation in floor thickness.



And here is Tilton pedal assembly in its final resting place. The new pedals will take some getting used to, but at first pass I like them.



More to come soon,
Britain

Thanks Randal...hope to see you again...maybe at the WCR in Medford.

-Britain

This may have been addressed, but I was curious if you planned on fabricating a dead pedal/heat shield.

During hard cornering I have always liked the advantage of a dead pedal, but with the radiator line you have there as well I can visualize a bit more complicated yet effective design alternative to the standard dead pedal.

Hat doffed Britain, amazing work

I'm thinking about going the scooby route too over a six and I think the last 25 minutes reading through your thread has convinced me it's the way to go

Keep up the exceptional work!

When is the date with the dyno?
I bet you have already done this, and are just tuning for the best pull on round 2.
???

Yep, there will be a fabricated shield over the coolant lines on both sides of the car. The drive side shield will incorporate a dead pedal.

-Britain

Well, the goal is to have the car running (not yet on the dyno) by the end of January. However, the custom flywheel that is being made won't be ready for another 3 weeks so we shall see.

-Britain

Can't wait to see this run Britain I'm seeing a good AX year for you

I am really curious to see how much the car weighs when "done"(less ballast & driver) but with a couple gallons of gas
We prolly ought have to have a contest. I'll throw in a $hitbox tee shirt to the winner. Only slightly used, worn only in parking lots.

Starting weight is 1715 with gas. Time/date entries if you're interested.

#1675

Ha, fun contest. I believe that I have an brand new $hitbox shirt somewhere.

-Britain

Heh.....I have a new one in my T drawer.....the other has real live Packwood gravel embedded in it....a collectors item.