I'll get one. You'll have to wait till next week when I get my headers back though.

I played a bit of gauge dress up tonight with some spare carbon fiber vinyl I had laying around. Who knows how long it will last, but when I get tired of out I'll just peel it off and paint it.

I must have missed this in your thread, is the water temp gauge in the combo gauge from a 924 - 944 - 928?

None of the above. It's from Tim. He also created the custom face too. It's printed on thick card stock. I think the gauge is from Jegs or summit. I'll be taking it out for a scale adjustment in a bit and I'll take some photos.

I added a silver button to my speedometer tonight. Now it will take a keenly trained eye to realize anything is out of the ordinary!
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Tim's custom gauges are now wired in! The stock look with new internals and some sweet color change action, all for less than the Speedhut Gauges!

Yesterday was really productive, with the engine out I took some time to clean up the engine bay.

I have decided hat I'm unlikely to go back to the stock engine any time soon, so I stripped the unnecessary extra stock wires out of the engine bay and deleted the relay board connector.

I added in Some proper P-clamps for my fuel lines so that I could run the wiring back inside the stock clamps as well. I also installed new clutch and accelerator cables, and plugs for the shifter cables, the old heater controls, and the coolant hoses where they pass into the longs.

I painted and re-installed the shifter and supports
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And, I got my ceramic coated headers back from the powdercoater. I wen't with black instead of the chrome because it was better recommended by the powdercoater, but also because I thought chrome would be a bit too much bling!
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Nice fit Ross! Your new setup probably doesn't howl like the Harley pipes did even tho they sounded pretty cool. Hope the still give a good growl! Did you run new coolant hoses all the way through your longs or just update the transitions?

So I got everything in and plumbed up. I took it on a shakedown run today. 20 miles of highway followed by a steep run up some switchbacks (lookout mountain). On the way back down I noticed a slight miss so I pulled over and sure enough, one of the coil pack clips had come loose. When I started the car back up the miss was gone, but there was a lot of smoke from the drivers bank of cylinders!

Smoky startup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1c10wbCJkM


I checked compression tonight, 117 +- 2 psi across the board, with no noticeable leakdown (over 5 minutes).

No visible oil in the coolant either.

My current plan is to drive out a bit more and keep an eye on coolant and oil level, see if either one drops. Thoughts?

Was the loose coil on the drivers side? If so, you may have washed down the cylinder a bit so you got some blow by. Or maybe some raw fuel left over... You didn't say if it smelled like oil or not, but if it's not doing it on a regular basis you're probably good.

Yeah I agree, you were driving with a dead cylinder for a while. The engine was just burning off some unspent fuel most likely. Had that happen on my old Type 4 when I lost a plug wire. If you have good compression and it stopped smoking after a bit you should be fine. Fire it up again today and you'll know.

If it was coolant you would probably smell it already. That stuff is pungent!

I put my exhaust hangers together tonight!
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I also started back on one of my other back burner projects ...
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Not quite ready yet, but it's close!
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Muffler brackets look cool but they also look like they will bend at the mounting tab.

Ash tray is way cool.

Good point on the brackets. I'll add in a gusset on the bottom to strengthen them against bending.

Wow Ross! The cup holder looks awesome! I want one. Put me on the list.

I did a few small things this weekend, but my favorite change was plasti-dipping my wheels gold! I also think I have sourced a neutral safety switch that is closed in neutral instead of open which should make the lockout relay easier to install!

That's a good look! Did you get your small amount of body work completed on Apollo?

I did! Just about good as new!

Looks great! I always wanted to see what your radiator opening looked like. Do you have a shot of it straight on?

So I think I have discussed this before, but I had an incident a few months ago where I started the car in neutral and it resulted in Apollo jumping forward into my toolbox, smashing up my other 914 (Calypso) and caving in the front bumper of Apollo.

I have now officially repaired the damage, but I didn't want to drive the car much longer without a neutral safety switch.

The subaru transmissions come with one, but it is a normally open switch (i.e. in neutral the switch is open, and it is closed in gear. This could be integrated through the use of a normally closed relay (when in gear you energize the relay and it opens) to isolate the starter relay, but that would mean if the wiring or relay ever failed it would default to closed and I would again be unprotected (but wouldn't know it). Not good!

After doing some more research I discovered that for whatever reason the 2005-2007 WRX had a neutral switch that is normally closed (closed in neutral and open in gear) and that it has identical threads to the switch in my transmission (2003 2.5 RS). I just finished wiring it in tonight on the power side of the starter relay. Easy as pie and the part only costs ~30$.

Subaru Part No. is below:
32008AA151

I like it. As you engineers say, KISS.

I haven't settled on the final cut yet, but this works fine for in town and highway. Steep passes and track days I have to be careful on my temps, but I'm hoping to solve that by moving from a junkyard volvo radiator to a thicker dual pass aluminum unit.

I was getting tired of how loud my exhaust was so I added in another muffler/crossover tonight. Much better!

Marty at MSDS was kind enough to supply the mandrel bends (super easy to work with, and inexpensive too!) And the center muffler is just a cherry bomb muffler from the FLAPS. I HAVEN'T SEALED it all up yet, but so far it looks promising!

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Please post a video of how that sounds, I have been playing with the idea of building an exhaust like that for a few moths!

I agree - cool ash tray & muffler brackets! Looks like you expect to hang some heavy sh$t on that ash tray though - material looks thicker than the muffler brackets.

No real progress to report, I've been too busy playing witty my new toy - a vinyl cutter!

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You may want to consider adding flanges to your add-on silencer set up. It's going to be fairly restrictive just by design alone and if you make it a convertible design you can change it out for your A/X activities. I wish I had access to flow meters for a truly accurate reading of the flow but if you increase the pipe diameter up it should minimize your backpressure, also adding a deeper tone. We need SOUND on this!

Wow the stickers look great! Are you planning to sale them? If so, I will take a set in red.

Great job on the center muffler. It will help a lot. Looks similar to Bob's setup which made the exhaust note really nice.

Here is his (from his blog):

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Nice welds BTW :beer2. Not easy to weld in a circle.

Beat me to it, Chris. It's been on my "to do list" since Bob turned me on to this method. I want to do this but keep the existing exhaust as a spare set.

Odometer: 49,902 mi

Woof! May Since my last update!

Not much has changed, just little upgrades here and there.

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I painted the exhaust a less gaudy color, picked up a few spare EZ30's (trying to decide if I should resell or do a turbo build... ), and put on some carefree miles.

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I had a bit of a scare earlier in the summer, coming down through the twisties in one of the mountain passes near Denver I had one of the plugs on my coil packs come loose and that cylinder started missing. I pulled over and fixed it, but on startup it let out a huge plume of smoke. I thought for sure I had done something serious, but there seems to be no lasting effect!

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Just recently I decided to try my hand at making a center console and came up with the following. Built fron MDF, covered in 1/2" foam scrim and upholstered with vinyl. I'm hoping that a few heat cycles will allow the vinyl to stretch out and even out some of the sharper wrinkles. We'll see, but it is nice to have something to keep the dirt out of the shifter mechanicals!

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That's the shortest shifter I've ever seen. Is that an AX thing, or just a preference for a really short throw? Nice console, btw.

Its the stock MR2 shifter length, and is incredibly short, but the tightness of the Subaru transmission \ cable shift makes it viable. I usually use a 3" lever extender to make the throw longer, but it is fun shifting with a 1" throw once in a while.

I'm getting EZ30 envy. How many of those do you HAVE man??? Any others or just the EZ?

All EZ30s, but I'm down to one spare now and that may end up in Brett's challenge build car.

I have EG33 envy myself, so many more options for tuning without going all custom!

I'm planning on doing a custom intake manifold this winter to flip my intake and clear the alternator, so it will be nice to have a spare around.

That's funny. We always want the one we don't have! Bob megasquirted his EZ30 BTW. Ran great. His comments are on the message boards over there. You could easily handle assembling one of those. I'm finding myself trolling for a newer 2.5L NA engine. Still have my cradle and stuff. Maybe take a few years and collect parts and have two complete drive trains! Just change 'em every few months .

I figured I'd eventually figure out whose car I saw at last years dragon boat festival. Your shift knob is the most memorable part!

Odometer:50907

Ive been driving the car quite a bit since my last update. My plan with the car has always been to maximize driving time and minimize time on jackstands. With that in mind i did a lot of things "good enough" during the initial build. Now that its been two years without serious mishap im going to start refining things a bit.

Below is a list of pet peeves on my project im going to work out!
Cooling system barely adequate
Cable clutch gives poor pedal feel
No heat
Intake extends into the rear trunk
No flip up headlights
No trunk supports
Sloppy ecu wiring (temporary wiring)

I started earlier this week rerouting and reorganizing the wiring harness to get it out of the trunk. It's till not quite done, but I dont want to finish it until i figure out where to hard mount the obdII port!

All finished up!

Nice!

LMK if u need anything, 914 parts wise,
Like rear trunk material

Looks a lot cleaner, Ross.

Odometer:51018

I finished putting in some aluminum shrouding on my radiator. I had tried previously to seal the radiator on the outlet side, but the shrouding over the intake side has had a huge effect on water temperatures. Coupled with the new Mishimotor radiator (z3 performance model) my fans essentially stay off unless I'm at a light. I have yet to test it under hard load in the mountains though.

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The best part is that I still have a front trunk. Even built a nice carpeted trunk board today!

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I also finally got proper flip up headlights back in the car and while I was at it, upgraded to LED units from vintageLED. Pretty spectacular result, and was totally plug and play.
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One side effect however is that the fog lights need to be rewired. The stock wiring grounds the fog lights relay through the high beam so the fogs cut off when going to high beam. LEDs won't allow the backward current, so the fogs can't come on. Should be an easy enough fix!

With all that front trunk space that the rest of us Denver conversion guys don't have, I guess I know who is hauling all the supplies for the RRC on Thursday!

I guess I am down to quarterly updates now!

RRC was fantastic as usual! I made the trip up there with three great friends, all in Conversions (Scotty in his LS-914, Conner in his EZ30-914, and Ray in his EJ25)

I have been continuing to improve on a few things here and there as well!

I added some camp 914 trunk struts, but didn't wan't to have to drill into the trunk. I built some brackets that bolt to the trunk hinges. Works great!

In bigger news, I picked up an EZ36 (3.6L Subaru, with more horsepower and torque than my first gen EZ30, plus variable valve timing)!

I also designed and built a set of ITB's based on Triumph speed triple throttle bodies. I'm planing on using Megasquirt to run it.

I'm also in the process of refinishing some 15x8 and 15x8.5" fuchs replicas! The intent will be to run some VERY sticky R888's in 235/50-15 on all four corners.

I have also decided to convert over to a hydraulic clutch and install a new transmission so I designed some new parts up and had them laser cut. Let me know if anyone wants a set!