Here are all of the videos as well.



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


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvZQcH-7ook


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHpibh-skvs


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

Wow, very impressive !

Brumos Racing hasn't got anything over you guys !!!

BOOM. The next evolution has begun.

Very cool. It will make a incredible progression thread better. I think I need one of those for the legacy wagon.

Did you do the seals yet or are you waiting?

Following my promise to Kevin, (along with my family, of course) I'm going about this very slowly as funds are present Chris. The additional money I have to come up with for childcare every month now really brings us back down to barely breaking even now that we have the little guy. But long story short, found the car for $800, already parted it out for that, and some and still have yet to get the thing scrapped. It was fun getting it running right before I pulled the motor. So far it's cost me nothing. In the next couple days I'll post pictures of how I flipped the manifold and did all the "free" things I could before I am able to spend more money on it. My goal is to do the EG33 swap as simple and cheap as possible, perhaps to illustrate that getting 240 hp in one of these cars doesn't need to cost 10k +. Granted it's a beatup old racecar, but hopefully it'll at least be one more thread with information for others ready to do the same swap. Certainly would not have gone down the path without guys like you showing the way Chris.

Love the pictures and videos!

Oh that's right...racecar. Let me think of a few things that are cheap or free.

Couple things:

1. re-seal the oil pan. It has no seal to buy, just use black RTV. That one is ALMOST CERTAINLY leaking.
2. For the throttle cable, since you flipped the intake you can now just use the 914 throttle cable. No need for a custom cable. You can either use a cable stop screwed to the end like the 914 is OR use the SVX end like mine

SVX/914 cable

1. cut the end off of the SVX cable (last few inches), then go to a home improvement store and get a ferrule stop and tool...

This may not be the right size, and they sell them in 2 packs for about $2, but you get the idea, right? Take the cable with you and you'll be able to see what size you need.

Ferrule stop

Swaging Tool:

Swaging Tool

Crimp the two cables together and then you have the SVX end in the SVX throttle body, 914 end for the 914 end. It WILL NOT pull out once you crimp it.

Now...you'll only use this tool ONCE...so....keep you're receipt...know what I'm sayin' ? Its obvious most of the swaging tools have been returned over and over. Just keep it shiny and take it back.

Make sure before you crimp it that you measure it out so that you're close to the right length. Once you crimp it you're committed!

Make sense at all?

Whats the displacement on that engine? Does it put you in C Class?

Cool, thanks for the tips Chris! I haven't decided which way to go on the throttle cable yet. I've swaged many a ferrule before, so that wouldn't be a big deal if I went that route. I'm not going to do the oilpan yet, as I need to order a bung for the oil temp sender and weld that into the pan since the car didn't come with one. On the street it wouldn't be a concern, but since these motors turn 7000+ rpms, I am curious what tracking it would do to the oil temps. I've already got the gauge anyway, so might as well use it.

Shane - it's 3.3, which would put it in the "C" class.

Sorry for the delay. 2015 ended up being quite the year - certainly the most "highs" and "lows" that I've ever had so close together. My first child was born in June, and I lost my dad shortly thereafter in September. But as I've had time, and for my own sanity, I've spent some more time working toward the swap. It's therapeutic in a lot of ways, I suppose. Anyhow, I started doing some work on the engine as time permits. So far cleaning it up, flipping the intake and getting the deck straight has been essentially free and now I have a better idea of what I need to save up for in the way of parts. I needed to open up the engine to figure out whether this thing was really as healthy as it sounded and if it was okay to proceed.

Getting it home was fun. These cars weigh a ton, and most of it was up front.
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A ripped fuel pump line kept it from really running right, but it sounded good anyway. I later replaced that torn line in the tank and it ran like a top.


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



Spent about 3 hours and I had the engine out and on the stand. Don't be afraid to do it yourself rather than paying someone else if you find one of these cars.

One of the first things I did after pressure washing the engine was to pop the intake off and see what everyone was talking about when they said these are easy to flip.

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It actually is quite simple. I went ahead and marked the various sensors and solenoids before I got ahead of myself.

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Several of these will simply swap to the other side of the intake and use existing bolt holes. I found that this nub (1) needed to be cut off in order to clear the air solenoid. Additionally, I had to hog out the holes for the air diverter (2) and rotate it ever so slightly to clear the coolant crossover tube on top of the block.

NOTE: About a week after I finished doing this stuff, I found out that there is a guy selling phenolic intake spacers which would eliminate having to do either of these. That link is here:

http://www.subaru-svx.net/forum/showthread.php?t=63141

Next I moved onto fabbing up an alternator mount, using the stock belt tensioner. This will work for my application since I won't be using the power steering pump or the A/C compressor. I had just enough room without either to mount the alternator close to the stock location. However, it wasn't till after I finished it that I looked at the lack of "belt" wrap" on the crank. We'll see how much of an issue this is later on. I'm a little worried about the belt slipping, especially since this engine will see a lot of hard on/off throttle on the track. But it may work. If not, I'll have to get a little more creative.

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The other issue with flipping the intake and retaining the stock airbox and snorkel is that the whole thing occludes the path of the dipstick and the oil filler. I think I have a pretty easy fix for the oil filler neck, but the dipstick will require some bending. This probably isn't a big deal on a street car as you would simply loosen and move the snorkel to check and fill the oil. In an endurance race, it means more time lost in the pits...

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Other issues I can forsee are that the EGR tube inlet to the manifold is now on the wrong end of the engine. I'll come back to that one later and since I spent so much time making sure this engine had no codes when I pulled it, I'd like to keep it that way. I believe a new tube strategically bent and rewelded can probably solve this. Also, routing the intake over the fuel lines, which actually pass under and through the intake "spider legs" makes removing it a bit more of a PITA. But it can be done. The good news is with the intake flipped, there is no cutting of the trunk involved and the throttle cable routing is much closer to stock and much simplified.

At some point I decided with 180,000 miles on the engine and since I had made my money back parting the car out, that it would be a good time to start tearing it down and inspect it further. After pulling off the thermostat cover, and then the water pump, the rust and scale I saw convinced me that proactively replacing the head gaskets was a good idea. Though these are not "interference" engines, (i.e. the valves and pistons do not occupy the same space), it was good to see that the timing belt had been done at least somewhat recently. However, the pulleys and idlers did not turn quite as smoothly as one would hope, indicating that the belt was the only thing changed. The water pump also was a little bit sluggish. Glad I got in there.

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Be sure to follow the Subaru manual to the tee when disassembling these engines. They are assembled and machined to exacting tolerances and require a delicate hand when removing components.

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The cams need to come out in a very methodical fashion, again outlined in the Subaru factory manual (thanks Chris H.).

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... for example, the cam tower caps are all wear components, which like the rest of the valvetrain, have worn alongside their individual cam lobes. If you screw one up, the whole cam then needs to be replaced, and the cam towers reworked. Honestly I don't even know how one would go about that process. The COOLEST part is that the Subaru engineers are far the most forward-thinking of any I've experienced. They had the foresight to label almost every component on the engine with indentations, so you know where everything goes when it's reassembled. About the only thing I had to do on my own was keep the hydraulic lash adjusters organized (all 24 of them).

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I absolutely love the hand written note...

...Speaking of which, several folks have already asked me where I got the Subaru factory manuals. Chris H. has been my mentor through much of this and sent me a ton of stuff, so I made a promise to myself, if any of you want to do an SVX swap, I'll be happy to send you what he sent me. In the meantime, if you want to access the manuals online, a gentleman already has them posted here ->

http://phantomotaku.com/SVX/


This was my solution to organizing 24 individual hydraulic lash adjusters. It just so happens that Harbor Freight has a very handy organizer for about 3 or 4 bucks and has 24 compartments that just barely have enough room for each. Much better than trying to cut holes in cardboard or other media.

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George,

Alternator fan belt.
What is the pulley to the left?
Is that an idler pulley or a tensioner?

I would consider losing that or move it up higher.

If you lose it, you could use the alternator to add tension to a different belt...

And, if you get close, send me a cardboard template of that thing you made and I will machine up something better...

Impressive

How about running the alternator off the rear axle like Freddie Baker's Kool Bus did ?

Rich, the pulley to the left is the stock tensioner pulley. I considered making the alternator bracket itself adjustable for belt tension, but I was somewhat limited by the length of 6 rib belts that are commonly available. The other issue is that the alternator really doesn't have a whole lot of room to be moved up or down in it's new location.

Well, I've spoken with several Subaru specialists and have decided it's worth it to move forward with Cometic MLS (multi-layered steel) head gaskets. I wavered on this, given the fact that, as far as I can tell, the OEM gaskets lasted 180,000 miles. But given the work involved with tearing the engine down and it's intended track use, I might as well spend the extra money an do it the best it can be done. This is important because it also dictates a couple of other things in the meantime, namely the precision that the mating surfaces need to be machined/milled to and their roughness average (RA). Cometic requires an RA of 50 or better with their gaskets, which is drastically finer than the factory finish.

So I moved forward with the head removal...

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As can be seen above, the water jackets were pretty stuffed with rust, calcium deposits and other "gunk" Though it's not an indication that the head gaskets would have failed anytime soon, I feel like a thorough inspection, cleaning and head gasket change is peace of mind, particularly given the architecture of the Suby engine. Notice the fairly small sealing surfaces on the deck, both around the cylinder bores and the oil return passages. No wonder why these engines (moreso the 4 cylinders engines) eventually have problems with the HGs. Meanwhile, this also gave me a chance to inspect and clean the cylinders. As you can see below, there is still evidence of the factory honing, which again, isn't proof of a healthy engine, but it's nice to see.

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While I save up for the engine gasket/seal kit, part of which I need before I can have the heads done, I figured it would be good chance to examine the deck and head for any potential issues.

First, in order to clean up the heads, I needed to remove the locating dowels from the top of each deck. Luckily, they are recessed with just enough space below them that a blind hole puller and slide hammer borrowed from AutoZone makes quick work of them. I decided to place the old head gasket back on top of the surface in case I slipped or screwed up otherwise.

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Next, I spent several hours cleaning the heads and the deck with acetone and a scraper, as one does to remove the old gasket remnants. I went with this method after consulting with Suby experts and watching several videos. Using a "whizz-wheel" or Roloc disks is not advised for several reasons. All whizz-wheels, even the 3M rubberized versions are prone to rounding off sharp mating surfaces. With so little room to play on the deck, I didn't want to take and chances. Additionally, Roloc disks are apparently embedded with silicon carbide which inevitably comes off and ends up in the crevices and cavities. If that stuff makes it's way into the sump, goodbye bearings. Instead, acetone, a scraper and elbow grease and several hours of labor is the preferred method. Clearly there is more to be done - you can see some of the corrosion and/or material (rust?) deposited on the aluminum heads, particularly around the water jackets. However, I thought this would give me a good base to determine the amount/if any warp existed in the head and deck.

What I found was interesting. There does indeed exist an air gap at the center of the head when it is placed back on the block without the gasket. How much is hard to tell, but it is visible with a flashlight on the other side. With a stock head gasket, this might even be acceptable.

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I was not quite able to fit my smallest feeler (.006) in this gap, but it at least confirms to me that the heads will be milled several thousandths and the deck probably needs a little massaging too. If I remember correctly, the Cometic requirements are .002 or less runout longitudinally. Hopefully I'm saying that right, but please correct my lingo if I'm wrong.

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So, since the heads are going to the shop, and I still need something to do, I moved on to working the deck surface. First, I plugged all oil passages, bolt holes and the cylinders with shop rags dabbed in Vasoline. I'm hoping that the Vasoline will help catch any debris and small particles that the shop rags can't.

I went to the local metal supply and found a good 3.5 x 30 aluminum block. I first block-sanded that with 320 grit paper and WD-40 to get, as best as I can tell, a truly flat surface. I then used spray adhesive and glued 320 grit paper to that. I soaked the paper and the deck in WD-40 and went to work in diagonal passes on the deck, slowly removing gasket remnants and a little material, observing any pits and valleys as they disappeared.

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Keep going. How much is the expensive gasket set versus the stock set?

I think it would depend upon the cost to me, experts always say go with the gold parts, they are better, but as you have seen here, lots of information is passed along with no real world knowledge, just something they read somewhere online.

That gap is huge, just sayin.
I would assume you will be having the heads machined, but what are you going to do if that gap is created by the case?
An aluminum framing square from Home Depot might give you a good idea on the case.
Oh, read up on acetone, wear the right respirator, that stuff is really bad for you.

The first passes revealed a fairly obvious recess in the deck surface, though not excessive in my opinion. I continued forward till most of that was gone. You can see some of the cross hatching below. The key is to go slow, alternating diagonal motions and allowing the block and paper to do the work.

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Then I switched paper to 400, then eventually 600. I consulted several references, and while I could get no straight answer, 600 grit paper on aluminum should equate to a 15 RA finish or better, exceeding the Cometic specs. I theory one could continue to 800 or 1000 grit, but from what I understand, some "tooth" on the surface is desirable for good gasket adhesion. In fact, more grit would be desirable for an OEM composite gasket.

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Thanks Rich. I have done another assessment with a straight edge on the finished surface and the deck is within a tolerance that I cannot determine a noticeable gap at this point. My plan is once the heads are back from the reputable shop up the road, to apply Prussian blue to the deck surface and then use very, very small movement of the head on it to determine if there is anymore work that needs to be done.

The other thing I'm slightly worried about is the amount of material that I removed. I believe it to be fairly inconsequential, and I will rely on the machine shop to tell me how much was removed from the heads. At that point, I'll order the appropriate gasket thickness to try to retain the stock compression and therefore, timing. My understanding is that as deck height is decreased, timing is retarded, in some cases by several degrees.

Oh, and the SVX is finally gone. A guy in town wanted it to "restore". I tried to explain that the majority of the harness, interior, etc was gone, but it wanted it anyway. For $200, I can't complain. Bye-bye SVX!

Uh ohh... look what I got back today!

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I have a machine shop down the street from me that does incredible work - I've sent multiple things out to them and been impressed every time. In this case, both heads, even at 180k miles checked out perfect on the valve leak tests and the crack test. They did need to be milled .004 to get rid of surface pitting and a slight bow and they went ahead and installed the valve stem seals that I supplied, $220 out the door. Perfect! Especially since the Cometic MLS gaskets I ordered were .004 oversized (estimated ahead of time). I'm hoping to get the heads back on this weekend, however it'll still be some time before I start it. I've got more plans in the way of trap-doors in the oil pan, and I need to weld in a bung for the oil temp sensor. But finally making some progress.

purty!

Looking very good George. BTW I finally got to Bob's and picked up the 75 POUNDS worth of EG33 parts he was saving for me from an extra engine he had. In addition to all of the sensors I needed he gave me quite a few extra coils and injectors so let me know if you end up with any bad ones. Test all of your coils. They don't always throw a code and they are a huge PITA to take out when the engine is installed.

Are you sending your injectors out to be serviced? I might. Saw this place on a post recently:

Mr Injector

Looks like it would be worth it for me. My car has been sitting on and off for a while.

We've sent mr injector at least 200 injectors. Super happy with their service.

Once I didn't get back about 50 injectors for a couple weeks. Little panicked since I thought they got lost in the mail. Turned out they had come back quickly and one of the guys threw them in the drawer. Would have been out a ton of money. Turn around was just so fast I didn't expect them back.

Oh thanks Mark. BTW that goes for you too. If anyone has a need for an extra whatever lemme know. The coils and stuff are stupid expensive new. Like 928 parts. I need to do something nice for Bob.

I MIGHT be a wiring expert soon. We'll see. Gonna re-do mine in May. Will ping you.

Hey Chris,
Wow, what a nice offer! I would for sure like to have at least 1, perhaps 2 spare coils, maybe an injector or two as well. That's one of the issues with running this motor at the track - none of that stuff is available in town at AutoZone. For now, I believe everything should work fine as-is, since it did when I pulled it all off. Might not be a bad idea to send the injectors in since they do have 180K on them. However I had a helluva time trying to pull one off the fuel rail already, even following the factory procedure. I just don't want to bust anything.

I did get the heads back on it this weekend and the cams back on the RH side. I'll post some pictures when I get home. Unfortunately my warranty from the machine shop is 90 days, but I doubt I'll have any way to fire this thing up before we reach that point. Still, it'll be nice to have the engine back together and get some of this stuff out of the bins.

Well I got a little ahead of myself and didn't take as many pictures as I had hoped, but the engine is almost back together. I should be getting the car back next month, at which point I will begin removing the 1.8 that's in there now so I can start mocking this one up in the car. I still need to do a few things like replace the injector o-rings, put manifold back on and start thinking about a way to run the sensors. Also, once the engine is in the car, I'll take some measurements as to how much room I have to modify the oil pan. These engines have issues with oil starvation at higher Gs, but other folks have successfully installed "trap doors" in the oil pan to eliminate that issue. It just requires some fabrication.

Here's what the Cometic gaskets look like. These are called "MLS", or Multi-Layered-Steel gaskets, and you can see why. There is a very thin (0.001) layer of viton rubber on the surface to help seal minor imperfections, but this is why the deck and block have to be so, very precisely machined. The heads I'm sure were done right, but only time will tell if my sandpaper block job on the deck is up to snuff. When I laid the bare, machined heads on the block there was no visible light seen through. And I decided to do one final pass with 800 grit sandpaper to make sure I was within the RA recommended by Cometic (50 RA or better).

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First I installed the dowel locating pins that I had popped out of the deck previously. Then I laid the heads on and torqued them to the Suby OEM procedure and specs. Sorry for the crappy picture.

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In the Subaru procedure, everything gets torqued in sequence to 51 ft-lbs, in 2 steps. Then there is a very specific procedure outlined in the manual where the bolts are torqued to a spec, then torqued to an angle. This is a little bit unnerving for me, as this is typical with torque-to-yield fasteners. The SVX uses two sizes of head bolts, long for the inner 4 locations (marked on the bolt head itself - genius!) and short for the outers. Unfortunately the short bolts are NLA from any supplier I've found. However, the LONG bolts are still available. I had two long bolts which were rounded off at the tops of the triple squares, so I purchased new long bolts. Now, nowhere in the manual does Subaru state that new head bolts must be used, but that would be ideal. In my case, I had no choice to replace a couple of them and reuse the rest. At this point it'll either work or it won't.

Anyhow, here's a trick that I use for torquing based on an angle, as Subaru wants us to do. I simply mark the bolt heads with a sharpie and use that as my baseline. I've used one of those crappy torque angle gauges before and by the third bolt I was not sure how far I had actually turned it. So now, I do it this way. Subaru gives us a spec of 80-90 degrees on each turn, saying that we are not to exceed a total of 90 degrees at each step in the sequence. With my marks, I was able to make sure that I stayed within those guidelines, or close enough for my liking.

So this is torqued to initial 33 ft-lbs, and marked perpendicular to the head in preparation to turn 90 degrees. As you can see, I also mark the torque sequence on the head itself for my own reference. BE SURE YOU ARE LOOKING AT THE MOTOR IN THE CORRECT ORIENTATION when you flip it over to do the other side. Almost got caught out on that one.

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And this is after torquing 90 degrees on the inner bolts. Make sense?

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That's pretty much it. The rest of the assembly is fairly straightforward... except two things.

1) The service manual has a typo in it that really sucks. On the LH camshaft, the notches in the end are faced directly downward on both the exhaust and intake cams. You lay the cam in the journals, then torque the cam caps in sequence. ON THE RH camshaft the manual says lay the cams in with the notches facing downwards. That should read upwards, as the picture directly below that shows. If you have them facing downwards, then you won't be able to lay the cam in flat and torque it correctly as several lobes will be in the open position and you can potentially damage the thrust surfaces on the head.

2) The Cometic gaskets come with rivets installed in them to hold all the layers together. I chose to go ahead and install them with the rivets attached. However, when the final assembly of the timing cover and gears happens, these rivets stick out too far on the RH head. After doing a lot of reading of similar problems on other applications, I chose to dremel these off after I had everything torque down (picture below).

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3) Finally, I also decided this was the time to install new water pump to heater pipe hoses. Once the timing covers are back on, it's a real pain to get at the spring clips that hold them on. I *could* have ordered these from RockAuto and saved 20 bucks had I thought about it ahead of time. But instead I wanted to get it back together and found them locally. They're just two simple 90 degree molded heater hoses, one is 1/2 and the other 5/8. The part numbers that you can cross-reference are Gates 28460 and 28566.

post some pictures of my carb rebuild to my 2.0 Thread please

At the rate your going you'll be ready for Sebring before me....

George, what is going on with this build?

This is such a cool motor, I want to see and hear it running.

John