Hey Charlie, do a thread. I'd like to see your work on this. I usually follow your posts with interest.

I second that Charlie.
Back when I started my project, you were well into collecting knowledge and plotting your best path.
You knew better than I did before I even thought of starting.
You helped me prevent some costly mistakes.
I would be very interested to see your approach and progress.

Mike

Guys I probably will do a thread and call it my 914 thesis. After the past years of accumulating knowledge and parts. The only catch is I'm now 68 and I have several really nice projects setting around. I also still have some really big home improvements in line. I have lost count in the cost of all the parts for the 914. I just got a 06 forester 5spd tranny to go with the other trannys I have so I think I may have all the ring and pinion choices availabe now. I just realized the later trannys don't have the inspection cover on top of the case in the rear to make it easier to do a internal cable shifter mechanism. I knew that but forgot it I only have one older tranny a 96 tt one with the removable top plate.

I'm sorry Ian for butting into your thread. To do my own thread will require a lot of picture taking and that kinda drags me down.

The guys that have already done this have had lots of good ideas and have saved me and others a lot of redos because I'm never happy knowing something could be done better without doing it over. What i will try to concentrate on is the details mostly.

The wiring harness stuff for me will save a lot of time.

My son hotrods a sti so he is always working and studying the suby turbo motor stuff. I will be curious to see how Jake Raby deals with keeping the head on a high pressure suby motor. Anything over about 26 lbs is a time bomb in my opinion.

Charlie, don't worry about it, I am just happy that this thread is getting looked at, as it seems the member vendor section can get ignored at times.

heck I'm looking forward to your thread as well, after talking with you i can tell you have a wealth of valuable knowledge.

As for the cables, I do plan on buying in volumes to keep the costs down.

the internal shift mech is cool idea id love to see you get to that project.

Any updates on the axles?

Yes, they have been ordered, SAW is thinking 2 weeks until they are shipping them out.

besides that i have been really busy with midterms and of course my last term of school cant be a nice easy, I've read 7 or 8 books in the last couple weeks.

still plugging away at Cold Water though, I have just recently become a dealer at Small Car Performance, so if anyone wants wiring kits/instructions or shortened aluminum oil pans let me know!

So, to clarify for my dumb ass; I can but an EZ30D with just about any Suby 5-6 speed, buy the Small Car $200 kit to adapt to the 914 ECU, buy your kit and have basically what I need sans the cooling, clutch parts? And if this is correct will it matter whether I go JDM or USDM. TIA, kent

Kent this is very general in description. A few years ago I was more up to date on my knowledge. I have a 96 tt 2.0 jdm motor tranny and all the turbo and exhaust stuff. After bying it I realized the motor had different sensors, wiring and ecu than domestic subys. The wiring can be fixed but the ecu probably will have to stay with the sensors. I do remember on nasioc the discussion about the difference in cam sensors and their feedback to the ecu. In other words the best stock ecu is probably the later wrx or sti ecu. That means you probably will need the later sensors also and that means you need the later wiring connectors. I don't know if the later jdm motors use the same sensors and connectors as dm but they might.

I have decided the quickest best solution is to get a aftermarket expensive ecu and be able to do anything you later want to do including support avcs. But my son has been considering this a long time. He has a much modified built motor and the romraider control is challenging. It is a expensive thing to do. Also the 02 wrx I think I remember is a 16 bit and the 04 sti is a 32 bit ecu. I'm guessing for the avcs control.

Thats sorta what I remember. I think you are better off staying with late- 02 on domestic motor and tranny. The 05 and later turbo legacy tranny has stronger, ie, wider gears to handle more torque.

Study up on the ez30 conversions every where you can. Try to keep all the neat controls of the factory if you can. My son thinks his 04 sti factory ecu controls the knock better than aftermarket ecu's and that is why he keeps using it but the tuning is very hard when you go to e85, bigger turbo, meth and bigger injectors, bigger pulse width control fuel pumps and so on.

Maybe Ian will have some of small cars stuff down pat and some more answers before I get to that point. I bought smallcar's stuff a few years ago and basically it was resisters fooling the ecu on the fuel tank sensors and maybe a o2 solution I think.

I'm sure they have advanced more since then.

Again, I think when you get really serious you will go to a aftermarket control but by then you will decide you need to learn your own programing also.

The great thing is Ian's at the age where learning and retention is at it's peak and also he has the energy to complete more late night tasks than a lot of us and he doesn't seem to be challenged as much by the technology as some of us. In my opinion. I'm glad he came along even though there are several people here how have contributed a lot and have done some really good conversions. We all know the good conversions are always going through updating phases. We called it kaizan at work. Which really just means continous improvement.

This is what I'm trying to nail down. I want the Suby 6. I am under the impression that I will save myself a lot of $$ and time if I buy a donor car and use all of the wiring, ecu, etc. I do find some 6's w/ manual tranny's but they're all 3.3 6's out of the SRX. Every EZ30D I find has an automatic coupled to it. I'm afraid I might run into some issues with the factory ECU should I switch over to a manual tranny for the EZ30D. Then I read Ian's recent post re: the Small Cars kit and was confused. Is he saying he is using the 914's ECU + the kit OR the Suby's ECU + the kit?
Whoever said ignorance is bliss hasn't met me, yet.

Kent,
Basically, you are right in your recipe; however what the small car DIY kit does is allow the use of the stock SUBARU ecu. This is an alternative to an aftermarket standalone ECU, which is powerful and flexible but expensive. The DIY kit helps you weed out 70% of the unneeded wiring, resulting in a wiring system that consists of the ECU and only the wiring to run the engine properly (I’m doing a full ez30d set up for a customer right now, I’ll take pictures of the wiring before and after, I would bet there is 50lbs of copper that is removed).

"Just about any 5-6 speed," is not quite right either, although from about 93 onward manual Subaru transmissions can bolt up to basically any engine, doesnt mean they are equal. for the 6mt, only the new 2010+ 5mt based 6 speeds will work, the STI 6 speed cannot be converted to FWD up to this point and is too long for the 914 besides. for 5 speeds, in general you want to stick to the power output of the engine the trans was originally on, ie you should not throw an NA 5mt on a turbo motor and expect it to last. Furthermore, although it would be nice to think otherwise the transmissions are stronger the later the year ie: 2008 is stronger than 2004 is stronger than 2000 is stronger than 1996. Finally you want to think about what gear ratio you want to go with those range from 3.9-4.44.
I am working hard on many things right now, but i have a 5 page document with a much more in depth look at the engine/transmission choices that i will be posting up to my website soon hopefully. it should help to answer a lot of questions.
Also i do not know if small car carries jdm wiring kits, because yes it would matter.


Charlie,
I agree with you to a point on the aftermarket ECU, for people going for massive power and 90% of the JDM engines, aftermarket is the way to go. On the other hand, if someone just picked up an NA 2.2L or 2.5L for 1-1.5k(including ecu) and just want a reliable 914 with quite a bit more ummph, then the stock ECU is a better choice just for the budget. Even if a person plans on upgrading to a turbo engine later I don’t think it’s that necessary to spend the money on the aftermarket ECU. I mean with a 02-05 wrx you have both Romraider (free+50$ for a cable) and Cobb AP (200-500 used) out there for tuning assistance, at a price that is much less than a standalone set up.

On the small car stuff, im still learning, but basically it is what you described, it is made to get the stock ECU running not much else. However they do leave in the OBD2 dongle, which leaves an opening for romraider or AP. For the EZ30D i have found one experimental definition for romraider out there, which opens up some tuning options.

Thanks for the kind words, always nice to hear support =). I am thankful to all the pioneer conversions as well, I probably wouldn't be here without them. I'm definitely not an expert by any means on the wiring/ecu side of things, but I'm learning and exploring options as I go and the goal down the road is to be the source for basically top down subaru conversions on 914's cooling, ecu, engines and all. "kaizan," hmm, I've never heard that before, you may be interested to hear my plans for my own conversion then. Starting out narrow body 4-lug with an ej22/25 franken engine and taking it through the conversion life cycle, tracking my progress as i go, ending with a 280+ HP beast with all the trimmings.

Kent you need to study up some but asking questions is also ok. Search a lot on 914's with suby sixes. I know for sure there is at least one completed. I have seen the pictures here I'm pretty sure.

Also use nasioc and look into their conversion forum as the later sixes are being put in, in place of the four so they will use the manual tranny also.

Charlie, Your right I do need to study some more. I've only gone on nasoic a few times but not much jumped out at me. I've read all of their related forums/posts going back a few month's but that just get's me to the question asking stage. I'll end up building this one just like my first 914; on the fly.

Ian, Thanks you've answered my questions. I think I'll continue to pursue an LL Bean with the plan of converting to a manual tranny.

Quick update, I am now a Speed Hut dealer. They provide a great product that makes it easy to get a useful and cool dash in your 914.

If you go to my924s4 or Sawtooth buid threads, you can see how truly nice they are for our application.

Let me know if you want a set!

-Ian

Hey Ian, what's your feeling on an SRX donor for $1000? Is the 3.3 too long? Too old? Will it fit your cradle? Tia, kent

The SVX, (Ill just assume the R was a typo ) is a great engine, its the cheapest way to get 240hp, and it is bombproof, know to last well up into the 300k mile range (if taken care of). There was a thread in the garage talking about it a little bit. It will work with my cradle fine. 1000$ for a complete donor svx is good, as long as there is nothing wrong with the engine and its not 300k miles. for just the engine I would shoot for 500$.

Edit: Here is that thread
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...179&hl=eg33

Any news on exles and the shifter? I am waiting until it's complete to order the whole package.

Spoke with Sway-A-Way, they said the axles have been done machining for a while its just their heat treat company that is lagging. In any case if you bear with me one more week they should be here!

The shifter has taken a little bit of a back seat to some customers projects, and wedding planning (I'm newly engaged btw!) however It is something I plan to get to before the end of January!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Congratulations on your engagement and thanks for the update.

Hey Everyone, Just wanted to give you a heads up, The axles are inbound to me and I will be shipping all of them out asap when they arrive!

Update: The axles have finally arrived and they look great! I will be shipping out a whole mass of orders that have built up on Monday!

just a heads up, I have three ez30D engines locally ranging in price from 1250-1750. Let me know if you need help sourcing any engine/transmissions I do my best to hook it up for fellow teeners.

Any thoughts on making a alternator bracket or is there one already?

Any update on the cable shifter?

Help a guy out and buy some parts! Inventory liquidation prices listed on the second post!

Reasons for liquidation:
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?s=&...t&p=1865270

Email on axles sent.

I've got a suby in my '68 912 but still mated to the 901 via an adapter. ive since gotten an wrx tranny and want to swap it in but not sure how to do the axles. as it turns out, i got a hold of a 912, 914 and 944 axles and cv's and they all seem to have the same spline dimensions and i was able to slide a 912 cv onto a 914 axle splines. the axle on the 912 is shorter but about 10cm. can i order axles to a shorter length?

Hey Ron,

That is great news on the spline count, shoot me an email and we can discuss the dimensions and what it will take, but short answer is yes getting a different length axle is pretty simple.

-Ian

Inventory is getting lower if you are on the fence now would be a good time to order!

congrats on the marriage.

hope the honeymoon is fun, most are, from what I hear : )

jim

Hey guys,
Still getting settled and moved in at Boise. check the thread in the garage for details

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...p;#entry1865270

Reopening and getting some products pumped out for Christmas soon!

Getting settled in the new shop, working on the cable shifter while I wait for parts to come in for cradles. Those who emailed about parts check your inbox soon!

cable shifter and half shafts with WRX/944 fittings. let me know how much and how to pay you.

Got you down, will email you with a quote shortly.

Cool! My radiator and inter cooler should be done and in over the next week.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to purchase one of your engine cradles for my project. I sent you a PM with a dimensional question, but I did find a photo of one of your cradles that one of your customers installed, and it looks like the cross-member location will be great for my application.

Congratulations on getting married. I just did myself two years ago, and it set my 914 project back (that and my son being born 15 months later), but I'm getting back on track.

looks like ian will have an excellent shift solution very soon : )

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=221682

Ian, I sent you an e-mail about the diff lock spool. Now I am looking at your axles.
My WRX/901 was located keeping the 901 trans mount in the original location.
Now the motor will stay where it is and I will make a new trans mount for the suby trans. This will move the trans stubs FWD or AFT ( not sure ) about 1.5".
Concerning the length of the axles, is that about the same location the axles were designed around?
Mike.

I see you have a custom engine cradle. any pics of engine installed?
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...=203783&hl=

you may want to ask ian if he will sell you 2 trans hangers UNWELDED.

this way you can tweak the vertical section as needed cause doubtfully it will fit perfectly with your cradle. there is really little room for error with the trans hangers.

Mike, I believe I responded to your email yes that's about right where my cradle puts the engine, maybe .5" less but that should not make a difference.

As Jim suggested I can sell some of the parts piecemeal as well. Doesn't make too much of a difference to me, let me know if you are interested. With your design I'm betting you will go a different direction but let me know if you need help either way.

Cable shift just about done =)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_e9jk6z83k

Yes Jim, I just updated my build thread. You can see in my signature.
I will try to do more updating this weekend.

Ian, you are no longer a suspect. I got your message and will get with you soon on the axles... Thanks.

PS: The cable shift linkage looks great.

Hi Ian,
I'm interested in a cable shift setup when they become available. Put me on your list. Thanks, John

Ian,

Congrats on finalizing the move & settling into matrimonial bliss

I think I have dibs on one of the early orders for a cable-shifter as well.



Dave

I'm down for a setup too. Need to get an engine cradle first though

Yes please, I'll take a shifter.

Any progress on the engine cradle production run? I'm ready!!!

sweet! it is on the way. Now I'm back to work....