As promised, a video on the five lug install. This is part one, covering the front end. Mostly just me blathering on for a while, but hopefully informative for someone considering the swap.

Retromod YouTube

I normally don't like Cookies on a 914. But those are the right wheels for that car.






I like the Skateboard Decks too.

Okay, here's part 2 of the five lug swap video:

Retromod 914 five lug swap video

My rear calipers from PMB shipped last Friday, so hopefully I can get it back on the road soon!

It was a busy summer getting our house ready for my older daughter's wedding, but work continues slowly on the 914. I got my rear calipers from PMB, and of course, they're absolutely beautifully done.
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I'm still not totally happy with the brake performance, so there's some work to done. They just don't seem to bite as much as I think they should. Probably further adjustment on the rears and maybe replacing or rebuilding the pressure regulator?

In other news, I finally got a new radiator...for my aircooled Porsche? Yes, the cat's out of the bag! I will begin the process of doing an EZ30 Subaru swap on my car. I will work on the cooling system at the front first to keep the car on the road. Here's the Celica GTS radiator with dual fans that I got off eBay. $240 to my door. Looks like it should fit pretty well.

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As previously shown, the floor of my trunk was cut out at some point for AC, so the plan for now is exit the air flow out the floor with ducting. I know some people concerns about the downward force of air creating front end lift, but I honestly don't know if I'll the car fast enough for it to be an issue. Time will tell, I guess!

More to come as I continue to steal everyone's clever solutions to these swaps.

Now that I've committed to doing the Subaru EZ30 6 cylinder swap, I've been trying to make some progress. Focusing on the cooling system fabrication in the frunk, I'm making a little headway. The first thing I did was to buy a small Titanium flux core welder to replace my well-used Chicago Electric welder. Still a budget unit, but I like it fine.
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My first welding job was to make the frame that will accommodate the floating radiator mounts. One inch square tubing and some flat bar make up the bottom and sides. Not pretty welds, but they'll get the job done.
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The flat bar tabs were drilled and grommeted for the bottom mounting posts on the radiator.
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I should note that I basically ripped off the approach from forum member rmarx (how do you tag someone in a post?). Thanks for the ideas! As he did, I will make drilled and grommeted tabs for the top posts as well, that will mount below or above the sheet metal cowling that will cover the intake side.

The next thing I needed to deal with was the terribly cut out floor pan, courtesy of the PO. I know some feel it's not the best way to vent air out, but I've decided to do it throught the frunk floor. I ordered the vented floor pan from Patrick Motorsports. For $65, it's fairly cheap, and it was fun to order something from them. Probably the only item ever!
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It's designed for an oil cooler, so for my purposes, I needed to get the louvers back closer to the bulkhead to accommodate the radiator and fans. So I lopped of the extra material and moved it to the other side.
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I cut it to the floor shape, then decided I needed more airflow. So I drilled a series of alternating 7/8" and 1 3/8" holes (trying to retain some strength), then covered them with expanded sheet metal to keep out rodents and debris. Wasn't too worried about covering the louvers.
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At this point the pan is mostly seam welded in place. I'll post a few pics when I get it primed and seam sealed.

Work continues on the frunk-mounted cooling system. I got the vented floor pan welded in place, seam-sealed and primed. It felt great to repair that floor pan, even though its a different approach than I may have envisioned originally.

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To mount the radiator frame to the floor, I made two tabs from 1/8" bar steel, drilled and bolted them to the bottom frame rail, then welded them to trunk floor. This way, the entire frame can be unbolted from the car relatively easily.

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I bent and welded 1" bar steel supports to connect the upper frame to the front of the car. I lifted the weatherstripping and drilled holes for low-profile bolts to connect the supports.

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The final piece to be able to mount the radiator was to create tabs to be bolted to the upper frame supports that are also grommeted to the top rad mounting pins. By removing the bolts (nuts are welded underneath), I can easily remove the radiator.

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I'm actually going to re-do the tab design because I'm not happy with how it looks, but for now, the radiator is in position the way I planned.

Next step with be to start on the shroud design and execution, so we'll see how that goes. Happy New Year!

Nice Work !!


man that Datsun is sure pretty!

brant

Thanks! I miss the old Roadster, especially when I'm hanging around some friends who still have them, but as sports cars go, they don't hold a candle to a 914!

But here's some cool Datsun Roadster content from my bro's YouTube channel. The owner of the cars is a friend here in NM.
YouTube

Very nice Jeremy-



I have always admired the sound and smoothness of 914 Suby conversions.
I see lots of smiles in your future. Keep at it.

Ask me how I know

Hit me up if you're ever in SoCal

Oscar

Thanks for the kind words, and the invite, Oscar!

Made a little more progress on the radiator frame over the weekend. I welded on nuts to the frame arms to mount the tabs that will be grommeted to the radiator. I trimmed the lower frame crossmember, then cut tabs from 1" bar steel to cap off the ends. Did some more grinding on the welds, then finished them off with some JB Weld. Primed, then painted with gloss black VHT Chassis paint. Powdercoating would have been nice, but not in the budget at the moment.

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In working on the front of the car so much, I decided to deal with some body damage that has bugged me for as long as I've owned the car. I wasn't really planning on doing it at this stage, because I really want to complete the Subaru 6 conversion to the point of running and driving before I tackle body and paint. But dealing with the front end damage (to some extent, at least) makes me feel better moving forward.

I also plan to do similar work in the engine bay before putting the new engine in, so when it is finally time to strip it down for paint, much of the "B surface" work will be pretty good. I know many people start with paint and body, then do the powertrain, but for me it makes the most sense to do any cutting, welding and modifying to the body first so I don't have to cut into a freshly painted body (though I'm sure some of that will have to happen anyway).

I detailed some of this in a separate thread recently, so I'm just getting all the info into the build thread here.

Body damage and surface rust. The structure was reasonably pulled, but there was no effort to treat the bare metal, so a lot of superficial rust:
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I cut the worst of the kink, then put a ratcheting strap on it to pull it inward a little. This really didn't move it too much, though maybe if I had cut it more, it would have. At any rate, added some metal to the opening and welded it up. I did some hammer and dolly work, then added some filler and seam sealer.
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Before priming, I added extra holes between the factory holes in the nose for better airflow to the radiator. I cut some mesh, which wasn't quite long enough to span the distance. A few spot welds made it into one piece and I tacked it into place.
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I stripped as much of the paint on the nose as I could, then taped it off and sprayed several coats of primer/surfacer. I got into the buckets below the headlights and treated some surface rust in there (as well as removing a substantial rodent nest!).
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Now that the body work was decent, I finally got to install the radiator with my painted frame. The upper mounting tabs are just in bare metal, since I'm not sure how I want to finish them. Once the shrouds are in place, they will be about the only visible brackets. I'm considering drilling some "lightening" holes for aesthetics, burnishing the metal more, then clearing, but we'll see. But now that the radiator is in and I'm content with the mounting, I can start mocking up the lower and upper shrouds, maybe out of 1/16" aluminum.
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That's it for now!

Did you and Zach ever do that 5-lug video?

I would be worried about cooling with your setup. You will definitely need to duct the front to make it effective and in the rear there is hardly anywhere for it to go. The radiator needs a lot of fresh airflow in and out. If you don’t do ducting you will need larger holes.
From a trusted source of mine:
With a well-designed inlet duct, the opening for your intercooler, radiator, oil cooler, etc. should be about 1/3 the surface area of the heat exchanger. If your intercooler core is 20” x 30” (600 square inches), In a perfect world, you’d then create an outlet duct that would then shrink down to the 1/3 size again and dump into a low-pressure zone

Food for thought anyway. maybe you have some good plans

Hey Eric! I thought Zach was going to send you the video, but I did post it earlier in the thread here. But at any rate, here are links to the two-part video:

Five-lug swap-part 1

Five lug swap-part 2

I appreciate the input! I agree I'm flirting with a lack of airflow, though I do plan to fully duct the setup on both sides. I post on the Watered Down Facebook group as well, and Kent has been commenting on the design and seems to think it might work. My thinking is, that when it's all up and running, if I have cooling issues, I can drill or cut more openings without a major headache. I'm also banking on the low cooling demands of the EZ30 vs. a SBC or LS. We'll see!

He should be OK. Here are both of my Subaru conversions and their openings for reference. On the 70 with the green & yellow bumper I cut out 5 of the centermost holes creating an oval opening and it cools fine. Jeremy is using 7 holes and has opened up smaller holes in-between each of those. Worst case is he'd need to open it up by removing the material between the holes. The EZ30's don't require much of an opening. Even with AC. HighJack over.

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I like how you did that, i wish i cut my hole open like that in a past life instead of cutting the bumper out so much. What does the backside of that look like? i went through the fender wells but i do really like the floor exit for non race car kinda swaps.

I was just more worried about exit, but he is right that he can cut more holes. Especially with ducting it’ll be better. If theres good water proof ducting and you have the grating, why not just cut it out so you don’t need to figure out if it works good enough on a hot day. Keep up the work though!

Time for a little update here. Up next was making aluminum sheet ducting on both sides of the radiator. I started with the inlet side:

Card stock template (card stock is silver, so not metal yet):
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Metal brake ordered from Jegs:
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First delivery of aluminum sheet, fairly light duty at .050:
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Duct floor:
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Duct floor and walls riveted together. I'm using weather stripping with "top bulb" rubber tube to help fill in an irregular edges:
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Here's the top and a close-up of the rough opening for the latch. I'll figure out some way to finish it off a bit. Also a close-up of mounting method.
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More to come!

Looking good.

Nice work

At that point, I got a little delivery :

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EZ30R, should motivate the car down the road.

Also, picked up a disgustingly dirty Impreza 5MT locally for $140, with starter, flywheel, engine bolts, and trans mount. Also picked up a nice quality trans end plate locally for $50:

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Still waiting on the Subaru Gears rear drive lockout collar, all the way from Down Under.

Next up was getting on to the exit side of the radiator.

Template (aluminum sheet is expensive so I don't want to do it twice if possible):

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Taped up sheet metal before riveting:

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Riveting content:

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And in place, but I haven't decided how to mount it yet.

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My cradle is built and being delivered as I write this from JWK-Engineering.

Drove the car for the last time last week with the air-cooled Type 4 and took a video of it running. If anyone is in the market for a running 1.7 with dual Webers and a side-shift 901, let me know.

This is coming along nicely Jeremy, I’m following your build especially now that your doing the conversion Suby (I got one of them too that I’ll be dealing with eventually) - good work so far

A couple things I wanted to ask about - what exactly did you do to the dash? .. and also, I was wondering how much of the original ‘lumpy’ texture from the factory was on your roof when you shot it with the rocker guard? Did you sand it smooth first or go over original texture? Yours looks nice but I’m considering using it over a well aged original texture roof and was hoping for some of the original dimensionality to come thru. Not sure if doing that would produce good results though.


.

For the dash, I used red body filler (for small scratches and pinholes) to fill in cracks, sanded, then painted it with flat black vinyl paint. It has not held up too well, so the next step will be to put on a moulded dash cover that I have hanging around. Eventually, I hope to just do a complete 914Rubber dash.

For the top, I just sprayed the rocker guard over the existing texture. I’m not sure if it was original. The rocker guard doesn’t build up much texture on its own, so I think you’d be fine to spray over what you have.

Looking good

Slow but steady progress still being made here. I got my cradle from JWK Engineering and it looks to be a well made and solid piece. It includes the mount bracket for the Subaru transmission and new mounting hardware.

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So that got me motivated to remove the Type IV engine and gearbox. Sold the entire drivetrain locally and gained some mad money to buy more parts.

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Also got my rear dif lockout from Subaru Gears; a beautiful piece, I think.

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I'll be using an MR2 shifter, so I picked one up on eBay for what seems to me like too much money. But there ya go... And yes, they're all rusty looking, but i have some plans for that.

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Hell hole repairs will be next!

Can I ask what you are going to use for engine management (ecu)? I keep seeing that you can't use the EZ30 stock ecu and have to purchase a standalone from private companies which is expensive and may not be fully featured.

Yes, this is sort of the elephant in the room when it comes to the EZ30R. Before I started ordering parts, and especially the engine, I felt confident that I would be able to use a fairly basic Link ECU. As I continued researching (after having bought the engine) and opening up lines of communications with several ECU companies, I became convinced there is only one truly well-developed ECU for the this engine at this time: Haltech Elite 2500. It is the only ECU I've found that has base start up maps for the 30R and can accommodate the DBW, Variable Cam Timing, Variable Valve Lift, and CanBus conversion that are inherent in the EZ30R.

So, once you're done spitting your last swig of beer all over the room, you try to come to grips with that reality. I pretty much have, and while it will be some time before I can spring for the Haltech and harness materials (seriously planning to build my own harness to understand how it all went together), I actually feel pretty good about it. And if that gets me closer to maximizing the potential of this swap, then I honestly believe it's money well spent compared to the other build/swap alternatives.

To take this just a bit further, I have heard of people successfully getting their 30Rs running in 914s and even Vangons, but I have yet to see any real video of this in action. So, while those JDM sixes with all their high tech look good, do your due diligence before you plunk down your money. Or just hang in there with me for another year or so, and see if I actually get this thing to work. I'm starting to work on a video series on the swap for my brother's YouTube channel, so this won't be the only place it will documented.

Long response here, but I was going to have to address it sooner or later!

Awesome, thanks. I have thought about this swap quite a bit and have read many threads but have not seen a definitive answer.

I've heard that you can use the factory ECU if you can find a place to stuff the donor car's gage cluster up under your dash. Also heard there is a guy in Australia that is making a work around but that may be for the 3.6. Either way it is supposedly pricey. Check with Jeff on Subaru Powered Porsche's.

Wow, just getting around to seeing your thread, Jeremy. Everything you've been doing looks great

Yeah, I know people have worked around it, and in fact Outfront Motorsports told me they can adapt a Link ECU and build a plug-and-play harness for around $2500. It would delete the variable cam timing, which according to them is primarily there to help with low RPM torque for the big cars these engines were designed for. Deemed unnecessary in a 914, which is probably true. It's a back-burner option for me if I decide not to go Haltech. Hoping to see Michael at Rennch on YouTube to wire his up in his 911 Blasphemy Build before I commit.


Much appreciated, cheers!

Small update here.

I had to remove the nut from the splined shaft in the transmission to put the spline lock in place. This is necessary to be sure all torque from the rear differential shaft goes to the front drive outputs. These are the bearings and washers.
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Only need the washers and the nut to connect the lock:
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I had some flange sealant left over from resealing the balance shaft covers on my 944 Turbo, so I thought I'd try some here for the cover.
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I don't know why my photos freak out sometimes!

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I also don't know why my brain freaks out sometimes, so you get duplicate pics for free!

Anyway, time to remove the auto transmission plate to make way for the flywheel. I had heard the bolts were difficult to remove without damaging, and indeed I only got three of eight out. Thanks to a recommendation by rmarx here on the forum, I was able to weld large nuts on to the bolts and use a socket.
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I had to order new flywheel bolts obviously, but even if I hadn't destroyed them, they are too short to make it through the flywheel thickness. No more torx bolts!
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Run-of-the mill HD clutch in place.
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Big moment, engine mated to transmission and on the cradle. This is just in preparation for test fitting to measure out coolant lines and shift cables, but it feels great to see it at this point.
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Congratulations, that is a milestone.

That transmission cleaned up real nice ! This is going to be a nice one

Thanks! One of many ahead of me, but I’ll keep pedaling.


Yeah, I’m pretty happy with how it looks. It’s a big unknown in terms of condition but the little bit I’ve seen of the internals seem very promising.

Okay, let me see, where are we? Oh yeah, I'm doing a Subaru 6 swap on my car! Progress has been slow this Fall and Winter.

I teach classical guitar full time at a college-prep school, but I've been getting back into performing professionally and I got a bit more work than I had planned for this Fall. For the understandably few who might wonder what that means: early October: US premier of a newly-written guitar concerto (solo guitar and orchestra), late October: world premier of a newly-written opera featuring guitar throughout, early December: performances of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez. So, teach, practice, rinse and repeat.

Anyway, the hobby must continue for my sanity. As previously shown, the engine and transmission could be installed now, but I'm working on the engine bay, including hell hole repairs. I want to get this wrapped up and in primer before I put the drivetrain in for the first time.

After removing fiberglass installed by a PO:
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First cuts reveal more mouse nests. I would say a rodent infestation is a lot like rust; worse than you think:
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More trimming and cleanup work. Not pictured is a small metal patch I did on the bottom of the rocker, and then rust treated and POR-15 coated the inside of the long:
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Most of the work was actually happening last summer, and here's a pic of what happens when your angle grinder with a cutoff wheel gets ripped out of your hands and bounces off your forearm (added here to remind me, and you, to be the F*** careful). I was wearing leather gloves and it hit right above the glove. Now I wear longer welding gloves when grinding and cutting.
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Went to Urgent Care and the female Russian doctor looked at it and said "Ah, it is just superficial!". Glad to hear, but not sure I felt that way. Superglue and Steristrips and now it looks like a smudge under my hairy arm.

Also got my DBW pedal board from JWK Engineering:
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And, my brother and I made a project introduction video on his YouTube channel:
Retromod Youtube

Ow

Latest update is that the engine bay rust repair and general preparation for primer is taking quite a bit of time. But I'm determined to get it prepped pretty well and primered before I put the engine in for the first time.

The rust repair in and around the hell hole has taken the most time, but ironically it's the undercoating that I sprayed into the engine bay shortly after getting the car that is slowing me down now. It has to be scraped off a bit at a time and it's just about taking forever. People complain about what the PO (previous owner) has done, but what about fixing the wrongs of the CO (current owner)? Anyway, a few pics:

Most of what I cut out:
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Where it's currently at. Still more welding to go, then POR-15 the welds, then seam sealer, then primer:
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The latest part to arrive is my Zero Decibel Motorsports bell crank for the cable shift to the Subaru transmission. Very nice looking piece:
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More to come...

Most of us are that PO at one time or another. I was that PO when I fiberglassed that battery area and ended up doing the proper metal repairs 14 years later! It's coming along nicely Jeremy.

I forgot to add this; you may already have this update. https://www.agtengineering.com.au/product-p...Ejr4GulBgKcm7Ss

Thanks for including us on your resto journey! I'm likely going to be doing a lot of similar repairs to my 74 2.0.

Q: did you use stock aluminum windshield trim for the windshield or a rubber seal? I had a 914 awhile ago that had a rubber windshield seal and I never did figure out how it was done. I'll be replacing my cracked windshield and (hopefully) re-installing the aluminum trim, if I don't completely mangle it during removal. BTW, If anybody has any tips on how to successfully remove windshield trim, I'd appreciate it.

Regarding the flux core MIG: IIRC, I was told that flux core wire may have baked in impurities that may eventually pop out like a rust bubble later on on finished body panels. If anyone else can enlighten and/or correct me if I'm wrong, I'd appreciate it, as I'm getting ready to buy a MIG welder and want to ensure I'm getting the right type.

MIG is correct but requires a little hammer/dolly work. TIG is better as less heat=less shrinkage. TIG units are more expensive and complex. MIG is easily learned.