Tony,

Look up crawford performance - www.crawfordperformance.com

They are located in Oceanside. I brought my teener to them on Saturday morning they can put a STI engine in our teeners no problems. They are currently getting up to 700hp with a 2.5 liter STI engine. My car is there getting dyno tuned, they should be able to increase my HP by approx 40%. If you call, ask for Quirt Crawford. He is simply awsome...

Keith

Cool! I'm running the stock ECU so I don't know how much tuning range there is in that. I've been told that Outback Motors can get 190 HP out of a stock EJ25 by using their maps on a Link system. I'm not really ready yet to mess with tuning the engine, but I'm sure that will come sooner than I imagine.

-Tony

Allright Tony!

So you called your friends huh? I guess that's why I didn't find out about this until I read it here.

Andrew

I am running the WRX stock ecu and they can get ALOT out of these ECU's I mean ALOT!!! If I were you, I would call them...

My ECU is getting a licensed reflash, if I ever have a problem, I call them give them the ODBII code and they email me the file to correct the problem. Also if there are any improvements to the system, they provide the updates free of charge. The ECU dyno tune starts at $1,000.00 but in my opinion, worth every penny. Within two minutes of bringing my car to them, they had it running 100% better. I simply can not wait to get it back.

Keith

can you help me post a video?

tx

Ketih

Awesome video, Tony. A couple of observations :

1) Glad the thing was in neutral when you fired it up !!!

2) The video was so short ! I coulda watched/listened for a long time.

3) You don't look as much like Napoleon D. as I thought you would....

4) Sounds like you're all ready to drive to RRC; registration deadline is Friday...


Congrats on all the hard work - now, officially, you are the man.

I kinda wasted my summer not getting much done on my car; I'll prolly have a ton of questions for you next summer...

Cheers,
Jeff

Yes, I made sure it was in neutral! And I had the parking brakes on as well as a brick behind one of the rear wheels.

I still can't drive the car as it has no exhaust system and no gear shifter. Both of those things should see significant progress over the next couple weeks.

I'd love to do the RRC, but we'll be in Italy or Switzerland at the time.

I'll take a longer video once I get the gear shifter installed. Right now the transmission is dry and I don't want to leave it rotating for very long.
One thing I want to do though is take some really good recordings of the sound.

-Tony

I'm curious to see how cool she runs Tony. I wonder how it will work at high speeds over a few miles. Many love the rad thing and are anxious to see it do it's thing!

I'm also anxious to see how it does with heat. I have several ideas in mind because I know that with just two fans, I won't have enough cooling capability. So here's my plan so far..

1. Drive the car until it gets hot. Watch the temperature and monitor it. (with engine bay lid)

2. Do the same but without engine bay lid

3. Modify engine bay lid to GT-style and add two more fans to push air into the engine bay.

4. Add a flap in front of the hot air exit under the car (like the 914 rubber flaps)

5. Build the diffuser setup as previously discussed in this thread

6. Build a retractable lip that sits behind the trailing edge of the roof to divert air into the engine bay

7. If all those things fail, reverse the flow of the fans to pull air from below and out the engine bay lid.

8. If all that STILL fails, buy a Renegade kit and sell out.

-Tony

I like #8
But I know you will figure it out! If you have come this far what would stop you from not making it happen!

Believe in yourself and it will come.... (haha, I think I heard that some where)

that's just plain HOT!

I believe it will work but it will probably work best under way if you had some forced air ducting piped into it also.

You can do it!!!!

If all else fails before selling out how about moving the radiator where the stock muffler was? There is a jeep radiator 11" tall by 31" wide. I would think there would be other short radiators. Could that work?

Not a bad idea. Though if I had to put the radiator on one end of the car or the other, I 'd rather have it up front to help even out the balance of mass.

There are a few other ideas I have like augmenting the single radiator with one or two motorcycle radiators, etc. I'm sure I'll figure out a good cooling setup. If I can't them I will have to turn in my License to Engineer.

-Tony

Just sharing my favorite quote, it helps me along when some "doubting Thomas" says there is no way my ideas will work...

"Creative ideas reside in people's minds but are trapped by fear of rejection.
Create a judgement-free environment and you will unleash a torrent of creativity"
Alex Osborn


NO SELLING OUT! We have followed you this far, now make it work dammit!

Motorcycle radiators like Brant's racecar... ohhh yeah...

Would be a bit harder w/ headlights though.

Just keep the fingers crossed that it works the 1st time, and you wont have to do all the rest of that work.

BJH

Sorry for asking the BIG QUESTION, didn't expect that many peeps to be questioning your AWSOME SETUP! There are a huge number of high power fans that will suck the hernia out of your rad bro!!! You have the dream setup we all needed to see and mimic!

The greatest form of flatery is immitation and we are all looking ta do the same thing. RUN THAT BEAST!!

Last night I figured out the problem with the accelerator cable. Turns out that there were two things wrong. First, the throttle cable was wrapped around the clutch cable. As Napoleon Dynamite would say 'FRICK'N IDIOT. GOSH!'

Secondly, the carpet seems to have been causing problems. So I'm going to cut out a couple small areas where it seemed to be binding up. I also lubricated the three ball/cup bushings. With those three things done the throttle works great now.

I also built a bracket for and installed the coolant temperature guage.

Today I'm picking up a part that Phantom914 machined for me (THANKS ANDREW!!!) for the cable shifter. The cables are set to arrive from McMasterCarr today as well. If all goes well I could have the cable shifter installed (meaning the car would be driveable) by Friday or Saturday.

I'll upload photos of the cable shifter as I get it built and installed. Hopefully it works well!

-Tony

WAY TO GO TONY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Get er done and drive it to the German Auto Fest next month.




BTW, you got a REEEEALY steep driveway.

As expected the cable shifter cables arrived today, as well as the last part I needed machined (THANKS PHANTOM914). So right after I got home from work I started getting the parts put together and the cables installed. Didn't quite finish but I got half the gear selection working. I figure another 4 hours and this thing will be fully functional.

Couple more pictures. Also the linkage between the Subaru and 914 throttle cables.

So far the forward-backward action on the shifter is great. The only slop is from the transmission itself. These cables are humongous. I definitely didn't expect them to be as big as they are. However they both fit through the original shift rod hole with no problem. I've still got a couple brackets to make and need to take care of the in/out movement (in the pictures its hooked up but rather poorly). So Saturday I'm expecting to try this thing out on the road. It won't have an exhaust and undoubtedly the ECU will put the engine in 'limp home' mode, but I should be able to get an idea of how the shifter works.

-Tony

I would suggest smaller quick-grips on the transmission end, otherwise ground clearance may be a problem.


Also, looking at the first picture, I think the RF amp gain may be a little low for this application. Maybe you can find out which amp is included in the Renegade kit and use that one. No sense reinventing the wheel.


Otherwise, good job!


Andrew

RF Amp gain? I have the complete Renegade kit and can't say I recognize that one..

Ed

In the first pic, he's using an RF amplifier under the quick clamp, as a spacer. It was a nerd joke.

Gosh, doesn't everyone have junk bins full of surplus electronics?



Well, its not just a function of gain Andrew. This amplifier has a particularly high IP3 and low noise figure. For my shifter I want to make sure my adjacent channel interference doesn't saturate the front end.

-Tony

OK. I was just trying to save you some trouble, but it looks like you thought this out well enough.

Andrew

Let me know how this works out for you. I've had a few saturation problems in my front end. Had been thinking of low-tech solutions, like replacing weather stripping, but I think a modular RF amp would be cheaper

Also, I disagree about the Quick Grips. I think the black handles are a nice match with the steering wheel, shift knob, and soldering iron.


It's looking awful clean, Tony. If this were the 80's, Id say it looks righteous.

quite the tower for the shifter!

now i know why my fuch hasnt been cut into a clock yet LOL

it's one thing if a V8 car drags a rubber cooling hose on a speed bump but quite another thing if that rear trans linkage shoves the in/out shaft into the tranny. IMHO. =-)

i just dont want to see you on the side of the road someday with a jacked-up tranny.

i like that the shifter is high. coooool.

Nice engineering Tony!!! I like to over engineer stuff and dosen't seem to heavy to me. Good job!

:beer1:You make me look lazy.

I redid the linkage setup for the side-side movement today and it looks much better, doesn't hang down as far. The other thing is that this shifter stuff sits roughly between the two wheels. Its highly unlikely that a speed bump would affect this stuff.

In other news I drove the car for the first time today!!!!! First drive was with no mufflers and was insanely loud. So I decided to clamp the mufflers on temporarily and that helped a lot. Still a lot of leaking exhaust, so its rather loud.

So initial impressions after driving.

1. LOUD - exhaust will fix this

2. Shifter is backwards! 1st is Rev. 2nd is 3rd, 4th is 5th. The pivot point for the side-side movement is on the wrong side. This is a simple fix, just relocate the bearing and flip over the linkage.

3. Side-side movement is touchy. The range of motion on the shifter is small. I think I need to lengthen or shorten a lever arm somewhere.

4. Getting into 1st is hard. I'm not sure if this is a function of the shifter mechanism or the transmission. At this point its hard to tell. The transmission has been sitting for some time and I don't know its condition other than what I was told (that it was in really good shape). There was no grinding from bad synchros etc., but this is definitely something to investigate.

5. The battery was dead. Also I'm not sure if the alternator is charging. The battery voltage doesn't go up to 13.8 when running, but that could be because the optima is sucking down amps, loading the alternator.

6. Even without an O2 sensor, and my sensor simulator box out of commision (meaning that the engine is in limp mode) the motor pulls hard. I never got to more than 1/3 or maybe 1/2 due to noise concerns. I'm excited to see how this thing will run with everything hooked up properly.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to get my muffler bracket made. First though I want to work on the shifter and see if I can get it shifting better. I don't want to hand over the car to the muffler shop without it shifting well. If all goes well I will take it in to the shop Monday or Tuesday.

-Tony

It is cool! I hadn't thought about the shifter position in a long time ( I did intentionally put it high) and when I drove it today I realized that having the shifter up higher is really nice. For me at least its a much better position than the stock location. I'm not so sure I'm thrilled with the MR2 shifter mechanism, but it will do for now. The majority of the slop now seems to be inside the transmission.

-Tony

No kiddin But if they had one I would have bought it by now.

Haven't updated this in a while and I've gotten a lot done.

In summary, I drove the car to work last week and it had several issues. The shifter fell apart, the engine overheated, and it went into limp-home mode. Also the tachometer was showing the wrong numbers, and the alternator wasn't charging.

The cooling problem was fixed by replacing my temp sensor splice with a piece of metal pipe instead of plastic that melted out of shape during the overheat event, as well as bleeding air out of the cooling circuit. I tested the cooling system and it cycles properly now.

I haven't had enough time behind the wheel to see how well it cools, but in anticipation of it not cooling enough I have begun modifying the engine bay lid for a pair of fans to bring in cool air from above.

I cut the two wires on the tachometer for the 4-cylinder engine operation, but it seems to be reading about twice as many RPMs as it should. I'm wondering if I should configure it for a 6 cyl engine. Probalby will check NASIOC or Autometer's web site for this.

The shifter has been fixed in two ways. First, the nylon plastic piece that raises or lowers the shifter bar into/out of the transmission has been lengthened to keep it from falling out. The bolts that hold the shifter arm to the shift rod came loose and I think I need to replace them with cap head scerws and loctite them in place.

The alternator is now charging properly. I ended up replacing the alternator, but when the new one didn't work, I knew I had wired up something wrong. The easy fix was to wire the remaining wire to the generator light on the combination meter.

The remaining biggest isue is the limp-home mode that its stuck in. It refuses to go above somewhere around 4000 rpms. After disconnecting the battery for a while it seems to reset the ECU and I can drive a short while until it comes back. Getting this stuff fixed is one of my priorities this week. Those last 2700 or so RPMs give a LOT of power.

I made a bunch of noise today by cutting holes in the rear bulkhead and the rear trunk for the exhaust S-bends. These S-bends will take exhaust from the mufflers to exhaust tips on either side of the bumper. After I get everything working I'll have to weld u the rear trunk to cover the exposed exhaust pipes.

Its looking like getting to the German Autofest with this car is goign to be a close call. I was hoping that this weekend I would fabricate the diffuser and really get the cooling system workign well enough for the toughest part of the trip, the ascent of the Sepulveda Pass, and back up on the back side.

And now, some pictures.

-Tony

...

Here is how I took care of my limp mode problem.

You need to take the car to someplace that can clear the RAM. If you have gone down to AutoZone and bought a ODBII scanner/reader you can only clear the cashe but not the RAM. You need to clear the "hard codes"...

I think you can also disconnect the ECU From the battery for a couple of hours as well...

I have heard that hard codes clear when you do what WRX said, AND short the power leads together to kill any internal power reservoir. This negates the hours of wait.

Hey Tony,

I'm curious about the exhaust. I know you're got the outback headers, and the pic shows the tube going over the axle (nice) and through a muffler. I was suprised that you needed to cut the trunk - was this so you could use stock bends ? I haven't poked my head "down there" for a while, but I thought that there would be room where the stock muffler is located to run to tailpipes w/ no cutting. When you get time to snap more pics, I'll be eager to see 'em.

p.s. Glad to hear that the cooling bugs are working themselves out.

I had to cut the trunk just at the very back because I am having the exhaust exit through the bumper, as in this modified picture...

I'm sure it will look better in real life..

-Tony

nooooooooo not thru a chrome early bumper!!!

Nonono, the chrome early bumper is no longer in my posession. Thomas has it now. I'm going with fiberglass Getty bumpers. Gotta pick those up tomorrow or thursday.

-Tony

Looking good, Tony. Miss the Sepulveda pass (and steeper Camarillo grade) by just coming up PCH. Prettier ride, too.

Wednesday night, 3 more days until German Autofest. Hard to say if its going to be done in time.

I hooked up the two extra fans tonight and faked out almost all the rest of the sensors. I discovered that the vehicle speed sensor is supposed to send back a 0-5 volt signal, not 0-12. So I will probably just put a potentiometer across the input to the ECU and scale it down to 5 volts from 12. Also I need to figure out how to trick the heater sensor signal for the rear O2.

The results of tonight's test drive are that it still goes into limp home mode, and since I don't have my code scanner I can't yet tell why.

Another result is that with 4 fans going, the car vibrates a lot! Not sure that's going to be a long term solution, as its kind of annoying.

And the last result which I'm not thrilled about is that the cooling achieved by 4 fans (two on the radiator, two forcing cool air into the engine bay) doesn't seem sufficient. I drove around for probalby 15 minutes or so and got it up to temperature. It never went over 210, but being that it was 10:30 at night and probably 70 degrees out I would have hoped for better, considering that I was just going from stoplight to stoplight, and not really stomping on it that hard.

In these conditions it did reasonably well, but I highly suspect that its far from enough for any kind of spirite daytime driving. Unfortunately I won't get to really test it during the day until Saturday. Saturday I will need to come up with whatever aerodynamic aides I can. Fabricating an underbody diffusor even out of sheet aluminum on one day is going to be a huge challenge. The easier thing to try might be a small spoiler behind the targa bar's trailing edge, shooting air down into the engine bay.

This is a challenging and interesting part of this project really and unfortunately its probalby going to be too late for making it to the German Autofest. But there have been miracles in the past.

Tomorrow I get my OBDII reader back and should be able to see what is causing my troubles.

-Tony

The technical name for the limp home mode is "Limp to GAF mode".

Tony....

"THE EGGS ARE IN THE BASKET, AND ARE READY FOR DELIVERY"

Alright, don't worry too much. Sounds like you are going through all the same crap as I did. You are at the end of the forrest, all you have to do is step out of it (so to speak). I know it is frustrating... but aside from your cooling issues, I think it is something small like a MAP or MAF sensor that is screwed up or something small like that. Your ECU will tell you all of your issues. If you simply can not get it figured out, do what I did and call Crawford and be driving it home in a week.

Bust ass on this Tony! Hopefully your cooling issues are all ironed out soon.

Keith

Tony,

Just a couple of thoughts with respect to your cooling issue. If indeed the radiator is not getting a sufficient flow of air through its' core, I would suggest you focus on the negative air pressure side of it. Generally, it is more effective to create a negative pressure side. Trying to force air through by means of an intake system is usually unsuccessful without adequate exit side negative pressure. I suspect that you'll need to do some experiments in your case.

Easiest way I found, was to get yourself some cardboard boxes, duct tape, a straight edge, and a razor knife. Start mocking up some spoilers/ducts (tape the h*ll out of it!), whatever it takes, and do a test. Tape it in place nice and solid employing gussetts, etc. It's easy with cardboard. It doesn't have to last long or be pretty. Once you establish what works, re-create it in a permanent fashion. I've used this method many times at the track for both cooling system ducting, as well as some aero dynamic device testing. It's quick and easy.

Good luck; I'd like to see your car at the GAF if possible. I'll likely be there on Sunday.

Andys