I have been watching this thread and I think it would be a cool conversion. Although I hate having to mount radiators and run the water throughout the car, the engine has potential.

I know a member of this board who was working on a WRX 914 conversion a while back. He had his engine mount bar made by Tony at TC Design (TC Design Fabrication) and I thought it looked great. These pictures are from their website.

-Britain

now they r good pics, the setup we used was just straight bits of box and angle, when the motor needs to be removed the whole lot comes out under the car, works well at the track if anything blows 8 bolts a wiring clip ,water, fuel and cvs and its all on the floor infront of u, i wish i could take better pics but i killed my extension light in the process

well britan how good of a friend is he ( the one who had tc make the mount ) you might want to tell him it will be a failure. fiid orignally made his mount just using the stock motor mounts but he had 2 inches of bounce on the front of the motor, and that was pushing it by hand. fiid added two drop links off of the rear of the mount to fix it.

then you have renagades first try ( and they know how to build stuff ) which broke the first time they put weight on it.

look at it this way, the mounts on the motor are about 14 inches back from the body mounts. if you just use the weight of the motor not including the front of the tranny so we will say 250 lbs. then if the body side is 2 inches in dia, you have a 14 to one leverage on 125 lbs perside or about 1700 lbs trying to stretch, bend or break the bolts to the body mount.

either build it like my bar or go like renagades which goes from the body mount to the tranny mounts ( from what i have heard ) . i think these 2 ways are just about the only way it will work. ask anybody who looked at my car at the wcc who saw me shake my whole car by pulling on the motor intake.

I believe there is one other way. There are threaded bosses on the bottom of the engine near the base of each cylinder. The Vanagon mount uses these with the engine mount points to anchor plates that go foward to mount points very near where the Type IV engine mounting bosses are. This would allow a slightly modified Type IV crossbar to be used to mount the engine. I doubt this would work with the stock turbo exhaust (that front cross tube would get in the way), but it should work with a non-turbo engine, or a custom turbo exhaust.

The TC Design unit was, I believe, made for Jon Watts on this board, and it ultimately wasn't used not because it was too floppy, but because it fouled the shift linkage. All due respect to Fiid, but there's little reason the mount pictured wouldn't work very well, provided you used a cable shifter. A tailshifter might also work, but Jon wanted to use a sideshifter. The mount would put heavy loading on the four bolts, which would have to be hefty to compensate, but it should work with adequately stiff tubing. TC Design designs and builds custom suspensions, so they have some expertise in the area of strong, light, stiff tube fabrications.

QUOTE (lapuwali @ Jun 19 2005, 02:30 AM)

expertise in the area of strong, light, stiff tube....

Mikee? You catching this?




Hasselhoff

i use a side shifter with my mount, but i did make a new shifter bar to go around the oil pan. i also made it with way more offset than needed, but i can fix it later and drive it now.

i just looked at my motor to see the bosses you where talking about, i am not sure what you are talking about but i did see what looks like a large plug in the bottom of the motor that is about 1.5 inches in dia, and i saw 2 little holes with plugs on the out side of the heads, they are about 1/4 inch. another problem i just noticed a problem with a stock type engine bar, the thermostat and water inlet that is on the bottom of the motor is perfectly in the way of a straight bar between the body mounts.

i personally think my mount is one of the best solutions, i spent about 30 hours looking at all of the possiblitys and mine is simple and very solid.

Solid mount is a good thing!

Why didn't they use a chain system, instead of a belt?

chains stretch and need oil. and if they stretch or dont get oil they trash the spocket too. then we get in to noise issue

belts are cheaper too

QUOTE (scott thacher @ Jun 18 2005, 10:56 PM)

i use a side shifter with my mount, but i did make a new shifter bar to go around the oil pan. i also made it with way more offset than needed, but i can fix it later and drive it now. i just looked at my motor to see the bosses you where talking about, i am not sure what you are talking about but i did see what looks like a large plug in the bottom of the motor that is about 1.5 inches in dia, and i saw 2 little holes with plugs on the out side of the heads, they are about 1/4 inch. another problem i just noticed a problem with a stock type engine bar, the thermostat and water inlet that is on the bottom of the motor is perfectly in the way of a straight bar between the body mounts. i personally think my mount is one of the best solutions, i spent about 30 hours looking at all of the possiblitys and mine is simple and very solid.

I'm sure your mount is very good, but it's not the only way.

Small Car

These guys make Subaru into Vanagon mounts. The Vanagon mounts the engine very similarly to the 914, just flopped around. They don't have any clearance issues with the coolant fittings. There are some photos at the above link that show where the threaded bosses are I'm talking about. They're not at the heads, they're at the BASE of the cylinders, near the sump.

This mount doesn't require you to permanently weld anything to the car, which I see as an advantage.

I'd personally be afraid to mount an engine using anything but its designed engine mount points, but maybe I'm too conservative.

Regarding belts, the rated life of the Subaru belts is 105,000 miles for 1996 and on belts for the 2.5L at least.

From an article on chaning the belts on subaru engines:

"Next, it's always been an engineering challenge to keep the lon chains or gear trains necessary for overhead cam engines quiet and trouble-free. Also, if there was a failure of a chain, a sprocket or a gear, the oil tightness of the engines would have to be violated to perform the repair, and that meant there was always the potential of comebacks for lube leaks. A timing belt is inheently quiet, and its replacement is an external job."

According to the same article, you can get high performance timing belts that stretch over their lifetime such that valve timing is off by only 0.07% ! Those are rated for 70,000 miles.

While there may be many ways to hold the engine, they all have drawbacks. The TC design one, while it apears to be well made, still seems to suffer from a leverage problem. 2 inch diameter tube or not, the torque is still applied to that small bolt on each side of the car.

Scott's bar, while perhaps mechanically speaking is very sound, requires some slight modification of the engine bay. I'm not sure why anyone would be concerned about that unless they can't get some small amount of welding done, or plan to revert to a concours car at some point.

The renegade setup if it is as described will work well and be an easy bolt-in solution. It requires however moving everything forward a bit. Maybe its not an issue. It will be interesting to see how they manage to keep such a large structure light. Also, from their description, the oil pan stays stock. I would think being able to move the center of mass down by 2 inches would be desireable to many...


So there's probably not one BEST mount for everyone.



-Tony

i am sorry about what i have done to your photo but it was a way 4 me to show what i have now all feedback is appreciated so please shoot away ,the original mounts r being used the only problems r starter is touching floor big deal and the sump sits low, the drive shafts clear all with enough room 4 the exhaust, the cradle is solid bolted to the body as the engine and box use their original mounts as they would in their rightful home, sorry again about the picture dont shoot 2 much

james i am not saying mine is the only way. and at the point where the car has to be cut to get in the radiator a little welding is not a big deal. if you look at the picture above you can see how they curved the front cross bar down and forward ( or maybe just forward ) to clear the thermo housing on the right side of center. TC's mount is very pretty, and if it got extended to the tranny mounts or even some kind lof linkgoing up at the rear of the motor it would be perfect. with the exception of the shift bar.

You guys are funny.

Tony's (TC Design) mount is plenty solid, there is no bounce. I'd gladly post pictures of my 200lb self jumping up and down on the engine mounted in the car if it would help convince anybody. When I had the mount made I was going to make a cable-shifter because the RennShift wasn't out yet. Now that we have a solution for poor shifting 914's I'd like to keep the shift rod; so I'll take it back to Tony for him to modify.

I won't argue with anybody over who's mount is best since my car is still in-progress, but if you guys saw Eric Tischer's engine mount you might come to think you're over-engineering things just a bit.

here r some pics of that mount and some tell me what ya think

sti anyone

and more

and more

fat ass

and some

that last one was the engine mounting i hope these are useful to the people that contacted me

thats a crap pic but its the engine cross over again

this car is the racer that has been put on the backburner cause the turbod bmw in the other pic has broken more stuff again

This topic is so not good for me! My daily driver is a 2004 Sti.. I'm sitting here beating my head against the wall trying to get this type IV to work and all I can do is look at my suby and think of it as an engine donor.

Mm.. 300 hp/300 ft lbs and a lightweight midengine setup.. Wow..

I am sure that most of you out there could wedge just about any engine you wanted in the middle of a 914. what you get with the renegade hybrids product is dedication to quality. I guarantee that no one will mistake our engine cradle for a home built mount. we take pride in our work and it really shows in this kit. I am a "do it yourself" kind of guy too, but sometimes its kind of nice to have someone else do the tedious design work for you. if you want a well designed, good looking mount call me up at renegade. if you want to build it your self I admire your creative spirit and hope your swap goes well.
-Dana