Well, It's been a little over a year since I bought my 914, and I'm finally moving on the swap, so it's about time I get this thread rolling! First of all, let it be known that rnellums is to blame for everything you're about to witness. He was kind enough to let me drive his swapped 914 for a classic car rally last May, and ooooh boy did I fall in love. I don't think I've ever had so much fun in a car. Me being a lifelong Subaru guy, I was obviously enamored. After expressing my love for that 914 to my stepfather, greggearhead, within a couple weeks, he was blowing me up to tell me that he had found me one, and that he knew a guy who could trailer it to me from Illinois. Obviously, I jumped on it! And now here I am, staring down the barrel of this swap. Wish me luck!Click to view attachment

Congratulations and good luck! Looks like a great starting point.

Well The motor and trans are here! Got a fantastic deal on a JDM EZ30/6speed combo Huge thanks to JDM of Houston! the motor and trans look to be in great shape, and it even came with a FULL wiring harness! (not to mention a drive shaft and a rear diff). I just recently got the type 4 motor and trans dropped, so now its time to start thinking about engine management, and an engine cradle.
P.S. If youre interested in a Type4 2.0 bored up to a 2.4 and/or a 901 5 speed, drop me a line!
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Welcome to the EZ3*R swap club!

A few tips:

Your going to have to cut the center out of the trunk to fit a 6MT

It's an early 6mt so you're going to have to keep the center diff and weld it up to get fwd or buy one of the JDM drift couplers.

The ECU and harness are pretty much useless due to the immobilizer and no way to defeat it.

I would sell the 6MT and rear diff, there's no need for it in a light car. (STI drag guys love that box)

5MT uses 10% less power to turn them a 6MT.
5MT weighs 75lbs less
5MT clutch and flywheel are cheaper

JDM Spec B has the tallest gearing of any 6MT, not great for acceleration but awesome top end.

If you need any help with your swap feel free to PM me

Tonight, I've tasked myself with digging into some of the known-unknowns that I've been told to expect along the way with this JDM Tribeca motor. I know that I can expect to run into CAN BUS issues, Immobilizer issues, and drive by wire issues, so I'm working to at least establish a basic understanding of the lot of the issues. luckily for me, the guys over at iWire have put some time into dumbing this stuff down in their blog. Here are some real basic posts, mostly for my own reference later, but also for anyone else that might be as big a noob as me. I will circle back to update later with actual solutions, as I work them out.

Drive-By-Wire Overview

Immobilizer Overview

Immobilizer Plan of Attack

CAN BUS Overview

Miscellaneous iWire Help Links

Kevin and the guys at I-Wire are great resources. I've actually known Kevin since back in the day when he started in his garage with simple GC8 swaps.

If your EZ30R had a 6MT bolted to it, it is more than likely a JDM Legacy Spec-B as the Tribeca was never sold in Japan. You can check by looking up the trans code on the white sticker near the starter.

Hey, Thanks man, I really appreciate it! But are you sure that its impossible to bypass the immobilizer issue? I hear rumors that some fabricator kid got around it in a forester that he H-6 swapped. (I still need to do some digging to try and find this thread) The guys over at iWire seem to think that if you can get a hold of an immobilizer, a key, and an ecu from the same vehicle, you can make it work (which I don't have) but don't you think that you could get the immo and the key reprogrammed somehow? I know that my local hardware store can reprogram chip keys, and you can even buy doo-dads like this thing that let you copy and clone rfid signatures. I feel like there's gotta be some way around it.

That's good to know, Thank you!

In order to program the immobilizer you need a code from Subaru if you don't have any of the original keys. A US dealer won't be able to supply it.

If there was a manual EZ30R here in the US you could get all the components from that car and then get it programmed but there are only Autos here.

I've even contacted ECUtek in the UK, they can disable the immobilizer in 4 cylinder ecu's but not 6 cylinder.

Most of the swapped setups either had a full donor car or are running an aftermarket ECU (I have a Link Thunder that runs all the features of my EZ36R)

A Little More Reading About CANBUS on Subagears' CANBUS emulator FAQ page

sounds like it may be possible to re-code an immobilizer/ key, but at around $800 for the emulator, plus the cost of all the reqired components and recoding, megasquirt or something comparable may be the wiser move.

The Link Fury is there best bang for the buck. It can do AVCS, AVLS, Fly by wire and has built in uego. They also have base maps for for the EZ30R and it's unique trigger setup.

Here is a link to the Forester guy's build thread I mentioned earlier who was doing the EZ30R swap, and managed to get his immobilizer, and chip reprogrammed to run an OE ecu.

Still not sure if ill run that route, but just in case.

He bought everything out of a UK donor car (average price around $600-$1000USD) and had a BCM ($100-300) with a US VIN and a dealer that would work with him ($100-125 an hour) that's how he got it to work. This doesn't include a full US or UK LHD bulkhead harness or all the misc needed to use it.

It's a butt ton of time, wiring and, money involved and no real advantage over a Link. And there's really nowhere to hide a giant harness like that in a 914

Well guys, I did it, after reading a bunch of oe ecu horror stories, I jumped on the Link Fury. Should be an experience. I also went ahead and snagged an MR2 shifter assembly sans cables. Speaking of, @76-914 where did you get the cables you used to build your shifter setup?

they are called push pull cables or control cables, search teleflex and they will pop up, do not cheap out on the cables.

Control Cables Inc 562-949-0455. Great service and they'll take the time to be sure you measure correctly.

@914forme , @76-914 thank you much fellas! everybody else, stay tuned, I'll be designing shift control bracketry in the coming weeks, as well as fabbing motor/ transmission mounts, and brainstorming cooling. speaking of which, how well does the sciorocco radiator work, @76-914 ? Any complaints? thinking about going that route since yours came out looking so clean.

It was great but too small for AC. Get the Toyota Celica racing style radiator w/ fans for <$200 on eBay..You can whip the engine all day long and it won't overheat. I forgot the model number but I'm sure that I listed it in my build thread. My search history at eBay only goes back 3 years. Member @Mike _Bellis originally told me about them. He may have a link.

This is the one several of us have used:

Celica GTS rad/fans
00-05 Celica GTS.

Hurry up and get this done. Heh.

Yeah what he said, May 2020 is just around the corner

Holy hell it's been like a year since my last post and I'm sorry to say that not a lot has gotten done other than buying some goodies. I've been spending too much time working on my stupid DD, and other side projects, but yesterday I did finally roll up my sleeves and do some damn work.

Recently, My DD ('05 Legacy GT) chewed up its center diff and I had to replace the trans, and it got me to thinking, since that one is now useless as an AWD trans, I might as well try my hand at making a DIY FWD spline coupler like jpnovac. ( thread here ) So yesterday, I did just that. My center diff looks quite a bit different from JP's but the same general concept carries over and he did an excellent write up.

after removing all of the 14 bolts at the back of my trans, I was able to pull the center diff out
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hammering a pin tool into the little recesses at the top of the diff allowed me to separate the outer casing from the guts
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I then grabbed ahold of the top piece in the stack internals and got to hacking. I used a cutoff wheel and tried to keep the cut as straight as I could. a little groove in the needle bearing seat made that pretty easy.
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I then threw the outer casing component in the vice to cut the female splined section off of the rest of the housing, but I didn't have a large enough cutoff wheel to get the job done and I was doing a piss poor job of keeping the cut straight. I knew that at the end of the day, I was going to have to enlist the help of a friend with a welder, so I gave him a ring and asked if he had a bandsaw that might be able to make the cut. He had other methods in mind to cut the component. (I dont think this is how most people use a lathe)
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But hey, it worked and nobody even lost an arm.
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After facing our cylindrical components on the lathe (overkill) we gave the upper edges of the needle bearings a little love with a flapper wheel, and we had our final stack all ready to go. I dropped the smaller cylinder into the larger one and pushed in the needle bearings in to keep the cylinders concentric.
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The side that engages the splines in the trans looked like this.
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we were then ready to weld up the stack.
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And Viola. After a little facing to flatten up that weld, the DIY spline coupler was complete. You may notice that we didn't weld up the interior of the coupler like JP did in his thread, that mas mostly because my welder friend, Matt didnt think he would be able to get his mig gun into the cylinder to do it cleanly. we discussed the application for a couple minutes and considered the direction that the forces would be applied to this part, and deciced that one weld would probably hold.... but please, tell me if I'm being an idiot

The component fits up in lovely fashion, and I feel like I've saved a trans from the grave. I'll be doing the final install of the coupler and buttoning up that trans in the coming week, but I'd love to hear the community's thoughts on the coupler.

@Subaruined
Damn that Ross! We have a local group of 914 junkies if you're interested. Ask Greg or just click the Colorado-914 image/link in my sig.

Nice work. I doubt Osha would approve the lathe used like that, lol.

That is going to a fun ride for sure. Nice job on making the drive adapter.