Thanks for the feedback.


I could not find the instructions for the pressure plate assembly so I am not sure what the spec was. I am generally careful about torque specs for critical components so I would assume that they were properly torqued. Although anything is possible?


All of the parts are new.


I checked again, very carefully, for cracks and could not find anything that even hinted of a crack.

I also measured from the pressure plate face to the flywheel mounting face and it was consistent.

What I did notice, and I have no idea if it is actually an issue, is that when I set the pressure plate finger side down, the pressure plate face does not sit level.



The level is zero'd to the measurement surface (otherwise known as my glass cooktop).

Is this a problem? It is the only thing that I can find that even hints at an issue.
I sent an email to KEP with all of my observations. They were helpful when I called last week. Hopefully they can give me some feedback to get me moving forward again.

Cheers,
Scott

The feedback from KEP is that the the pressure plate likely has some issue.
I have a new on on the way and the old one is going back to KEP for inspection.

If all goes as planned I will have the car back together and working on Saturday as my from me to me birthday present and, more importantly, in time for our annual Chili Cook-off party where a whole bunch of people will be at the house who have been asking me for a long long time when the car will be running.
Hopefully I will never have to be asked that question again.

Cheers,
Scott

Happy birthday. I'll be celebrating with you.

The tracking number says that my new pressure plate will arrive tomorrow.
Here is my excellent schedule through the end of the weekend.

Now...Continue to work like a dog to put the finishing touches an a work project that started 3 years ago.
6pm- Clean the flywheel and organize the tools/fasteners required to get the PorSTI back together.

Tomorrow:
7-9am final review/cleanup of work Documents.
9am-12pm Meeting to release project to production.
10am; UPS should arrive with pressure plate.
12:01pm Drive home and open Hopslam.
12:30pm-end: Install and test clutch. Drink more beer.

Saturday:
Morning: clean up garage for party. Pick up beer bottles from Friday.
11am-2pm: Brunch and beers at favorite restaurant.
2pm-5pm: Get ready for Party.
5pm-end: Party. Maybe do a burnout to prove to friends that PorSTI really is working.

Sunday:
Pick up more beer bottles.

My plan was going great until the UPS guy showed up at work and did not have my pressure plate. Called KEP and apparently they are incapable of differentiating between a shipping and billing address.

The pressure plate will arrive today but instead of installing it this afternoon during the half day of vacation I took for the purpose, I will install it tonight.

Bad news, new pressure plate, same problem.

This must be a stroke issue. What else could it be?

How's the beer?

Beer was great. Had a Hopslam, New Belgium Rampant, and NB 1554 while waiting for the pressure plat to arrive. Nothing like a couple of Imperial IPA's to take the edge off.

Hopefully I can get some more travel out of my clutch pedal to confirm if more TOB travel will fix my issues.

Not quite in time for for my party yesterday but....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIKFcDL4-NA


Time to take the wife for a ride around the block!

I will document what I did to fix the clutch issue later today!

Cheers,
Scott

Cool!
Now, take some time to drive it before you put it back on the jack stands.

Admittedly, I was expecting something more dramatically bad to happen when you revved it up there.

I too was a bit uncertain about what would happen but the car needed to start its new life in an appropriate way so I went for it. Turned out quite well.

After the burnout I took it out for a leisurely cruise with my wonderful wife. The temps starting climbing so I brought it back to the garage to work some more air out of the cooling system.

I then took it out for a less leisurely drive and blew an intercooler line off attempting a rolling 2nd gear WOT launch. Made some awesomely terrifying noises but no harm done. This thing is going to be very fun

I also found out that near full throttle pedal travel, the sensor faults out so I need to modify the linkage a bit. Not a huge problem but did result in some pushing before I figured out what what going on.

At the end of the testing the car started to stall out. I am pretty sure that I am almost out of gas because the tank is not baffled so it could suck air as the fuel is sloshing around.

Unfortunately in the middle of this I found out that my 96 year old grandmother is terminally ill so I parked it and am now in Wisconsin.

Stay tuned.
Scott

Had a great day in the garage. Took care of a transmission output shaft seal leak on my wife's '05 Legacy GT Wagon. While I had it out I also fixed a small exhaust leak. It went so well that I had a couple of hours to work on the PorSTI.

I have been struggling with an issue where when the engine loads up it starts running like garbage. I had convinced myself that the ECU was hitting some failsafe target and going into a protection mode because it felt a lot like when my Galant VR4 would hit fuel cut. I took log after log with different signals but could not find anything maxing out. The only thing that looked at all abnormal was that the O2 sensor was saturating at full rich when this occurred. I figured that it was part of the protection mode.

Some more research and deep thought and I changed my diagnosis to a boost leak. Pulled the intercooler and checked all of the couplings. Sure enough, one of the couplings had slid past the clamp but was still over the tube so at low boost/vacuum it was still sealing but at high boost it would leak. Put everything back together and it goes like mad. Rolled into the throttle in second gear and got almost immediate wheel spin Gotta love boost!

As for the clutch, the problem is a lack of stroke at the slave cylinder. I am going to replace the 3/4" master with a 1" to increase the slave stroke.

With the car running I had a chance to drive it to get the required out of state vin inspection so that I can register it.
My plate idea was still available!
Click to view attachment

I actually received the plates last weekend but I have been too busy following CptTripps build thread to update my own!!

Ok...so I have a HUGE issue here mister.

You're only about 1:45 south of me and I'm just now figuring this out?

I need you to get in that car and drive your ass up here so I can compare things and make sure I don't build myself a hand grenade.

No excuse. I'll expect you in my garage at 6:00pm tonight.

Outstanding! Great work. Mucho congratulations.

Looks like you have everything well under control but if you need any specific pictures or anything just let me know.

I still have some minor details like brake lights and blinkers to hook up before I can get too far away from home. Hope to get most of it knocked out on Friday and then I can start finding excuses for mid range road trips.

I need to get some serous miles on it before June because I will be joining by Detroit buddies on Hot Rod Power Tour. Need to know that it will hold up to 2500 miles over a week of daily burnouts and other shenanigans.

It may LOOK like I have it all under control, but I imagine that there's something backwards somewhere that I will need a 2nd...or 3rd...or 4th set of eyes on before I feel comfortable driving it more than around the block.

So I'll expect that next weekend you'll be able to come up and help me shake-down mine! Right??? Come on man...it can be your first "mid-range" trip. I'm a short 2h drive up 71!

I had a buddy conduct a sanity check for me. It was useful to have somebody reasonably unfamiliar with the setup check it over because I had looked at it so many times that I was missing some obvious things.

Biggest things to pay attention to are those that can cause over boost. Make sure the boost control solenoid is plumbed properly and if you are using the stock plumbing, check that the restrictor pill is in the correct place.

Good to hear that you are stepping back from the goal to drive to Hershey this weekend...no sense cutting corners now.

Congratulations!!!!!

The car sounds sick!!!!!!

Had a some fairly productive garage time over the long weekend.

I installed the 1" master cylinder for the clutch. I am definitely getting full disengagement of the clutch but the pedal force is somewhat obscene. I am considering changing to a 7/8" master but need to do the calculations to see how much the pedal force and slave travel will go down.

I had the wife drive it just to see what her reaction would be to the clutch. She was more uncomfortable with the position of the steering wheel than she was with the clutch

I also hooked up the brake lights and blinkers so the car is legal to drive. Unfortunalty when I took it to go on the madden voyage to the gas station, the car started bucking again...apparently when I was doing burnouts in the driveway earlier in the day I blew a IC hose off again.

Anticipating that this would continue happening I purchased a Harbor Freight Bead Roller during the last super sale.
Click to view attachment
It does a pretty good job but I had to clamp a reinforcing bar on the back side to keep the rollers aligned.

I even put a bead on the input/output of the IC.
Click to view attachment
Talked the wife into powering the rollers while I rotated the IC.

Unfortunately I must have something mis-clamped because I am still getting a hesitation. Sucks, I was planning to drive it to work tomorrow.

Cheers
Scott

Very Nice, I have one of them and never thought about doing that, I will have to try this. I have built them out of Vice grips and exhaust clamps. Did what I needed it to do, on my turbo pipes on my TDI.

great thread, from start to end. glad to here its on the road.

I think that I just calculated myself into a corner and am now doubting myself.

I went from a 3/4" master to a 1" master.
The slave is 7/8".

I calculated that this increased the force needed at the master cylinder ~79%.

If I would have went from a 3/4" to a 7/8" master, I calculated that I would have only increased the force needed at the master cylinder ~29%.

Anybody want to double check my math....

Come on...somebody wants to dust of the old HP48

Well with the increase in diameter of your master cylinder piston, the area of the circle has increased from 0.442 square inches with the 3/4" master cylinder to 0.785 square inches with the 1" master cylinder.
I calculate that at about 78% increase in area.
The 7/8" master cylinder would put you in the middle with 0.601 square inches or about 34% increase.

Jim

Thanks Jim!
Basing the comparison on area vs force is a much cleaner way of getting to the same results.

I ordered a 7/8" master to get the force improvement. The slave stroke should still be fine.

Cheers,
Scott

I sorted out the issue with the boost and it is running great again. So great in fact that I decided to drive it to work today.
Took the opportunity to fill it up at the pump for the first time.
Click to view attachment

I did find that with a full tank, fuel will slosh out of the vent. It is so fun finding issues like this finally!

NICE! no vids?

Who's. valance are you running, it looks like the one Patrick sells, but if you have a better source do tell. I am in the market for one.

And great to see it out on the road. That is a great day in every car projects life. Now go and work the bugs out

Not much to show that is video worty, just tooling around town.


It is the Patrick valance. It is a pretty nice piece but it did not fit symmetrically on my car so I had to offset it about 1/2 inch from center. Might be my car but it seems pretty straight up front.

The car got a little warm sitting in traffic on the way home from work yesterday. Probably due to the lack of a vent on the hot side of the radiator. Also did not help that I had a few weeping connections in my cooling system. Man would it be nice to have a set of tube beaders the next time I have my cooling system apart

Just read this cover to cover, amazing stuff you've done. My father and I are in the process of putting a '74 2.0 back together. I have my doubts on the quality of life our little 2.0 has and if it get's a Suby Motor this thread will be printed on poster boards for reference.

Just read this cover to cover, amazing stuff you've done. My father and I are in the process of putting a '74 2.0 back together. I have my doubts on the quality of life our little 2.0 has and if it get's a Suby Motor this thread will be printed on poster boards for reference.

Thank you for the kind words. Hopefully my successes and more importantly my failures can help others improve the quality of their projects.

That being said, I just swapped out the clutch master cylinder and the 7/8" master has a much more reasonable pedal force and the stroke is enough to fully disengage the clutch.

I have been going through all of my parts to see what I have...more like what I can find.

Looks like I lost my Subaru fog light switch. Anybody have one left over from their harness that they want to sell?

It should look like this:
Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

Had another pretty successful weekend in the garage. Spent a few hours cleaning up some unused or poorly routed wires. Then I tackled installing the upper dash.

The metal support dash came out pretty easily.
Click to view attachment

Mocked up the assembly on the bench so that I could weld up some cuts make to fit the Suby IC.
Click to view attachment

Many hours of welding, grinding and painting later...it is ready to go back in.
Click to view attachment

Installed! The paint job is crappy but much better than is was previously.
Click to view attachment

Now I can accelerate without having to hold the IC in place!

Cheers,
Scott

With the dash in and some of the wiring tidied up the car feels almost like a real car. So much so that I have been driving it a lot...apparently too much for the unvented radiator.
The engine temps have stayed almost ideal but after a half hour drive through traffic and highway speeds on a beautiful 80 deg day the thing started sputtering and quit on me. Sort of started up enough to get onto a side road where I could check things out. After poking around for a bit I noticed that the fuel pump was not making any noise. Went to touch it and damn near blistered a finger. Apparently containing all of the heat from the radiator in the same area as the fuel cell and heats up the fuel so that it no longer cools pump causing the pump to seize. I did not like the external pump anyways so I picked up one of these:

In Tank Pump

I am also going to apply some adhesive heat barrier to the fuel cell and finally put the hole in the hood so I should be ok.

I found it to be very irritating that the fuel gauge reads backwards so I ordered a new sender.
Sender

I also noticed that the radiator fans were running all of the time and that the ECU was commanding them to do so. After a bit of reading the ECU considers speed when turning on the fans so I guessed that the vehicle speed sensor disconnected fault was causing this. Temporarily hooked up my sensor and the fans work properly. While messing with the sensor I considered that there was no way possible for the speedometer to be correct so after some searching of the internets I found and ordered this wonderful device:

Speedpuls Tachotronic

I was still struggling with a fuel/boost cut type feeling as boost started to build. Again I had convinced myself that it was indeed fuel/boost cut. In preparation to have my car tuned next week I made a quick boost leak tester to confirm that everything was OK. Well, it was not. I had a few small leaks that were together causing a huge loss of air under boost. Welded up a few pinholes and adjusted a few clamps and it is making power again. When I took it out for a test drive last night the roads were a bit damp so I had a load of fun boiling the tires with any moderate throttle apply.

I also found that all of the wheel bearings need to be replaced. I read a number of different explanations on how to remove the rear bearings and would like to try it while on the car w/o the spendy tool. Anybody want to convince me that trying to "tap" them out is a bad idea? I have a press so I could do it that way but really do not want to pull the trailing arms.

I have to say again just how cool the custom dash is that I picked up from ruby914. If you want to use the suby IC you really need to convince him to make one for you.

Cheers,
Scott

I don't know Scott. Have you have you seen what Kent (76-914) is doing with his Suby/914 cluster. He is making the need for complete dash replacement obsolete. He is 1/2 way there.
I have to take a 2nd look at the Suby cluster, see if it can be drawn and quartered with the parts reintegrated into the 914 cans and still get full functionality out of it. It would be cool if the odometer was still there and the Suby harness connectors utilized.
I see you did manage to get the fuse box up under the dash, wow, great job.
Where is the ECU now? I think anything FWD of the stick shift is a major task.
I also like the upside down fuel sender tube, wish I knew they made them sooner.
Do I recall your wife didn't feel comfortable with the control locations? What was it?
I think I did manage to get the steering wheel just a little more forward. I also tilted the seat back some.

Mike, I did see what Kent is doing and while it is really impressive, it just feels right to have the suby gauges and with your handy work...it integrates really well. I do hope that you go back to a stock configuration so that I can have your carbon covered piece

My ECU is between the seat. I will hide it under the center seat cushion/tray. My wife did not like how low the steering wheel was and how her legs were unsupported. The wheel is now much higher so that I can see the gauges and the seat will be reclined 15 deg very soon. Should be pretty much ideal seating position for me and not so bad for anybody else sorter than 6'.

On the progress front, I got the in tank pump and new fuel sender installed. No pictures because it was a somewhat hectic install...partially because one of my buddies stopped over with a couple of Cuban cigars that distracted me for a couple of hours. I did make a valuable swap fact. The suby fuel pump controller requires an isolated ground in order to control the duty cycle. The in tank pump kit that I used has a pump ground that is not isolated so the pump does odd things...like run continuously when the IG is on but engine is not running. Not really a problem except that I also had a leak inside the tank that was causing the engine to run like crap. I went to bed Sunday night with the car not running and no idea how to fix it with an appointment first thing in the morning with the tuner. After a restless night of mental troubleshooting I fixed it first thing in the morning and made my appointment. The result is this:

Click to view attachment

Pretty standard stock turbo results. I had him be a bit conservative so that I can put pretty much any quality of premium and still beat on it w/o any fear of detonation.

I also had my new tires installed which really helped with the straight line traction but the sidewalls are really compliant. I actually pulled over on the way home from the shop because I thought that something was wrong. I feels like I am driving on gummy bears. I played with the tire pressures a bit and got some improvement and it will get a bit better when I replace the wamped out bearings but the handling will still be less than super. Maybe I will have to install the 911 front suspension and 16" phone dials I have squirreled away. Anybody have a set of rear 5 lug parts laying around?

Tires are 205/55R-15 Dunlop Direzza DZ102's. Wheels are stock 2.0 Fuchs.

Anyways, still have a load of stuff to clean up before I will be comfortable to drive it 2500 miles on Hot Rod Power Tour. Less than 3 weeks to go, time to get serious.

Cheers
Scott

...almost forgot. After the tuning session, which was particularly nerve wracking listening to some strange guy wail on my "baby" on the dyno for almost 4 hours. Every time he brought it to redline at WOT I cringed waiting for horrible noises of catastrophic failure. None happened but after the session he asked me what fluid in the car was blue. WTF...did the tranny crack? Swepco is blue! Got under the car on the lift and the passenger side of the trans was soaked. Pressure plate was dripping. Looked around and it appeared that the front seal was leaking. Got it home and looked at it closer and it actually looks like the fluid was coming out of the breather.

Is it possible/common for gear oil to get slung out of the breather?

I have a spare set of drilled hubs. You can take your -4 rotors, bolt the hobs on and mark the -5 bolt holes, and drill the 4 holes. on each of the rotors. If the hats are as soft as the metal in the disk, you should have no problem drilling them.

Iam swapping over to 911 rear hubs and stubs. So these are just kinda hanging out in the rear arms, still haven't pressed them out yet. I could get that done if your in need.

What would you want for the 4-lug Fuchs if start doing swappy swap stuff??? You can PM to keep the bidding down.

This is definitely an option. Realistically the conversion will not happen before Power Tour so I am not in a hurry. When you get them out, get in touch and we can work something out.



Send me a pm with an offer. This will get you first in line when I do sell them and give me an idea what my budget would be for the swap.

Nobody has any feedback about the trans fluid situation??

I've only seen oil out the breather tube if it's overfilled... or if the bottom of the tube is venting below the fluid level. Other than that...??

My size 13 foot would catch EVERY one of those wires!

Added a catch can and see what happens with your trans fluid. Many a thread on how to do it, you can go cheap on it, a bike bottle, and cage, and some hosing. Its not a bad idea anyway if your planning on auto-xing it or taking it to the track anytime.

People don't like oil on tracks.

And for some reason unless there is a VW Beatle in the crowd the first place they always come and look is at the 914s.

I was at one event a guy in an Eagle Talon dumped 4 Quarts all over the paddock and they came over to inspect my car. I am like what are you looking for, I am clean, go look at that guys car, with the trail of oil heading to that trailer over there.

I like the idea of adding a catch can, thanks for the suggestion.

When I used to race F500 we had a run group with Formula Vee. Even though we ran two strokes and probably put a decent amount of oil out of our exhaust we still complained about the oil from the FV guys Air cooled flat 4's are always to blame.

Cheers,
Scott

Had a productive day in the garage today and ticked off some major items.

The biggest but least interesting thing was to fill the access holes in the outside of the longs. I always hate doing things that when complete just make it look the way that it should have in the first place. So boring that I did not even take any pictures.

The other thing is something that I have been avoiding....cutting the cooling scoop in the hood. Lots of measuring, marking, measuring, and more measuring...
Click to view attachment
..then finally some cutting.
Click to view attachment
Cuts came out almost perfect, wobbled a bit on the longitudinal cut but can't really tell.
Click to view attachment
Still have to bend it open further and fab in some sides but it should be fairly discrete.
Click to view attachment
The opening will be about 12cm deep. The cut out is 60cm x 20cm.
Click to view attachment


Eventually I will fab up ducting to the radiator but that can wait, too many other things to do before the start of HRPT on the 6th.

Cheers,
Scott

I'm really diggin that hood!