kimokalihi's 91 SS EJ20 Swap

[kimokalihi]

Suspension is in! 10 hours of working on my car last night and I got some progress done. Now for the pics!









Front is swapped but still sitting high. The back is monster truckin' on the STI struts.









Rears in and sittin at a good height without any adjustment. Front now looks way too high.








Dropped the front coilovers down another 1.75" to get it maybe half inch lower than the rear. It's tucked now.














Reinstalled the heat wrapped and silicone sealed header. Then I removed the NA fuel rails I had tried using on my manifold with no luck. Reinstalled EJ20G fuel lines and rails and installed the 565 STI injectors using the phase 2 ---> phase 1 adapter kit. Excellent quality products from Carl Davey over in the UK by the way! The kit seems to have done the trick.











The STI injectors are too tall on top so I removed the grey caps and then cut off the little circular wall that the cap sits in. This allowed the mounting bracket to sit right on top of the injector just as it does on the stock injectors.

[cj91legss]

Looks good man, you get your thing settled with the ebay seller yet?

[kimokalihi]

Thanks CJ. I love it! It looks hot now sittin nice and low. It's amazing the difference in height with impreza/sti struts in the front. You have to drop it a lot to get it even.

I got my money back from that stupid seller who wouldn't respond to my emails when I asked him where my harness was. I haven't bought another one yet because PhyrraM is on vacation so no hurry (he's supposed to repin the harness and wire in a pair of ignitors) and I'm afraid of wasting my time buying it from someone else if it is indeed on national backorder as that seller claims.

Also Rob is supposed to be working on a secret method of changing the ignition setup that he said might make it easier for me. Haven't heard from him in a while though.

[cj91legss]

check your pm

[kimokalihi]

Today I pulled my fender off and did a couple cool little things with my engine bay. Started it off with installing the driver's side simply subie fender brace. Finally. One day I'll install the passenger's side brace.









After lowering the spring perch down 1.75" the spring is now loose and has about half an inch or so of room between the top of the spring and the upper spring perch when the car is jacked up. When I lower the jack down I hear a loud snap when the spring pops back in place on the upper perch.

Is it loose because the damper needs to be changed? How do I do that?







The starter power cable and the transmission ground cable were too short and couldn't reach the battery properly since my optima has terminals on the opposite side of normal batteries. So I removed them and replaced them with brand new 4gauge battery cable and did my first ever wire tuck! Not finished because I need battery terminal clamps but they're ordered so I'll finish that by next week probably.












I'm going to buy some more wire loom to cover the remainder of the cables in the fender and into the engine bay a bit right to where they split and hook up.







The battery ground hooks up to the body right by the battery with a tiny cable. That just won't do, especially since I'll be running an amp which will obviously be grounded through the body of the vehicle. It can be seen here. Black wire with yellow stripe. About 8 gauge.







Here you can see my other little engine bay mod. Windshield washer reservoir relocation. I still have to buy a couple bolts and nuts to mount it and I'm going to need to fiberglass a filler neck that will come through the wall right in front of the engine bay all the way up to the top of the headlight for easy filling. I'm gonna look into a plastic welder but will probably just fiberglass one on.








Check out how different the camber is on the front struts. The passenger has wicked negative camber and the driver side has hardly any.








Couple cool looking shots with no fender.

[cj91legss]

what all do you have left to do?

[kimokalihi]

Bunch of stuff. Put the manifold, turbo, downpipe on. Install new clutch master and slave cylinders. Rewire the harness or buy a patch harness and rewire that. Figure out if Rob has figured out easier way to change ignition. Install ECU. Install boost and AFR gauges and wideband sensor. Rig up an intake filter of some sort. I'm not cutting that expensive silicone hose.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head to get it running. That and fill the tranny, rear diff, coolant, power steering and clutch fluids.

[evolutionmovement]

You might be able to find a decent long filler neck from another car. The Mazda 3 has its washer tank in approximately the same area. Also has a hole in the center of the cap that a hose on the underside comes out of. You can use it as a dipstick by covering the hole with your thumb and pulling out the hose—one of the very few clever details that normally abound on the old Subarus. That tank looks like PP or PE—easy to weld if you go that route. I like that mounting location, too.

[kimokalihi]

I looked up plastic welding and it turns out there a bunch of different kinds of plastic welders. Which one do I get? They're pretty expensive too. One I saw was $550. Looks fun though except how the hell do you figure out what type of plastic you're trying to weld?

[SubyFusion]

I know they sell them at harbor freight! not sure how good they are, but last lime i checked they had a couple different ones. probably for a reasonable price, I am sure they have a cheap one you could get just to mess around with, unless your looking for something serious!

[evolutionmovement]

I got my electric one for under $200. It's a Mini-Weld Model 5 from Urethane Supply Co. Also came with a bunch of different weld rods. The air ones are cheaper, but I never used one. I find the airless to be pretty straight forward. 9/10 times the type of plastic will be written on it. You can also tell by the recycling number. The bumpers are PP, some interior parts ABS—the initials are on the plastic. Both are weldable thermoplastics. I would guess that tank is PP (polypropylene). The main ones you'll find are: PP, PC (polycarbonate, often confused with the sissier acrylic or "Plexiglass", but much better impact resistance. Used on our headlight lenses), PE (polyethylene like soda bottles and plastic kayaks), ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, another common one you'll find with bumpers and other car parts).

Fix a car bumper or motorcycle fairing once and it probably pays for itself.

[evolutionmovement]

Dammit—can't edit. Anyway, there's a USC Model 6 (basically the same thing as mine, but maybe a little better) on Amazon for $155 right now. I like how the description mentions PP as a problem plastic when I thought it was a joy to work with when I fixed my bumpers. If you decide to go with it and want some pointers, feel free to PM me. I'm by no means a plastic welding guru, but I do have some experience now. The book that comes with it also has some pointers and some tricks to ID plastics that may not be identified (though there shouldn't be many of them).

[kimokalihi]

Sweet, thanks. I'd like to buy one but I'm not sure. I'm supposed to be moving out in a couple months so I kind of told myself I'm not going to be spending so much dough anymore and only buy things necessary to get my car running. That's tough but I gotta think about the near future. I really need to sell a ton of stuff out of the garage. Leftover subaru parts all over the place.

[kimokalihi]

I know they sell them at harbor freight! not sure how good they are, but last lime i checked they had a couple different ones. probably for a reasonable price, I am sure they have a cheap one you could get just to mess around with, unless your looking for something serious!

That could be a temporary option if they're cheap enough. I could always go the fiberglass route. I have leftover resin and mat. I think I have a full gallon. I was actually thinking maybe I could find some flexible hose and get it bent the way I need it and then fiberglass the outside of it in the ridges and over the whole outside and make it rigid. Maybe fiberglass a threaded plastic top on it with a cap. I'm gonna make this work. Hopefully soon too so I can get that fender back on.

[kimokalihi]

Checked harbor freight. They range from $13 to $70. Which of these would you recommend?

http://www.harborfreight.com/welding/pl ... lders.html

[evolutionmovement]

I never worked with air, but it seems like it may be more difficult to regulate. I definitely don't recommend the electric one, which looks kind of like a 1-time use bumper fixer. You need to be able to control the temperature for the different plastics. You also want at least 2 tips: the feed tip that you feed the weld rod through and a spade tip to smooth things out and better work the more ornery plastics (like PC). You'll also want a heat gun if you don't have one so you can heat up the piece to accept the rod. An angle-cut tip would be nice, too (especially for expanding a cut to accept the weld), but a Dremel also does the job.

[kimokalihi]

Interesting. I have good heat gun already. Looks like the $70 one is the best value. What's the purpose of the air though? Seems like it would work fine without air? I watched a couple tutorials on youtube on airless welders.

Maybe I should make a run to harbor freight today and grab some more wire loom while I'm in town and a couple bolts to mount my reservoir. Well actually I need to figure out what I'm going to use for a filler neck. I don't know where I would find a mazda windshield reservoir for cheap.

[evolutionmovement]

Like I said, I never used the air one, so I don't know. The electric is like a cross between a solder iron and glue gun. A single temp setup would work with some plastics, but not all. PC is especially finicky as the temperature difference between solid and overcooked (bubbles) is fairly small and it cools down from ideal temp very fast. With my headlight lenses, I have to pre-heat the parts, then weld in the bead while heating (which requires 3 hands as you have to push the rod through while holding the welder and the heat gun, which also needs to keep moving to avoid overheating). Since I'm not an octopus nor does my dick have something useful like another hand on the end, I end up with colder welds that I have to go back over using the spade tip and the heat gun.

It's too bad the wasteful insurance industry wouldn't let the shipment of Mazdas written off in a cargo ship overturning a few years ago to be parted out as those kinds of parts would be cheap. I can understand the engines and body parts, but WTF about the rest? Money shouldn't take precedence over intelligence. Anyway, there are probably other modern cars that would have a similar set up (modern Fords and Mazdas also share a lot of parts) so you could just wander around a junk yard. Maybe a Focus?

[kimokalihi]

I searched google shopping for several cars windshield reservoirs and the mazda 6 had a straight skinny neck. I need one that comes out the top of the bottle and then goes sideways through the engine bay wall and then straight up again. I searched for other cars too including the focus and no luck so far. I also did some google searching on washer reservoir/tank relocating and found nothing.

[kimokalihi]

I just did a bunch of more searching and found out that hondas and maybe the 03 RSX have the best looking filler necks on their washer fluid reserviors. They are all tucked away hidden from view like I'm trying to do.

Then I came across this of all things on ebay via google shopping (google shopping is the shit btw).



It's from none other than a 90-94 legacy wagon! Haha. I think I could use that flexible neck to bend right through the hole in the engine bay wall. The question is, how to attach it to the tank. Surely it must be a different plastic than the reservoir?

[Deride]

I'd mount it in the trunk myself and run a wire back to the pump and a hose to front. Kinda like STi intercooler sprayers are setup.

[kimokalihi]

What's wrong with mounting it where it's being mounted? Seems a lot easier to me than running wire and hose all the way through the car to the trunk.

[evolutionmovement]

Good find! Can't believe I didn't even think of that.

Washer spray might not be as critical in the PNW, but the Mazda 3 has the single washer tank setup and it takes a few seconds for the spray to reach the rear window. IMO, that would be unacceptable for windshield use, even if just for the annoyance. You'd also have the wipers going on a dry windshield before the spray reaches and then the wipers would be stopping.

Why not just get a whole rear tank, filler and all? You'd lose some volume vs. the front, but might be worth the ease. The rear filler neck is rubber (silicone?) and slip fits over a lip on the filler spout of the tank. The problem is that the rear tank's filler hole is much smaller than the front, so you'd have to fab something to make an adaptor or a new filler hole for the rubber hose. You could cut and weld the smaller filler hole off the rear tank. . . Plenty of options, I guess. The rubber filler cap will also require some support from a bracket or something, but something real simple would do. Another good thing is that ugliness hidden under the fender doesn't matter.

[Deride]

It shouldn't have much of a delay if there is fluid in the lines, maybe on its first dry run but after that I doubt it. Just saying its an option. I've thought about doing that in my Impreza along with moving the battery to the trunk to clean up the engine bay.

[madmallard]

you're gonna do the big-3 grounding while you've got it apart, right?