Reubens BC "Blighter"

[Reuben]

Indeed, nobody stops to consider the amazing amount of work that went into the GC chassis to improve over the BC. Still the geometry is so similar, that I refuse to accept that I can't make my BC feel as nimble as a good stock GC. I'll get there, mark my words.

In other new, I blew the head gasket in Blighter proper on the weekend, so motivation to get this engine together pronto is High, Basically I'm spending all my pay at the moment on it, to get it done.

I whipped the heads off the EJ22, and ICK. EW. WTF. Poor engine was clearly neglected, the amount of scaling on the pistons tells me it was never driven above 3000rpm, and the rust in in the galleries tells me it was badly neglected. I'm def considering getting the block halves sent off to get acid dipped, so I can start a fresh.


IMG_2961 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

Odly though, cyl 2, was looking beautiful...


IMG_2962 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

Cyl's 1 and 3

IMG_2963 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

[Legacy777]

It looks like #2 may have been steam cleaned

[Reuben]

Last night I stripped more of the 22 block down. She sure did look toasty, the black oil caked in that engine... Yummy. Really want to send the block away and get it dipped and checked. Will be scrutinising those crank and piston tolerances!

[Reuben]

I've neglected this thread for a bit... woops.


Friday:
Finally got the 22 block halves apart, there's a bit of scoring on cyl 3, but nothing more than beast had on his 20R when we tore that down at 118,000km's, so not too bad. Put the block halves in "Mr Washy" to see how they come up, hopefully a couple of cycles should do them fine, and I won't have to sent them away.


Saturday:
So, Blighters head gasket issue is a bit odd. I've just been driving him as normal, thinking, 'fuck it, what's the worse that can happen, I cook this temporary motor?' It's only overheated once since the massive overheat last week, up to 98 deg, not even regestering on the needle, so that's fine... But the thing over the week has began to chew more and more fuel, to the point of smelling like it through town like an ol carbie pile... and is starting to drop the revs when warm (used to only do that when cold). The engines def not happy, but whatevs, maybe I'll just tune the link to compensate, dahahaha.

Welp, new exhaust finally going on tomorrow!


Today:
Well, the fuel smell and consumption culprit showed itself... after dropping my work mate home, we were remarking on how fucking strong the petrol smell had become, and it really was down on power today too... so we popped the bonnet, and injector 2 was bubbling fuel out... nice... Even made a lovely pool on the back of the passenger head... Not dangerous at all...

So whipped home and in 30 mins I had the manifold off, and managed to find how it failed...


IMG_9617 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr


IMG_9618 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

A quick wiz with some carbie cleaner to get the muck off them, and I picked some new seals of a BG5 manifold sitting in the garage, re-assembled and test drove. Whole thing from key off to key on was just over 2 hours, nice. In time to watch the sun set. Test drove it (partially to listen to my new exhaust too) and it went well, nice to have my power 90% back, but still a bit stally, so the head gasket is still playing up. Because the drive was a bit spirited, temp got to 100 when we parked, and the overflow had boiled over on the way, but the moment you get moving temp just plummets back to 82deg.

And on the new exhaust, got a local mechanic who likes working on sunday mornings (pics up a fair bit of work doing that) to weld up my fujitsubo.


IMG_3018 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr


IMG_3020 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

Sounds really fucking cool, just what I was after. Nice and quiet to drive around, but the moment you put any load on the engine, it's got quite a good noise. And WOT delivers an a decentky loud, rough, cackle (gotta love the N/A's for that). Very pleased indeed.

[86BRATMAN]

I do love the way an na sounds with an open exhaust. Almost makes me want to not build a turbo motor... Almost.

[Reuben]

Almost... And I get that feeling when I haven't driven any of the turbo's for a while. But then just jumping into a stock GT here is enough to quickly turn me into GIB MOAR BOOST NAO. And who could say no to a 2.2L RS-RA port and polished 20G with a worked TD-05 strapped to it. Not I, that's for sure.

I'll enjoy this noise muchly whilst I build the 2.2 up though, and I def intend on getting a fly-by vid of it!

[Reuben]

IMG_9623 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr


IMG_9624 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr


IMG_9635 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr


IMG_9637 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr


IMG_9644 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr


IMG_9641 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

[Reuben]

So anyone who drives a Subie with inverted struts eventually starts to disregard most mild suspension knocks, kind of a part of life. Well we started to notice a while ago that the knock in the back of Shale (Amy, my partners V4 2L non turb impreza - full STi suspension and body kit though) started to go a bit beyond that... Amy got concerned and went in the boot, and found the emergency jack had worked its way loose, so she put that back in nice and tight. But that didn't fix it, she kept on digging, and found the spare wheel cap was upside down, and not actually tight on the spare wheel, so she remedied that... Still didn't fix it... It all came to a head today, when it suddenly got a LOT worse, and apparently it sounded like metal on metal...

I arrived home to find the back seats out, and Amy inside tightening the rear strut top bolts, but all were perfect and tight, so we went and jacked up the arse end and had an inspect. Didn't take us long to spot what was wrong.


IMG_9649 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr


IMG_9652 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr



So I had beasts old ones kicking around, because I had changed him to outback ones for the STi arm conversion. Both are MY98's, one beast turbo, Shale non turbo, and we were quite surprised at the difference. Looks like beasts are def a bit beefier, around the mount points, and the HX ones seem to have only a good fold only on one side...


IMG_9653 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr


IMG_9657 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr



20 min job, both fitted, bushes greased, struts greased, ready for out drive to dunners next weekend!

[Legacy777]

I upgraded to the Whiteline heavy duty anti-sway bar mounts a while back and they are quite a bit more heavy duty than the stock pieces.

[mike-tracy]

The GD impreza ones are quite burly as well, I would say even burlier than the GC8 ones.

[Reuben]

First of Blighters FUN bits arrived yesterday too... I'm really impressed with the quality, especially given it barely cost more than the gaskets on their own if I was paying full banger retail through work (not so bad at staff though, lol). Dunno how I'm going to swing the dual water inlets though... I guess the company reckons I can get away with using two innies for my in and out...


IMG_9659 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

And more bits arrived today... I forgot how big these fuckers are!!! I'll make it work... :s


IMG_9662 by Reuben Horsley, on Flickr

[Reuben]

Have been posting on good ol Clubsub again, and I inevitably got the "why don't you just sell it and buy an RS?" questions. So I thought I should make this vid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGocw5CKZFg

[DLC]

I can't tell you how happy I am that you've added a BC to your collection, and done right! It's great to see you here Reuben.

Any objection to this being moved to the Build Journal section?

[Reuben]

Yeah, I like the back and forth banter, don't really did the no replies thing. Maybe I post there too?

edit: woops, missread the rules, disregard, topic now shifted!

And yeah, BC loves, always wanted one... Never ever in a million years would I have envisaged a mutant BC3 though! lol!

[Reuben]

I may or may not have secured a set of forged pistons... Now I'm thinking of keeping my eagle rods from beast, and using forged pistons and rods in the 2.2

Interesting... that just upgraded the weakest components significantly...

[Reuben]

So some dude made a vid of driving one of my favourite roads, the crown range. This is the road that claimed beast, due to my low oil I got starvation in the lower hairpin section.

Just a sunday drive, we do this road maybe once or twice a month, there's a great restaurant at the end of it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZbPe6P ... Z593XwQUsA

[Reuben]

Well progress has been basically halted on this as beast build accelerates. The beast (who is not posted here), is just about to have his long block assembled, and first start will be this week! yay!

But also, injector 2 fucked out again.... I don't know what's wrong... Well I do, i'm using old seals and installing dry... but I don't want to fork out for new seals, cause I'm a cheap cunt... So some more used seals and installing them with vaseline I guess... gotta find time to do that job while putting together Beast!

[Legacy777]

That looks like a pretty nice road!

[Reuben]

So I finally cooked the 20D. Over 4 months I have daily driven it since it initially blew the head gasket. I found out why it's gone too, a couple of weeks back I cought a glimpse of the head gasket poking out of the top of the block under the manifold, and noticed it was corroded to fuck. Totally demolished, I'm amazed its held up as well as it has so far! I floor the thing up to 6500rpm every day I drive it (self imposed redline), and only now has it tipped to the point over overheating regardless. I cooked it on a bit of road doing barely 50mph, but had no where to pull over, and was stuck in traffic, so it just sat pegged in the red. I had the link controller, and it was only 116deg c, less than the 126c I saw once, but I'm guessing the prolonged sit at that temp is what did it.

Sad to see, I was looking forward to getting some vids of it in N/A mode with the GT exhaust headers, it sounds fucking ruthless, but it may never be. Maybe some quick drive by's while it's cold before pulling the motor out.

This puts the hurry up on the 2.2 build though, and I have been thinking about it. Using the SOHC pistons as originally planned may not be the way forward. I'm not really interested in crushing my head gaskets multiple times putting the heads on, the belt on and mesuring valve clearances. I drive my cars hard, this must be done to ensure they are a good fit. I'd rather just save time and spend on a set of wiseco's that's have valve recesses for DOHC heads, it just makes sense. And being forged u can push them much harder than I ever would feel comfortable with the cast N/A Pistons. I have to let scope creep get the better of me here, it just makes sense to do it once do it right.

Next question is where in this firesaken part of the country am I going to find a builder I can trust to assemble the short block for me!

[86BRATMAN]

Many of us over here have installed dohc heads on the sohc pistons in the ej22e. As long as you aren't using a proper thickness head gasket you won't have any piston to valve contact without timing belt breakage.

[Reuben]

Hmmmm, could be alright then... You guys don't have any first gen DOHC gear though, it is slightly different to second gen. I'll have to research how different the valve clearance is between them. I think it is less than the BG stuff, I'm pretty sure you can't put BG hydraulic heads into the flat topped first gen Pistons, but BG pistons with first gen heads is sweet as.

[bcmaxx]

just curious how the sti intercooler fit? i Have a wrx intercooler, and its very tight!

[86BRATMAN]

From what I've seen the early 20g heads are fairly similar in the combustion chamber to the ej205 and ej255 give or take a few cc's and there are several builds using them as well. But I definitely understand wanting to make dead sure things are going to go together without interference.

[Reuben]

just curious how the sti intercooler fit? i Have a wrx intercooler, and its very tight!

EJ20K intake manifold, I'll have almost as much room as a GC engine bay, so it will be very tight. I have a spare 20K inter cooler in case it is too tight. But yeah, 20K throttle bodies are recessed more, and half the length.

[Reuben]

Mini update... The boyfriend has talked some reason into me, pointing out how cheap it is to do head gaskets, and how I need to learn doing them... So why not just fix the 20D and roll with it... This takes the time pressure off the 2.2, so I can get the heads fixed proper, the block built proper, with wiseco's and make really decent power out of it. I have to agree TBH.

It also means I can enjoy having the N/A for a bit longer and continue to tune it to see how much power I can irresponsibly squeeze out of it!