kimokalihi's 91 SS EJ20 Swap

[kimokalihi]

Jess, you did see there's a nut on each side of the bracket right?

[PhyrraM]

I'm looking at this:



If that all gets tightned down together, I'm good.

[kimokalihi]

Oh yeah it's tight. That picture was just to show the brake line that had to be bent a little to fit the bracket.

[Legacy777]

You'll need a 15mm (stupid) wrench...

Hahaha Agreed, 15mm is a stupid size...it's actually an equivalent US wrench size.

This brake line on the turbo legacy (pretty sure it's different on NA) had to be bent back towards the firewall a little. Maybe 1/4"-1/2" because it was in the way of the bracket. Obviously not designed for our cars specifically.

There's no difference in the brake lines between turbo & non-turbo or even abs & non-abs. That line will get in the way. The MRT bracket doesn't have as much webbing there to interfere with the line. You could notch the bracket, but bending the lines isn't too hard.

[Legacy777]

Did you take any measurements of the MC movement before and after putting the brace on?

You probably won't notice a huge difference in how the brakes feel with the MC brace. From talking with a guy here in Houston, he had MUCH more flex in his WRX than I had in my Legacy, so I think it's more beneficial on those cars then ours.

Here's info on the measurements from my MC brace install

http://bbs.legacycentral.org/viewtopic. ... housandths

[kimokalihi]

No I didn't take any measurements unfortunately although I guess it wouldn't be hard to back that threaded bolt out and measure it. What did you measure it with?

[beatersubi]

...it's actually an equivalent US wrench size.

There is no equivalent SAE size. 15mm is larger than 9/16" and smaller than 5/8".
Which makes even more stupid.

[mike-tracy]

...it's actually an equivalent US wrench size.

There is no equivalent SAE size. 15mm is larger than 9/16" and smaller than 5/8".
Which makes even more stupid.

it's a 15/25.4 SAE wrench, lol.

But yeah working on European cars you see 15mm as well as 18mm used a lot.

[kimokalihi]

Oh fur sure. I helped my friend install a new clutch and flywheel in his audi A4 last year and now I hate euro cars. 13,15,18,20,torx,some other torx with twice the points or something. Nothing was easily accessible or engineered well. 20 hours to do a clutch job with two people. In sub freezing temps no less.

[kimokalihi]

Somebody at my work drives a nice WRX with STI brembo swap. Also there's an A4 or S4 in the background that this super skinny kid in I.T. drives. Doesn't seem like he takes care of it though because it's always super dirty and beat up.

[mike-tracy]

Dunno about the rest but I like the middle one

[kimokalihi]

Don't lie you're diggin the ford. Haha. Thanks. I like the WRX, especially those sexy black seats it's got that I can't seem to find for a decent price. The wheels I'm not feeling though and I don't know why they make those brembos such an ugly color.

[beatersubi]

Oh fur sure. I helped my friend install a new clutch and flywheel in his audi A4 last year and now I hate euro cars. 13,15,18,20,torx,some other torx with twice the points or something. Nothing was easily accessible or engineered well. 20 hours to do a clutch job with two people. In sub freezing temps no less.

Just consider yourself lucky you didn't find any inverted torx bolts. They're the new rage on German cars.

[evolutionmovement]

German cars are their revenge for losing the war. Their propaganda ministers weren't hung after the Nuremburg trials, they changed their identities and infiltrated the automotive press, effectively bullshitting millions into believing in the superiority of their "Aryan" dream machines. (Aryan, of course, actually being Persian, but they stole the swastika, so why not appropriate the name of another unrelated heritage, one who's empire lasted thousands of years, whose most famous ruler, Cyrus the Great, was truly one of the greatest men in history for being mostly the opposite of Hitler's Reich?)

For easy reference, here are some common close-enough equivalents that almost always work interchangeably for wrenches and sockets:

8mm=5/16

10mm can sort of be used for 3/8 . . . or maybe it's the other way around, I forget.

11mm=7/16

13mm=1/2

14mm=9/16

16mm=5/8

17mm=11/16

19mm=3/4

[soobrdad02]

After being forced to get rid of my wagon, I ended up being forced into a 2000 BMW 3-series, and I can verify that German engineering is ALL propaganda this thing is a POS. I've never seen a car with so many issues considered to be common among the model, and the owners on those forums...lets just say they should all be nicknamed "Massengill". I've only had this thing since the end of November and I've been looking for another 1st gen wagon ever since. Damn east-coast doesn't make it easy though.

[kimokalihi]

With euro cars ive always thought they're only worth owning from new til 5-8 years old and then get rid of them before they start breaking and turning into a massive money pit.

[evolutionmovement]

There's a good reason BMW covers all maintenance for the typical payment period—so people won't realize how expensive they really are to own and trade it in for a new one. Still, the Germans gain market share as reality TV takes over cable. There have been some cool German cars, nearly all of them in the past, but if I wanted unreliable with corner-cut engineering I'd at least get something with character and looks from Italy (but not anything from Ferrari as a decades long failure to build a car that doesn't have issues with self-immolation is unacceptable and the Tifosi? Talk about Masengill!).

I always find it funny to go through ghettos and see all the discarded "old" premium German makes in their last throes of life. The uneducated and insecure (as opposed to the educated and insecure who buy them new) buy them used because they're cheap status (to buy, because the new buyers have to have the latest model and educated second hand owners know enough to know what a nightmare ownership of an out-of-warranty Eurotrash car is—shit, Audi can't even make side view mirrors that don't turn various opaque colors after a few years), but then they can't maintain them, but they also don't drive much, so it being broken often is fine with a bus stop so close—after all, broken or not, they have a Bee Em or a Benz and that makes them playas. A few years later, though, they finally find their way into the junk yards, probably 5 years longer than a car of similar problems from any other origin would have been tolerated. And that wraps up the typical ~15 year road registered life span.

I will say one thing: I'm glad VW got everyone else to improve their interiors and most of the competition seems to have done it in a way that they don't fall apart and look like hell after 5 years.

Sorry! Once I get going on German car bashing it's hard for me to stop . . . like a Mercedes with failed electronic brakes.

[kimokalihi]

Are you referring to vws shit interior? Cheap painted interior plstics that the paint rubs off after a couple years of use and reveals the different colored plastic underneath. And everything breaks like the cupholders and buttons for the heated seats and other features. I'd rather have ford interior than vw/audi. Also what's with the overbearing smell of those cars? Even after a decade of driving it still smells like vw..

[evolutionmovement]

That's exactly it. The VW interiors look good new, but quickly deteriorate (like everything else). The competition had to up their game to compete, but most seem to have built their's not just for perceived quality, but to actually last a little longer. The interior of my Focus is actually pretty nice for the kind of car it is and seems like it will last pretty well. It's a big improvement over the Mazda 3, which wasn't bad, but looked almost new when I traded it last summer (almost 6 yrs., over 150k miles). The Focus has some of that painted "aluminum" trim around the console vents, but they're not in a vulnerable spot. The fake aluminum on the steering wheel is something else—it seriously seems like the real deal. I don't know how they did it, it's like they coated plastic in aluminum. 27k on it now and it's been bulletproof (not that it shouldn't be, but I've personally known VWs on their second engines around this mileage). I've put gas in it, 2 oil changes, & there was a recall for an ECU re-program for some emissions deal (manuals only) and the cool thing is that it seems to have relaxed the stability control that was WAY too overactive when I bought it. I have to say that this car has impressed me (I was a little worried buying a Ford), but if the next Mazda3 looks better than the current Joker face and comes with the Skyactiv diesel, I'll be back in a Mazda. And then the only viable excuse people have to buy a VW (because there's no other cheaper diesel car), will be gone.

[kimokalihi]

What year focus? My friend's dad had a 2008is I think and I road in it once and it had horrible interior. Hard plastic typical american crap. Felt very cheap. But it got him an average of like 45mpg freeway.

[evolutionmovement]

It's a 2012. It's a true global car now, the one they sell in Europe, too. It's a newer version of the Mazda3/Volvo C30, S40 platform. We never got the 2nd generation Focus here and the 1st generation was cheaped out over the Euro version. It's nothing like the older one. They maybe should've changed the name for the US (or never cheaped out on the US version in the first place or at least gave us the 2nd generation).

[beatersubi]

16mm=5/8

16mm≠5/8", it just isn't.

[evolutionmovement]

16mm=.6299" 5/8=.6250". Do you really think the tolerances on your average wrench and socket, tools designed to work with often crud-covered, possibly painted hardware, that also has a production variance would make a less than 5 thousandths of an inch between the two units of measure too much of a difference to be workable? I buy metric for work even though I work in SAE because metric tools don't walk away and I've used those sizes, but I don't buy Snap On, so maybe it's the cheaper tools that work.

[kimokalihi]

Makes me mad that american car companies produce and sell better engines and platforms to other countries and we're left with watered down shitty versions of these cars if we even get them at all. I know its because of regulations and safety but I'm mad at someone for it.

[evolutionmovement]

Not really anymore. The Euro standards are comparable for emissions and safety now. It's cheaper to engineer a single car and make the few small changes than two different models. The problem is the difference in markets. I would've bought a wagon, but they won't sell that bodystyle here because, apparently according to Ford (and Chevy as it's the same thing with the Cruze), I'd be one of too few people to bother. As it is, the sedan seems far more popular than the hatchback here, which I'm not even sure they sell in Europe. Europeans pay a lot more for cars than we do and they also like diesels due to their high fuel prices and different taxes on diesel (and diesel is where our respective emissions vary most). Many of their gas engines are smaller than what people would be willing to buy here, but they can live with that as they drive much less and aren't on the kind of truck-infested highways we have all the time. More importantly, it's what they're used to (mainly due to the post-war rationing and heavy taxes on displacement. For this reason, there was even an Italian market only Ferrari 208, a 2 liter version of the 308), while Americans are used to big engines and big cars. So some of the market differences are attitude, but a lot is the result of differences in geography and history.

For the Focus, Ford didn't think they could charge enough for the original to make a profit, so they decided to cheap out and sell to bottom feeders instead. THAT is why the Germans succeed—they do the opposite and they cultivated their name so that they can sell dogshit in a catchers mit and people will think it's the greatest thing of the year and be happy to pay extra for the stink. The American companies squandered their names and there was a lot of doubt about the higher pricing of the current Focus, which in highest Titanium trim that can parallel park itself closes on $30k. But I don't see many Titaniums (except when I was in Montreal). I got mine with the manual, sunroof, sport package, and 17" alloys for 20k. Had to wait 10 weeks because nobody stocked manuals, though.