TheSamba.com Forums
 
  View original topic: 71 standard - ej22t swap
grantjd Wed Jan 29, 2014 2:00 pm

After years and years worth of using various internet forums, I've decided to make one of my own. I realized that I rely on free info from the internet for all sorts of things in my life, from dry walling to skiing, so this is my attempt at giving back a bit.

Plus, it will hopefully force me to document what I'm doing. I built a garage with a lift, and I have yet to build a project car in it, which annoys me.

I've had various intentions of building a Subaru powered 914, and actually bought two whole cars and a motor, but sold them in favor of buying a house and building a garage. The beetle will be significantly cheaper, easier to find parts for, and my girlfriend has wanted one since she learned to drive.

So, I looked around some and found a 71 standard originally from southern California for $1000. It was only 30F here in Denver when we went and checked it out, and despite the dead battery it fired immediately with a jump. The PO didn't know too much history on the car, he said he purchased it from a friend that was going for a cal-look. Its in pretty good shape, there are only two patch panels that iv'e found so far and no rust. He had a few extras on there, points-less ignition, some kind of performance exhaust, etc. I wasn't too interested in the stock VW stuff as I intend to sell the motor, but it has been pretty fun driving the thing around stock for a while. Causes a lot of giggling while driving.

The car was originally orange. The guy i bought it from painted the body black and the fenders red, without any masking or anything, so it looked fairly terrible.
Here's the car as purchased:


First thing we did was spend 50 bucks and a day sanding and respraying the car orange, mostly to get rid of the terrible older paint. The rattle can job turned out decent, i may wet sand it and wax it to get some of the peel out but ill probably just finish it with a few light coats of matte orange.

After a few days to cure

You can see where its gloss and where its peeled a bit, shows up looking dull.

The intention of this car was to have a fun, reliable car to rip around town in. I don't currently have any intentions of autocrossing or track days, but I'd like to make it to the drag strip after its sorted out to see what it'll run.

After reading through the various builds on this and other forums, It looked like an ej22 would be the easiest and quickest way to have a fun car to rip around in. I figured Id take this route:

1. Brake swap to something appropriate for the power, wheels/tires

2. Replacement of the required tierods/ bearings/ bushings/ other things as needed for a safe handling vehicle

3. Motor and cooling

4. Transmission update after i blow the stock one up. A subarugears swap would be nice, lots of $ though. So far, Ive been pretty thrifty with this build.

Im not too familiar with Subarus, or beetles, so the information on this forum has been great! Its nice to see so many people document their progress and ideas.

I began to search around for a donor car, as I have the space and means to trailer one home. I found quite a few in the Denver area, not surprising with the proximity to the mountains. A friend of mine suggested a few Subaru specific websites to check out, and I found a wrecked legacy turbo for $800.


Its a complete and running car with an ej22t and manual trans. It was in a pretty serious rear end collision, and subsequent front end collision. It smoked a bit of oil after idling for a few minutes, but other than that there isn't any coolant in the oil, or any other things that immediately jumped out at me. I plan on a minor refresh anyway- hopefully its just a valve cover or cam seal leaking.

At this point I plan on keeping the stock ECU and modifying the harness (really, simplifying the harness). If the cause for the oil consumption is failing turbo seals, Ill probably look at sourcing a TD04 out of a WRX. They seem to be pretty popular to get rid of around Denver. Other than that, I don't have any modifications planned for the engine save the required things like fabricating an exhaust, cooling and vapor systems.

Went at removal of everything required for the swap and everything I could salvage off the car to sell one Saturday, with the help of my friend's son and my dad.



Pile of Subaru stuff ready to sell



So far, I've sold the turbo x-member, trans, struts, some interior bit, and some other stuff for almost $400! Plus, since i had the title, i was able to scrap the shell for $210. I'm at less than $200 bucks for the Subaru, with a fairly big pile of stuff to try and sell still.

Motor and harness ready for cleaning. I tucked it in the corner of the garage so I don't get tempted to tear into it until the more important pieces of the swap are finished first- turning and stopping.



The Subaru has some pretty decent brakes- twin pot front and discs rear. I planned on buying a kit to swap to discs, but the sub. has aftermarket braided lines, 4 wheel discs, newer aftermarket drilled rotors and new pads.



I spent a few days figuring out how to mount the rotors and calipers, and came up with some brackets to get the calipers spaced correctly




I'm having these cut by a friend this week, and hopefully everything will go together appropriately. I wanted to keep the stock width as close as possible, so I turned the stock drums down to flanges and redrilled a 5x100 pattern for studs. This way, the thickness of the wheel mounting surface of the rotor will be the only added offset to stock track width. I can fine tune the position of the caliper with spacers- I initially wanted to form the caliper brackets out of a single piece of steel, but the bracket isn't very long and i cannot hold a jog that short with thick material.

Ill have to see how everything goes together once the brackets are finished next week, and if i'm unhappy with how it turns out ill probably just buy a set of discs from a conversion place. The intent was to save some cash.

I've got some of the stock WRX wheels from the 02-05 era that are 16x6.5 with a +53 offset. Hopefully, they will be close to fitting so i can at least get it on the ground and see what i need to source as far as wheels go. I've got my eye out for a set of the BBS RX 2's that came of Wolfsburg Jettas.


Other than this stuff, the only other thing I've had time to dig into is the front beam. Somewhere along the line, the front beam has had Sway-A-Way adjusters added. When we picked the car up, it thought it was riding on the bump stops or something because any road input caused some pretty harsh bottoming. I adjusted both of the beams to full up, and it didn't change much. I even attempted to adjust the upper beam 8.5* lower than the bottom beam, similar to the stock angular offset, but it still banged off everything. Turns out, there aren't any bump stops, so im wondering if it was the shocks bottoming or the balljoints finding their mechanical limit.

I pulled the beam apart to see if there were any broken leaves, but they were all fine. The upper beam was missing the shorter grubscrew- the one that holds the leaf packs to the collar, and the adjusters were welded in really poorly. So, i decided to cut them out and clock them correctly for a neutral stance, 2" up and down. I have added rebuilding a VW beam to the list of things I will never bother to do again.

I stopped by Painter's Grinding (local VW speed shop) on my way to refill my argon tank, and they happened to have a stock balljoint beam laying on a work cart. The guys working there let me borrow an angle finder, and it appears the the lower grub screw's stock angular location is about 33* with respect to the beam mounts.

I went home and re-welded the adjusters in place at this location, which was pretty far off from where they were to begin with, almost 20*. Appears the PO wanted neutral to -4" on the beam. I don't really understand though, because even at theoretical stock height, it still was pretty slammed. Maybe everything is just worn out.

Tacking:


If this doesn't work ill probably find a used, stock beam.


Ill try to keep a steady stream of pictures coming, as I always have appreciated the same from others when I'm hunting for information.

Ill be back at it next week once I'm back from traveling for work.

discoloredcurrency Wed Jan 29, 2014 2:09 pm

Awesome!

VWCOOL Wed Jan 29, 2014 2:42 pm

Yeah there are quite a few Subiebugs here in Australia, the single-cam 2.2s seem to be popular as they are easier to install and deliver less stress to the gearbox.

I was involved in a Type 3/EJ20Turbo (WRX) conversion years ago and it was FAST!

Joel Fri Jan 31, 2014 3:19 am

grantjd wrote:
Transmission update after i blow the stock one up. A subarugears swap would be nice, lots of $ though.

It depends entirely on how you drive it.

My stock one did 70K since being subi powered and prior to that I had Supercharged and turbo VW engines.
Whilst I;m not abusive to it I certainly don;t baby it either, no point putting a big engine in if you cant enjoy the power.

I had it torn down and rebuilt with all the goodies a few months back by one of Oz best gearbox gurus and it only showed normal wear and tear.
And that was over 14 years without even checking the oil level let alone changing it.

If you are thinking of Subarugears setup in the future factor that in when you plan how things fit.

I pretty much ruled it out with mine even though I would have like it because it would mean redoing my intake, header/muffler, A/C mounting, coolant lines etc due to it lifting the engine 2".

grantjd Tue Feb 11, 2014 10:14 am

After a trip to Turkey, I've had some time to continue working on the bug.

Getting the Subaru brakes to work will take more time and effort than I am willing to devote currently. Id like to have this thing rolling in about 2 months.

Issues were, wheel fitment and rubbing without going wider, wheel centering, and the most important thing being turned down drums to make 5 lug hubs. After removing some of the ribs on the drum to allow a land for the press-in studs, I'm not comfortable with the integrity of a cast hub.

I went ahead and bought the CB performance disc setups for front and rear, hopefully they will be here this week.

Here is the front mocked up with Subaru parts:


Next was time to clean this disgusting motor and freshen it up a bit. 20 years of Subaru and Colorado oil/dirt all over it took a long time to clean off. Basically every vacuum and plastic or rubber line was cracked, broken, etc. Luckily many of these lines are going to be eliminated, and everything else will be replaced with fresh lines and clamps.


After a LOT of scrubbing, cleaning, etc.


Removed the heads, as during the tear down the passenger timing cover was super melted, i figure this thing probably got really hot once. The gasket was fine, but the head studs were nearly fused to the block.

Good enough for me.

A bit of carbon built up on the valves and pistons, but nothing too bad. Cylinders look great.

I went and ordered a full gasket set for the Subaru motor, a metal oil separator plate, and some other odds and ends to get it back together cleanly. Ill leave the bottom end for now- it ran fine during the 30 min or so I ran the car. Fortunately for me, all this info was easy to find in other threads.



So basically, i accomplished nothing on the actual car! And ive spent more on gaskets and seals than i have in this engine.


I think Im going to go with some 2 liter Fuchs style wheels, as Ive always been a 914 fan. Plus, theyre super cheap right now. Anyone know where i can get these in Denver? Shipping them in from CA is going to be $100.



Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group