Air Cooled to Frankenmotor Monstrification

[Jeremy81]

Great thread, this is very informative! I'm conteplating a simliar conversion of an 81 Westy. My question relates to the cooling system and how you plan to use and mount the front radiator? The later model Vanagon's have a radiator support/carrier bar, the air cooled models do not. Is this carrier bar welded to the body or is it bolted? Also, will you be adding the lower grill and cutting out the sheet metal? If so, how will you attach the lower grill? Keep up the good work!

Last, will you install stainless steel or aluminum cooling lines?

[levi]

The rad is held in place by 4 brackets, 2 at the top corners, 2 for the bottom corners.

I know of no "carrier bar", just the brackets.

I have seen a subarized van to an air-cooled that the owner did not bother with cutting in the second lower grill, and they said it had no deleterious effects on cooling.
_________________
One of these days I'm gonna settle down,
but till I do I won't be hangin round.
Going down that long lonesome highway,
gonna see life my way

https://youtu.be/cSrL0BXsO40

[veloandy]

I had my Westy project shelved for a long time, but I finally dusted it off and got working on it about a month ago. I got it running really well, drove it for a half tank of gas, and then it died of some kind of major internal engine failure.

I yanked the frankenmotor, swapped the heads onto a junkyard EJ22 bottom end, and finally have it running pretty well. However, I thought I'd close this thread out for posterity because my Frankenmotor is no more.

The pics in this mega-post are quick ones I grabbed with my phone to show what I'm talking about. My apologies if they offend anyone's aesthetic sensibilities.

Cooling System: Engine
I didn't use a reversed cooling manifold -- instead I used some flex hoses, a Jegs universal radiator cap flange, and a couple of 90-degree 1-3/8 conduit elbows (with a bead of weld around the ends to keep the hoses from slipping off) to run the radiator lines forward.

I used a turbo water pump (to clear the exhaust, see below). This had an extra outlet that I plumbed into a T in the heater lines to do kind of a Tom-Shiels-esque thermostat heat control (this is looking up):

I don't have a pressurized burp tank in the system. I'm using a eurovan pressure tank as an unpressurized overflow tank (in front left of engine compartment -- it has a line from the radiator cap behind the license plate)

Cooling System: Coolant lines
I used factory plastic coolant lines from a parts vanagon. I connected these to the conduit elbows on the engine in back and the radiator in front with ribbed flex radiator hoses.

Cooling System: Radiator, fan, grille, heater core
I'm using a stock Vanagon radiator, it's held in place with stock Vanagon lower brackets. Aircooled models don't have the top radiator support. I understand it's spot-welded in. All the top radiator support needs to do is prevent the radiator from bouncing out of the lower mounts. I have a length of cooling hose wedged in there right now, and I need to figure out a more permanent top mount.

I used the dealer-installed 200W A/C fan as a radiator fan. I had to make some custom brackets with aluminum angle and pop rivets to get it to mount to the radiator.

I haven't cut a lower radiator grille, and I didn't have any problems with overheating the one day I drove in light traffic in 95 degree weather with the Frankenmotor.

I'm controlling the radiator fan using the signals from the Subaru ECU, so I'm not using the stock temperature switch in the radiator. I couldn't have used it if I wanted to because the radiator temperature sensor sticks out too far to slide the radiator in from below with it installed, and without a lower grille opening, it is completely inaccessible to install after the radiator is in place. So, I cut the protruding electrical connection off of the sensor and am using it as a simple plug.

I installed a stock water cooled heater box. I added a radiator flush tee to the heater core and filled the system through there. I was able to bleed the tiny bit of air left in the cooling system from the radiator bleed bolt. This seemed to work well for the 100 miles of the Frankenmotor's life. I didn't fill through the heater flush tee when I swapped in the EJ22 and I'm having a few cooling issues that seem like air in the lines. I'll do a more thorough bleeding job tonight.

I installed a round universal temperature gauge in the center of the dash. Its sensor screwed into the stock gauge temp sensor location in the Subaru coolant manifold. I used the sensor that came with the gauge -- the resistance was different from the stock Subaru gauge temp sensor.

(note the tire of my Emergency Backup Vehicle in the corner of the pic)

Exhaust
I set up a pretty solid exhaust for just under $200. It consists of:
- cast iron STI exhaust manifold ($60 off of Craigslist from a guy who put headers on his STI)
- 180-degree bend from http://www.mandrel-bends.com $12.67
- flex joint from http://www.mandrel-bends.com: $20
- 90-degree bend from http://www.mandrel-bends.com $11.75
- ebay universal catylitic converter $48.90
- 2 ebay universal 3-wire O2 sensors: 2X$15
- Muffler from an F150 from RockAuto: $15

I hung the whole thing on a heat shield I made from some scrap heavy duty aluminum sheet I had laying around using steel galvanized lumber ties as straps. I mounted the aluminum sheet with four bolts: Big ones going to the empty power steering and AC brackets, and some small ones going to the bottom timing belt cover bolt holes. It's pretty solid. (and yes, you have permission to make fun of my ugly welds)

I first tried spacing the heat shield from the belt using spacers made out of PVC, but these seemed sketchy and started to loosen on their own accord. I replaced the spacers with lengths of steel pipe and used locktite on the bolts. Hopefully they'll hold up better.

It works well, but the one issue is the F150 muffler is too long (25" shell length). It fits, but it does tend to rub on the body sometimes, making it annoyingly noisy. I'll probably swap it out for a 6" round 2"inlet/exhaust, 16" shell length muffler sometime soon. (Check out the melted drop of tar hanging on the bottom from where the muffler heats up the undercoating on the top)

This was good enough to get it going, and it was only $15 new on a closeout from RockAuto, so I'm not too dissatisfied.

Wiring/ECU update

I scrapped my idea of mounting the ECU in an ammo can because it didn't fit anywhere as well as I thought it would, and it made troubleshooting tricky (I still think the ECU-in-an-ammo-can is a cool idea, though).

Instead I put it under the rear seat and made a plastic cover for it, and held it on with industrial-strength Velcro.

The only wiring issue I had was I initially hooked up the power incorrectly, so I had battery+ constantly feeding the FI and draining the battery. The fix was an easy change of connections on my terminal mounting block.

If you recall, I cut the Subaru wire loom with about 8-inches of wire from the ECU, and cut the engine harness at the firewall. The hassle of splicing the two together (especially when you need to trace every wire anyway) seems pretty minimal compared to pulling the Subaru wiring intact. If I was to do it again, I'd definitely cut the harnesses again.

The other issue is my knock sensor was cracked and dead. I took it to get emissions tested and it failed at speed because the ECU was messing with the timing and dumping in fuel because it thought it might be knocking. I replaced the knock sensor with a 470K Ohm resistor to ground to make it seem like everything was OK and everything passed with flying colors. I'll replace the knock sensor with a real one when I get a chance.

I also don't have a speed sensor hooked up. The only negative consequences I've seen are the engine light doesn't go out, and the rev limiter kicks in just over 4000 RPM. I'll live with this for now, but plan on building a simple VSS simulator with a 555 chip that does a 5V square-wave pulse 4X/second. (Subaru stock 4 pulses/rev, 25-inch tire means 490 inches/rev. 490 inches/second = 27.8MPH). I think my low rev limit will go away if the ECU thinks I'm constantly going 27.8 MPH. The circuit should be less than $5 to build.

Throttle Cable
For the throttle cable, I just got some bicycle brake cable housing to run from the stock throttle cable housing, a bicycle brake cable barrel adjuster at the bracket, and replaced the entire length of inner cable with some 1/16" cable from the hardware store. It was super-cheap and seems to work well.

I had to add a very light pedal return spring to under the floor at the gas pedal. I don't think the subaru throttle body has quite enough spring pressure to work with such a long cable with a light pedal resting on it.

Oil Pan
I used the stock 1995/1996 Impreza oil pan. It seems to hang down A LOT less than the Legacy oil pan, and I have decent ground clearance.

Engine Death
After about 100 miles, my frankenmotor developed a sudden and horrible rod knock. I don't know why. I got the inside super-clean, double-checked all my torques, verified the bearing clearances with plasti-gauge, and checked the oil pump clearances. I was sane and sanitary with the sealant. I had plenty of oil at the time of the failure. I packed the oil pump with Vaseline, and cranked it with no plugs in before the initial start up until I got good oil pressure (and it came up fast).

I pulled the oil pan, and all the bearing caps and rod bolts were intact and attached. #4 had a ton of play, and the engine was VERY hard to crank over (on the verge of seizing).

The only possible causes I can think of are:
1. There was a bit of junk left over somewhere that blocked an oil passage
2. The Vaseline I used to prime the oil pump was too thick to get pumped through the tight Subaru-specified bearing clearances and caused oil starvation.
3. The block was damaged/warped in a way that I couldn't measure with plasti-gauge (e.g. was perfect where I laid the plasti-gauge, was loose 90-degrees one way, and was tight 90-degrees the other way).
I doubt I'll get to trying to do a post-mortem before my wife freaks out about yet another engine in the corner of the garage and I haul the bottom-end off for scrap.

After the engine died, I felt physically ill with frustration. I wanted to set my Westy on fire, and/or sell if for nothing. After taking some time to breathe, I decided to just throw in a junk yard bottom end. The nice thing about a Frankenmotor with reusable Cometic head gaskets is that I could use an EJ22 or an EJ25 bottom end just as easily. At the U-pull-it yard I found had some super-high-mile (312K) Subarus, some pristine not wrecked Subarus (maybe scrapped b/c of engine damage), and a wrecked 1996 EJ22 Impreza with 180K miles. I grabbed the complete 180K Impreza engine for $260. It was dirty on the outside, but the oil was clean and the oil pump was good inside. I swapped on my frankenmotor's heads (with the unused stock EJ22 head gaskets from my gasket set) and my 100-mile-old timing assembly and water pump. I primed the oil pump with assembly lube this time, swapped it out, and fired it up. It ran great! So far I'm really happy with the EJ22. Hopefully this one lasts longer.

Emissions testing the EJ22
My westy had been parked while this project lingered and my registration expired, so I had to get it emissions tested. The Emissions testers didn't know (or care?) that it wasn't the original engine. The results of my last few emissions tests are below. Note that to get the old aircooled engine to pass, I disconnected a fuel injector and leaned out the AFM as much as I could without causing a misfire. Dang the EJ22 is a lot cleaner when running properly!

So, that's the end of the tale of my Frankenmotor. If you've made it this far and have any questions or want me to snag photos of anything, let me know.

Later,
-Andy

[heynanc]

I can never tell if I'm posting online or writing a private message.
I guess more things than my vanagon don't quite work well.

I'm sure the VAST and creative and discerning readership of the samba have probably done all sorts of things to create liquid cooling where there was none!

I want to hear about it? What did you harvest for your donor, where did you put it, how did you get it to stay there, what did you use to get the liquid from front to back, etc.!

Do tell!
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Nancy
2016 Subaru Outback daily driver
1984 Westfailia Vanagon EJ22 “ Guinness”
2006 Dodge Sprinter 2500

[240Gordy]

[heynanc]

I was looking for some help. New to the forum, new to the VW experience.

I have read this mega-post, and even corresponded with the author.
He had waterboxers, if my memory serves at all.

What would help me is some of the terms one might use for the "search" feature to come up with the alternatives people have used for their radiators.

While I agree that it is probably mentioned numerous times in the forum, what I would appreciate is some guidance on how to mine that info. from the vast data base that is thesamba.

Your comment - helpful. Suggestions on search terms -more helpful.
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Nancy
2016 Subaru Outback daily driver
1984 Westfailia Vanagon EJ22 “ Guinness”
2006 Dodge Sprinter 2500

[veloandy]

Hi Nancy,

Welcome to thesamba!

Thread searching is off-topic of this thread, but I'm responding here for context...

Regarding the search, I LOVE thesamba, but I often can't find what I'm looking for using the built-in forum search. I end up using Google a lot more. If you add "site:thesamba.com", google will just search thesamba for your query.

For example, I remember reading about a totally incredible build that used a dodge radiator and the poster referred to his van as a breadbox.

If I Google "breadbox dodge radiator site:thesamba.com", the thread comes up as the first hit.

If I use thesamba's Vanagon forum's search feature for "breadbox dodge radiator" I don't get any results.

That said, other than the search, I think thesamba's forums are top notch -- not just the great contributions of the members, but also for the forum software itself -- I groan every time I have to go to Yahoo groups to try to read a thread...reading threads on the samba is SO easy and fun that it's way too addictive . Hats off to thesamba admins for making the site indexing work so well with Google!

Good luck!
-Andy