Thingaru

[syncrosimon]

Great work, thanks for documenting, this is great for downtime reading.
_________________
1991 16" 2.1 DJ Syncro factory hightop ex Finnish Army Ambulance, now sold.
Thinking about Thing or 181 (182) ownership.

[av8shunmeckaneck]

[av8shunmeckaneck]

Got a start on making the charge pipes. Fwd pipe just barely fits.

Had to raise up the inboard side of the right radiator. Even though I specifically bought a smaller fan for clearance between the radiator and intercooler I accidentally cut the shroud out for the larger fan that came with the radiator. Oops! It works though.

Been getting my mandrel bends at JMD Tubes. Owner is pretty cool, they are close and prices are good. While I was there saw this protractor jig. More effort than its worth right now but a good project for the cnc router at some point.

Waiting on a silicone elbow reducer to make the rest of the aft charger pipe. All of the charge pipe is 2.5" o.d. aluminium. Maybe 60 thou (didn't measure it).

Reference pics

[av8shunmeckaneck]

The Subaru cable attaches to the throttle body from a downward angle. At least rotating the intake aims the cable fwd but to get that to work would require running the cable through the parcel shelf. That's not a good option so I came up with a different solution and a good use of these extra HTD-3M 15mm wide timing belts.

Ordered a 7/8" master cylinder.

Slave is 3/4" and from what I've read the stock Subaru master is 11/16". Not sure if I'm going to do a tunnel mount or firewall mount. I scrounged up some CAD drawings of a floor mount Tilton setup but not sure if I want to start machining a project that big just yet.

The grid looking expansion tank that I made doesn't fit now that I have the right radiator in place and the fwd charge pipe. Once I figured out where to mount it I realized the old one work at all. The welded on fittings are all in the wrong places. So I whipped up a new one.

It's getting close to being able to fire it up and start tuning. Subarugears says that they are going to ship this week. That will be another fun project to build the tranny.

[av8shunmeckaneck]

I should probably do a separate thread just on the raspberry pi and tuner studio, maybe on the Megasquirt site, but for now I'll continue to cover it on a higher level here. There is so much information that took quite a bit of research to find.

Took me a while to find this but perseverance prevailed. The Pi hdmi touch display is powered from the USB micro port that also allows does the touch function. My idea here is to leave the Pi powered ON all of the time. That means the screen will stay on too. This nifty device will interrupt the USB port when the key is turned OFF. The developer's intended use was to have hysterises turn the port off at a falling 3.3v and back on at rising 3.8 volts. It can be controlled directly from Pi GPIO pins or battery sense wires. I need to add a key switched 5v input to trigger the on/off.

Ordered a new Teleflex throttle cable. Was using one on the turbo 1600 and it was awesome but way too long. 8ft is perfect length for my install and makes it easy to source on Amazon since they are sold in 1ft increments.

[Arkansauced]

I’ve got major skills envy going on. Really enjoying following this!

[av8shunmeckaneck]

[av8shunmeckaneck]

Got the down pipe tacked up.

[av8shunmeckaneck]

Thingaru is finally running in the car. This a clip of what it sounds like with a JMD Tubes 3" in/out resonator. Still thinking of how I want to finish the outlet. Its running super rich but I don't have the coolant system hooked up so I can't run it very long.


Link

[syncrosimon]

loving your work
_________________
1991 16" 2.1 DJ Syncro factory hightop ex Finnish Army Ambulance, now sold.
Thinking about Thing or 181 (182) ownership.

[Michael B]

It will be interesting to see how well the cooling system works being placed inside the engine compartment (cool air in, hot air out). Always nice to see other people’s engineering

[av8shunmeckaneck]

Thanks Syncro.

Michael. Hoping the cooling system works out. I haven't checked a turbo EJ20 radiator in person but I'm guessing that these two Civic radiators will hold a little more coolant than the Subaru did. And with being a much lighter car than the Forester that I think the engine came from, hopefully the radiators can get the job done.

I got the clutch system pretty much finished this weekend.

Slave cylinder installed with the starter removed for access and a peak at the turbo down pipe.

Couple of shots looking aft from the access panel at the front of the tunnel. What a pain reaching through that hole to try and work on anything with any tools in my hand.

I had to grind off the shroud that surrounded the banjo fitting on the slave cylinder. The replacement -3an to M10 banjo is taller and fatter than the Subaru fitting. Here you can see the shroud with a notch in it before I cut it off.

Poked another hole in the tunnel for the clutch master cylinder reservoir hose. The tunnel is double wall where I ran the hose thru so there was no way to get a grommet in the hole. I cut a short piece larger diameter tubing that fits around the reservoir tube and cut a slit in it as a feedthru grommet. The clutch is tee'd into the fwd brake master cylinder.

[av8shunmeckaneck]

I got a new touchscreen display for the Raspberry Pi dash because, Chinesium and the touch function wouldnt work. That meant I had to make a new bezel. Sadly, the display hooked my shirt while I was working on the bezel and it fell off the bench. New display is on order. I haven't trimmed the edges yet.

Trimmed and bent the dipstick tube. It didn't fit anymore with the BOV in the way.

[av8shunmeckaneck]

Finished trimming out the new bezel for the pi-dash. I have it for the Pi to be on all the time. This way I don't have to wait for it to boot every it shutdown the car.

Made a new cross over brake line for the rear brakes to go up and over the tranny.

Had to get a bubble flare tool for the brake line. See if you can spot the issue here.

Modified a HF ring roller into a bead roller. Still needs some work though.

[av8shunmeckaneck]

Trimmed about 6 inch's off the stock shift rod and modified the Subaru shift linkage joint. I trimmed down some M12 nuts on the lathe and plug welded them into the end of shortened shift rod. I didn't take any pictures while I was modifying the joint but I made it very similar to the Subarugears linkage. This required trimming a bit more out of the access hole. Its pretty close to the frame numbers but I think they will be able to stay where they're at.

Added an exhaust tip to the resonator. I went with a scalloped look and I'm pretty happy how it came out.

[av8shunmeckaneck]

Got the fwd bulkhead somewhat finished. Made it out of 3/16" to add some strength back in from all that I've cut out.

Ended up having to trim off the whole pinch weld on the right frame horn. Little more than whats been shown from Subarugears.

Picture of the left side too for reference.

Intake is mostly finished too.

Lightened up the intercooler mounting brackets. Not sure why I made them out of steel. Easier to tack together when holding them in place I guess.

[av8shunmeckaneck]

Guess I forgot to post the tranny build pics.

Showing the washer stack up on the stock pinion shaft. Mine has a thick keyed washer and a thinner cone/spring washer. Subarugears build video and the manual they provide don't show the cone/spring washer.

Differential with old ring gear. Went with 4.11 gearing.

New ring gear.

Clearancing the right side (as installed in Subaru) of tranny for the new ring gear.

Good looking mesh pattern I think. Waiting on reply back from Todd at Subarugears to see what he thinks. Hopefully I got lucky. I only did 1 test fit to check the mesh pattern when I got this one. I've heard some people have to do it several times to get it right.

The finished transmission with the rad Subarugears emblem sticker.

[av8shunmeckaneck]

Engine is back in and running.

Made an oops though with the clutch setup. 7/8" master cylinder with a 3/4" slave and a heavy pressure plate don't play well together. Too stiff to disengage, feels like it's going to bend something. Did some research on NASIOC and the stock ratio is about .84615:1. I'm at 1.16666. I ordered a 5/8". Problem now is Corona. Who knows when I'll see it.

[av8shunmeckaneck]

Got some good test driving in over the past week. Cruised over to the Rose Bowl today. Quite a few people there considering.

During the first test drives the coolant system was no good. I hadn't made the engine compartment shroud for the right radiator yet so it would overheat pretty quickly into the drive.

With both shrouds installed it almost completely encloses the radiators so they can only get cool side vent air. Here's a pic of the completed right side shroud.

I didn't do an open shroud that seals to the deck lid like the left radiator because the intercooler will need to get its own air. For the intercooler I may do some variation of the ideas in my "Tail light vent idea" thread.

With both shrouds on the cooling was definitely better but still not very drive-able. It would overheat in moderate street driving if at steady speed for anything more than half a mile. It would also cool down though to an acceptable right while waiting at a stop light. This called for scoops which I figured was going to happen anyway. At first I only made a scoop for the left side. The size of sheet that I had worked out so that I could make the scoop stick out about 5 3/8". A little big but a step in the right direction. It made a significant improvement but still overheating.

I made another scoop for the right side and cut down the left one so it didn't stick out so far. The scoops are attached with an m6 bolt welded to a short piece of angle iron. The angle iron hooks the inside of the louvers and the bolts pull the scoops against the body. Here is the left side after I trimmed it.

It's still getting too hot. Not quite overheating while driving on the street but overheats after a couple of miles on the freeway. I think the expansion tank is too low. The top of the tank is just above the radiators high point. But I think the bigger problem is that the high point in the radiators don't have a way to get rid of the air if the system boils. I'm think of putting small hose fittings in place of the radiator bleed screws to allow a small amount of coolant to always be flowing toward the expansion tank. My thinking is that the coolant flow in the radiators should always be slightly restricted by the thermostat open or closed.
Filler just above the highest point in the radiators.

Tested the thermostat with a cooking thermometer. The stamp on it says 78 which converts to 172 F. It worked as advertised in the water test. Mr. Wizard would be proud.

Next update I'll cover the clutch modification and what had to fixed with the exhaust.

[obus]

I'm enjoying your updates. Thanks and continued luck
_________________
July 1959 Mango Standard Bus aka Obus L346 L347 https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=256592&highlight=
June 1973 Pumpkin Orange Thing aka Othing L30H
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=711775&highlight=
1960 Paprika Red Karmann Ghia Convertible aka Schatze L452 built 5/20/60
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...highlight=
66 21 window bus built 8/31/65 https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=777273