The Adventures of an Aussie in America
Today was a momentous occasion in any swap, I started the car for the first time!
We had a couple of minor hiccups with reversed fuel supply and return lines, but once those were corrected it fired right up. Thanks to Ted for manning the camera and helping out today.
She’s still not much to look at, but the interior should be going back in tomorrow and with a little luck I’ll take it out for the first test-drive.
After tracing out all the wires in the HVAC harness I think I’ve figured out the source of the problems I’ve been having. Somehow I managed to switch around 2 wires (one blue, one blue/black) on the control panel, and the smoke I saw was a resistor giving up the ghost, not the fan switch at all.
I fixed the wires and replaced one fuse which had blown, but I’m going to need at least a new A/C control panel (I could probably replace the resistor, but it got hot enough to discolor part of the board so I’m just going to find another one) and possibly a new mode actuator before everything will be functional again.
I also managed to get the rear defog wired up, I set it up to bypass the WRX body integrated unit and use the original Legacy on/off switch. It is still connected to the ECU though, so I can use it for logging.
In other news I managed to get the sway bars and brakes fitted, decided to use stock WRX calipers and rotors (thanks Dave!) for the winter and take my time rebuilding the wilwoods properly.
The downpipe gave me a little trouble, as one of the turbo studs refused to cooperate and stripped out the nut. Luckily the thread in the turbo weren’t damaged so everything went together smoothly with a replacement stud from Subaru.
I filled the engine oil (Royal Purple 5w30) and transmission (Subaru Extra-S). Still have to fill the rear diff, power steering fluid and coolant. I’ll probably wait until the interior is a bit more together to tackle bleeding the clutch and brakes, or at least until I can get the driver’s seat bolted in.
Last night was a momentous occasion, I hooked up a battery and started testing out the electrics!
The good news is that I have working lights, mirrors, windows, wipers, keyless, alarm, horn, radiator fans, instrument cluster, ecu & obd2. I was able to successfully read the ROM from the ecu, which is the first step towards getting the car tuned for the various engine upgrades.
The bad news is that there was a small amount of smoke. The blower fan switch started smoking when I turned it up to 4 (the highest setting) so I need to trace that out and see what the problem is. Other than that the other known issues are the interior door lock switches (driver’s side is reversed and passenger side doesn’t work) and the interior light dimmer switch is also reversed. I also still have to figure out what happened to the rear defrost wiring and verify some other HVAC wiring, as well as test the audio and a couple of other systems.
Otherwise, I’ve been finishing up a few things in the engine bay, and installing a turbo heat blanket and heat wrap on the downpipe. I’m not happy with the straps I got from JEGS for securing the wrap to the downpipe, so I’m waiting for some different ones to arrive before I get that sealed and the downpipe installed.
Photos!
Things have been progressing slowly over the past couple of months for various reasons, but it is starting to feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now, a good feeling!
Dad helped knock a few projects off the list while my family was visiting from Australia, making brackets for the interior fusebox, LC-1 controller and power steering fluid reservior and helping to get other parts test-fitted.
The wideband bung is in the downpipe, and most of the engine bay is finished off. I flipped both of the firewall grommets so that the wires exit upwards away from the downpipe which helped tidy up that area immensely and also integrated the LC-1 wiring into the main harness for a cleaner look.
The front wiring harness is loomed up and in place under the radiator, along with the ABS and cruise harnesses which are routed through the passenger side fender.
With a little trimming for clearance the HVAC components and dash beam are now installed, and last night I wrapped up the wiring for the combination switch (turn signals, headlights, wipers, etc). I still need to wire the cruise control main switch, rear defog switch, mirror controls, sunroof & finish up the audio wiring.
I’m excited to see the interior starting to come together, hopefully it won’t be long before I have the dash installed and am ready to test everything and start it up!
Mechanically, I picked up a set of Wilwood calipers and DBA rotors and I’m working on rebuilding and refinishing the calipers before they can be installed. Everything else except the exhaust & sway bars is installed.
I had surgery on Friday for a small hernia, so I’m out of action for a bit. The swap is slowly nearing completion, and I’m getting to the point where things are beginning to get buttoned up, but it’ll be at least a week or 2 before I’m able to do any work on the car.
Since the last update I’ve been wrestling with the APS turbo inlet and intake manifold installation. It took a lot of swearing to get everything installed and fitting nicely, but it’s in there now and looks great.
I also implemented a modification to the fuel system I heard about from some guys in NZ, using 2 oem passenger side fuel rails and fuel pressure regulators along with 2 brass T’s and high pressure fuel line to implement a parallel fuel rail system.
The new engine sits quite a lot higher than the stock motor, so I had to notch the support bracing under the hood for clearance at the rear of the intercooler, and the IAC and expansion tank both touch the heat blanket underneath the hood. As far as I can tell this is an unavoidable problem given the lower hood line of the Legacy compared to an Impreza, so I’m just going to wait and see if it causes any problems.
I’ve also completed the brake line modifications needed to fit the 05 ABS system, and made brackets for the new boost control solenoid and 05 cruise control actuator. I still need to finish re-routing the cruise control harness to it’s new location beside the ABS actuator.
The dash went in for a test fit this week, and I have a good idea of how the fuse box and relays will be mounted, just have to make yet another custom bracket for those, and one to hold the fuel pump controller.
I also picked up some more competitive rubber for autox now that the car will be running in Street Modified, OEM Impreza RS 5-spoke rims wrapped in Avon R-compound tires in a 225/50R16 size.
When swapping a turbo motor into an older Impreza or Legacy, the front crossmember must also be swapped for the turbo piece in order to clear the uppipe. This is pretty straightforward and doesn’t cause any major problems, but it usually means unbolting the shiny new WRX or STi steering rack and bolting on your old one.
I wasn’t particularly keen on that idea, especially because of the faster ratio of the STi rack. So, I decided to use it and send the old one to the junk pile where it rightfully belongs.
At this point you’ll notice that the splines on the WRX/STi rack are different, so the linkage between the rack and column won’t work. Easy, just swap the column, right? Nope, that won’t work without serious mods as the columns are a different length due to changes to the firewall.
The solution is to keep the original column and modify the linkage so that it has the correct spline count at each end.
To perform this mod you’ll need your original linkage, and a linkage with the correct spline count for the new rack. We’ll be removing the rack end from both linkages and swapping them over.
Begin by removing the lock bolt that holds the linkage to the rack. You’ll notice that the end of the linkage is a single piece of pressed steel. All that is required to remove the end is to spread it open enough to slide it off the u-joint.
Start with your linkage, the easiest way I found to spread the end was to hammer/press successively larger round rod between the 2 ‘ears’ where the bolt passes through.
In the photo above you can see the end already spread apart, I was using the large end of the socket extension and tapping it straight down from above to spread the ears without risk of damaging the splines. Begin with something small (I used the other end of the extension in the photo) and use progressively larger rod (sockets work well) until the end is spread open far enough to get it off the joint.
Here you can see the disassembled joint. The parts you see on the end of the ‘cross’ in the joint are bearing races and each contain 20+ needle bearings. They should come out of the end as shown above.
Once one is free you may need to tap the other one out with a hammer & punch. Be careful with these! If they come off you may be able to put them back together as-is (the needles are held in by the grease in the bearing), but if any of the needles come out you should remove them, clean, re-grease and reassemble the bearing (without losing any needles).
Repeat the disassembly process to take the end off the WRX linkage.
Once you have both linkages apart, it’s just a matter of putting the WRX/STi end onto the original linkage. Place one end of the ‘cross’ into the end and use a hammer or press to slowly close the end back onto the joint. You’ll need to go slowly and make sure that it closes properly onto the bearing races. Once it’s fully seated check the movement of the joint and adjust the fit until it moves freely.
Once the end is moving freely, you’re done. Bolt it up and enjoy!
