BUILD-OFF CHALLENGE: MichiganMat Options

[MichiganMat]

Big update: Wiring.

About a month ago I was able to pick up a 2002 wiring harness from eBay. Luck smiled on me back around Thanksgiving and my local junkyard had a 2002 WRX in the lot and I was able to scrounge the complete rear harness, fuel pump controller, turn signal stalk, and a few other various bits for $50. Found an engine fuse panel on eBay and *boom* I've got the complete harness.

~40 hours later and I've finally got the harness all trimmed down and ready for installation.

My advice: Print out the complete wiring diagrams and become extremely familiar with them. Label every connector. Once confirmed what things are, start trimming. EASY. Haha.

Anyways, today I had the day off so I finished up the work on the harness. I've got all the mystery wires identified and marked, all the connectors are trimmed down, and its basically ready to put in the car. Im, of course, going to wire-wrap the whole thing and mount it all to a board before installation, blah blah blah, but the trimming part is done. Phew!

I also had some *spare* time on my hands tonight so I started making the mount for the WRX turn-signal / headlight stalk to mount to the existing 914 steering column. I removed the old controls from the 914 column, including the old tumbler and wheel lock. The mount is made from some 2x2 that I had laying around. Bunch of cutting and bending and I've got a pretty good mount.

The detail work on this stuff will take some time but the bulk is finished. Feeling pretty good about mounting it all in the car next week.

Thanks for following along!

[76-914]

If you need an excuse to drink, this is it. Good job! Wiring is a tremendous hurdle.

[MichiganMat]

Mounted all the wiring to an aluminum panel which will go behind the driver seat.

Im going to wrap everything in weaved wire wrap before install, should be pretty pimp.

[MichiganMat]

BIG NEWS: The car is on the ground.

Im trying to think of what to update you guys on as far as the last few months. Lets see..
• Wrapped and installed the wiring harness
• Started work on the tail lights, Im gluing 3" LED trailer light cores into 914 buckets
• Bolted up the suspensions bits, plug-n-play for the most part.
• Ran brake, clutch and fuel lines. Easy, just time consuming.

Yeah, other than that, just invited a group of friends over and we got to work on lowering the chassis off the rotisserie today. Then we lifted the rear and slid the drivetrain underneath and put all into position. Now I have a big shit-eating grin every time I turn on the garage lights! Almost 2 years, countless weekends, yada yada yada, but I'll be damned, I've got a 914 roller in my garage.

[Dion]

Seeing 914Dave's harness out of the car and just 1/2 of mine out, I thought that was daunting. Nice work! Looks fantastic. Really looks good.
Cheers

[Chris H.]

Wow that thing looks GREAT!!!! Nice work. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[MichiganMat]

Had a busy weekend with the 914.
Built the engine+trans mount, installed it into the car. Took about 9hrs. Pretty happy, the distances from the trans output stubs to the hubs is a perfect 20" on each side. Easy peasy.

Started work on the IC, found a good location, will start making mounts and ordering tubing and connectors this week. Shouldn't be too hard to mount up.

Im really liking the location of the IC, I think it'll be a nice showpiece, something to look at when she's parked.

[tygaboy]

That's looking great! Curious about the cut-away of the lower portion of the rear shock towers. Was there a specific reason? I ask because I was looking at doing something similar. In my case, it was essentially cosmetic.
Keep up the great work. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/aktion035.gif)

[MichiganMat]

That's looking great! Curious about the cut-away of the lower portion of the rear shock towers. Was there a specific reason? I ask because I was looking at doing something similar. In my case, it was essentially cosmetic.
Keep up the great work. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/aktion035.gif)

Yeah, its basically cosmetic, though it does give better visibility into the shock piston / spring area. I was looking over the metal and the bracing and the lower parts of the towers weren't providing any value so I decided to snip them out.

Thanks for the compliments, looking forward to tossing this thing into a corner and full wail!

[MichiganMat]

Mocked up the location of the IC, yanked the driveline, cut some material, and mounted it up.

Its just a little platform at this point, but I'll weld some threaded rod to the bottom of the IC, drill some holes in the platform, isolate it with some rubber, and bolt it down. The IC is going to be full of water so I figured Id build a tough strong mount for it.

[MichiganMat]

Its been a busy couple of months since my last update!

•Finished the IC mount and plumbing. Welded in a flange for the stock BOV, mounted it all up...
• Exhaust is done. 3" stainless, no cat, right out the back.
• IC radiator is mounted, right behind the driver seat. It's the best place I could think of to get air flow that was near the engine. May not be "race" legal, I know theres some controversy about holes in firewalls, but it'll be good enough as a big-boy toy.
• Dash panel is in, waiting on the tablet mount and it'll have an 8" Fire Tablet running RaceCapture mounted to it. Going to installl oil and check-engine lights into it too.
• Tail lights are in.
• Tow hook is mounted up
• Added some LED headlights to the front bumper. The WRX harness already had the wiring, might as well make the car road legal. The lenses are too bright for my tastes, Im going to smoke them with some nice vinyl this week.

[mgp4591]

Those are some serious LEDs.... are you gonna blind the other lane?!
And I love the details of your build - I've stolen several...!!

[MichiganMat]

First start!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sIbpQJs0ck


But she is smokey:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2QeBiHwc50


We've had quite a journey since the last post. The WRX conversion hit a snag or three: the cam and crank gears had teeth that were not compatible with the US ECU, they were set up for the JDM ECU. That took a loooong time to figure out, and a few minutes to rectify.

The US throttlebody did not fit on the JDM intake, so I had to buy a small adapter and then weld a tab on it to cover up IACV flange that was left exposed.

A lower cam gear was cracked through and easily could have exploded had the car started. Also, the timing belt tensioner bracket was badly stripped out, the tensioner could have popped right out and taken the engine with it.

Lots and lots and lots of wiring debugging of the self-made harness. Still happy I made it myself but the time I have into it is immense.

But here we are, with a running engine. So much more to finish up, just in terms of debugging, but getting it started feels like a huge step forward.

[MichiganMat]

Painting the doors took forever, but I finally got around to finishing them. They had a bunch of damage which I filled and sanded about 6 times. Then I had to figure out my gun (again), prime, and paint. Bodywork, man...



Then when the doors were finally mounted up, I added some porsche scripts and some meatballs on the doors and hood.



And heres the cam gear which could have ended the life of the engine had I not found it:

[Mueller]

Congrats on the firing up the engine...sounds great!

[Amenson]

Congratulations! Sounds rowdy, ready to party.

[Cairo94507]

Jesus - that engine sounds beautiful. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[matthepcat]

I would love to come see your car, and live in San Jose too. Rad sounding idle (almost rotary sounding).

[MichiganMat]

Time for an update!

Been busy with a few things:
• It drives! Took it around the block just to shake it down a bit, car feels great. Still needs a windshield, heh.
• Found out why it was running so rich, I hadn't plumbed the bypass valve correctly. Plumbed it to the intake and *boom* no more super-rich exhaust.
• Added number meatballs to the doors for that racer effect
• Found out the water pump is leaking badly, so that will need to replaced ASAP.
• Been working on the digital dash via RaceCapture. This is where the bulk of my time has been spent.

A bit more about the RaceCapture: Bought a used RaceCapture Track module from eBay and it came with a bad wifi module. $10 and an hour with a soldering iron and a new wifi module is installed and the Racecapture works as expected.

Next problem: Older Subaru ECUs don't speak CAN bus. They speak a Subaru-only message format called SSM. This means that I can't just plug the RaceCapture into the OBD2 port and get signals. There is, however, a project out there which uses an Arduino to translate SSM to CAN:

https://github.com/rpkish/Subduino-SSM

I've started building one of these and I've made pretty good progress. Im able to send test signals from the Arduino to the RaceCapture and have the data appear on the tablet dash. The next step is to wire up the SSM side and plug into the ECU.

Otherwise, we've got a huge backyard remodel going on and my garage is completely stuffed with BBQ and firepit equipment so I haven't had any space to work.

SSM to CAN video is here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/qNpLpvHHIXg

[Mueller]

Cool adapter you are building for the communication betweeen systems.