Tony's Subaru Conversion Thread Options

[TonyAKAVW]

Okay, to answer some questions/concerns...

From Jkeyzer:
1. U-shape is stronger, and doesn't interfere with the trailing arm movement. A straight down piece would blockk the trailing arm from going where it should when going over bumps etc. Also, the engine mounts on the motor are angled down at 30 degrees so it would be more complex to mount them to a straight across bar.

2. Not sure if 1/2 inch is necessary, but 1/4 inch might be too little. The engine can't really be bolted any closer. The pictures I have shown here are of the passenger's side. The driver's side head on the engine sits back further towards the output flange, and there is maybe 1/4 to 1/2 inch of clearance on that side between the support bar and the head.

3. For now yes.

4. Welding the bar into the side plates, as banksyinoz mentioned would make for a very difficult engine removal. By welding paltes onto the longitudinals, I am effectively increasing the strenght of them in that local region. The sheetmetal of the longitudinal at that point doesn't carry the majority of the load. The plate spreads it out.

5. The spacer will be welded to the engine bar, and actually it will make the structure stronger... Since it becomes an integral piece of the bar, it allows for half an inch of material for the bolts to sit in. I'm really not sure how heating up the bar would allow me to bend it. Bending isn't going to help unless its the entire thng and that would take a TON of heat. Also, what happens to the metal after I heat it like that???

Because I'm using 3 3/8 inch bolts going through solid metal (the inside of the tubing at the tops is going to be filled with a machined aluminum billet) I can really crank the bolts down and get a huge amount of strength on each side. I'm not too worried about the conenction point, its not as if this engine has a V8s worth of torque. But I will watch it and see how it goes.


Okay.. next..

The volume of the oil pan that I removed is 1.1 liter or about 67 cubic inches. So it loses 1 quart of oil basically. I can make that up by adding roughly a 4 by 4 by 4 section, but I will probably do it on either side in a 4 by 2 by 4...

-Tony

[jsteele22]

Hey Tony,

Great to see you (& fiid) making progress. Always love to see pictures ! That's the best shot I've seen of the oil pan situation. Man was that thing deep or what ! I'm wondering if anyone has tried just closing off the pan with a flat sheet and adding the volume externally; like maybe using a remote-mounted dual oil filter. The combination of going from 1 to 2 filters, using a larger that stock size filter, and the tubing itself should probably make up the 1.1 liters.

BTW, is that the dipstick tube coming out of the pan ? Also, is there an oil pickup tube from the engine that has to get shortened ?


Keep up the good work. I'll need to hear plenty of happy stories to keep me going on my project. I'm still waiting on the engine (seller had a roof collapse which caused some delays...) and I'm gonna be pretty busy until the end of the year, at least, with other stuff.

[TonyAKAVW]

QUOTE

Great to see you (& fiid) making progress. Always love to see pictures ! That's the best shot I've seen of the oil pan situation. Man was that thing deep or what ! I'm wondering if anyone has tried just closing off the pan with a flat sheet and adding the volume externally; like maybe using a remote-mounted dual oil filter. The combination of going from 1 to 2 filters, using a larger that stock size filter, and the tubing itself should probably make up the 1.1 liters.

Thats a really interesting idea... I had been thinking of just putting two fittings on the oil pan and having an extra can for the oil. It would be the least fabrication, but I'm thinking that the oil would sorta get trapped in there and not cirulate much.

I will have to look at the engine and see how I could fit two filters, etc.

QUOTE

BTW, is that the dipstick tube coming out of the pan ? Also, is there an oil pickup tube from the engine that has to get shortened ?

Yes, that is a dipstick tube coming out of the pan, and yes, the pickup tube has to be shortened a bit. Another neat trick that Outback motors does on their modified pickup tubes is to weld a little bar across the opening of the tube so that in the event of a minor oil pan denting incident, the pickup tube doesn't bottom out on the floor of the oil pan and suffocate the engine.

Good luck with your project. I has been just about 2 years now since I picked up this car and started working on it. But only in the last few months have I really built up some momentum.

-Tony

[cha914]

Looks good Tony. I thing for the oil pan I would just weld a flat piece on the pan and then add an accusump to the motor, you have plenty of space in the engine bay for it, and you could get away with a small 1 or 2 qt one easily.

Keep the pics coming!

Tony

[jsteele22]

QUOTE (TonyAKAVW @ Oct 31 2005, 04:01 PM)

Thats a really interesting idea...  I had been thinking of just putting two fittings on the oil pan and having an extra can for the oil.  It would be the least fabrication, but I'm thinking that the oil would sorta get trapped in there and not cirulate much.   I will have to look at the engine and see how I could fit two filters, etc.

I'm not sure what an accusump is, but this was the sort of thing I had in mind.

oil filter relocation kit

[banksyinoz]

had the same thought on the filter as there can be a cooler added as well in the line (my ae82 twincam (4age) toyota corolla has this setup) but the main reason was for ease of the custom exhaust manifolds

this would mean larger oil volume plus water and air cooling for the oil ,which cant hurt when raping occurs (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/driving.gif)

tony will you also support your engine bar forward to the original mounting point ? i just think it would help strengthen the mount and stop it flexing forward and back? just a thought (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/beer.gif)

[TonyAKAVW]

I had no idea what an accusump was either... so for those who don't here's the basic idea behind it...

An Accusump is basically an oil accumulator - a cylindrical canister with a large piston inside. On one side of the piston is a compressible gas (air) and on the other side is room for oil. When the oil system pressurizes, the pressure forces the piston back and the accumulator fills with oil. When a loss of oil pressure occurs, the air pressure pushes the piston and oil is forced out.

There are a couple uses for this. First is that with a manual valve, it can be used to pre-oil an engine. So when you stop running your car, you close the valve, and the cylinder is filled with pressurized oil. Just as you start up the car, you open the valve and the pressurized oil is forced into the engine and lubricates everything as oil pressure builds up normally.

The other main use is for conditions where the oil in the pan is sloshing around and the pump is sucking air. In this case, the pressurized oil feeds the system until pressure is regained and things go back to normal.


I do like the idea of having a relocated filter, or maybe even a pair of filters, but I'm wondering if this really fixes my problem. Bondo claims that the filters are after the oil pump. So if the pump starts suffocating, the extra volume post-pump doesn't seem as though it would help a whole lot. Is this the right way to think about it?

-Tony

[banksyinoz]

when i looked at my sump yesterday there seems to be room to go forward and back with the volume as in 500ml on the front and 500ml on the back to make up for the 1lt approx on the bottom that is removed.
from your pic of your engine bar i would guess that you also have similar room to add this, then the volume is in the sump as it originally was , some extra windage may be of help in this scenario though this maybe a little more tinwork but less cost

[d914]

from outback, thought it might help:

The easiest way to do this is to chop off 1 1/2" of the pan on the bottom. Since the original design of the motor places the oil a good distance below the crank, when using our chopped oil pan the motor still accepts 5 quarts of oil with no risk of oil aeration. If using the stock dipstick, the full mark is the low mark,

The best value for a shortened oil pan is Outback's "ready to mount" pan with heavy duty 3/16" this plated bottom. This is fabricated from at standard oil pan, chopped off and welded into place the new rugged bottom. This bottom is welded into place with slight tilt so the oil will drain nicely to the drain hole. The drain plug is in the rear of the pan (flywheel side) toward the bottom. Kit's for this area available too if you want to do the work of chopping and welding yourself

[bondo]

The whole point of a sump is to keep the air out of the oil system, and provide some reserve capacity. Adding filters won't do that. You could add 20 filters and you would require more oil, but it won't add the equivalent of sump capacity.

[TonyAKAVW]

GRRR. I HATE UPS. I don't use UPS much, but one time a package was completely lost, and now this time it got damaged. Question is, will this still work?

[dlo914]

i dont like UPS as well...shipping fees are like double that of USPS.
UPS=Universal Piece of SH*T (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif)

[bondo]

QUOTE (TonyAKAVW @ Nov 1 2005, 07:37 PM)

GRRR. I HATE UPS. I don't use UPS much, but one time a package was completely lost, and now this time it got damaged. Question is, will this still work?

It'll work great on a stock 914, but not a subie one. (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/wink.gif)

[CptTripps]

I wouldn't trust it as far as my dog could throw it...

...file a claim.

[jsteele22]

QUOTE (bondo @ Nov 1 2005, 05:13 PM)

The whole point of a sump is to keep the air out of the oil system, and provide some reserve capacity. Adding filters won't do that. You could add 20 filters and you would require more oil, but it won't add the equivalent of sump capacity.

Okay, good point. I was just thinking in terms of volume. From what I've seen here, this is my understanding of the situation :

1) dual remote mount oil filter
PRO: increases the volume of oil in the system, ads a tiny amount of oil cooling, makes filter changes easier.
CON : does not keep the oil pickup tube from sucking air.

2) Accusump.
PRO : looks cool, smooths out pressure fluctuations, can be used to pre-oil engine.
CON : $$$, does not keep air out of oil circuit.
YEAH BUT : If air does get sucked in, it will be compressed and forced through the system by the reserve of pressurized oil. Isn't this good enough ?

3) Fill the oil pan to a higher level
PRO : keeps the oil pickup tube end covered, so air doesn't get sucked in.
CON : top of oil is that much closer to crank

4) Fabricate a larger volume (expanded sideways) oil pan
PRO : you get more volume
CON : hard to do, and it looks like the risk of sucking air is exactly the same as case (1) and (2).



So I've still got some questions :

* How serious is it to momentarily draw air into the system, by going over a bump, say ? Once the pickup tube gets re-submerged, the oil will eventually push the air through, but in the meantime are we talking a negligible increase in wear or a destroyed engine ?

* How serious is it for the crankshaft to (occasionaly) splash into the oil ? Sure, you'll lose a little power, but are there any other bad consequences ? Someone mentioned foaming ? I was always told that overfilling an engine's oil, which is essentially what (3) amounts to, can do (unspecified) bad things. Urban Folklore ?

[MikeP]

Running the crank into the oil has the same effect as riding a bike into water. check to see if you can get a windage tray for your application as they work to "scrape" oil from the crank, prevent some of the "foaming"and provide a slight barrier to oil slosh, they bolt on to extended main studs, in a SBC they can give a rather significant HP gain as well.

[TonyAKAVW]

Here's the bottom of the engine looking inside. The crank is above the top of the oil pan considerably.

[TonyAKAVW]

And here it is with the windage tray in place. I suppose that blocks some of the oil splashing.

[Mueller]

Tony....drysump it....you got access to machine tools correct? (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/smile.gif)

[TonyAKAVW]

QUOTE

Tony....drysump it....you got access to machine tools correct?

You know that was my thought originally, but I have no idea how to make a dry sump system. And as far as machine tool access... kinda sorta, not really, maybe, depends. I suppose I should do some reading on dry sumps. Unfortunately I have several other items up my sleeves that I need to work on first... But a dry sump is definitely a cool idea...

See Mike, this is why you need to get rid of that air cooled engine and convert to Subaru. Think of all the wonderful parts you could come up with!!!

-Tony