Tony's Subaru Conversion Thread Options

[Dr. Roger]

it's one thing if a V8 car drags a rubber cooling hose on a speed bump but quite another thing if that rear trans linkage shoves the in/out shaft into the tranny. IMHO. =-)

i just dont want to see you on the side of the road someday with a jacked-up tranny.

i like that the shifter is high. coooool.

[JPB]

Nice engineering Tony!!! I like to over engineer stuff and dosen't seem to heavy to me. Good job!

:beer1:You make me look lazy.

[TonyAKAVW]

I redid the linkage setup for the side-side movement today and it looks much better, doesn't hang down as far. The other thing is that this shifter stuff sits roughly between the two wheels. Its highly unlikely that a speed bump would affect this stuff.

In other news I drove the car for the first time today!!!!! First drive was with no mufflers and was insanely loud. So I decided to clamp the mufflers on temporarily and that helped a lot. Still a lot of leaking exhaust, so its rather loud.

So initial impressions after driving.

1. LOUD - exhaust will fix this

2. Shifter is backwards! 1st is Rev. 2nd is 3rd, 4th is 5th. The pivot point for the side-side movement is on the wrong side. This is a simple fix, just relocate the bearing and flip over the linkage.

3. Side-side movement is touchy. The range of motion on the shifter is small. I think I need to lengthen or shorten a lever arm somewhere.

4. Getting into 1st is hard. I'm not sure if this is a function of the shifter mechanism or the transmission. At this point its hard to tell. The transmission has been sitting for some time and I don't know its condition other than what I was told (that it was in really good shape). There was no grinding from bad synchros etc., but this is definitely something to investigate.

5. The battery was dead. Also I'm not sure if the alternator is charging. The battery voltage doesn't go up to 13.8 when running, but that could be because the optima is sucking down amps, loading the alternator.

6. Even without an O2 sensor, and my sensor simulator box out of commision (meaning that the engine is in limp mode) the motor pulls hard. I never got to more than 1/3 or maybe 1/2 due to noise concerns. I'm excited to see how this thing will run with everything hooked up properly.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to get my muffler bracket made. First though I want to work on the shifter and see if I can get it shifting better. I don't want to hand over the car to the muffler shop without it shifting well. If all goes well I will take it in to the shop Monday or Tuesday.

-Tony

[phantom914]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap56.gif)

[TonyAKAVW]

i like that the shifter is high. coooool.

It is cool! I hadn't thought about the shifter position in a long time ( I did intentionally put it high) and when I drove it today I realized that having the shifter up higher is really nice. For me at least its a much better position than the stock location. I'm not so sure I'm thrilled with the MR2 shifter mechanism, but it will do for now. The majority of the slop now seems to be inside the transmission.

-Tony

[fat73]

I would suggest smaller quick-grips on the transmission end, otherwise ground clearance may be a problem.


Also, looking at the first picture, I think the RF amp gain may be a little low for this application. Maybe you can find out which amp is included in the Renegade kit and use that one. No sense reinventing the wheel.


Otherwise, good job!


Andrew

RF Amp gain? I have the complete Renegade kit and can't say I recognize that one..

Ed

Agreed, there is no Amp gain with the Renegade kit...


(IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused24.gif)

In the first pic, he's using an RF amplifier under the quick clamp, as a spacer. It was a nerd joke. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

No kiddin (IMG:style_emoticons/default/yawn.gif) But if they had one I would have bought it by now.

[TonyAKAVW]

Haven't updated this in a while and I've gotten a lot done.

In summary, I drove the car to work last week and it had several issues. The shifter fell apart, the engine overheated, and it went into limp-home mode. Also the tachometer was showing the wrong numbers, and the alternator wasn't charging.

The cooling problem was fixed by replacing my temp sensor splice with a piece of metal pipe instead of plastic that melted out of shape during the overheat event, as well as bleeding air out of the cooling circuit. I tested the cooling system and it cycles properly now.

I haven't had enough time behind the wheel to see how well it cools, but in anticipation of it not cooling enough I have begun modifying the engine bay lid for a pair of fans to bring in cool air from above.

I cut the two wires on the tachometer for the 4-cylinder engine operation, but it seems to be reading about twice as many RPMs as it should. I'm wondering if I should configure it for a 6 cyl engine. Probalby will check NASIOC or Autometer's web site for this.

The shifter has been fixed in two ways. First, the nylon plastic piece that raises or lowers the shifter bar into/out of the transmission has been lengthened to keep it from falling out. The bolts that hold the shifter arm to the shift rod came loose and I think I need to replace them with cap head scerws and loctite them in place.

The alternator is now charging properly. I ended up replacing the alternator, but when the new one didn't work, I knew I had wired up something wrong. The easy fix was to wire the remaining wire to the generator light on the combination meter.

The remaining biggest isue is the limp-home mode that its stuck in. It refuses to go above somewhere around 4000 rpms. After disconnecting the battery for a while it seems to reset the ECU and I can drive a short while until it comes back. Getting this stuff fixed is one of my priorities this week. Those last 2700 or so RPMs give a LOT of power.

I made a bunch of noise today by cutting holes in the rear bulkhead and the rear trunk for the exhaust S-bends. These S-bends will take exhaust from the mufflers to exhaust tips on either side of the bumper. After I get everything working I'll have to weld u the rear trunk to cover the exposed exhaust pipes.

Its looking like getting to the German Autofest with this car is goign to be a close call. I was hoping that this weekend I would fabricate the diffuser and really get the cooling system workign well enough for the toughest part of the trip, the ascent of the Sepulveda Pass, and back up on the back side.

And now, some pictures.

-Tony

[TonyAKAVW]

...

[WRX914]

Here is how I took care of my limp mode problem.

You need to take the car to someplace that can clear the RAM. If you have gone down to AutoZone and bought a ODBII scanner/reader you can only clear the cashe but not the RAM. You need to clear the "hard codes"...

I think you can also disconnect the ECU From the battery for a couple of hours as well...

[Dr Evil]

I have heard that hard codes clear when you do what WRX said, AND short the power leads together to kill any internal power reservoir. This negates the hours of wait.

[jsteele22]

Hey Tony,

I'm curious about the exhaust. I know you're got the outback headers, and the pic shows the tube going over the axle (nice) and through a muffler. I was suprised that you needed to cut the trunk - was this so you could use stock bends ? I haven't poked my head "down there" for a while, but I thought that there would be room where the stock muffler is located to run to tailpipes w/ no cutting. When you get time to snap more pics, I'll be eager to see 'em.

p.s. Glad to hear that the cooling bugs are working themselves out.

[TonyAKAVW]

I had to cut the trunk just at the very back because I am having the exhaust exit through the bumper, as in this modified picture...

I'm sure it will look better in real life..

-Tony

[Aaron Cox]

nooooooooo not thru a chrome early bumper!!!

[TonyAKAVW]

Nonono, the chrome early bumper is no longer in my posession. Thomas has it now. I'm going with fiberglass Getty bumpers. Gotta pick those up tomorrow or thursday.

-Tony

[Howard]

Its looking like getting to the German Autofest with this car is goign to be a close call. I was hoping that this weekend I would fabricate the diffuser and really get the cooling system workign well enough for the toughest part of the trip, the ascent of the Sepulveda Pass, and back up on the back side.
-Tony

Looking good, Tony. Miss the Sepulveda pass (and steeper Camarillo grade) by just coming up PCH. Prettier ride, too.

[TonyAKAVW]

Wednesday night, 3 more days until German Autofest. Hard to say if its going to be done in time.

I hooked up the two extra fans tonight and faked out almost all the rest of the sensors. I discovered that the vehicle speed sensor is supposed to send back a 0-5 volt signal, not 0-12. So I will probably just put a potentiometer across the input to the ECU and scale it down to 5 volts from 12. Also I need to figure out how to trick the heater sensor signal for the rear O2.

The results of tonight's test drive are that it still goes into limp home mode, and since I don't have my code scanner I can't yet tell why.

Another result is that with 4 fans going, the car vibrates a lot! Not sure that's going to be a long term solution, as its kind of annoying.

And the last result which I'm not thrilled about is that the cooling achieved by 4 fans (two on the radiator, two forcing cool air into the engine bay) doesn't seem sufficient. I drove around for probalby 15 minutes or so and got it up to temperature. It never went over 210, but being that it was 10:30 at night and probably 70 degrees out I would have hoped for better, considering that I was just going from stoplight to stoplight, and not really stomping on it that hard.

In these conditions it did reasonably well, but I highly suspect that its far from enough for any kind of spirite daytime driving. Unfortunately I won't get to really test it during the day until Saturday. Saturday I will need to come up with whatever aerodynamic aides I can. Fabricating an underbody diffusor even out of sheet aluminum on one day is going to be a huge challenge. The easier thing to try might be a small spoiler behind the targa bar's trailing edge, shooting air down into the engine bay.

This is a challenging and interesting part of this project really and unfortunately its probalby going to be too late for making it to the German Autofest. But there have been miracles in the past.

Tomorrow I get my OBDII reader back and should be able to see what is causing my troubles.

-Tony

[bondo]

The technical name for the limp home mode is "Limp to GAF mode". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Aaron Cox]

Tony....

"THE EGGS ARE IN THE BASKET, AND ARE READY FOR DELIVERY"

[WRX914]

Alright, don't worry too much. Sounds like you are going through all the same crap as I did. You are at the end of the forrest, all you have to do is step out of it (so to speak). I know it is frustrating... but aside from your cooling issues, I think it is something small like a MAP or MAF sensor that is screwed up or something small like that. Your ECU will tell you all of your issues. If you simply can not get it figured out, do what I did and call Crawford and be driving it home in a week.

Bust ass on this Tony! Hopefully your cooling issues are all ironed out soon.

Keith

[andys]

Tony,

Just a couple of thoughts with respect to your cooling issue. If indeed the radiator is not getting a sufficient flow of air through its' core, I would suggest you focus on the negative air pressure side of it. Generally, it is more effective to create a negative pressure side. Trying to force air through by means of an intake system is usually unsuccessful without adequate exit side negative pressure. I suspect that you'll need to do some experiments in your case.

Easiest way I found, was to get yourself some cardboard boxes, duct tape, a straight edge, and a razor knife. Start mocking up some spoilers/ducts (tape the h*ll out of it!), whatever it takes, and do a test. Tape it in place nice and solid employing gussetts, etc. It's easy with cardboard. It doesn't have to last long or be pretty. Once you establish what works, re-create it in a permanent fashion. I've used this method many times at the track for both cooling system ducting, as well as some aero dynamic device testing. It's quick and easy.

Good luck; I'd like to see your car at the GAF if possible. I'll likely be there on Sunday.

Andys