The AUSubaru.com.au Forums

Hopefully the wait is nearly over and the poor 311 K old engine can be retired , under the knife next Wednesday .

I don't think that RX is going to know itself with some compression pressure in its cylinders .

Just to rehash the rebuilt 82T was out of an Aust spec Spider Turbo AWD Vortex so about the best basis we got here .
Aside from the usual new rings/bearings/water pump/gaskets and seals this one got ceramic coated piston crowns and a smidge higher CR ~ 8:1 .
The heads were ported and have NA MPFI cams in them . The flywheel was lightened twice , first turned then milled because these things are really heavy in std form . New clutch of course .
Spider manifold is already on the existing engine with the modded plenum and early L Series TB and TPS - only 3 plug ECU arachnid L Series in existence ?

I don't know if time will be available to fabricate a proper exhaust header but if there is that will be done too . If not I have Vortex headers which are rumored to have a slightly larger bore up pipe section - not too sure .

Keen to see the result of lots of time effort and money .

Cheers A .

Good too see things are moving along.

Are you gonna do a dyno run? i really wanna see how much difference the intake and compression made.

don't think I had any grey hair when all this started , how long has this been Adrian?

discopotato03 wrote:Keen to see the result of lots of time effort and money.

Yeah, me too.

Run a few good before/after tests I rekon. Time yourself from 0 to 100, maybe quartermile if you can, there are little devices you can get that work this out from the G forces if you can't get to a track or a remote stretch of road to do it.
Will you be hopping onto a dyno too?

Chuckles , it's not a racer guys it's a daily driver ...

I don't know if it'll see Stu's dyno , not sure if it's an AWD one .
Anyway it will need to be run in and have the usual short oil and filter changes to bed everything in and get any crunchy bits out .
This will be one of my first engines to be run in on an oil with a low friction modifier additive pack - cheap old GTX mineral oil for the first 500 k's .
I don't really have a convenient mountain pass so I'll load up the ballast , lots of water containers so that it has to work a bit and get the compression pressure behind it's rings .

Luckily I've been told about a firm that's going to stock Mobil Racing 4T 15W15 synthetic oil , 4 stroke bike oil , and I'll run it later on that .
Out of a 44 means not paying for packaging .

How long this build ? Must be 18 months or more surely and longer than I thought the existing engine would last . Provided you can keep the coolant and oil where it needs to be these little dinosaurs keep plugging along .
The cam belt and water hose dramas keep you on your toes with these older engines but the real win is the learning process .

I don't think I'm going to go the last step , aftermarket computer , with this car so I have to stay within the boundaries of what I can fool the std computer and AFM into believing . I just want the thing to be torquey and if I can get that in the mid range it should be a good thing in a light car .
The burning question is going to be can I find electrically compatible slightly larger injectors and tickle up the vane type AFM .
Probably going to need the Vac advance/pressure retard diaphragm made 100% as well .

Just want good enough , cheers A .

Due to unforeseen circumstances I won't be there for the engine swap and no don't ask why .
It was dropped off this morning with all the necessary manifold gaskets/rad hoses/spare Vortex header and any details needed about certain alterations to half a dozen trivial things - AC wiring half gone etc .

The fabbed header is going to have to wait because the spud spec Garrett turbo didn't materialise in time so can't see the sense it doing that part in stages . If nothing else we'll get to find out how a fresh EA82T likes having fractionally warmer cams and slightly better breathing heads plus a tad higher compression ratio . Oh and a reasonable amount out of the flywheel as well .

Will give them a bell and with luck it'll be up and running tomorrow afternoon .

For people who've done this with an RX what time frame is involved to R and R engines and swap all the ancillaries (manifolds/water/oil lines etc) over ? Don't forget we are talking about a very experienced mechanic but one that wouldn't have done one of these cars for a long long time .
This should be relatively easy compared to transverse turbo AWD cars like the Laser he rallied - must be 15 years ago . Gotta like an in line drive train .

Will see what tomorrow brings , cheers Adrian .

Good to see its moving along.

If you find your factory up pipe is a restriction, and with less than 1-1/2 ID, i dare say it is.

Do what i did and make a new up pipe, it only took me an afternoon to make this one

I just cut the T flange at the bottom, and grafted it to a piece of 2" pipe, that was bent where needed, and i used a TD04 flange, but there is no reason my you cant just bore the hole in your VF4 flange to take your new pipe size.

Good luck with the swap

The std header is a weird thing but on closer inspection I think Subaru did try - a little bit ...
The farthest head flange necks down to ~ 32 33mm where the turbo "stub" side is about 10 mm larger internally .
People I know think it was done this way to speed up the gas flow through the smaller side and slow it down on the shorter larger side .

I really think the go is to make a longer turbo side engine pipe TWE style and have the same pipe diameters - maybe 1.75" OD .

BTW the old heart will stay "on location" and be used as a jig to dummy up the new header . It'll be losing any newish bits like the belt kit and maybe sold off then .

Cheers A .

you ask for an indcatin of time for the swap. It is fiddly ensuring all threads are good, surfaces clean, things are fine. I did all this recently but took no time clock along and di it in dribs and drabs so it wasn't as painful. Lturbo paid someone to do just this a while back with a Subie shop and I think the bill was about $900 - ten hours? Which would be a fair estimate of the time I spent in total doing the manifolds swaps, turbo lines, belts and R7R of engine.

Almost finished , needs the radiator and fans back in then oil coolant and start up . I understand lining up the gearboxes input shaft took a while .

More tomorrow , cheers A .

that is where it comes in real handy if you butcher a gearbox for its input shaft, or can buy a line up tool to suit for about ten bucks. Something else I do here is raise the body on stands, undo the crossmember to chassis nuts to the point the nuts are at the end but not off the bolts. This gives more free room to line up the box without the engine mount studs catching on the crossmember, once box and engine lined up and flush just lower the mount studs to crossmember and then raise crossmember to chassis and do up chasis member nuts


WOO HOO --- I can hear you cheerin'

Not exactly cheering but I got to see Ellie running with its new motor late this afternoon . Won't be a car again until Monday morning but seeing and hearing is believing .

We created our own mayhem because the timing marks were machined off the flywheel and the mechanic had a couple of goes at getting the cam timing right .
Lucky we have the Vortex pointer on the front of the engine and a suitably marked L harmonic balancer pulley .

At the 11th hour the main water pipe out of the top of the pump leaked due to a rust pin hole and had to be changed . They say that pipe is almost impossible to get out so lots more time lost .

Also spider manifold had to be gutted again in three levels which takes time .... and money ... . Lucky I bought spare gaskets for it .

I probably should have called this thing the bionic woman because the "we can rebuilt her better faster stronger" has possibly taken a similar budget .

I don't know , don't want to know , just want it back to get some use out of it .

More on Monday , cheers A .

discopotato03 wrote: I probably should have called this thing the bionic woman because the "we can rebuilt her better faster stronger" has possibly taken a similar budget .

I don't know , don't want to know , just want it back to get some use out of it .

More on Monday , cheers A .

It is like that isn't? And you will likely find three year old Ford Fiestas hard to catch up with

With a std header and air pump possibly yes , but if it's wet and greasy ...

I'm going to have a serious look at that central steel pipe , my car doesn't use TB water heating and it might be a better bet to link a piece of real good quality rubber hose in and replace the bloody thing every few years .

Are we sure FHI didn't stand for Flood Hydroponics Industries ...

Be very interesting to see how the breathing improvements work on these engines , the goal was always to get higher volumetric efficiency and these engines would not be famously high looking inside them .

I'll have to try and find out which header went on in the end because there was a choice of three , I'd really like to see the original RX one to compare it to either of the supplied Vortex ones . If there was another few percent gain I hope I got it . Actually a friend of mine , another mechanic , always says that its the picking up of a few percent here and a few there in 6 or 7 places that makes a significant difference . The specs show the best of the EA82T's having from memory ~ 135 Hp and everything we've done is a little better again than those , the only thing we haven't equalled or bettered is that slightly larger turbine housing on the turbo which is now the greatest system restriction . The little Garrett BB turbo which I had the better turbine fitted to will be light years ahead of any IHI bush bearing unit of equal size .

Provided I can keep the fuel up to this thing initially anyway I'd put my money on Ellie over a Festiva , till it ran out of gearing which is close and short for an RX Turbo .
With its much lightened flywheel it should pick up revs faster than std and also drop revs faster between gears which makes the syncromeshs life a lot easier , important in these old fragile dinosaur boxes .

One more day and I should have some answers , cheers A .

i loved the difference between using lightened flywheel and stock. i added flywhel and underdrive pulleys on my wrx and it was a big change. however, i sometimes stall it at lights as it wont idle away from a stop very well, mind you the brass button clutch doesnt help if you want to slip the clutch a bit.

enjoy

Three (3) exhaust headers for these now? I guess that as well as the diameter below the turbo another measure would be volume, so a water fill and measure might be on the cards.

I did say Fiesta, not Festiva. [Almost as confusing as the new Holden Cruze and the old Holden Cruze ??] Mind you when mine was auto 3 speed and had the weak valve spring I did have a run with a mate in his 92? Festiva (Mazda 121 boxy) he was 5 speed 1300cc positive pressure Landi Renzo LPG , mine Impco LPG. He revved the daylights out of it, I couldn't due to weak valve spring and it took 'til 100kph before I could do him !!

Chuckles , fair enough . I don't pay that much attention to these later econo cars unless they have a bit of flavor about them - as in if some component off them is useful to me . I'm the ultimate parts tart .

Actually my Skyline had a lightened flywheel and one of Jim Berry's (Race Clutch QLD) organic sets fitted to it last week . Normally R33 GTS25T's have a 240mm clutch but Jim found ways of fitting the 250mm ones which is same diameter as Z32 300ZX TT and R33 GTR . Both are heavier and make more power than my Skyline so all's good . The pressure plate assembly is a rejigged something else that fits the RB25's flywheel and has more clamp (drive clamp) loading . On the pedal its just like std which suits me . The plate itself is an OEM Valeo 300ZX TT one that's had the wave springs reset . Jim tests each and every clutch kit he builds and mine via the numbers equates to good enough for 277 Kw .
This clutch had a very minor judder at sub 1000 revs which I put down to it wearing in and the lightened flywheel . It doesn't take kindly to idling around in 1st on level ground now - needs tune work as well .

I hate sintered bronze button clutches in street cars , with today's technology (built by the right people) you can buy organic full face clutches that are far better than anything ANY production Subaru gearbox can stand up to .
In a race app the buttons work better because they can be made of materials that hack the heat and abuse better than organic linings can .
The current trend is that the carbonic or carbon composite buttons are best because they are light and can stand high temps better than sintered bronze or iron . They are still a bit grabby so PITA road clutch if not doing race/club race/ or mutter drag race which Rexes with their - limited - transmissions don't like . Unless your are going to do repeated hard launches or have tranny killing torque all the grief with button clutches is suffered for nothing in even spirited street driving .

Ellie just has a relatively std clutch with a bit higher clamp load and reset pivot points to make the pedal effort easy . Lightweight car with not stump pulling torque output .

Will be making the call soon and hopefully on the way to bring it home .

A .

Got it home finally .

The driving impression is good though subtle initially . Having been here before I was prepared for the doesn't feel much different thing and that was almost the first one .

The immediate difference was that the throttle response is better which makes the gearbox feel better on up and down shifts . It's idling a tad slow but that's easy to adjust .
It is torquier at low revs and feels like a different car at part throttle 90-100 km/h .
There must be some engine control gremlin in the system and I suspect the TPS is not set properly or worn out .

Something I REALLY need to know is what the native spark plugs are for an 86 build RX turbo , the mechanic fitted the same type of plugs that the Vortex engine had and I suspect that being 87 build and the later MAF 4 plug system the plugs may be different .
I think I was using NGK BCPR6ESII plugs in the old engine , need someone with a genuine 85/86 workshop manual to confirm what the early 3 plug ECU EA82T engines use in an NGK . If the ones in it are wrong the right ones should help out a bit .

The mechanic ended up fitting the central water pipe from the Vortex engine because the old RX one was leaking and paper thin . The drama with changing it was its bolt brace and the small tube that goes to the throttle body . Once the brace is cut off the pipe can be removed and refitted easily . One to remember .

So to run this engine in and try to sort the electricals . We may have to play with the idle air bypass on the AFM because it was richened up a tad to nurse the worn engine when I bought this car . Exhaust smells very faintly rich at idle .

I have asked my mechanic/fabricator about making a techworks header and he said yes it should work better but hard to judge by how much . Peoples experiences with this style of header has been good and I think if there is a stumbling block it would be the pipe size and turbo suitability . From previously the NS header necks down to 33mm where the short side is 43mm . Based on this more evenly fabbed primary pipes in 1 5/8 or 1 3/4 may do the trick with either 1 3/8 or 1 7/8 up pipe . I can't see the point in it being any larger than the turbine housing inlet which in my case will be T25/28 sized .

More later , cheers A .

Good to see its going.

As for spark plugs, when i looked up what mine needed, they were NGK BP6RES11 (i think)
If i remember correctly, that means heat range 6, internal resistor, 1.1mm gap