Deserter GS to Suby EJ20 Turbo

[GS guy]

Onto the cooling system. This is one of the current projects on this car, and has been sidelined lately with work on the chassis and front suspension. After studying the OEM and several Vanagon conversion cooling layouts I'm pretty well set on going with this layout:



Instead of running coolant through the heater core full time, it's going to be plumbed to be a non-necessary curcuit for proper engine warm-up and thermostat operation. Only open when the heater is on. The OEM heater line coming off the top of the water manifold will be Teed into either the line from the water resevior, or the return line from the heater core. Either one plumbs back in as a bypass of the thermostat, and either should work to circulate enough coolant for proper thermostat operation - or at least I'm "pretty sure" it'll work. Dont know 'till you try!

Radiator will be up front, it's an Afco "Scirocco" style I picked up a Speedway motors scratch and dent sale - although it looked to be in near perfect condition. I pressure checked it for leaks first thing and it checked out good. Onto the modificaitons.

First of all, the standard drivers side outlets won't work with my frame design - they pointed straight into a frame member. Off they came and plugs fabricated to be welded in and cap them off. The elbows shown will be sectioned into 90 degree pieces and routed out the side of the radiator (near the original outlets) pointing rearward. The top one I'm not 100% sure just yet - it needs to loop 180 degrees back across to the passenger side. Not sure if this will need to be up top, or drop down nearer the bottom of the chassis before crossing sides. I need to do some more mock-up before deciding on final position of both new outlets. I also fabbed up a 3/8" pipe fitting to weld into the passenger side for the cooling fan sensor.





I think I've identified a "0" pressure radiator cap - one that just seals the opening vs. being pressure rated to open for an overflow (Stant 10232 or 11232). Never knew they made such a thing until recently. If that works I'll install a bleeder fitting in the overflow outlet in the neck to help bleed out air during inital fill-up. Be a lot easier than cutting off and welding up the filler neck opening, plus adding a bleeder back in! My main cooling system fill and overflow is back by the engine.



My cooling lines will be sized using the Renegade Hybrids school of though for their 914-V8 conversion (which they also use for their 914-Subaru conversions). Engine to radiator will be 1" size - to promote a little more pressure/better heat transfer and speed up the flow of hot water to the radiator. The return to engine is 1.25". I've found standard radiator hoses to convert to these sizes from the Subaru stock 1.5" and get the elbows I needed. Running aluminum cooling tubes front to back on either side of the chassis, down near the bottom. Looking for a "flat bottom" chassis with nothing hanging down underneath when I'm done.







More work to do to get all this fitted up under the front end, and as mentioned that's been sidelined by the other front end suspension work currently going on. I'm leaning towards just running a Spal fan with brackets locating it in the middle of the radiator, puller fashion (no shroud). Space is very tight in the front of this car with little front overhang, I need to conserve space wherever I can. Haven't pulled the trigger on the fan just yet, looks like it'll be in the June budget.

[roachdogg28]

Hey gs guy! sweet build man! i look forward to every post. I was wondering if you made your nice adjustable sway bar from scratch, as i have a similar idea roaming my brain 'cept for my beetle.

[GS guy]

Hey Roach,
The rear sway bar was cobbled together from parts from HRP World (Speedway sway bars and arms: http://www.hrpworld.com/index.cfm?tpc=S ... n=category), energy suspension mounts (Summit Racing), and down links made up of rod ends and swaged aluminum radius rods from Speedway Motors. I'm helping to support a LOT of different vendors with this car!

[roachdogg28]

Very cool, thanks for the info.

[GS guy]

So not too much progress lately, life and day-job taking priority for a spell.
I did decide how I'm going to finish out part my cooling system based on the diagram above - in particular the return hose from the heater core and the engine coolant crossover manifold heater outlet (line with the ?). Only one inlet at the WP for both of these to return to and since my heater core will recieve water supply directly from the radiator line, I won't need to feed it from the water manifold; though the water manifold "heater" outlet still needs to return to the water pump.

Decided to pick up one of these Y-blocks to merge the coolant flows together:


One inlet on the Y block with be constant flow from the coolant manifold, the other will be coming from the heater core which will be intermittent flow - only flowing when cockpit heat is desired. These will both feed back into the 5/8" bypass port at the water pump from the outlet of the Y, satisfying the need of constant by-pass flow for proper thermostat operation.

This is a bit different than the more "standard" 4-way heater valve (allowing full flow all the time - heater on or off) or even just running through the heater core full time (no valve). It does, however, better match the flow design and operation of the aftermarket heater kits, like those from Vintage Air and allow a little less plumbing with the radiator line "supply" Tee up near the heater core. I saw Tom and Kathleen's Manxter at Carlisle with the Vintage Air heater system installed and it's very compact and slick! Very clean install on their buggy. I'll be able to fit both cockpit heat and windshield de-mister with dash mounted controls with this system.

[surfbeetle]

Do you have more info on the Vintage Air heater system? Is it a combo ac/heater system? Contact info?
thanks

[ambrynmc]

Do you have more info on the Vintage Air heater system? Is it a combo ac/heater system? Contact info?
thanks

http://www.vintageair.com

[surfbeetle]

Thank you. They definitely have a lot of different options on their webpage. At one point, I had contacted a vw ac place here in San Diego and he guestimated about $2500.00 to do ac on my suby powered bug. That was sight unseen so it could be more or it could be less. Also I had found a place that sells the under dash part for the vw but when contacted, they no longer sold that part. I figure with the vintage air stuff, a subaru compressor it wouldn't be too hard to come up with a kit. I just wish I could find the under dash piece for the bug, not just a generic one.

[56SemaRag]

These guys have some different models as well. Fortunately they are just down the street from me

Old Air

[GS guy]

ICE has had a specific Beetle AC kit you decades. Their website doesn't have too much info, you might try contacting them:
http://www.iceac.com/index-1Beetle.html

Found another Beetle specific AC system supplier with some pictures:
http://www.gilmore-enterprises.net/Air/Beetle.htm

For a Suby swap, for sure you'd want to keep the Subaru compressor on the engine, then try adapting the rest of the Beetle system - either aftermarket, or an OEM AC system. I don't know much about how AC systems are designed and parts sized to each other, so matching the parts to the capacity of the Subaru compressor would be key I'd imagine.

Wonder if the above companies might be interested in developing a variant of their VW kit specifically for Subaru swaps?

[GS guy]

Well, I'd hope to report some updates on the cooling system by now! Since last post I've been sidelined by interior work on the chassis, boring stuff like seat and seatbelt mounting, fitting the e-brake handle, and some front firewall work and beginning to tie in the steering rack with the front end. Not the topics of this post!

I was finally getting around to working back on the front end of the car, specifically fitting the radiator and whatever mods were required for this effort. I ordered a 12" Spal fan that seemed like it would fit the radiator about perfectly, with a healthy 1360cfm rating. I'm going to try it without a shroud as space in the front of the car is "very" tight! Thinking fitting some kind of rubber bulb gasket between fan and radiator should help concentrate the available flow to do enough cooling work. Unfortunately - the fan that was sent was a 16" model, a bit too big! I did get the 195* thermostatic switch and relay kit (to match the OEM 180* theromstat), so that part came in right. The correct size fan is on the way, but will have to wait now for fitting it up with some custom brackets.
I did decide what to do about the radiator fill cap though - since my regualr fill will be back in the engine bay at my Canton fill tank (and 16lb cap). The radiator will be getting a Pro-Werks cap installed - a non-presure style cap that will simply seal the opening. I'll use the overflow fitting for bleeding the radiator, and as a possible purge connection if I'm having any trouble getting the system bled out. Big PITA removing the original radiator cap machining on the neck though! I wouldn't want to do that again, but it did clean up nice and should work perfect for fitting the cap and bung it screws into.

My lower front frame rails (not yet installed) will support the lower radiator mounts, and serve multipe duties of also providing tow points and acting as a lower support for the front valance/air dam. Most of that part is still to be mocked up.

Plenty to work to do in the upcoming month!

Jeff

[56SemaRag]

Looks good brother , thanks for the update!

[GS guy]

Fan finally came in - the right one this time! Excellent customer service BTW from The Fan Man.



So I'm eyeballing just exactly how I'm going to mount the fan (scratching head....). My original plan was to build simple brackets coming off the bosses on either side of the radiator, extending over to the fan mounting points. The bosses sit right at 1-1/8" out from the core. The fan is made to surface mount onto something flat (like a sheet metal shroud). Unfortunately, it really doesn't have a good means on this model to mount from the rear of the fan. The width of the fan is 12.5" (across the flats), while the height of the radiator is about 12.25". Definitely close enough, but the top cover plate on the radiator sits about 3/16" out from the core (holding the fan off the core), there is no corresponding bottom cover piece, just the core. Also the fan doesn't really have a good surface to attach some kind of seal - to seal the fan to the radiator and prevent pulling air in from the sides instead of 100% through the radaitor.

The more I though about this, the less I like trying to fit some kind of pliable seal between fan perimeter and radiator. The radiator core will likely abrade the seal over time (or maybe even damage the core?), plus it will block some surface area of the radiator. Add the difficulty of figuring out a way to mount the fan from the back-side and this approach is not looking too promising.

I'm back on figuring out some kind of shroud, mostly to make it a whole lot easier to mount the fan, but should help with cooling efficiency when the fan is running. It just needs to be short, so working on something that will come out close to flush with the mounting bosses, about an inch deep off the core. Then some simple flat brackets to connect shroud to radiator bosses. I think it's a plan!

Close up on the new fill cap. The standard OD on the cap bung fit the neck opening pretty well (despite being undersize from what it was advertised to be), just needed a little shim "ring" between the two to snug it up. It'll get welded on when I have the rest of the mods done.



Jeff

[RonW]

I agree, the shoud sounds the best and will then make it so its pulling air from all the core not just whats directly under the fan. the rad i to from ron davis does that very same approach, seem to work well.

[supaninja]

That thing is damn badass!