Yet another subaru perversion (dohc ej25 67 bug)

[dirtygerman]

Hello everyone,

I tried to start a thread about this on the samba. I went over like a loud fart in church. But after reading through the threads here, I feel right at home. I'm pretty much going to copy my original post from there.

I bought the car in 2008, it was complete and driving and looked fairly nice with a fresh maaco paint job and all. But there was rust lurking in the depths and once I started poking and prodding, all hell broke loose. What I discovered: the entire body (i mean every panel) was covered in a 1/4" or more of bondo. The front end had been hit at some time and it looked like a different front clip was bubblegummed on. All of the lower quarters had been replaced due to rust, BUT, the PO apparently did not have a grinder because he bondo'd over all of the welds. I mean big heaping welds with bits of wire still hanging on here and there.

So I stripped the car, pulled the body off the pan. The pan was in decent shape as the floor pans had been replaced as well but they must have been done by somebody else because they were ok. So I cut out all of the PO's patch panels and welded in my own. I cut off the front clip abortion and welded that in. I have pictures of all of this stuff but I'm not going to post them now because I want to fast track to present day.

Once the body was mostly taken care of I turned to the motor. Wanted to go watercooled so I did a Mazda rotary swap. I tried for a year to get this swap going and had set back after set back with it. I got the car running and drove it under its own power a few times but then was dismayed to learn that I had spun a bearing. I rebuild the rotary and replaced the necessary parts. Just to spin a bearing again. The motor must have had a bad oil pump or something or a blockage. I still don't know what caused it.

At this point I had no motor for the car and a little to nothing budget to spend. I was tossing around the idea of selling it because I was just sick of it and wanted it out of my life.

A few months ago I started looking into subaru swaps. I have to give all credit to a thread on shoptalkforums which is a great write-up on putting an ej22 into a baja. I also have to give major credit to Joel at aussieveedubbers. Joel's thread on his subaru swap is amazing and inspired me to try it myself. The search began, I was looking at complete motor swaps, donor cars, and engines by themselves. I found a motor on craigslist. I was a 98 ej25 dohc with a bad head gasket.

About the motor: I know most people don't want to go with the dohc motors because of all of the cutting required. I had already removed a good amount of sheetmetal from the car already with the rotary swap so I figured whats a little more? That gen of ej25 was plagued with head gasket problems, I knew that so I knew a rebuild was in order. I pulled the heads off of the motor and put them on my homemade decking device. It is just a thick piece of glass that is true and I stick da sanding pads to it. Then move the head across the sand paper and check your progress. I was amazed at how far out both of these heads were. These pics are just before finishing the deck job.

[dirtygerman]

[dirtygerman]

This was the last low spot to come out, or I guess you might say it was the highest spot. But this is where the HG blew for sure. So just installing new gaskets on this motor without having them decked would have likely resulted in more HG failures. Once both heads were decked I thought I would check the case halves. They were out too. So I decked them as well. The owner of the motor told me he didn't overheat it but I have have a hard time believing that after seeing this. Luckily the cylinder walls and pistons seem to be in great condition and the crank turns over easily by hand. So with decked surfaces I installed a new Cometic HG and all new seals

[dirtygerman]

Then test fit the motor in the car

[dirtygerman]

Swap details: I have the wiring harness 90 percent finished. Luckily for me my dad has a 97 legacy with the same ej 25 dohc. His Legacy did not hold up to well to the salty PA roads and had some serious subframe rot. I talked him into letting me take the wiring harness out of it and any other necessary bits and pieces. The motor is still in it so I already have a spare to build or not either way its nice to have. I pretty much just need to tidy up the harness, its hard to make it look neat let alone get everything hooked up right. The fuel lines and throttle cable are done, cross them off the list. Just have to wire the fuel pump. A friend of mine drives an STI and had an extra header for my motor.

Its your typical cheap ebay stainless header that did not fit that well so I had to heat it up and twist it and tweak it a bit. Fits good now. I still have to build the exhaust though. I have new stainless 2.5" straights and bends to use and two stainless mufflers. Still undecided on whether or not to use just one or both. I don't mind it being loud but I don't want to be heard three miles away either. Also fitting to mufflers in there is not going to be fun.

One issue I have is the valve cover clearance against the fenders and deck lid. I made a new solid trans mount to raise the trans about 1.5". This also provided much needed ground clearance for the oil pan and exhaust manifold. But it put the valve covers right in the way of the deck lid and the rear fenders. So my options are to cut a little bit of the rear fender out to fit around the valve covers and run a deck lid stand off. Or I could move the trans forward a bit. As much as I don't want to go through all of that work I would rather do that than to have the valve covers hanging out in the open air. So I would be happy to take any suggestions on that.

I was planning on installing the radiator in the back of the car and I have already removed the parcel tray to do so. But after reading through the threads here I am second guessing it. So I guess I'm on the fence, may need a push to get over it.

[dirtygerman]

Sorry for all of the separate posts, I was having trouble posting pictures for some reason. Some worked and some didn't. I think they were all to big so I resized them but even then some did not work.

[dirtygerman]

[dirtygerman]

Ok so I have a lot more pics to share but i'm scratching my head on this one and maybe one of you can help... I have always used photobucket with no problems. You can copy the img code link right from there and post it here. When I do that I get an error ALL PICS MUST BE NO MORE THAN 800 PIXELS HIGH OR 800 PIXELS WIDE. So I then resize the photo to no more than 800 in any direction and I still get the same error. Then I try to shrink the pic even more down to no more than 500 pixels and still the same error. Any tips?

[RonW]

welcome to the forum. i found the guys here to be very helpful and the forum more active. looks like you are going about things right. i'll let the others chime in regarding the cutting since my dohc is in a different car than yours. i have trouble too posting photos from the gallery i have it hosted on. i have to make sure they are displaying no larger than 800x800, then copy/paste the image URL into the bracketed Img html tags. should work.
cheers
ron

[dirtygerman]

Thanks Ron,

I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. Maybe i will have to start taking lower quality pictures.

[883]

Thanks for posting, I’ll be watching closely.

I tried to start a thread about this on the samba. I went over like a loud fart in church.

I decided to do my build thread here for similar reasons. I like the general atmosphere here a lot more.

[56SemaRag]

Welcome to the forum. Welcome home. Lots of great information about conversions here without the Samba undertone.

About the pictures, get a photobucket account and set it up. You can have the account automatically convert any size upload to meet the parameters set by STF. Takes a couple of minutes, then its a no brainer. Quick uploads from your phone or computer doesn't matter.

Looking forward to your build

[dirtygerman]

Thanks for the warm welcome guys

This is how it should be.

SemaRag I have the photobucket account but I was unaware that you could have it change photo size upon upload. That helps alot, Thanks.



As for the shortened oil pan its mostly done. I still have to baffle the inside and clean it up a bit. I still have to shorten the pickup tube as well. Picks of the header to come.

[Iguana]

Welcome, interesting sump design you have there. Might be a silly question but where is your dip stick tube and did you remove your oil return tube from the inside ?

[dirtygerman]

Yeah I haven't finished it yet. I still have to relocate the dip stick tube. When I cut the pan down I had no choice but to remove the return tube. I was worried about the return tube as it would be a pain in the ass to get it in the exact spot where it needs to be. So I looked at aftermarket ej oil pans and most of them just wall off a channel in the corner of the pan. So I will do that for sure.