So late last month, I had a total derpstorm.
Was working on replacing the engine in the Legacy and got fed up with stupid Subaru EJ engines and their stupid head gaskets, timing bullshit, comparative expensiveness and general leakiness and explodium fragility.
On the other hand, I am absolutely IN LOVE with the FB engine family and it's FA cousins. I have two, and know people with plenty more. As long as you put oil in them, they just run. Period. There's probably a million miles of driving between those cars, and not one engine problem to speak of. Meanwhile, in EJ land, MTBCatastrophicF is something like 150k miles.
So I bought a rekt 2015 Impreza with some pocket money ($2k), and a shedload of parts ('bout $600) to fix said Impreza's engine (which was a bit more heavily damaged in the collision than I was expecting - notably the crank pulley took a hit, sheared the woodruff key and exploded, sending shrapnel into the timing sump, and also boogered up the threads on the crank.
The plan is to take the FB20 and jam it into the hole the EJ22 came out of and do a complete wiring transplant, retaining literally everything including the emissions gear.
There are two exceptions:
1) I'll be building an electronic box to masquerade as the Transmission Computer because I'll be retaining my manual transmission and I bought a CVT Impreza (oops). $50 would buy me a manual ECU, but this is more interesting
2) I'll be building another electromechanical box to masquerade as the gauge cluster, spinning motors and translating CANbus signals to analog lights and whizzy speedometer cable shenanigans (maybe, I might just keep the mechanical speed sensor in the trans and ignore the wheel speed outputs) to retain the factory gauge cluster (the remaining data will be passed to the stereo for display, probably).
I figure this will, at the end of the day, cost LESS than a professionally rebuilt EJ of ANY description.
I'm half tempted to follow this project up with an '07 Impreza (the best looking car Subaru has ever built), retaining the CVT, and developing this into a repeatable process or kit, and then shipping it to a friend of mine in California to see if we can ram it through the CARB Engine Change process, and then marketing this shit.
Was working on replacing the engine in the Legacy and got fed up with stupid Subaru EJ engines and their stupid head gaskets, timing bullshit, comparative expensiveness and general leakiness and explodium fragility.
On the other hand, I am absolutely IN LOVE with the FB engine family and it's FA cousins. I have two, and know people with plenty more. As long as you put oil in them, they just run. Period. There's probably a million miles of driving between those cars, and not one engine problem to speak of. Meanwhile, in EJ land, MTBCatastrophicF is something like 150k miles.
So I bought a rekt 2015 Impreza with some pocket money ($2k), and a shedload of parts ('bout $600) to fix said Impreza's engine (which was a bit more heavily damaged in the collision than I was expecting - notably the crank pulley took a hit, sheared the woodruff key and exploded, sending shrapnel into the timing sump, and also boogered up the threads on the crank.
The plan is to take the FB20 and jam it into the hole the EJ22 came out of and do a complete wiring transplant, retaining literally everything including the emissions gear.
There are two exceptions:
1) I'll be building an electronic box to masquerade as the Transmission Computer because I'll be retaining my manual transmission and I bought a CVT Impreza (oops). $50 would buy me a manual ECU, but this is more interesting
2) I'll be building another electromechanical box to masquerade as the gauge cluster, spinning motors and translating CANbus signals to analog lights and whizzy speedometer cable shenanigans (maybe, I might just keep the mechanical speed sensor in the trans and ignore the wheel speed outputs) to retain the factory gauge cluster (the remaining data will be passed to the stereo for display, probably).
I figure this will, at the end of the day, cost LESS than a professionally rebuilt EJ of ANY description.
I'm half tempted to follow this project up with an '07 Impreza (the best looking car Subaru has ever built), retaining the CVT, and developing this into a repeatable process or kit, and then shipping it to a friend of mine in California to see if we can ram it through the CARB Engine Change process, and then marketing this shit.