I've accomplished a few things since my last post. I installed sound deadening material on the back wall of the cab in the Brat. I already had done the floor a few years ago when I put in new carpet, but decided now was the time for the back wall since I had the panel removed to access the fuel lines.
My new fuel pump was dripping gas at the high pressure side, and when I tried to snug it up the plastic cracked. place.
Lamenting the destruction of my second fuel pump, I also realized my gut feeling that having all the fuel stuff (surge tank, high pressure pump) under the hood right next to the engine was unnecessary risk for vehicle fire. The leaking pump really drove it home that it wasn’t some far of chance of gasoline spewing out into the hot engine at some point. So I took a step back and removed my pump bracket, surge tank and am finding homes for them back by the gas tank where they can leak as much as they like without causing me stress. Since this move was slowing down my chances of actually driving the car this October, I decided to embrace the schedule adjustment and take time to do some things the right way instead of rushing. I mounted my surge tank on the passenger side rail opposite the stock pump. I bent a 5/16 hard line to replace the 1/4 return line and another to carry the supply from the low pressure pump across the car to the surge tank.
I still need to bend one more line. Bending lines is super fun old man stuff. I’m also going to replace the chewed up insulation behind the seats with some more insulating sound deadening material. 
You can see my new return line clipped into place.
I figured out why I was having trouble putting the gauge cluster back into place, I was trying to line it up with the wrong holes. Age has softened the impetuousness of youth and I did not just smash it in thankfully. Know when to smash and when not to smash is the sign of an experienced mechanic. My high pressure fuel pump got dropped too much and wasn’t working, so I ordered and received my new one from rock auto. I put it into place tonight and fired the car up! Pretty excited to hear it run again this time with the cat on so it was not deafening. I filled it with coolant and started it again to let it get up to temperature but stopped quickly as I noticed a fuel leak from the new high pressure pump. I’ll try to tighten it up tomorrow but I’ve got a nervousness about having all that gas fittings and pump under the hood now. If this thing burns down my sadness will be immeasurable and my day ruined. I may move the surge tank and fuel pump back closer to the gas tank, but I think I’ll take it for a spin once before I start removing components again making it immobile again.
My stock Brat radiator has now been modified to accept 1.5" hose just like the stock EJ radiator. I called around to many good independent auto repair shops in Lafayette and they all said that the only radiator repair guy they knew was Mark in Dayton and he is retired. So I found a shop in Frankfort would said they could do it, so I had the radiator dropped off in the morning and they called me in the afternoon to say it was done.
It was Jerry's Body shop & Radiator, I would highly recommend them, the end result was "a-brazing"!
I finished up the shroud, bolted on the fans in place, and then dropped it into location.
I found that the stock EJ hoses fit now very perfectly with only a little trimming of length from each end to shorten them up to compensate for the much closer radiator position and slightly more narrow radiator. It is nice to know that I can use off the shelf hoses with a little trimming. So much better than having to cobble together different size hoses and couplers. I should probably put new hoses on it, but I'll just use these for the shakedown. It's starting to seem like a real car again, it's a great feeling to be completing tasks and crossing things off my list.
There is no room for stock EA fans, although one of them would fit with a little trimming. I decided to build a shroud and use electric puller fans. I want to reserve the space where the condenser goes so that I retain the option to get my AC installed and going without having to re-do any of the work for the cooling system. Pusher fans would take that space, plus with the cyclops light on the Brat there is even less room behind the grill for extra fans. I settled on the following design. There is about 10" on the left side of the crank pulley where the motor sits 3.5" away from the timing belt cover. There is about 6 inches on the right side of the crank pulley where the timing belt cover is 3.5" away from the radiator.
A 10" fan fits nicely on the left but a 6" seems to approach too closely to the crank pulley for comfort. So I opted to install two 5" fans on the right so the crank pulley can nest down inside, with the 10" fan on the left. The shroud serves to hold the fan in place and also to force the fan to draw air through the radiator. If there was no shroud, some air would come through the radiator but most would just come from around the radiator. Using a shroud essentially turns the puller fan into a vacuum that forces air through the radiator.
I cut the holes into a sheet of 16ga steel which if I was doing it again I would probably make from aluminum and maybe a lighter gauge. It is heavier than I anticipated. I cut the holes and I'll decide how to secure the fans. I may just drill through and use a button head screw, but I might also weld tabs on the motor side and use the captive nut slots on the SPAL fans. They are lo-profile and are really quite slim, they seem high quality, I'm glad to have laid out the extra money for the SPAL name instead of a generic fan.
The front sway bar on my brat hits the FT4WD 5 speed transmission I've used in my swap. I looked at modifying the sway bar, but as I read it sway bars are tempered and spring steel and other metallurgical things I don't understand and cutting and welding it makes it not work as well. The place it hits the transmission is the spot where it climbs up into the subframe to allow the exhaust to pass underneath. I learned that Addco made a performance sway bar for the EA81 cars including Brat, and it is much stiffer than stock and larger, at 1" in diameter. Because of the size of it, Addco made the loop drop down instead of up, which means it will not interfere with the transmission. So I tried to order one through JEGS, but they cancelled the order after a few days saying it was no longer stocked and not in production. So I did the next best thing and contacted Addco directly. I asked if they would custom make one for me or how many orders would it would take to get another production run. I got an e-mail response that said they were "very unpopular" and that I was the first person to inquire about them in 5 years, and they did not have any more stock and were not going to make another production run. However, he said, "do not despair" and offered to sell me the control bar, which is the one they check all the production runs against to ensure accuracy. Since they were not going to produce more they wouldn't need it. So he had it sent off to get blasted and powder coated since it had been collecting dust for years, and a few days later I received the last front and rear performance sway bars for EA81! 
The Brat did not come with a rear sway bar stock, so I'm excited to see how it handles with less body roll front and rear. The front bar clears the transmission nicely as I hoped, and the rear fits perfectly into place. The front bar was mistakenly supplied with two wrong brackets, but I can't blame them for mistakenly picking the order, they probably don't have much practice on this particular setup. New front brackets should arrive soon. Seeing these new parts and high quality bushings makes me realize that this car is actually 38 years old and every piece of rubber needs replaced. That can wait for a while though! Lets just call the service life 40 years and that should give me some time to enjoy it before it needs more attention.
I set the Brat down from jack stands and put it on a spare set of rims so I could compress the suspension for installation and still have room to roll around underneath. The flash makes the Brat look rustier than it is, this car is still amazingly solid, just surface rust present. When I was at the junkyard the other week pulling some parts they guy asked me what Subaru I was working on and he said about 15 years ago they had someone drive in a Brat to sell for scrap and they used it as a yard car for several years without doing anything to it until one day they were blasting through some tall grass and hooked the oil pan on a truck frame laying hidden in the weeds. The sad eventual fate of all novelty vehicles is to end up at the junkyard.
The 1995 Legacy airbox that came with my donor car has an angled snorkel and did not fit great in the Brat body. I pulled a snorkel and air box from a 92 legacy that fits much better, the MAF meets the airbox at 90deg instead of 45 which works better for the space. I had to remove my AC relays from the strut tower and reroute (lower) the factory wiring harness from the Brat to get it in place, but it looks good and secure. The only problem was the inlet to the filter on the under side of the box was almost flat against the fender. I could have drilled into the fender to supply air but decided I would put speed holes into the lower box instead.
The EA81 engine in my Brat had a pitch stopper, and so do the EJ22 and EA82 engines. The EA81 pitch stopper is not in the same place or same design as the more modern ones, so I had to modify mine to fit the new EJ motor. I cut it shorter and welded it back together, and then drilled a piece of flat bar to bolt onto the adapter plate that mates my full time 4wd transmission from an EA82 GL10 Turbo to the EJ motor from the Legacy. 
The stock brat mount remains unmodified. I guess the purpose is to prevent the motor from shifting with torque. Some don't run them after conversion, mine was easy enough to make that it might as well go in.
A carburetor has a bowl of fuel to draw from in the event that the fuel pump sucks some air if the fuel in the tank is low and sloshing around. In a fuel injected car, there is no reserve and the fuel must be supplied at a specific pressure, so any air in the line from sloshing is bad. Fuel injected cars have baffles to trap the fuel around the pickup in the tank, but they are not present in a car designed for a carburetor. There was a turbo brat with fuel injection for 2 years (I think) that had a baffled tank and would bolt in, but they are much more rare than a regular brat, especially 38 years later, so impractical to find. So I'm installing a surge tank, which is essentially a small bowl of fuel that feeds the high pressure pump, keeping a steady supply. Race cars typically use aluminum or stainless and that all seemed out of place in a cheap old car. I settled on the following solution. A marine fuel filter / water separator that has the necessary 4 ports already was a great place to start.
The existing low pressure fuel pump supplies gas into the filter. The high pressure pump draws from the filter. The return from the fuel rail returns to the filter. When the filter is completely full then the fuel returns to the tank. I had to modify the fuel filter bracket just a little. The two "in" ports are independent of each other, but the "out" ports are connected by the casting. I tapped the casting on the overflow "out" and put a set screw in it to separate it from the high pressure pump feed "out". I then had to drill into the casting after my plug to open up the overflow "out" so it would allow a full filter to return to the tank. To mount it all, I decided on the drivers fender where the old jack holder was.
I've got both brackets screwed in for fit up, once I'm "finished" I'll go back and tack them in place. I've got all the the lines mocked up with whatever hose I had lying around, I'll replace them with appropriate new fuel line and then I'll have the fuel system sorted!
Things needed to finish my EJ 2.2 Swap into my 1982 Brat EA81.
