Radiator shroud & fans

 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.  

Addco sway bar

 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.  

EJ22 airbox into EA81 Brat

 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. 

I had to cut off the mounting feet from the bottom of the housing to make it fit so I need to attach it to the Brat somehow, but I don't expect that to be a big problem. 

EJ22 Pitch stopper

 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. 

The Brat sat under a cover indoors for the last few years, thankfully it survived without any major damage, but it did accumulate a large amount of mouse crap.  Thankfully they didn't seem to ruin my new carpet or seats. 

Surge tank & high pressure fuel pump

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 bent a bracket from 16 ga steel to support the filter, and then made a fuel pump bracket from 20 ga and used the toggle clamp from the stock fuel filter to close it. There is a rubber strip around the filter to dampen vibration and also hold it snug in the metal clamp.

 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! 

Some of the EJ swap write ups claim the stock return line is too small, but I'll give it a try and if it not able to keep up with the return feed I'll run a larger return line.  The stock brat return line is 1/4" and the supply is 5/16" by my measure.  I don't want to drop the tank and install a bigger bulkhead fitting for return, but I will if its necessary.  

EJ Start -

 This motor has not run in 6 years, what a great engine!

Resurrection - Brat & Blog

 To bring everyone up to speed, the motor swap was a larger project than I anticipated, and after several years of procrastination, my friends agreed to come help me finish this bad boy.  The EJ starts and runs.  Now I need to do a few finishing problems.  Here is a list of my problems, and I"ll make a post of each of my solutions so that this blog might be a good reference in years to come.  Since I started this swap, Photobucket broke the internet and sank most the useful forum posts.  So hopefully blogger never follows suit.  

Things needed to finish my EJ 2.2 Swap into my 1982 Brat EA81.  

• I need to adjust the front anti sway bar, the hump hits my full time 4WD 5 speed from a GL10 turbo wagon.  
• Fuel - surge tank and high pressure fuel pump
• Exhaust - attach cat, oxygen sensors & muffler
  
• Integrate the wiring harness and ECU into the Brat in a clean fashion
  
•  Radiator & cooling setup
  
• Install Oil pressure and Temperature sending units that work with the Brat gauges
• Air box install
• Battery relocate