Wow, you got the engine and trans out as one piece, very impressive. Didn't think that was possible. Great build, my STI drivetrain needs to go in in the next few months.

I'm impressed you were able to do it all in a garage, on jack stands. Your back must be glad it's all over. Glad we could help point it straight for ya. Enjoy   
And the brake caliper vinyls look better in person, very nice and original touch.

Awesome, must be nice.

Thanks for the kind words guys...wouldn't hold my breath on the RHD conversion tho

Car is driving awesome, still getting used the shorter gears...it feels a lot quicker just from gearing.

This was my question exactly too when my friend said we'd be pulling the motor. When working on jack stands the problem becomes trying to align the transmission up properly to go back on. The STi trans just weighs so much it's pretty hairy to align things properly. The added difficulty of trying to do that underneath the car on your back without being able to see everything outweighs the relatively smaller hassle of pulling the motor. This is according to my friend who's done this a handful of times, said after doing it both ways pulling the motor is less time/hassle in general.

As a bonus, it let us inspect everything more easily on the motor to make sure things look ok, and let me delete the last piece of the already blocked-off secondary air pump system.

Last edited by countriccati (2016-09-11 12:46:12)

countriccati wrote:

Thanks for the kind words guys...wouldn't hold my breath on the RHD conversion tho

Car is driving awesome, still getting used the shorter gears...it feels a lot quicker just from gearing.

This was my question exactly too when my friend said we'd be pulling the motor. When working on jack stands the problem becomes trying to align the transmission up properly to go back on. The STi trans just weighs so much it's pretty hairy to align things properly. The added difficulty of trying to do that underneath the car on your back without being able to see everything outweighs the relatively smaller hassle of pulling the motor. This is according to my friend who's done this a handful of times, said after doing it both ways pulling the motor is less time/hassle in general.

As a bonus, it let us inspect everything more easily on the motor to make sure things look ok, and let me delete the last piece of the already blocked-off secondary air pump system.

I agree with your friend, my friend who is an auto tech and works on Subaru suggested the same thing to me. I already had a friend install my 6 speed at his shop. Aligning the motor with the transmission in place was difficult and time consuming.

Nice travelog!  Thanks for posting!

Japan is #1 on my list of destinations to visit...

Got in on a group buy on some Morimoto XB LED fogs, figured they'd have potential for actually being useful; rarely turned on the stock fogs since could barely tell when they were on with my headlights being so bright. Got the type X version that come with a bracket for 08-11 STi, but those brackets were totally useless, had and modify our factory brackets to make things fit (they also came with the wrong plug connectors, needed to order those separately). These things are bright, rated at ~1200 lumens each, and are definitely visible with my headlights on. Unsure if it's worth the trouble to do the fogs-only wiring mod which is mostly just for looks/novelty, need to do a bit more investigation about it; either way, it's nice having fogs that are at least visible.



Also decided that no one will notice my car any more if it's got gold wheels (undermining sleepiness), so let my V7s be free from the plastidip menace. It's amazing how close they are to the front brakes...paper thin close. Don't love them, don't hate them, but it's winter, so they'll do.



Temporarily lost one of my keys and fobs, and before finding them again (thankfully) decided to use the opportunity to take the plunge for a beefier security system and remote starter. Got the recommendation from my trusted shop to get a Compustar setup, and a really nifty add-on module called drone mobile which lets you start and un/lock the car from basically anywhere using your phone. You can also check battery voltage, and if the alarm is triggered it will push notifications to your phone so you'll know. The alarm is connected to a 3 axis gyro and accel that not only ensures the car never starts in gear, but will also trigger if the car is tilted (i.e. getting towed, wheels being taken, etc) or if any door or the hood is opened. There is a subscription fee for this drone mobile since it's effectively a low-bandwidth cellular service for your car, but it's fairly reasonable ($50 for the year or 3 years for $120). You can upgrade to get more info, track the location of the car and geofence along with other things--beyond my needs for now, but upgrading doesn't require any hardware changes.



Particularly on these nearly 0 degree Fahrenheit days we've gotten lately, it's wonderful. It ended up being a fairly pricey proposition since it required many hours of labor for wiring (being non-canbus, installing a hood opening sensor) and was done by a place that typically caters to higher end clientele (the other cars in the shop at time were an F355 and a genuine chopped '34 hotrod) rather than a "geek squad" special--but absolutely love having it and to me it's worth it. As a bonus, there's a turbo-timer feature that idles the car for a couple minutes after you remove the key, which, while unnecessary for our turbos, is nice to have to let the engine cool down a bit (and the novelty of removing the key with the car still running!)

While idling the car for ages and ages isn't particularly great, giving yourself some extra time to let the car warm up in cold weather and cool down after driving was part of my program anyway...now just don't have to be sitting there to do it

Last edited by countriccati (2017-07-09 14:44:51)

Sorry I missed out on this party; congrats on the driveline update! I am EXTREMELY envious of the sedan track!

Still one of the more complete 92x and a person favorite. Keep it up.

No disrespect meant for anybody on the forum but I think this man has the finest looking example of our cars here.

Oh you guys--you're far too kind

Part of why there's been no update is things took a substantial sideways turn. Usually my style is to wait until everything is clear before posting, but things are in motion already so can share a bit.

At the beginning of January the car started running poorly. Driving at low speeds/RPMs it seemed to keep losing power. Looked at the learning view (pictured) and saw it had pulled tons of timing out (the IAM should be 1 for a 32 bit car).



Reset the ECU to put the timing back in and it seemed to be fine. A week later had the same behavior, resetting things seemed to make it all be ok again. It would go for days with no issues, then would happen again.

Had sent my previous oil sample to Blackstone and they'd said things look fine, there was some oil consumption (about a quart every 1500 miles), but nothing to that point made me worry too much.

Decided to replace the knock sensor, and while taking the TMIC off saw this (intercooler elbow):



Obviously something was letting oil get past my AOS. With the new knock sensor the car behaved exactly the same way, pulling timing during low RPM driving.

Now it was clear something was very wrong. Did a compression test the following week, and did it a couple of times just to make sure: cylinder 4 was at 60 psi. Presumably ringland failure. My friend assured me it wasn't anything I did wrong, these are just flawed engines that can fail at any time, no matter what you do. For now would have to drive carefully, keep close tabs on oil, and stay out of boost to avoid catastrophic failure. The feeling of futility is so disheartening. Saab story confirmed.

The drive home from my friend's place where we did the compression test was pretty abysmal, wondering what to do. Thoughts of getting rid of it and never touching an EJ again crossed my mind. I had hoped to have a few more years to decide if I wanted to put a new motor in this--certainly not to have my hand forced.

My friend with a full V7 swap (207 and 6 speed) in his 04 wagon happened to come by that day to return a spare wheel. He'd swapped his wagon after having engine failure suddenly on a road trip, and encouraged me to look into putting a 207 in my car.

That wasn't my vision going forward, but talking with him did help me realize the best option would be keep the car and fix it. This car deserves to get fixed. Having recently finished grad school and gotten a full time job, my time is limited. But being able to bike to work and not having other major expenses (yet), and continuing to live like a grad student on peanut butter sandwiches puts me in the unique position to upgrade things substantially, knowing full well this is financially equivalent to investing in AOL to turn things around.

This next phase will be a real paradigm shift, since so much of the setup was tailored around making the most out of stock components and not overtaxing the current motor (lot of good that did). The powertrain changes will be significant, going from having almost everything stock to almost nothing. Moreover, my engine builder/tuner Matt was firm on switching to using an AP instead of open source to run blended SD. That change is really the most difficult pill for me to swallow, but ultimately trust his judgement.

Had to wait another month for Matt to be available, just dropped the car off last Sunday at his place to get started. There's some delay getting all the last parts from a supplier so will take at least another week or two. Engine is out:



Once it's all together there's a lengthy break-in process of driving the car carefully for thousands of miles, all while out of boost. Only then can it get tuned to see how everything comes together. Haven't driven in boost since January 21st after the compression test. Realistically, won't get to again until April at the very earliest. Sad banana indeed.

The car won't necessarily make tons more power, but the plan is for it to be capable of reliably doing that should I want to later. Ultimately, the thinking is to avoid being in this circumstance again any time soon (hopefully). Since reliably building a new motor to handle the current power level would've been exorbitantly expensive already just to be back where we started, the marginal cost to go bigger is worth doing in my estimation. There are certainly other ways of fixing the car, but not having the time/space/experience to pull/rebuild the engine myself, nor the desire to just get back to the status quo, this seemed like the best path forward. Going bigger might've very well been something I'd have done eventually anyway.

The overarching goal is to have the car be more reliable, very streetable, and be capable of some bigger power in the future if desired. Time will tell how it all works out, and will keep things updated here as time allows.

Last edited by countriccati (2018-12-28 21:06:47)

Yep, Matt Miner has been my guy since the beginning, sticking with him. He told me during my previous tune that it would be my last open source one since he's moving away from them as much as possible wherever possible. He explained the benefits are really on his side of things: it's easier and faster for him to tune with an AP generally, and particularly with SD he won't use experimental/buggy open source stuff, which is unfortunately the state of 32 bit SD (16 bit with carberry is more mature). He just has no interest in it is what he told me, since the AP works well every time and cuts his tuning time in half (offered to pay him the full cost of an AP on top of tuning costs to use open source, wouldn't bite). Personally dislike the AP business model, and Cobb generally, but out of respect and trust for Matt decided not to fight him too hard on it. If there's a tool that makes my job easier and faster it would be my strong preference to use that too, especially on a bigger project where the alternative options are not as good.

So we're going with an EJ25, not a 207, and it will have all new internals, hence the break in protocol.

Thanks for the encouragement, looking forward to being on the other side of this