pontoontodd

I'm going to try to make this guide as comprehensive as I can for setting up an EZ36 with a Haltech Elite 2500. Haltech does have some good wiring instructions on their website for the EZ30 but the EZ36 is significantly different. I also had someone share with me a base map for EZ36 but it's for the older (ESP) version of the Haltech software, so I will try to post that once I get it working well, probably after some dyno tuning too. Will also include specific wiring for putting this in a first gen Impreza (specifically 98 GF in my case, the older first gens definitely have different wiring in the instrument cluster if nothing else).

Mounted regulator, assembled and installed fuel lines. I think I have the engine harness plug pinned out well enough to get the engine running. Pinned out the connector for the DBW pedal. Which doesn't look like it will directly bolt in place of the Impreza gas pedal, will have to figure out something there. The rear brumper for the Forester just needs to be welded and painted. And yes that's road salt. Made tubes running forward from the bottom of the bumper to the swaybar brackets. Made the one on the right side easily removable, should protect the carbon canister.

Been making some progress on the Impreza too. Shifter was interfering with one of the low range shifters (I think lock/unlock) so B welded in a different tube and cut the stock one. Welded in a front receiver for winch or jack under the front bumper. Hangers for rear muffler. Should probably brace those a little better. Fit the middle 2.5 x .095 4130 exhaust section and tacked in a V band clamp. Welded main portion of the exhaust. STI pedals basically fit but seemed a little off. We tightened it down and seems OK. Got a lot of the wiring done. Engine harness connector mostly pinned out from the Haltech, need to add a few powers and grounds. Pretty sure I figured out the gauge wires (oil press light, temp gauge, tach), main ignition switch wires, and fuel pump power wire running to the back. Getting fairly close to running I think. Haltech recommended running a pressure regulator and return line rather than trying to control fuel pressure with the pump. The EZ30 does have a pressure regulator on the end of one of the fuel rails but the rails and injectors are completely different than the EZ36. EZ36 supposedly has higher flowing injectors. Apparently most people either buy billet rails (which cost money and would also require AN feed lines or adapters) or just drill and tap the stock rails. I drilled and tapped them 1/2-20 and chamfered them for O ring boss AN fittings. Have all the fittings, line, and regulator, just need to put it together.

B and I are finally back to spending more time on our Subarus. Replaced the tie rods and rack boots in the white Outback and set the front toe. It's been running well. Definitely has some ghost walk on slippery surfaces but feels very stable on clean pavement. I think at least one of the trailing arm bushings is pretty sloppy. Did some work on B's Foresters including some tie rods and rack boots. Revalved all of his shocks and replaced the fluid in most of them. Went back to basics, I think we'd kind of gone down a blind path the last few years. He says it rides better and is less noisy on the street including a small jump. We now have significantly different valving in his car, Z's FXT, and my Impreza but the same size tires and springs and similar weight and wheelbase so we're curious to see how they compare off pavement. Would like to get the long travel struts tuned better this year. We also got a good start on a rear bumper for B's Forester to match his front bumper. We'd already bent a template out of conduit so we made two copies of that out of 1.5x.095" 4130. Longitudinal body mounts are 1.25" receiver tubes spaced up with 3/4" square tubing. Figured we had to use something to mount to the body and it gives us two more solid jack/recovery points. A little hard to see in the pictures but the stock bumper and hitch are just bolted in from the bottom. We drilled all the holes all the way through and ran long bolts all the way through the body. Mock up of the two bent tubes. Lateral square tubes are also 1.25" receivers. B wants a 2" receiver on center and can then just use a 1.25" reducer to fit our winch, hitch, etc. Need to shorten that up and add some diagonal braces. Will also miter vertical tubes on the ends, probably add a few more short vertical tubes too. Needs some tweaking but this is where we left off with that project. Another good day on that and we should be able to get it ready for paint. Been doing some "reverse shopping" as my brother calls it. Went through my mostly bald and leaky mud tire inventory and took the worst seven to the tire shop to get disassembled. Had a few that didn't leak and had some tread on them but were worn funny (every other block worn down, blocks worn at a taper, super noisy, tire in foreground is a perfect example).

UP trip video from 2022

M finally decided the old Impreza wasn't worth fixing. Compression had gotten so low the car would roll in gear with the engine off. In a way this is the one that started all of our Subaru off pavement adventures after I hit a deer over a decade ago. A little disappointing it didn't hit 300,000 miles. Certainly the most entertainment per dollar of any car I've ever owned. inside of the gas tank: Some of the parts we scavenged. The main things I wanted were the wheels (and tires), shifter/console (although most of that doesn't fit my '98), and the front axles and knuckles. The knuckles had been upgraded to the bolt on wheel bearing style and it had the big front wheel drive style axles. We considered removing the transmission (since it's the older style 5MT with the top inspection plate) and a few other things but had to draw the line somewhere. That left us with the question of how to make it roll. The simplest/cheapest idea I could come up with was to weld a tube to the bottom of the control arms (they're kinda rusty and I already have a few pairs of good stock ones). Then I welded some short pieces of tubing inside some space savers to act as hubs. These weren't centered or anything but it was just for getting the car out of the garage and on the flatbed. "hubs" were retained by tack welds. Gave us some hot Carolina squat action. Don't worry we kept the chrome lug nuts and only used a couple old rusty lug nuts per wheel to put some crappy tires on the back. M specifically told the tow company they should come with a flat bed but they didn't. He insisted the guy look at how poorly the "front axle" was attached but the guy was unconcerned. Put the front end on a dolly and dragged it out of town. Frightening. A day or two later when I unloaded the parts the one taillight still had plenty of blinker fluid in it. Have made some progress on the green Impreza too. Will try to post a few pictures sometime. Unfortunately I've been busy with other things. Mainly buying a building to move my machine tools into. In the long run that should be great but it's kept me from finishing the Impreza.

Some last minute rust repair before the last trip I forgot to post. Black Outback's muffler is quite rusty and started leaking. This is after hitting it with the wire wheel, a big chunk of it evaporated. Welded on a patch. High temp paint. Maybe a waste of time but did make the exhaust significantly quieter. On to the Impreza. Most of the fab work is done. Bumper and skids about as welded as they can get on the car. Made mounts for the stock turn signals (without those they blink fast). They'll be mostly behind a sheet metal panel below the bumper. B made fan mounts, only have one right now but you can see the tabs for both sides. Headlights and a few other things I just set in place for pictures. Made mounts for light bars just under the headlights. B figured out radiator mounting a while back. Obtained the right section of harness for the PS, alt, and AC compressor. B mounted the airbox a while back, I popped another hole in it. Might epoxy a tube on that eventually, still need to cut a hole in the hood scoop blockoff panel for those. I had the exhaust mostly laid out and then B reminded me about the gas tank guard. Pressed a divot in the skinny muffler to fit that. Probably won't restrict flow too much. Also made the ends out of round but phased 90 from the middle (you can kind of see in picture below). Skinny muffler in place. If/when I fab a rear bumper I can raise the big muffler an inch or two. Front portion of exhaust is basically done. Going to add a flange/gasket where this will meet up with the skinny muffler. If anyone has a recommendation on a 2.5" flange/gasket I'm all ears. Have to remove the various crossmembers/skids/bumper for finish welding and paint. Still need to find power steering lines and reservoir (2015ish H6 Outback) if anyone has a line on those. Also need to swap in DBW gas pedal and manual brake/clutch pedals and clutch hydraulics. Most of what's left is wiring. I think I have that mostly figured out. Might mount the Haltech where the passenger air bag was and make that panel easily removable.

Really need to make straight cut low ranges over the winter. The plus side is that the low range was still working fine all weekend just making a ton of noise. Yes, trying to get the Impreza going, then part out the black Outback.

I'm not going to say it stayed extremely clean (we tried) but there wasn't really any dust to worry about. Dirt falling off the bottom of the car, yes. If not for the cage we would have parted the black Outback out a long time ago. Or so I keep saying.

Went to the UP the last weekend of July with three Subarus and five people. B wasn't able to join us. Before the trip I was checking my notes and realized there was a crack in one of the rear uprights of the black outback so I welded that. The rear tires on the white Outback were almost completely bald so I put some less bald tires on it. I had looked before we went and saw a large area of public land east of Sagola we hadn't explored. There were several fire towers and the ELF (extremely low frequency transmitter) in the area too. Didn't expect much of those but gave us something to roughly wander towards. Fire towers turned out to not exist or be on private property which is about what I expected. When we went to where the ELF was originally marked on my GPS we couldn't find anything. Later Z looked it up and we did make it there but it's some kind of secure gov't facility so we didn't get to see anything. On the way up I was driving the black Outback when suddenly I looked down and the coolant temp gauge was pegged. It had been right where it normally is for hours so I figured it might be the sender or gauge or something. Pulled into a shady spot in a parking lot. Realized it was the same hose that had rotted out on us out west and replaced it with a spare I had. The oil leak there keeps eating those hoses. Left that skidplate off for the time being figuring we'd just reinstall it at camp. Crossed into Michigan and started wandering off pavement. Z got his Forester high centered and stuck on a stump (between engine skid and trans crossmember). Lifted it off with the high lift and threw some wood under the tire. This part of the UP was rockier than most of the UP but not like the Keeweenaw. Trying to follow a powerline grade Z got his Forester stuck in some soft mud. Good reminder that any time you see even a slight trickle of flowing water up there the ground is probably going to be super soft. At this point I realized I'd left my brand new speed strap and folding recovery ramps at home. Then we broke my 2” speed strap, it's seen a lot of abuse but I was still a little surprised. Z had a tow strap and with a combo of that and my marginal speed straps we were able to get his car out. One of those situations where we tried about ten iterations of straps thinking each one would work, might have been just as fast to winch or jack him out of there. Went the other way on that powerline grade which had some good rock ledges and climbs but didn't go very far before going off into the woods. Before one fairly big drop we decided we should put the one skidplate back on the black Outback so we did that while V cooked the burgers since it was supper time. Maybe the first time we've cooked supper before getting to camp. Saw a (juvenile?) porcupine standing in the road, got a few good pictures of it before it walked off into the brush. Late in the day the black Outback started making some fairly high frequency drivetrain noises proportional to wheel speed like a gear in the transmission was rubbing on something. M was driving and I played with the shifters and then it went away. Found a FS campground and stayed the night there. The next morning we did a little more trail riding but the transmission noise was back. It was making enough noise even in neutral that we didn't think flat towing it would be a good idea. We discussed a few options and decided the best would be to try to fix it. I have been carrying a stock DCCD so plan B was to install that and plug the shifter holes. We went back to the campsite we'd stayed at the night before since it was decent, close to toilets, and there had been no one else in the whole campground. Of course during the day two other campers showed up and occupied the spots on either side of us. Disassembly went fairly smoothly but time consuming. Realized we'd need gear oil so Z and V drove to town to get that and some groceries so V could cook us some fajitas since we knew he'd have plenty of time. The main problem seemed to be thrust forces (from the helical gears I assume) wore out one of the snapring groove lands to the point that one of the snaprings was just floating around in the middle of the low range. We just removed the snapring, the part it'd been holding on was already galled/peened in place. M and I tried about ten times to put the low range back in the trans and then put the cover on with no success. Finally we put the low range in the cover and put the whole thing on and it went right together. One trick we used was to tie the split needle bearing on the front output shaft on with a blade of grass since it would instantly dispose of itself, before that those bearings kept falling out of place during assembly even though we'd greased them. As it turned out the grass fell out during assembly but did its job. Then we put everything else back on and I took it on a test drive around the campground before dark. Seemed to work fine but still a little noisy. Camped again in the same spot we had on Friday night, something else I don't think we've ever done before. Sunday we had a solid day of trail riding with no major issues. Found a stunt area, unplugged a culvert that'd been dammed up by beavers, then Z got properly stuck in the mud in a clearcut area. Probably over 100' from the nearest fairly solid ground. Set up the winch and swapped the Anderson connector from the white car on to his battery. Winched off of several different stumps with the snatch block and eventually got him on to solid ground. Good reminder that having a winch you can put on either end of any car is far superior to having it permanently mounted to one end of one car. He was then able to drive through the clearcut along the trail back to where we were parked. The whole thing took under two hours with surprised us. I got the black Outback stuck after turning around and trying to climb up a steep bank. A backed the white Ouback back to where we were. By then I remembered I had a proper elastic snatch strap and soft shackles so we used those. They hit much softer than the speed straps. I couldn't really even feel when it hit even though A was taking a 10-20' run at it. He eventually pulled me up the little bank. Somehow the rear bumper cover of the white Outback had come off so we cobbled that back on and continued. Monday morning while we were following the black Outback it seemed like the rear camber on it would be both tilted to left, then both straight. Eventually A decided to pull over because it was steering itself. The subframe had pulled out of the remains of the unibody on both sides. We also had brackets connecting it to the skidframe which had mostly ripped off. We sort of straightened out the brackets and hose clamped them back on and ratchet strapped the subframe up into place. (We were able to ratchet strap the subframe back up to the body, not shown) A managed to navigate us down a fairly long and almost entirely off pavement route south. Got to an abandoned railroad track. Had to restrap the rear subframe a couple more times. The last time A came up with the idea of strapping the subframe to the skidframe laterally which helped a lot. Black outback is probably finally and properly totaled. Needs a trans rebuild, radiator, coolant hose, rear diff is no longer limited slip, rear axles and wheel bearings are ticking time bombs, and most importantly needs some serious body/frame repair for the rear subframe. In the meantime it is still driveable if I need to drive it around town some. Really need to get the Impreza running. Will try to post an update on that soon.

Wife and I have been doing a lot of kayaking day trips, mostly in northern and central IL. Took a weekend trip a couple weeks ago and found some interesting trails. Had to control myself as we had no tools or spare parts and were traveling in one car.

Video from our trip to Missouri last year. Have made some progress on the Impreza too, will post an update on that fairly soon.

Finally got video edited and posted from our Kentucky trip last year. https://youtu.be/1KxQLa__Ogk

Thanks K. I would have done levers instead of cables on the Outback but I kept thinking it'd be totalled by now. Should be much easier shifting. Yeah rear suspension is just about ready to weld and paint. Skid plate does hang a little lower than most of our other cars in order to protect the headers, hopefully that won't be too much of an issue. I think the biggest improvement over the black Outback will be the 1000#ish weight reduction.

Hard to tell from the pictures but this is after some massaging and trimming we did to get the condenser farther forward, maybe 1/2-3/4"? One of the little things we did was to bend the bracket/line on the driver's side (LF) of the condenser to give us a little more room for the radiator. One issue was this corner of the radiator support had a big radius/gusset to it so B notched that out and patched it back in. I have some grommets that will fit that washer for the radiator mount posts. Other side we've got a tube tacked in with a piece of hose for the post. Bottom of radiator will probably also be padded with rubber and will rest on radiator support. Radiator is for a 99-05 Mazda Miata and fits without any trimming or modifications. About a half dozen companies make thicker core aluminum radiators for those cars, this one has a 42mm thick core. Just narrow enough that it sits alongside the passenger side (LF) cam phasers. Unfortunately I think I should find/make some 90 degree bent water necks for the top tank. I might be able to get a hose with a tight enough bend to clear the PS pulley but I want to get one welded on the other side anyhow. While I'm at it I'll probably put a 1.5" water neck in the bottom and at a more downward angle for more clearance to the timing cover. Again, this one would probably work as is but it's smaller than stock (1 3/8"?) and the hose would be very close to the timing cover.

Box for rear trailing arms is still very close to the wheel. Might even rub just from the weld bead sticking out when finished if I just welded them as is. I plan on tweaking those for a little more clearance before welding. Shortened up the links on the driver's side by 1/8". While I was at it I refit the tube to the bottoms of the bushing sleeves rather than centered for some shock clearance. Not ideal structurally in tension/compression but that's almost certainly not how they'll fail. With the shorter links the inner CV still has a little room before it bottoms out at full droop. We also put a tire on and stuffed it up as high as it'd go with the jack and I still think rolling the fender and removing the rear bumper cover will be enough. High/low and lock/unlock shift levers/linkage tacked up: Seems like most of the compliance is in the trans mount so it should be stiff enough. There is an alarming amount of slop in those in line ball joints though, I need to find some better version of those or replace them with rod ends. B was able to shift high/low and lock/unlock while I turned the driveshaft. High/low is pretty easy, lock/unlock takes considerably more effort and turning. This is the same experience as in the Outback with the cables but is definitely easier with the levers. They have about a 2:1 mechanical advantage and you can actually push or pull hard with one hand. Plan on bending the right side lever to the right. Plan on just poking holes in that rubber boot for them to pass through, they don't move much at that level. B did say the left lever (hi/lo, requires more travel) does get close to the dash in low but that can be adjusted.

Checking rear suspension travel, interferences, and axle lengths. At full bump the RR inner CV is almost extended all the way, balls are pretty close to the big snapring. Over a half inch from being bottomed out at full droop. LR is a little over 1/4" from being bottomed out at full droop. LR at full bump still has a lot of travel before it's fully extended. So I'll probably shorten the lateral links 1/16 or 1/8". Bottom of shock shaft hits lateral link at full droop, will probably bend lateral links to give a little clearance. This got me thinking about how we could get more travel. The shocks still have some to spare. Springs get close to coil bind and we've actually broken a couple of them so we don't want to work those any harder. Could potentially mount the springs in line with the strut bodies like most the aftermarket does but we seemed to have a lot of friction when we did that. With these axles there's quite a bit of room in both directions before they're the limiting factor. Wheel well is already going to need some rolling at a minimum so more bump travel would require either serious body surgery or more subframe lift. Really just need to tune what we have.

built from scratch, see post 85 and the next few afterwards

Here you go, rear suspension fully mocked up with fabricated links, front axles, and billet knuckles with bolt on wheel bearings. Might shorten the lateral links a bit but have to check. Should work as is. B and I got the engine and trans skids/mounts mostly fit and tacked up. Trans mount bracket, wanted it to protect the studs. Brackets bolted on in stock crossmember location need to be gusseted/trimmed. It hangs down a little farther than I'd like but is only about 1/4" lower than the headers and I didn't want those to be the lowest point. Should be a bit stronger than most of our engine/trans skids. Needs a few lateral tubes in front of oil pan and headers. And obviously some sheet/plate.

Wow! That's perhaps the greatest website I've ever seen. It's like going back fifteen years when the internet was useful. Thanks a million for the tip! Probably getting the headers ceramic coated but yeah I hope they won't stay clean and shiny long. Not that anyone will see them. Someone else online suggested what you just did with the pipes side by side, would definitely be the way to go but I just don't have time to make everything from scratch. Otherwise I'd finally build a two seat buggy.

Video from our trip to OK, TX, and NM with slammo.

Got the right rear billet knuckle finished. I made a couple of legit trailing arms using sleeves Z turned up. Sleeves are about 50% thicker than OEM and made out of chromoly so hopefully they will stay round unlike the used one in the background. So I think we can now fully mock up the rear suspension. I finally got brackets and bolts for the AC compressor so B got the accessories and belt on. We wanted to shorten the primary tubes on the headers for more ground clearance. They slide in bores in the flange and are welded inside. First step B cut them off about 1" from the flange. Then I bored them out on the Bridgeport. After that it was easy to knock the rest of the tube off and B ground the welds a bit. Then we were able to pry/hammer the tubes back in the flanges and tack welded them on. Passenger side one was pretty good but we wound up angling the drivers side tubes toward the center of the car for more clearance to the crossmember. We'll probably cut off the flange on that one and extend it for more clearance but they're about as far up as I feel comfortable with. I want some clearance to the crossmember and rack boots. B also removed the auto shifter and put in the STI shifter but we need a rear pivot bushing. On the plus side it looks like we should have a decent amount of room for the hi/low and lock/unlock shifters in front of the stock shifter and room for a steering brake (two handle?) next to the parking brake. It appears that a 99-2005 Miata radiator should fit beside the passenger side cam phasers so I plan on getting one of those. One nice thing is that there are at least a half dozen companies making thicker core all aluminum radiators for those Miatas. I think I'm going to go with the CSR. Main reason for wanting aluminum tanks is then I can get a second inlet welded in the top tank.

Finally getting some video editing done, more to come in the next few weeks.

Thanks Bennie, from where I sit we have a lot of work ahead of us to get the Impreza running but I'm looking forward to driving it. Finally got video from our 2021 Vegas to Reno finish edited and posted on Youtube. Six minute version: https://youtu.be/zaS10G5Nnws Thirteen minute version: https://youtu.be/CzU8stsycP4

Wired in a connector for DBW TB and installed that. Installed low range in my other good 6MT for the Impreza. EZ30"D" radiator on left, EJ22 radiator from 98 Impreza on right. EJ22 and 4EAT from 98 Impreza. EZ36 and 6MT in 98 Impreza. Biggest issue seems to be radiator clearance. I've seen at least one person put this engine in this car with AC and a ~2" thick radiator but the lower passenger side cam phaser was basically rubbing on their radiator. Seems to be the same for me, which wouldn't be good for off road use. Going to shop around for some narrower radiators, should be a decent fit if we can just avoid those cam phasers. Not a lot of room in front, stock condenser wouldn't fit in front of radiator support due to headlights, would be a tight fit for condenser and fans between that and front bumper anyhow. Yes at this stage it wouldn't be too difficult to shift the bumper forward a bit but it already sticks out pretty far. On the plus side, should be a pretty straight shot for a skid from the radiator support to the front crossmember, might have to drop it down a bit for the oil pan but the timing covers are pretty high up. Headers need to be shortened vertically and probably at least the driver's side extended to put the flange in a better spot. They're not bolted up 100% so might look a little off. Plenty of room in trans tunnel. Z turned up some trailing arm sleeves for the front pivot. He also did some test fitting on the R180 to female front axle diff stubs. I have the RR billet knuckle almost done. So we're closer to getting that whole package figured out. While we were doing a bunch of this disassembly and assembly we weighed a bunch of things: 11# 98 Impreza EJ22 alternator 14# 2013 Outback EZ36 alternator 466# 98 Impreza EJ22 engine and 4EAT w/ PS pump, engine mounts, starter, engine oil 362# 2013 Outback EZ36 engine w/ flywheel, clutch, PS pump, engine mounts 198# 2007 STI 6MT 127# 5MT So the EZ36 & 6MT is only about 100# heavier than the EJ22 & 4EAT.