Age old question EJ drivetrain in EA71

[DrieStone]

So I've spent an hour or so on the board, and perhaps my search-fu just isn't great. In general the consensus is that getting an EJ into an EA71 is more work than an EA81/82, but not impossible. The car is a '78 Leone.

 

I was hoping to find a "best practice" guide of sorts on this. My thought is that it will probably be easier to try to get the engine/trans/suspension from a modern EJ car into the EA71. I'm not a Subaru expert, but I'm not exactly a newbie either. My guess is that I can grab the front and rear subframe and fabricate new top hats? 

 

I know there's going to a lot of fab work to get the engine and subframes to fit. I guess the questions I have are:

 

Is there a preferred donor if I'm planning on trying to transplant suspension too? I'm thinking second 2.0L gen Impreza 

 

Are there any other major gotchas that I'm not aware of? I know the Impreza is 6" wider so I'll have to make up the difference somewhere. I'll have some serious wiring work to do, modifying the transmission tunnel, etc. etc.

 

I'm sure someone has done this (probably a bunch of people), but I can't find any EA71 specific threads that talk about anything more than engine/trans swap. 

[el_freddo]

Try this:  https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2338561

 

I happened to stumble across this earlier today while looking for other info.

 

Personally I think he's butchered a great example of these old subis but I guess you have more over there than what we have over here...

 

Cheers

Bennie

[DrieStone]

If this car was worth keeping stock I would. The body on this is rusty with a lot of damage, the interior is shot. It was sitting, outside for many years. I don't really think that it's a restoration candidate. I have no guilt in modifying it in this way. Although, somewhat ironically I bet the engine/transmission are in better shape than the rest of the car.

 

I think that guy's build looks pretty good (although I think he needs classic wheels). You think he butchered it because of the internal modifications? Or just that he had a perfectly good Brat that he decided to modify? 

 

I don't know what his looked like originally, but I probably would have kept it stock as well. 

 

My goal is to try to preserve the outward appearance as much as possible (dents and all). I'm leaning toward getting a turbo Legacy GT (Liberty). I already own one of those so I could parts swap and test a lot easier.