Hey guys. I have an 87 gl and think it would be fun to put a turbocharged wrx or sti engine into it and make a sleeper car out of it. I realize I would need to put a new tranny and radiator and driveshaft and an ecu in it and stuff (and new tires and wheels, of course). How hard is it to actually bolt this engine into the car?

 

Am I right in thinking this would be a worthwhile project?

 

If not, any better ideas?

 

Thanks!

mechanically it will bolt in. Then the fun begins with the wiring harness.

 

find a WRX/STI front clip that contains the engine,wiring harness,ECU,transmission, radiator, etc...then go to town.

 

Or find a wrecked WRX/STI and swap bits over...

It's been done. It's really not that difficult either. Once you convert to the XT6 5 lug stuff and swap out the engine cross-member with one from a turbo EA82 it's just a matter of wireing and some exhaust/cooling system mods.

 

GD

I'm in the process of doing a complete WRX swap into a 85 gl 10 turbo wagon. Dale with NW Subaru Service is helping me do this project. I got laid off from work in January so money is tight so the project slowed down. This car will be take a while to do but it will be well worth it. Alot of thought and time and $ is going into it. It will be a nice car when done!

welcome to the forums. all the information you seek is already here. and you'll want to study it all before you try anything that in-depth.

Thanks for your input guys. About how much money is it costing you to do the 85 gl swap, when all is said and done? By the way, here is a cool website for a place in Arizona that works on high end cars and also sti's and wrx's http://www.dynocomp.com -They have some cool package deals on upgrades for these cars. Check out the "viper killer" package for the sti there. Wicked! Just click on the little picture where it says "subaru" if you want to check out what he has available for subarus. This guy owns everyone at the track with his sti. He's actually built quite a few of them, and they're MEAN.

Edited May 30, 200916 yr by new2soob35

High prices,on parts you can get in town, and for how much $ in my swap so far, close to 5k and probably about 5k more to go. The parts list is long and still growing ,some of the donor cars are WRX, legacy, xt6, and gl .

Into my current RX, with everything I have, I'm probably close to a $10k mark with my EJ swap, all the parts, complete 5-lug conversion, and all the other mods I've done to the car (including wheels and tires). If you found a donor turbo Legacy for roughly $1500, you could swap the whole car for somewhere in the neighborhood of $4k total?

yea, TOTALLY depends on the price of the parts. which entirely depends on what you use and where/how you get them.