Swap City: Part 4

Part 4 of our ongoing swap project is upon us.  To catch up on what has happened thus far or just to refresh your memory a little, go ahead and do so now: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

The car is inching towards completion and with the majority of the mechanical work done, the remaining work to be done is mainly installing various parts back onto the car to get it ready to run.

Day 1

We start with installing the stock radiator back into the car.  I don’t plan on sticking with the stock radiator for long since it is important to upgrade the it when you swap in a turbo engine.  Once you add a turbo to a car, the engine gets much hotter since it is constantly spooling and compressing air.  Since the coolant lines are different on the WRX engine, the upper radiator hose had to be cut to fit.

        

After that, the metal AC lines had to be moved to accommodate the addition of the intercooler, which is harder than it sounds since they’re metal.  The AC lines were sitting on a bracket next to the firewall (the barrier between the engine bay and the interior of the car), getting in the way of the intercooler which has to sit on top of that bracket.  With the AC lines moved, the intercooler could now rest where it is supposed to go.

Attached to the intercooler is the bypass valve.  The bypass valve (BPV) is there to recirculate the compressed air from the turbo back to the intake.  The BPV only opens when you let off the accelerator and the throttle is shut, trapping all the compressed air from the turbo.  When the BPV opens, it recirculates the air back to the turbo, so it isn’t wasted.

          

Now that the intercooler was in, we connected the rest of the wires in the interior and called it a night.

Day 2

We started the day by having the car towed to Sum’s new shop to get the exhaust cut and fitted.

(Don’t mind the FR-S wheels, those are for track purposes only)

Full disclosure: Sum just bought a shop in the heart of downtown Sacramento called Acme Body Shop (it is now under his ownership and different employees) at 1208 Q St.  He hasn’t paid me to plug his new shop, he’s just a really cool guy who knows what he’s doing and honest about what you need.  I can vouch for his work since we’ve worked together on this swap and he’s obviously a professional.

Sum got to work measuring the exhaust to fit the car.

After the midpipe was cut, we put it under the car to see if it fit.

Once we saw that the exhaust fit, it was time to weld the flange on.

During this whole process, it was discovered that the Check Engine Light (CEL) was on and giving us a fuel pump controller code.  This was because the fuel pump controller wasn’t playing nice with the wiring harness we installed.  A problem for next time.

After the exhaust was installed, we finally got to hear the signature Subaru rumble.  And thanks to the Stromung exhaust tip, it sounded extra mean.  I’ll make sure to upload a video of that soon for your hearing pleasure.  We then drove it back to Eddie’s house and installed as much of the dash as we could before had to wrap up for the weekend.

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