11 Oct Double Your Fun
When you’re doubling your fun by turning four cylinders into eight, there’s all sorts of little jobs that need to be knocked out along the way.
Putting a different car’s parts inside of another car can require a little more than you might think. In today’s first case, we’ve got the emergency brake cables. The way they are run normally in the Subaru, they come up through two oval slots in the center of the car, above the trans tunnel. The only problem with this setup is that they may contact the driveshaft of the LS motor setup, so we went about fixing that. First, we drilled two holes higher up in the body, to route the cables away from any potential issues. You can see both the new holes (the ones being used) and the old holes (the two oval ones closer to the middle of the car) in this next picture:
Naturally, you don’t want exposed holes just hanging out; after all, that could introduce unwanted elements into the cabin. So, we set about patching it up with our MIG welder and a good amount of grinding and smoothing.
Once the holes were sealed, we put a couple coats of paint over it to prevent against any corrosion. And there we have it — one sealed trans tunnel!
Next comes addressing the fuel system. Now that we have the fuel cell hanging out in the trunk, we’d need to find places for both the fuel pump and the fuel filter. We wanted to keep them close to the rest of the fuel system, but in an area where we can utilize some airflow to help keep the pump cool during operation. For that reason, we set about creating a system of plates and brackets that would hold both the pump and filter under the body of the car, closer towards the rear bumper. We started by cutting out some “feet” on the lathe; these feet will be welded to the plate, and the filter and pump will screw directly into them. In the second picture, you can see the feet connected to the fuel filter’s brackets, which we also made from scratch.
After that, we drilled holes in the framework holding up the fuel cell. During that time, we finished the brackets for the fuel pump, and also took our new foot-plate setup over to the welding table to get it all finalized.
Once the plate was finished being welded, we gave it some time to cool, then mocked everything up under the car as it would normally sit. And it’s looking good! Now we’ll have airflow around the pump, helping to keep it cool, while also arranging the pump and filter in a manner that’s easy for servicing, need be.
But that’s not all. We had one more modification to make. When creating the headers, it was difficult to get 8 runners down under the motor (as the Subaru normally has half as many pipes coming from the engine bay), and fitment was tight. In order to relieve some of that constriction, we shaved the transmission’s bell housing by about 1/8 to 1/4 inch to give it a little extra space. Since the grinder came out for the shaving, we knew sparks would get thrown and had the camera ready to capture it. It did not let us down.
We’ve got plenty more content coming up on the blog to end the week, so stay tuned!
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