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Terry's 415whp Forester diy budget build. About to be retired.

291K views 2K replies 77 participants last post by  bue car 
#1 · (Edited)
My 5th and favorite Subaru. The 1998 Subaru Forester S 5mt. I have always been one to buy a car in rough shape and make something of it. When my Legacy was finally starting to become a maintenance burden I started looking and found this Forester, it needed head gaskets mostly but the body was solid, rust free and it was a 5 speed. So I coughed up the $600 and bought it. .

And so began the build process.

Note worthy pages:

Dyno Day
Blow'd up rev 3 video
Ported Manifold
Manual Rack Install


Specs:

For 2017
Turbo rev6.0:
95 Legacy 2.2 Case
ej22e crank
13 STi rods .0018 bearing clearence
JE 2618 Forged pistons 314350 .004ptw
King main and rod bearings
ARP 2000 Head Studs
Felpro 9856PT Head gaskets
05 wrx shimless Heads
07 STi Cams
BW S252sxe
E85
CarBerry 4.2 speed density flex fuel rom
Omni 3-Bar MAP sensor
Oem wrx header
Custom rotated by me Uppipe
Custom dowpipe
Reversed, shaved and TGV deleted intake
3" exhaust, catless. Vibrant resonator, Jones Max Flow muffler
Innovative LC-2 Wideband
Denso 950cc injectors
Walbro 450 hard wired
Perrin FMIC 3.5x9.5x25 core
2.5" Intercooler piping
Full Speed Density
Tial 38mm wastegate VTA
South Bend Stage 3 Ceramic Clutch
homemade tranny plates
Forester 5mt 4.11, .871 5th
H6 VLSD rear diff
WRX Wagon takeoffs
STI 19mm rear sway bar
XXR 18x8.75 +35 527's
Outshu 245/40/18
TWM Short throw w/ weighted knob
Rotella Oil
Optima battery on floor behind driver seat
Depowered Rack



Old Block Turbo rev1.0:
95 EJ22e block (blew number 2 piston at 22psi)
96 EJ25D heads/gaskets

Old Block Turbo rev2.0:
2008 Ej253 pinned
CP Forged pistons set to .0035 PTW
2013 STI Rods (threw #4 rod bearing)
1999 Legacy 2.5 Crank
96 EJ25D HLA Heads
ACL Race Bearings STD size

Old Block Turbo rev3.0:
95 EJ22e block (#1 rod bearing)
96 EJ25D heads/gaskets

Currentish Photos, currentist at top:


















As purchased:



Usefull links for my record purposes:

obdII pinout

Stock ROM list

WRX ecu pinout
for iat move pin b23 to b27

98 ecu 1
98 ecu 2
98 ecu 3
FPC info

flash connector

Brydon's wrx harness to 98 wrx pin a5 actually goes to the 4 coil packs. im going to tee this wire to pin 85 rather than cut it

fpc wiring if i got that route

Brydon's donor harness prep

logging to openport 2.0 sd card

Wastegate Duty Cycle
 

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#163 · (Edited)
got my 3/8 round bar today, now i can at least finish the block pinning

A few questions on your pinning.

Did you use aluminum or steel rod? Machined to size?

Did you hone the cylinders after?

Height of pins?

How deep did you ream to put the pin in?

What size reamer and what size pin?

How much force to get the pins in?


Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk
 
#164 · (Edited)
Honestly it was a very generic process. I originally planned on using a 3/8 and 5/16 drill and buying 10mm and 8mm rod then machining rod to fit snug in hole. WELL i found some 5/16 rod at work and it fit perfectly snug in the 5/16 drill hole. So did the 3/8 rod. Rods are 6061 Aluminum. I found the 5/16 rod and bought 4 sticks of 3/8 on ebay for $8 out of Colorado (6061dude), good stuff.

I basically just put tape on the drill bit so i drilled each hole about the same depth, approx 3/4", then with a hack saw i cut the pins about 5/8. Not really a machine shop process here. Ideally the pins could be started but not pushed the hole way with your thumb, I light tap with an small rod and hammer got them finished, not too tight to move or effect the bore. A couple of the pins were too loose for my liking, an easy fix was to lay pin down and whack it with a hammer making it slightly oval shaped, then they fit nice and snug.

The hardest part was cutting and cleaning the little pins without burning yourself. Drilling is the most critical step and would be near impossible without that steel template to keep the bit from jumping around. The template can be made out of bar with just one hole as long as it has the same size hole your drilling and can be firmly clamped in place where you want the pin.
 
#167 ·
Honestly it was a very generic process. I originally planned on using a 3/8 and 5/16 drill and buying 10mm and 8mm rod then machining rod to fit snug in hole. WELL i found some 5/16 rod at work and it fit perfectly snug in the 5/16 drill hole. So did the 3/8 rod. Rods are 6061 Aluminum. I found the 5/16 rod and bought 4 sticks of 3/8 on ebay for $8 out of Colorado (6061dude), good stuff.

I basically just put tape on the drill bit so i drilled each hole about the same depth, approx 3/4", then with a hack saw i cut the pins about 5/8. Not really a machine shop process here. Ideally the pins could be started but not pushed the hole way with your thumb, I light tap with an small rod and hammer got them finished, not too tight to move or effect the bore. A couple of the pins were too loose for my liking, an easy fix was to lay pin down and whack it with a hammer making it slightly oval shaped, then they fit nice and snug.

The hardest part was cutting and cleaning the little pins without burning yourself. Drilling is the most critical step and would be near impossible with that steel template to keep the bit from jumping around. The template can be made out of bar with just one hole as long as it has the same size hole your drilling and can be firmly clamped in place where you want the pin.
Thanks, good call on the template too. It seems anyone that has ever had problems with pinning uses brass or steel pins, aluminum should help alleviate the problem with potential thermal expansion ratio differences.
 
#166 · (Edited)
An electrical update:

In efforts to prevent knock, I am unhooking my stock knock sensor from the emanage, i believe it may have been filtering detenation noise from the ECU, no bueno. It never seemed to work anyway. This leaves that channel open for me to wire in the IAT sensor in the WRX maf. This should now let me monitor intake temps post intercooler and adjust fuel and timing for heatsoak etc..

LEaves me with two questions to figure out:

1) How fast does the stock wrx intake temp sensor read, and is it fast enough to be useful for pulling timing during heat soak.
2) At what temperature is considered heat soak and how much timing to pull for it.
 
#168 · (Edited)
I did some cam measuring the other day. I always thought NA cams were more aggresive than turbo cams. They are not. The Intake lift was 8.3mm and exhaust was 8.5mm on the bigger lobe. Kinda lame when you figure Sti cams have over 10mm of lift. I dont think i can run much bigger of a cam because the smaller buckets hla heads have less room for the cam lobe to rotate.
 
#192 · (Edited)
this 2" uppipe made a huge difference, its trying to build boost almost 2k rpms sooner than before. The extra 300cc probably didnt hurt either. I been trying to hitting a couple psi here and there for seating the rings and i hit wastegate pressure this morning around 3500 and this dump tube is going to be a SCREAMER!
 
#180 · (Edited)
I think the bigger skinny one may go under the rear wrist pin access cap, I have to check tonight. I wonder why two oil cooler gaskets..

The bigger fatty doesnt go behind pump, its the same as other oil ports

Update:

Bigger skinny one went under rear wrist pin cover.
The fatty went on oil fill tube in head hole.
Blue one for oil pump
 
#183 · (Edited)
without a thousand dollar set of bore gauge and mic's, i had to use feeler gauges to check the PTW clearences. I think it worked out ok. And FYI i'm pretty sure the connecting rods all face the same direction, the fuji logo faces the oil pump. Not like Mike said in that CareyHolzman video says about bearing locks facing down. I did it his way then pulled block back apart to face them all same direction. I messed up one of my ring gaps. I set all the comp ring to .021, and scrapers to .025 then i somehow filed one of the scrapers to like .080 on accident, woops.




at what point do i have to stop calling this a budget build?

 
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