Vic you do nice work. $6k for a pan powdercoat seems excessive to me, particularly given what you got. That shop ought to refund it all, imho.
Hello everyone,
Another update on my build, I’ve got the front suspension and brakes put together.
I’ll be starting on the rear tomorrow.
I decided to do some DIY powder coating myself, I powder coated the drum spindles and the rear plates for attaching the the rear suspension arms. This involved buying a sandblasting cabinet and a new compressor along with a toaster oven and a powder coating gun.
the results are quite good though.
That’s it for now, I’ll keep you posted 👍
Attachments
Images (5)
A couple of years ago, my wife went through one of those weeks where she corralled everything that we hadn't used in a while and tossed phased it out. One of those was an analog Cuisenart convection toaster oven which got rescued and now is hidden away out in the shop cabinets.
I don't fully trust the temp knob on it, so I drilled a hole that I can pass a grilling thermometer temp probe through and that works great. Same as you, it's been handy for powder coating small parts. I get to use my daughter-in-laws sandblast booth when I need one - She creates a lot of custom stuff sold on Etsy.
He who dies with the most tools, wins...
Nice Mendeola stuff for sure.
DOing powder coating is something that I thought about doing at times and even media blasting needs a good water separator and the proper compressor. Plus you know the sand gets everywhere 
@Gordon Nichols posted:A couple of years ago, my wife went through one of those weeks where she corralled everything that we hadn't used in a while and tossed phased it out. One of those was an analog Cuisenart convection toaster oven which got rescued and now is hidden away out in the shop cabinets.
I don't fully trust the temp knob on it, so I drilled a hole that I can pass a grilling thermometer temp probe through and that works great. Same as you, it's been handy for powder coating small parts. I get to use my daughter-in-laws sandblast booth when I need one - She creates a lot of custom stuff sold on Etsy.
He who dies with the most tools, wins...
😂 I’m loving this! Thecway things are going I won’t be able to move in my garage with all the tools I’m having to buy for this build. I’m already eyeing up the next one - brake pipe flaring tool. I can’t believe the cost of these things!
I must admit, I wish I had bought the sandblaster and larger compressor at the start of my build, I spent hrs scrubbing to no effect. 2 minutes in the sand blaster and it’s done.
The powder coating was easier than I thought, same as, I should have got on it from the start.
@IaM-Ray posted:Nice Mendeola stuff for sure.
DOing powder coating is something that I thought about doing at times and even media blasting needs a good water separator and the proper compressor. Plus you know the sand gets everywhere
You are right about the compressor, I thought I could get away with using my old one, no good, hence the new one. A bonus was I sold my old compressor for the same price I paid for it, sometimes you win (rarely though). I fitted a water seperator to the cabinet and one to the compressor, seems to be working out okay so far.
I made some modifications to the cabinet, there are tons on line, one was the cyclone vacuum thingy on the left of the cabinet, it seems to keep dust at bay and most of the sand in the cabinet, cost about 20 bucks to make.
Well, great stuff, I just realized your in the Wild Rose Country, I have been thinking of moving there at times … You know… "never fear Smith is here.” and doing a good job it seems.
If you make friends with a local semi-custom exhaust shop you can usually get stuff like flaring done cheaply or for nothing (bring photos of your car - That always helps) and then you won't need to buy tools you'll only use once, or once every twenty years.
I still have the small-ish, 60 gallon air compressor that I had when building my car. I had to rebuild it after using air tools for too long on it. My son remembered that and got something much larger - a huge 2-stage 120 gal. compressor from something like Costco when he was building his shop and located it in a shed behind the garage to keep the noise manageable. You can never have too much CFM.
When I was building my Speedster, back in the 1990's, I was managing an engineering design group at a computer company. Part of that team built the mechanical prototypes of our stuff, so I made sure they had just about every tool known to man in their shop, plus a lot of space in what was once a parking garage. We all got good at creative justifications forwarded to the Finance types. Because the Proto guys had all those tools to work with, there was never any problem with bringing in things to get sand blasted, machined, chromate or powder coated, anodized or welded and then spirited back home.
Since I retired, I have to shop around for some of that stuff, but can still get things done on the cheap through a network of friends. That has helped me refrain from over-buying tools that wouldn't fit in my shop, anyway. Plus, I get to visit friends I might not see as often, just to check up on them.
A bicycling friend is a production Engineer at Astra Pharmaceutical and he dropped by a few weeks ago looking for help making a specialized tool he needed for some part of his production line. It maybe took an hour or so to cobble one together and he said my shop was way better than what he had at work.
He who dies with the most tools...
@Vic7672 posted:I’m already eyeing up the next one - brake pipe flaring tool. I can’t believe the cost of these things!
kit that includes tubing cutter, edge deburr & can do double and 'bubble' flare
https://www.harborfreight.com/...-tool-kit-58147.html
I got this to do the 1 brake line shortening to the rear & job done. I had a tube cutter and a countersink bit for the deburr.. and didn't see the need for bubble flare since I likely will not be doing another.
Hello
@Wrenn Smith posted:kit that includes tubing cutter, edge deburr & can do double and 'bubble' flare
https://www.harborfreight.com/...-tool-kit-58147.html
I got this to do the 1 brake line shortening to the rear & job done. I had a tube cutter and a countersink bit for the deburr.. and didn't see the need for bubble flare since I likely will not be doing another.
Thanks for this, I ended up buying a flaring tool similar to the one Eastwood sells, but from a company called Vevor, at about 1/4 of the cost. Oddly the tool I bought had a 45 degree and 37 degree fitting but no bubble flare. I took it to a machine shop, they drilled out the 37 degree portion to make it flat (circled) then machined the face the coresponding amount (arrow). I’ve not got around to brake pipes just yet, but I’ll let you know if it works. 
Attachments
Images (2)
Hello everyone,
The rear suspension and the rear brakes are fitted;
I had a few issues fitting the rear suspension, one of the issue I had is that I couldn’t get the Kafer bars to line up. On one of my earlier posts I showed the issue, I had the 2 brackets that fit to the frame horns bent a little bit more, which solved most of the problem. I then replaced the fitments of the top bar with heim joints, which totally solved the problem:
The next problem I had was that the disc brake brackets for the rear calipers didn’t fit the rear Coolrydes suspension:
I spoke with Pete at Airkewld, he informed me that people generally don’t mix and match Airkewld and Coolrydes products. Typical, more custom fitting was required, I decided to reshape the sides of the brackets to fit, this took a bit of time with multiple measurements and fitting. I finally got them both to fit, then I powder coated them:
I fitted new bearings and seals, sandblasted the old axles and powder coated the end sections.
continued in the next post.
Attachments
Images (6)
The eagle eyed out there may have noticed the the timing tools on the chassis, I had to replace the rocker arms and lifters on my daily driver the other day, what a pain in the ass that was!
The next thing I started on was reassembling the intake manifold on my engine, this is what iit looked like when I started:
I stripped it down, and started cleaning it, getting it to this stage:
I was then going to get it Vapour honed and powder coated, but I thought the cost would be a bit prohibitive, and I’ve had mixed results with farming work out. I stumbled across some youtube videos of people using wrinkle paint on their Subaru manifolds - in for a penny ……….
I taped off all the openings and used bungs to fill thread hole, then painted away. I then cured it in my BBQ grill as I didn’t want to incur the wrath of the Missus by using the oven, here is how it came out:
I went to the scrap yard and got another manifold which was in better shape but off an EJ253, the injector pipes were the same, the main injector pipes that run under the manifold were different, my manifold has an air injector solenoid the manifold I found didn’t so the pioes were a little different as were the injectors.
I cleaned the injectors with this kit I found on Amazon, the white piece at the bottom is from another kit I purchased, the box is an injector tester the white piece is a cleaner, when you combine the two you can test and clean the injectors at the same time, there are some videos on youtube:
The next job on the list is to clean and rewrap the engine wiring harness, then clean the throttle body.
Anquestion for those with a Subie engine: do you use a throttle body reverser? Like this:
If not how do you route the accelerator cable?
many thanks, I’ll keep you all posted as to my progress.
Attachments
Images (8)
I have a 2.5 Subie we have drive-by wire engine is 2009 ecu 2006.
nice job on the manifold,
I don't know about the newer ones, but on the older Subarus you could reverse the intake manifold and put the throttle body on the pulley end of the motor instead of the flywheel side. I think some wiring has to be modified and possibly some water hose stuff.
It looks possible from the pictures of yours I can see. Obviously flip the coil around and swap short/long plug wires.
Then you should easily get a throttle cable to it somehow. If you have drive-by-wire, you should be set, maybe making a small cut in the firewall to get an elbow on the throttle body, then mass airflow, then air filter. What ECU are you using?
When my car was built they used a throttle body from Outfront Motor Sports in Buena Park, Ca. It works with a cable from the back of the car. Here are some photo's .......
Attachments
Images (2)
Stock position in my EJ22, also stock ECU. I just routed the throttle cable into a wide U. No trouble with that in 10 years.
@DannyP posted:I don't know about the newer ones, but on the older Subarus you could reverse the intake manifold and put the throttle body on the pulley end of the motor instead of the flywheel side. I think some wiring has to be modified and possibly some water hose stuff.
It looks possible from the pictures of yours I can see. Obviously flip the coil around and swap short/long plug wires.
Then you should easily get a throttle cable to it somehow. If you have drive-by-wire, you should be set, maybe making a small cut in the firewall to get an elbow on the throttle body, then mass airflow, then air filter. What ECU are you using?
This is an option I hadn’t considered, it looks possible. Mine is a cable throttle body with stock ECU. Thanks for the idea👍
@IaM-Ray posted:I have a 2.5 Subie we have drive-by wire engine is 2009 ecu 2006.
nice job on the manifold,
Thanks Rey, drive by wire would have been the way to go. When I got the engine I didn’t really know much about different variants etc, having rebuilt one I am much more in the know now……… after the fact!
@Butcher Boy posted:When my car was built they used a throttle body from Outfront Motor Sports in Buena Park, Ca. It works with a cable from the back of the car. Here are some photo's .......
That is a nice looking engine! As much as I’ve tried, mine won’t be quite that polished, nice one, I’ve got engine envy 🤣.
Any Idea what engine the throttle body is off? It looks like it may be custom made.
@edsnova posted:Stock position in my EJ22, also stock ECU. I just routed the throttle cable into a wide U. No trouble with that in 10 years.
This is a great picture and extremely helpful, thanks Ed 👍
@Butcher Boy posted:When my car was built they used a throttle body from Outfront Motor Sports in Buena Park, Ca. It works with a cable from the back of the car. Here are some photo's .......
I can see in the lower area (top pict) an overflow tank for the rad. Does that goto another tank?
Also upper right there is an oil foaming tank ? is that what it is ?TIA
@IaM-Ray posted:I can see in the lower area (top pict) an overflow tank for the rad. Does that goto another tank?
Also upper right there is an oil foaming tank ? is that what it is ?TIA
Ray that tank is for the oil breather, not the radiator overflow. The radiator overflow is mounted lower in the very rear of the engine compartment.
@Vic7672 posted:That is a nice looking engine! As much as I’ve tried, mine won’t be quite that polished, nice one, I’ve got engine envy 🤣.
Any Idea what engine the throttle body is off? It looks like it may be custom made.
Thanks Vic, yes the engine was designed to make a statement. The engine builder thought I was nuts to do the intake in orange. But with the combination of all the colors on the car it was the perfect addition. After it all came together he agreed.
The throttle body is a custom piece. The engine builder ( Outfront Motorsports) added a lot of goodies to this motor. It's a stroked 2.6L with custom fuel rails, valve covers, dip sticks, caps, polished alternator and custom throttle body. Very fun to drive. I'm sure he could help you your build if you need any suggestions.
John at Outfront Motorsports 1 714 994- 5222 Buena Park, California USA