Subaru engine in a Speedster

I don’t know if it’s been done with a CMC, but I don’t know why not.

The Subaru engine has so much torque, you have to upgrade the VW trans to basically a drag box with square cut gears. Special Edition in Bremen, IN has lots of experience with this Powertrain and they’re in your home state. @chines1 can advise if they’d be interested in the job.

www.beckspeedster.com

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Thanks for the info. I will give Carey a call.

Do you know if the engine rotation is the same or does the transaxle need to have the ring and pinion flipped?

I don’t remember. I think it does, but it’s a standard item now.


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Engine rotation is same as VW. There are a couple VS conversions referenced here on SOC.  VS uses  same VW pan and VW transaxle as CMC/FF/early IM --- plus even Ed's BMC TD.  All to my knowledge use T1 transaxel - but suspect they changed gear ratios or at least used some of the freeway flyer beef up techniques (super diff, stronger side plates and welded syncros).  Heavier CVC joint and axle conversions are available too.  Dune buggies often go with t2 bus trans as they are heavy duty - but will require regearing. Reverse rotation gears (R&P) are available from Subarugears but they are costly (not much difference than a rebuilt 40 year old T1 trans though) - that would give you 5 speeds and right ratios for the Subbie engine.  http://subistuff.com/subarugears.html The Subbi engine is behind the engine (like the Porsche 914) unlike T1 which is before engine.

KEP ( Kennedy Engineered Products ) in California will sell you an adapter plate for about $450 that will allow you to bolt just about any motor onto a VW transmission. The Soob engine turns in the correct direction so no tranny mods are necessary. 

A heavily rebuilt VW transmission is advisable but not mandatory. I drove my conversion for three or four years before getting the tranny rebuilt and at that time I used stock VW gearing but with the 3.44: 1 ring and pinion and it suits my driving style well. 

One thing to look out for is the athwartship distance between your rear frame rails. I did a Soob conversion and my older IM frame rails only allowed installation of a 2.2l engine. The 2.5l engine is 2 1/2" wider and will not fit without frame modification. I got around this by building up a Frankenmotor which is basically a 2.5l block with 2.2l heads. Cometic sells head gaskets specifically for this mod. 

Ed Ericson converted a Soob engine for his MG TD and it's all electronic just like in a Subaru. I took a different approach to keep things where I can manage them and defaulted to a single, center mounted Weber 5200 carb and a Ford Escort crank fired ignition system. If you really wanted to go to a very simple ignition system, you could mount a certain Mitsubishi distributor to the end of one of the Subaru "in head" 2.2L camshafts. 

Cooling can be easily managed in a basic conversion. The rad seems to like being up front in the car and every high point will need a bleeder. I run a Saab rad up front in mine. Long aluminum tubes were donated to me from a buddy who had extra wing spars from a hang glider. 1.5" diameter and they run fore and aft on each side of the car. I mounted an aftermarket heater core in my conversion too. 

I use stock genuine VW heavy duty transmission mounts. I fabbed up a rear transverse mount which goes from side to side at the very rear of the engine using some mount parts I bought from Small Car Performance. Those parts basically cradle the Soob engine and make a rear mount easy to do.   I did not have to modify the oil pan and have just over 4 1/2" of ground clearance. I drove about 30,000 miles without this extra mount with that stock transmission so it comes into the "advisable but not mandatory" category of my conversion.

It's not that hard to convert once you know a workable plan. Ed and I had to teach ourselves and took different approaches but both work well. 

Here's one pic of a very dirty engine compartment where you can see that the EFI ports have been blocked off in favour of the carb. The Ford ignition parts are back on the firewall to the right of the overflow bottle. Second pic is of my rear mount going from the Small Car parts to the rear chassis frame rails. Third pic is the Small Car engine mounts that cradle the engine from below. Fourth pic is of the Kennedy adapter package and the last photo is of Suzanne who was brought in to help with the installation now and then but she proved out to be lazy, unreliable and late most of the time....

David....I like your rear transverse bar !  Looks like it mounts to the same plce as mine.....Bruce

aircooled posted:

David....I like your rear transverse bar !  Looks like it mounts to the same plce as mine.....Bruce

Thanks, Bruce. Mine works about the same as yours but you went the extra mile with the nice finish too. My mount is steel and goes up on each side to a welded tube which encases rubber bushings that are in turn bolted to the frame members. 

Thanks for all of the great info. If I went with a 2.2L engine what is the factory HP and TQ specs on this?

135hp/137lb-ft

WOLFGANG posted:

135hp/137lb-ft

Not bad numbers. 

I bet it feels a hell of a lot smoother than a $5-6k VW engine and doesn't leak oil. I may have Cary Hines do the conversion. I am talking with him and we are both in Indiana. I have owned one of their Spyders. I also owned the Rotary powered CMC roll up window speedster that someone posted a picture on here awhile ago. I sold it before I realized how rare it was. I thought the roll up window option was normal at the time I owned it. Kicking myself now.

I started with that engine  before going 2.5 Turbo.  They are getting very old so I would spend a few bucks on a nice rebuild.  They sound really nice too.  Make sure you get the matching ECU.  

Marty Grzynkowicz posted:

I started with that engine  before going 2.5 Turbo.  They are getting very old so I would spend a few bucks on a nice rebuild.  They sound really nice too.  Make sure you get the matching ECU.  

.....you mean old like my 1971 1600 punched and stroked to 2110.......?

Here's a great thread on using an EJ22 in a VW

http://www.shoptalkforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=136053

Panhandle Bob posted:

Marty Grzynkowicz posted:

I started with that engine  before going 2.5 Turbo.  They are getting very old so I would spend a few bucks on a nice rebuild.  They sound really nice too.  Make sure you get the matching ECU.  

.....you mean old like my 1971 1600 punched and stroked to 2110.......?

That not old, that's almost dead

Jimmy, here is my car  when It had the 2.2EJ with a Porsche 5spd.  

https://youtu.be/Q4ZO7Au4jS4

 

I have a NA 2.5L and am very happy with it.

The only real sorting changes I made after the conversion was a larger overflow bottle (now standard) and the addition of a small electronic device to soften the throttle response between the DBW accelerator and the ECU.


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Carey will def. take care of you, Jim. If you were closer to MD I'd offer to take the job, but probably still recommend Beck if you could afford them.

The EJ22 is indeed an older engine, and getting hard to find low mile units in boneyards or JDM. The good news with these is they're compact (review Stroud's post for why that could matter), tend to be relatively free from head gasket issues (there are some Suby DOHC that apparently have problems), are easy to change timing belts on, and are all-but-invisible to the racer boys,* so when/if you do find a low-mile one, it's usually not had the bag driven off it for all those miles.

Mine came from a '95 Legacy wagon with like 84k on it. The car was extremely rough, the oil in the crankcase was like burned coffee...and when I looked at the rods and bearings, cams & internals, everything was like new. There were still hone marks in the cylinders. 

Horsepower is indeed modest, but the torque curve on these is as good as or better than just about any comparable type-1. Like over 120 from just off idle through 6k.

The motors like to rev. Mine stops revving at 6k because I installed an unmolested, stock ECU, and in '95 they were limited to 6k. Only year, that. 

The standard late Beetle box with the usual beef-up stuff will handle a 2.2 or a 2.5 "Franken Motor" (about 180 horses) just fine, so long as you're not trying to prove a point every time the light turns green. I heartily endorse the 3.44 R&P. The engine's torque will eat it up, and you can cruise 70-75 at 3k, which is right on-par with what the Suby trans was doing.

I do recommend the Small Car shortened oil pan. Spendy but, unless you're riding a little high in the back, worth it for piece of mind. It's a nice, strong item and comes with the correct pickup tube & etc. 

All of these things you won't have to worry about if you have Special Edition do the work. I've done 1.

They've done dozens. 

 

*Except for the EJ22T, which was the hot setup about 20 years ago. The turbo motors had a closed deck and oil squirters under the pistons, and were commonly strapped to the biggest turbines a 20-year-old boy living at home could afford. Good times, but, means any 22T case you might encounter now has most likely been well and truly used.

Thanks for all of the great responses. I am waiting to hear back from Carey as to their winter work schedule.