2001 2.5RS NA 4EAT swap to 93 Legacy 5MT

yeah, it happens still

 

you needs the turbo gaskets in there.

 

I believe he has said 2 or 3 times in that other thread that he has the STi ones in... correct me if I am wrong but doesnt teh STi have a turbo hence turbo gaskets....

 

smartass

 

All y'all some smart asses.


Enough headgasket talk in this thread.


So, today I got the front stabilizer bar put in correctly. I also took the transverse links of the ball joint stud and wiped the grease I naively put on it yesterday.

Then I started it up and took it for a test drive.

Yay!!! Everything seems to be working just fine!

No speedo - of course. Also throwing a P1596 code - which just says that the automatic transmission diagnosis line is seeing the wrong voltage. I suppose it would, since I just clipped the wiring harness.

There is one problem I need to take care of, though. There was an exhaust brace that was held by a bolt to a brace of the 4EAT. I don't see any way to attach the hanger to the 5MT and it sounds like the exhaust is bouncing around without it. Definitely needs to be fixed.

Also, feels like the alignment is WAY off. Already scheduled with Jeff the Alignment Guy for this Saturday.


I've got a really important question here, though. Is it hard on any of the components to leave the car idling with it in neutral and the clutch out (like, no one in the car) for 5-10 minutes two or three times a day??? (remote start)

 

By the way - EJ22Tim - another huge thanks for you!!!

Dude, you hooked me up fat with parts!! Props to you and good luck with your shop, man!! (who knows, maybe I'll have you do my HG for some $$)

 

congrats buddy!!!!

 

OMFG - I know!!! Thanks for the help man. This is unbelievable! Going from brake pads to tranny swap. Most exciting weekend I've had in a LONG time!!

 

yea it definatly was alot of fun! ill do another one anytime

 

And you only got to see a little part of it. Man, it was fun the rest of the weekend. Wish you could been there for the experience.

If you wanna check it out anytime - text me. I'd probably even let you drive it!

 

haha alright i will. do you still wanna help my do my CV joints before the frozen water falls?

 

Sure thing. I'd like to see how they come off and go back on. We already know how to get the axles off. You may need be prepared to do an alignment afterwards.

 

yea for sure i was already planning on an alignment anyways. i just need to wrestle up $100 then its on.

 

I got wned:




Nice to see you so excited about your new setup!

 

No. Idling with the clutch in will wear out the throwout bearing if you do it enough, but with everything off you'll be fine. You're just spinning shafts in the transmission, that's all.

And remember: don't leave it in gear if you're going to remote start it. It'll drive off on you.

 

That's why I'm putting so much effort into the wiring. It is going to be wired so that the NSS circuit will not let the car start if the tranny is engaged in gear - either forward or reverse.

 

Turns out this was actually a broken off punch. Tim was trying to remove the spring pin or put it back in or something and used a punch that was a tad too big. It jammed in and broke off - that's what's sticking out.


Also, today I tested ABS and it works fine.


Car felt a tad wobbly and loose at first, but by the end of the day the car felt tight and solid again. Also, the high idle went away today, too.

 

So, the speedo sender from the 4EAT obviously won't work.

Ordered a VSS from like an 06 5MT off NASIOC today for $27 bucks shipped. Not sure about compatibility, but worth a shot.

 

Here's some various shots mostly take by my GF on her Nikon D40 w/ kit lens while we were working.

This was the night that TSTRBOY04, aspiringRexer, EJ22Tim, and Snowbum were all over helping to get the 5MT in.

Sorry we didn't get more with all you guys in them. I'll have to discuss with the GF what kind of photos are good for MNSubaru.

 

More pictures.

 

i love these pics!

 

You should see the one EJ22Tim picture mailed me off my heads as he's doing my headgaskets - engine looks brand spanking new inside!!

Let me see if I can post it.

 

Here's the inside. :yumyum:

 

wow i just read the entire thread and it makes me happy to see your car running after all the upsets and worries. i went through close to the same thing but not as drastic when i swapped my stock 2.5rs tranny for a forester 5speed.

didnt you HATE pulling the damn axles?! WTF! it seemed like they wouldnt ever come off and then it took waaaay too much time putting them back on the new tranny. and i only had to deal with the front two.

props on your project man! i talked to erick at his work but i couldnt make it out to help ya. and i havent been reading enough threads to know this was up. i wish i had the time to come by that day. it seems like you ran into a lot of the same issues as i did on my swap.

hope it lasts man! dont beat her

 

Thanks man. It was definitely a monster project, but it's working good now.

Axles on mine were a piece of cake. Slid right out like butter. Of course, if you saw the underside of my car you'd understand! A guy could eat off it!

I won't beat her. I love my car and want it to last forever! Of course I drive it "spiritedly", but nothing stupid that will wreck stuff. On-ramps are fun! So is snow! I'll have to make the ice races this year!!!

 

Looks a little carbony, perhaps run some seafoam through it.

 

Which Seafoam method hits that part of the engine? Intake?

I did all three Seafoam areas (gas, oil, intake) no more than a couple months ago.

 

intake, or maybe just beat on it a little more

 

Okay - I think I made some progress on the high idle problem. The problem is that after swapping the 4EAT automatic tranny to a 5MT manual transmission the engine has a high idle RPM - around 2000 RPM's. After a few driving trips it learned itself away - it was kinda strange. It was idling high, then one time I shut the engine off and started it a couple minutes later and when I started it - boom - it was gone.

The linked to photos from that site show the correct pin as the "AT/MT Identification" signal.

Turns out that this is from the ECM I/O Signal diagram in the FSM.

Also so happens that I have the FSM's for my car in PDF form (found em somewhere on the web, but of course now that I go back to look for the link I can't find it. Good thing I downloaded and saved them!).

A quick text search in the Diagnostics.pdf file turned up the ECU I/O diagram telling me which connector and pin it should be on my car, as well as the proper voltage.

According to the aforementioned website, the ECU sets that pin to it's 5V reference voltage. It will be at that unless it is grounded out, in which case it will be 0V.

That means I should be able to read 5V between that pin and ground now, and will have to ground it out for my ECU not to adjust the timing for an AT.


A look in the Wiring.pdf file shows me the location of the harness.


Hopefully, I will be able to try this tonight when I pick my car up from Tim's. He had to remove the battery to do the headgaskets, so the ECU should be reset and the high idle should be there, allowing me to know if this fix works.

I will let everyone know if it does.

The exact pin & harness will likely be different on different models and years. With this info anyone with access to the proper FSM should be able to determine the correct pin for this fix. Fixing it is as easy as either snipping the wire and either leaving it hang or grounding it out. A voltmeter or multimeter is useful for making sure that the FSM is accurate about which voltage level indicates which transmission type.

 

after letting the car idle for 10-15 mins it still is idling at 2k. it dropped to 1500 for a while but it went back up

 

It took several stops and starts and some driving before it went away last time.

It went away last night. When I forgot the HG parts I went back to my house and shut off the car while I re-zip-stripped the alarm computer and stuff by the clutch pedal.

When I started back up to leave again the high idle was gone.


Don't worry about it. I want to try this wiring trick above tonight to see if that makes it go away. It should.

 

Dammit I wanted to stop by to see, but my job said otherwise

Glad to see you got it all sorted out. You know, I wonder. If you swapped the ECU with one from a MT RS from the same year, would it eliminate the idle issues you're having now? I think all the plugs should be the same.

I have an 01 RS too, swapped though. Before I swapped, I wanted to do the I-Speed SRS20 reflash, so I bought an 01 ECU from a guy on RS25.com to send in to have flashed. Of course I never got around to that since I swapped, so the ECU is still just sitting here in my room, I never even took it out of the box it was shipped to me in.

If you think it'll help you out, you can have it for cheap. I paid 100 shipped for it a year ago, I'll give it to you for half that.

I think I could also scrounge around my friend's house and find my actual ECU from my old engine, but the case of that one is switched with my JDM ECU so that I could use the JDM ECU with the back half of the USDM ECU's cover box, which had the mounting points I needed to mount it on the passenger side floor (the JDM one is supposed to mount on our driver side floor cuz it's RHD).

The advantage to using my old 01 ECU is that I had the rear O2 sensor delete flashed to it by the guys at morries minnetonka way way back when (2003), so I was able to run borla headers + high flow cat with no CEL, also if you plugged in an OBDII reader and checked the sensors, the rear O2 sensor comes up as N/A :laugh:

 

Wait a sec. So if you do not change this pin the ECU will adjust timing differently? Does this mean that if you ground this pin the ECU will pull less timing from the motor allowing for potentially more power?

 

Yes, that's what I seem to be understanding. I don't know enough about how the engine works in conjunction with the computer and a 4EAT to know exactly what is different, but it sounded like the manual pin would make the timing "better" - if that makes sense.

However ......


Tonight I gave this a try.

First of all, the harness did not have a wire in it for that pin. I stripped one down and shoved it in the hole and was able to make contact and read the 5V. I grounded it, and it had little effect - maybe 200 RPM. It still seemed stuck idling around 1700-ish. I left Tim's and stopped for gas in Long Lake, when I started the car afterwards the ECU had already eliminated the high idle (pin not grounded).

So, I don't know, but it did not work like I had expected.

 

I think the MT ECU will eliminate the idle, but I'm not sure about the ABS - that seems to be partly dependent on the TCU - but I'm not positive about that.

Willing to let me try and plug that ECU in and see what happens before buying it? I'd be up for that. I'd also be up for trying the one with the O2 delete. If it worked okay and you wanted to get rid of it I could plop that in my mounting box.

 

Yea, no problem. I'd always wanted to see if that ECU worked, the seller said it did but I never got the chance to try. And today I'll stop by my friend's house after work and scrounge around the garage, I'm sure my old ECU is still there somewhere. If not, you could still try the one I bought.

I could drop by your place with the ECUs and we can plug them in, or you could drop by my place and we can plug them in. Today (friday) I only work 4 hours, off work by 11 am and free most of the day.

 

Cool. I'll PM you. I work until about 6 and then I have to drop someone off in Mpls.

 

OMG! this is an awesome thread and a great addition to the DIY database of this community. I didn't realize this was you because I got used to your old avatar.
I read all the important sections but I might have missed something and I read about your high idle problem.
There's one thing I wanted to let you know. My car is swapped as well and when they did the swap they changed the TCU and the cruise control unit, but I believe they did not change the ECU. I don't know if this might help you at all.

 

I don't think the TCU would control the ABS, considering I have a MT and ABS also. But I have no idea what kinda trickery subaru does with the 4EAT.

 

OMFG!!

Today was the first day that I really felt I had my baby back!

Made sure my alignment was good and put back all my interior trim (still missing boot, but lower center console piece fits with enough room to shift.

Vacuumed everything, cleaned the leather, cleaned up the dash and door cards, did the inside glass.

It finally looks like my sparkling clean baby. And it drives GREAT!! Love the manual, and finally starting to get the hang of it (busy traffic and hills still make me nervous).


Thanks again to everyone who helped in any way. Can't believe it's basically done and working!

 

Got a VSS yesterday. Going to try to put it in tonight. When there's decent amounts of traffic no speedo is fine, I just follow people. But when the road's empty I tend to like 4k RPM in 5th and I'm sure that's far too fast. :hsugh:


Looks like I have to wire it in differently from the speed sensor #2 from the 4EAT. Looks like that auto VSS went to the TCU where it's signal gets changed possibly (I'm pretty sure it uses a couple of sensors and takes that information into account when determining front/rear torque split).


Should also have the new center console in late this week or early next week, so I can get that buttoned up and kill the noise & tranny whine.

I am getting some vibration that wasn't there before the swap. Haven't really got a clue what it is. Loud enough to notice but not loud enough to be scary.

 

Hmmm ... VSS did not fit in the transmission. The shaft was too long and the threads were too narrow (not that they even reached the tapped hole at all).


Tried to put the pins in the front axles - the ones that go through the hole that lines up between the axle and the stub on the tranny.

It was weird, though - the hole didn't quite line up and when we twisted it one spline over it just didn't line up the same amount on the other side. I was only able to pound one pin about half-way in and the other about a third of the way in. Not sure why they didn't line up.

Getting the pins at least part-way in reduced, but didn't eliminate, some of the new vibrations.


Drives great, though!!! Love it!!!

 

Whoa vibrations?

Scary man, that one pin wasn't in all the way and that might be it. The faster you go the more it vibrates. :ugh: I mean, if you were going fast enough on a turn and hit a bump the wrong way who knows what will happen. Try pulling it out again and pressing it a LITTLE with a clamp. it might make it a bit smaller. As you bang it back in it should start to increase in size a bit. GL

 

I don't know. No way in h**l is that pin coming out, and it's only a couple of grams. It's off center less than an inch. Not enough to make any noticeable vibrations. Besides, it got better with the pins than without. Especially over bumps. Those axles must have been slopping around a bit. I'm wondering if it isn't somewhat the tranny mount. It's a huge POS. Group-N tranny mount is very high on my parts list.

 

group N tranny mounts are the same as STI tranny mounts, made by STI. (not from the car) they stiffen up everything to produce less shake, which means more of the restricted shake and pitch will translate into vibrations and it will only get louder.

as for that pin. you need to wack that SOB hard with your 3lb sledge! i was literally hammering on mine.