75 replies to this topic

[Beckers]

Yeah mad

 

Pull or push clutch? If its pull take the slave off the box and g clamp the rod into the cubt then bleed it. Only way ive ever been able to get them to bleed

Dual range box should be a push type clutch.

[El_Freddo]

Shit mate, I need to learn how to clean a car properly by the looks of things!

Schmick!

Cheers

Bennie

[duncanm]

.. the dual range gear box popping out of "HIGH" on decel

I had exactly the same issue when I reinstalled my engine + box. Took me ages to work out what was going on, thought the box was the problem.
 
You'll find there's a cable termination on the top of the driver's side of the box (easy to see from above) - you've done it up too tight.  Its got a rubber grommet in it. Just do it finger tight so its snug and wont undo.
 
Also make sure the lever-end is adjusted properly - put it in high, make sure the gbox is in high, take off the knob and console and re-do the cable termination clamp on the shift plate at its natural position (no tension on cable).

There's also a cable housing retainer on the box to stop it flapping around - make sure you didn't forget it.
 

This needs going over again with a slightly stiffer brush as the makeup was really caked into the little slits!
 

the rest is so clean! anyone have an idea how to clean this material? My gen3 suffers from what I can only presume is armpit sweat and sunscreen embedded in the window sill. Can't get it out.

[duncanm]

Oh - for the clutch, I've had good success with using a syringe on the slave and pushing fluid in that way - strange as it sounds.

[motoboy76]

Awesome update it looks great...

 

Top job......

[regashi]

Gen3 EZ30Ds are cool.

 

How have you updated the error codes for a manual transmission?

[U-Shell]

Yeah mad

 

Pull or push clutch? If its pull take the slave off the box and g clamp the rod into the cubt then bleed it. Only way ive ever been able to get them to bleed

 

It's push I'm pretty sure. I'll try the G clamp thing on the weekend, I do remember having to do something like that on my old RX

 

You could've just swapped the module off the side of the abs pump without having to rebleed anything just FYI. Saves heaps of effort. Auto would've only been cracking the shits cus it couldn't see the TCU anymore.

 

Tells me now haha.. Had to bleed new fluid through anyway so not a big deal

[U-Shell]

Dual range box should be a push type clutch.

 
Yeah she's a pusher. Thanks again for the ABS unit! Got me out of a pickle  
 

Shit mate, I need to learn how to clean a car properly by the looks of things!

Schmick!

Cheers

Bennie

 
Took a little while to clean but so satisfying afterwards! GO grab some citrus spray from the supermarket (like $9 for a bottle) and get in there! It's pretty easy going stuff but not sure how it will fair on the older dash's etc so be carful there  
 

I had exactly the same issue when I reinstalled my engine + box. Took me ages to work out what was going on, thought the box was the problem.
 
You'll find there's a cable termination on the top of the driver's side of the box (easy to see from above) - you've done it up too tight.  Its got a rubber grommet in it. Just do it finger tight so its snug and wont undo.
 
Also make sure the lever-end is adjusted properly - put it in high, make sure the gbox is in high, take off the knob and console and re-do the cable termination clamp on the shift plate at its natural position (no tension on cable).

There's also a cable housing retainer on the box to stop it flapping around - make sure you didn't forget it.
 

the rest is so clean! anyone have an idea how to clean this material? My gen3 suffers from what I can only presume is armpit sweat and sunscreen embedded in the window sill. Can't get it out.

 
Found that nut, it's not done up at all! Possibly the problem, I'll have another look tomorrow night, thanks for the advice!!
 
Citrus cleaner works amazing and isn't very harsh on the trims although I wouldn't go to ham with it. 
 
Try this stuff for your interior: http://www.superchea...enuFrom=1021763 . Doesn't leave an oily residue that can be annoying to the touch. Grab a paint brush or stiffer bristle brush if the paint brush isn't enough. That should work fine, its amazing how good the trims come up afterwards!
 
If you can deal with a slight shine, try some of this stuff if the trims are looking a little dry. I usually use it once to 'moisturise' old trims and then just use the normal stuff as I can't stand having a shiny dash in summer.
http://www.superchea...enuFrom=1021763

 

Oh - for the clutch, I've had good success with using a syringe on the slave and pushing fluid in that way - strange as it sounds.

 
Dad said to try doing that do, kind of like a reverse bleed
 

Awesome update it looks great...
 
Top job......

 
Thanks mate! It's slowly coming together
 

Gen3 EZ30Ds are cool.
 
How have you updated the error codes for a manual transmission?

 
Yeah I'm stocked. Maybe if I had of bought one for my first car instead of the RX Sedan, I might have still had it now!
 
Got a bloke to give me a tune I could flash onto the ECU that deletes all the auto codes! Nice and simples.

[U-Shell]

Well it's been a while but the car is finally alive and driving daily! I'll pick the story kind of where we left off...

​Now the engine was in, the car was some what driveable, but still way off where it needed to be to get a roadworthy and registered. Got a mate over to try and help me bleed the clutch because it was a porridge slippy bitch..

 

Clamped it helped, but was still having dramas

 

 

So we plugged the compressor in and used a vacuum bleeder with moderate success. The clutch was now engaging properly, but it's still at the top of the pedal travel. I ended up leaving it like this as I'll have to replace the clutch sooner than later, or the dual range, what ever gives up first.

 

 

Next part to be fixed was the power steering line from the pump to reservoir. She was leaking reaallyy badly and aerating the oil so OMR hooked me up with a new line, and that fixed the problem. 

 

 

Now that the major mechanical stuff was done in the engine bay, I gave it a quick cleanup to finish the day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that the major mechanical things were fixed. I needed to finish off the auto > manual wiring. Starting with the speed signal to the cluster.

 

This was the only wire I had at the time... A little thick on the insulation but it did the trick

 

 

Handy tip to loom multiple cable into one neat package. Grab said cables, chuck them in your drill and spin her up whilst holding the other end tight. It should twist together and stay there long enough for you to wrap up with electrical tape so it looks nice and neat!

 

 

 

 

Picked up the 5v feed from the TPS in the main bulkhead loom that runs across the firewall in the engine bay. Proabably a better place I could have grabbed the feed from, but it's held up for the last 1500K's so should be fine.

 

 

 

 

Then put some split conduit over the cables and black electrical taped it all together for a factory look

 

 

 

 

Now whilst I originally just ran the speed signal to the cluster, I later learnt after many frustrating check engine lights/ occasional limp mode if it was really unhappy, that you also need to wire the speed signal directly to the ECU. Other wise the cluster will show your speed, but you'll get an Idle malfunction error code which for me seemed to also trigger all the TCU/ Auto codes that were disabled, which then would stop the car going over 3500rpm.

 

Also note that those who want cruise control on a manual swapped H6 Gen 3, you also need to wire the speed signal and an ignition switched 12v+ feed over to the cruise control module. For me (Rev D-E) speed signal goes to green/ black stripe wire (pin 19) and the 12v to the white/ black stripe (pin 4).

 

When trouble shooting the idle code, I originally thought it was the Neutral position switch. The H6 ECU is looking for an open signal in gear, closed in neutral switch. Most 5 speeds are the opposite of that (closed in gear, open in neutral). So after a little googling I found that most 6 speeds are inverted to the 5 speeds, meaning a NPS would work on the H6 ECU. I can't remember the part number, but I believe it was from an 02-05 WRX STi 6 speed.

 

Although it's possible to invert the polarity of the 5 speed NPS in the ECU, this meant that the car had to be in gear to start. I wasn't sure how that would go getting a roadworthy and figured having to have the car in neutral to start was a good safety feature.

 

 

Car was missing the dead pedal when I got it as the previous owner had already put the manual swap in to test how it felt before pulling the engine to put into a Gen 2. Quick trip to wreckers and I have a manual pedal. Upon installation, I discovered somone had hacked out not only the auto dead pedal, but the whole metal tab/ bracket that the dead pedal screws too....

 

 

 

Some long self tapping screws had it sorted, but it doesn't sit perfectly which is a little frustrating.

 

I'm not sure what prompted me to start sound deadening the car when it wasn't even on the road at this stage, but I'm pretty sure I got a good deal on some sound deadner from Jaycar, so off came the door cards and in it went!

 

 

I love how easy Gen 3 door cards come off. Everytime I remove the E46 door cards, you basically need to re order every clip and screw to get it back on as they're so brittle...

 

 

Found some green goopy shit in there that the deadner wouldn't stick to, so took to the painful task of removing it as best I could.

 

 

 

 

 

Did all the doors but because I hadn't actually driven the car anywhere, I can't tell you if it made any difference haha. The mid bass was certainly improved in the stereo though which was my main aim.

 

Now fix the dual range. It wouldn't stay in gear not matter how much i adjusted things. So since I had a non dual range centre console, I decided to just tie the high/ low lever into high range until I get another gearbox.

 

 

 

I would like to say I fixed up how ghetto the fence wire tie up job is, but it's still there currently lol

 

 

 

 

I'm eventually going to adapt the old auto surround to take a manual gearboot so the trim pieces all match.

 

The engine was still filled with the sacrificial oil and what ever kerosene was still in there. Now the car had done a few heat cycles and short trips around the block. I could dump it and fill it with some short mile oil to try and keep cleaning the old gunky oil out of the engine before I put a full engine flush in.

 

 

 

Not sure how long a post can be on here so further updates in the next post....

[Liberty]

There isn't a limit on length of posts.

Great update though man. Well done on the progress so far!

[U-Shell]

Okay so now we're up to basically current day.

 

Car had finally gotten a roadworthy certificate thanks to Tyrone helping me out whilst I'd been away working in Albury (Hence the slow progress on the OBK)

 

I had a week off work to finish the car and get it ready for registration and other family stuff etc.

 

So naturally, since the car wasn't going to be getting registered until the friday, I decided to chuck a 4 channel amp and sub in ready for my drive up to Albury again that coming Sunday.

 

I'll just let the photo's do the talking:

 

Interior mostly came out except for carpet, drivers seat and rear upright seats..

 

 

 

 

Decide to try using quad shield coax cable to make sure there was ZERO noise/ interference, as my old Gen 3 had the dreaded alternator wine and the BMW gets it slightly on idle. Whilst the coax achieved that, it was a bitch to work with and did some damage on the 4 channel amp RCA inputs. I've gotten it to work now, but they'll need to be fixed up properly at a later date.

 

 

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Rewired rear doors with heavy gauge speaker wire ready for future speaker upgrade, the front got run up behind the head unit and connected to the OEM speaker cables and I'll need to work out where a cross over will go when I upgrade front speakers later down the track.

 

 

 

 

 

Then ran the power wires in through a grommet used to wire the VSS wires to the cluster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Handy dandy coax fitting off kit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Was almost finished until the misso rocked up and was Hangry, so left it for the night to feed her before she got to emotional haha

 

 

Got up early on friday and managed to get it all fixed and back together. To my surprise there was NO dash rattles!

 

 

 

Now that was done, gave the car a quick once over and headed down to VicRoads to get her registered. For anyone thats been down there, you'll know how much of a clusterfork it can be. Luckily I had an appointment booked, so stood around for 5 minutes, handed the lady my forms, went outside, checked the car, walked back in, paid my rego and was out of there in 15 minutes! 

 

Screwing the new plates onto the car was such an awesome feeling. Some long days and nights researching how to get the auto to manual conversion as close to an OEM delivered car (cruise, ABS, normal idle, no error codes etc), cleaning, fixing and replacing parts. Massive shoutout to all the VIC guys for giving me a chop out. These guys (along with some of the other legend I've met at HVC and online) are the exact reason I came back to Subarus!

 

Whilst the car has one or two little nigglelies I need to fix (ecu retune), I'm stocked with how it drives and sounds, which I'll get into now!

 

 

As soon as I got back from Vicroads, the mods begun haha!

 

Picked up a 22mm rear sway bar from a mate, an intake that I also use on my BMW and somehow I managed to hold onto one of the 5 or 6 rear mufflers I had on my old Gen 3 sedan. So on they went!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now because exhaust was off my old sedan, she was a little sort. The inlet is also only 2" and the H6 sounds a little restricted above 4500rpm, but have another muffler going on sometime at the start of next year...

 

 

Now I don't have a photo of the intake for some reason, but I basically hacked off the bottom of the inner gaurd resonator for bulk intake noises, kept the over the radiator style intake and basically replaced the OEM filter housing with a pod enclosed inside a carbon style housing. Don't care for the gain/ loss of powers, just love intake noise so it was worth it lol

 

 

 

 

 

Thats pretty much it for now. I'm sure I've forgotten something along the way. I've been working away in New Zealand and Albury for the last 3~ months, so car progress has been slow, but It's driving now and I'm excited to put some miles on her and finally have a car for HVC next year!

[duncanm]

awesome stuff.

 

Be careful of that rear exhaust tip -- I melted my bumper with a tip that was a few inches short and have had to cut off the deformed bits.  Check how hot it is after a bit of a drive.

[Liberty]

My missus has the same habit of putting her feet up on my dash. Frustrating.

[Barbbachello]

awesome stuff.

 

Be careful of that rear exhaust tip -- I melted my bumper with a tip that was a few inches short and have had to cut off the deformed bits.  Check how hot it is after a bit of a drive.

Lel hes already melted the reflector out of the bar.

Nice work Cman. Come and clean up my car pls

[Niko]

This is impressive.

V keen to see it in the flesh!

[U-Shell]

awesome stuff.

 

Be careful of that rear exhaust tip -- I melted my bumper with a tip that was a few inches short and have had to cut off the deformed bits.  Check how hot it is after a bit of a drive.

 

Lel hes already melted the reflector out of the bar.

Nice work Cman. Come and clean up my car pls

 

Yeah she got reqt after the first long drive haha. Just got back from Albury and she's looking a little sad underneath. Going to chop away the rooted plastic and rivet on some metal heat deflector type thing tomorrow in prep for the drive to Byron Bay at Christmas

 

 

[/url]

 

 

M8 I would be all over your car like a nasty rash if you're keen!

 

My missus has the same habit of putting her feet up on my dash. Frustrating.

 

She was lucky it had to be cleaned, but it's up there with the quickest way to push my buttons haha

 

 

This is impressive.

V keen to see it in the flesh!

 

Thanks moite, I'm super kjeen for HVC next year !!

[applegeek897]

Freaking epic stuff man, not sure if I asked this before but what are you shooting with? Pictures look mint.

[U-Shell]

Freaking epic stuff man, not sure if I asked this before but what are you shooting with? Pictures look mint.

 

Thanks man!

 

Have a couple cameras I go between. Earlier photos would be either a Canon 550D with 15-85mm f3.5-5.6 or a 5DMkII with Canon 50mm f1.8, then the newer stuff is either 5DMkII with Sigma 50mm f1.4 or my new camera, Panasonic Lumix G7 with either 25mm f1.7 or 7-14mm f4.

[U-Shell]

It's been a fair while between updates!

 

This will be a rather large update as the OBK has had a few gearbox swaps, little hiccups that I've slowly been sorting and some more audio changes. So I shall proceed...

 

First thing was sorting my clutch issue. After purchasing a second hand gearbox and rear LSD for an absolute steal, that looked to have had some TLC in the form of a refurb judging by the shifter bushes and general cleanliness from a wrecked B4, I went through to time consuming process of a gearbox swap thinking it would solve my clutch issues and result in a possibly more reliable gearbox over the dual range.

 

Long story long, pulled the dual range at a mates house on a Friday night and left the car there whilst I had trade school on the Saturday. My mate kindly decided to try and fit the gearbox by himself to help me out, but it ended up being a bigger drama than I could have imagined. After fitting the turbo flywheel and clutch with an impact gun, which included "cleaning" some small surface rust off the clutch plate with WD-40 and not fitting the spigot bearing to the flywheel, he then proceeded to try and fit the gearbox without removing the clutch fork pin and wiggling the gearbox around, using the longer gearbox bolts to thread into the engine and try and bring the gearbox/ engine together, then pulling them out and just leave the gearbox hanging on basically the input shaft until I returned later in the arvo at around 4pm. After reinstalling the clutch with correct torque settings, cleaning everything down with brake cleaner, degreaser and isopropyl alcohol, the gearbox was back in and filled with full synth oil ready to roll. 

 

Tried to bleed the clutch but wasn't having any luck. After some trouble shooting it turned out the master was ded. Ty hooked me up with a turbo master with remote resi and I made up a little cap that I could pressurise with a bike pump to help the bleeding process.

 

 

 

Car was finally back driving, gearbox was changing smoothly and crispy. By this stage I had acquired 3 or 4 gearboxes and cross members, so I put together the best of each ones bushes and linkages which greatly improved driving. Whilst this was all happening I decided to grab a tube of urethane from Bunnings to make a "solid" mount for the gearbox to see if that would help with the jerky on/ off throttle issues I'd been having.

 

Some duct tape and urethane plus over a weeks curing time I had this:

 

 

 

 

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Whilst it did make some improvement, it wasn't much and there was certainly more noise transmitted into the cabin. I've only recently found out that when I put the EZ in, that I missed the two reinforcement plates that go between the engine mount and the subframe which apparently help stabilise the engine mounts. I've got some from a B4 that I'm currently rebuilding. Going to chuck them in to see if they help *fingers crossed*

 

 

About a week passed and I noticed the gearbox was really hard to shift above 4500-5000rpm (didn't know there was no spigot bearing in the flywheel at the time). Jumped under the car to see that the gearbox was ejecto seato-ing all of the expensive full synth gearbox oil I'd put in there. At this stage I had already pulled the dual range twice and then again to replace with the B4 box. Fair to say I was pretty over working on the car and it was left for a good couple weeks before finding the motivation to pull the box again...

 

There's no pictures from the next few debacles as I was well and truly over the car by this stage and I thought to only fix was going to be some diesel and a match.. but a quick run down follows   :

 

Pull the B4 gearbox to find a small chip/ crack at the base of the unput shaft/ flange which I don't recal being there when the box went in..

 

 

It almost looks like a casting defect that is usually sealed with some type of sealant? Either that, or when old mate was trying to put the gearbox in incorrectly with brute force, plus leaving it hanging on the input shaft, its flexed the case enough to chip the input flange and release all my precious gear oil.

 

Pulled the gearbox out, cleaned it up, sealed the hole and left it in the garage to cure. Thankfully I had another spare B4 box that came with a parts car I stripped and was apparently in good condition. So threw that back in, put the car back together. Decided to empty what ever fluid was left in the second B4 box so I could refill, which is where the second problem arises.

 

I've never seen oil from a trans, diff or engine have that many metallic particles in it before. It was clear this gearbox had issues..

 

Filled it up with oil, ran it on the stands to make sure it was usable and was greeted with horrible noises. I assume a bearing in the front diff has let go but cant confirm. Thankfully it was driveable, but after a week of driving it was getting louder and louder (even with 85w-140 oil), so again, gearbox out... 

 

Now we're back to some pictures so this will be a little easier to read without just bulk text!

 

I'll power through all this as this post is going to be quite long otherwise 

 

Had a few days off work and conveniently a BCW care package had arrive with some goodies including new shift knuckle, steering rack bushes, and shifter bushes.

 

 

 

 

Started off with the steering rack bushes as the previous (original) engine that was in the OBK was a leaker and spewed all over the steering rack causing the bushes to degrade. Not a fun job as it can sometimes be a little painful changing them over without fully dropping the rack.

 

 

 

 

Next up was the rear diff install. Whilst there was nothing wrong with the open 4.11, I had the LSD so decided to chuck it in as, like with the first B4 gearbox, it looked to have been refurbished including near new rear driveshafts.

 

Exhaust dropped (forgot to add I picked up a B4 Bi-Modal rear muffler with the gearbox and diff which I installed with the valve wired open, sounds fantastic with no drone!)

 

These things are a pain to separate from the muffler 

 

 

 

Tailshaft removal ready for gearbox and diff replacment

 

 

The old diff fluid was surprisingly in really good condition

 

 

Thankfully the CV nuts came off nice and easy! Used some copper grease when re installing to ensure it doesnt get stuck for next time I need to undo them

 

 

Diff carrier bolts. Why so hard to undo!? Eventually got them undone, but it was looking bleak for a couple minutes there 

 

 

 

Diff installed and filled with full synth

 

 

Now for the job I'd been dreading for a while. Gearbox swap..    By this stage I could get a gearbox out and clutch swapped over in about 45-60 minutes solo and about 25-40 with a mate. This didn't make it any more enjoyable lol

 

 

After driving on the B4 boxes for a couple weeks all up, I wasn't a big fan of the gearing, especially because I'm still running the standard tall OBK tyres. It was slow, constantly changing gears and actually used more fuel than the dual range box. So after all that, I decided to put the dual range back in as it had no issues and made the car much nicer to drive around town. Basically never needing to shift out of 5th for most hills and can take off in second when rolling up to lights that change to green as you're about to stop.

 

Compiled all my gearbox parts to build one final revision of gearbox with the best parts from the other gearboxes, plus some new stuff from Benny. 

 

Started off with swapping the B4 shifter onto the dual range selector rod to utilise the wider knuckle bushings figuring wider pivot point would result in less play and better feel. Didn't like the lower height of the shifter knob so swapped back to the taller dual range lever.

 

B4 left & dual range on the right (note the height and knuckle width difference)

 

 

Dual range shifter with the new bushes that were in the first B4 box's shifter and the B4 width metal insert to show how much wider a B4 shifter is

 

 

New chassis mount compared to the old one in the background

 

 

New gearbox mount for the shifter selector rod support thingo

 

 

New shifter knuckle on the gearbox. This was soooooo much easier to replace with the gearbox out of the car (Damn split pins!  )

 

 

Finally everything was back together! The car drove great and I finally could just drive it without any issues. 

 

Fast forward a while. Found out my pitch stopper was  :fork:'d . Had been done up toight on the chassis end whilst pointing sky high, then forced down onto the gearbox mount when engine and gearbox first went in. This rotated the bush and made the gearbox end split causing some serious floppy bois. Ordered a new one from Partsouq along with all the engine gaskets needed for my B4 project. It fixed some of the floppyness, but it's still not great. Along with the engine mount support plates, the on/ off throttle tuning could possibly have something to do with it. Whilst the tune fixed the auto codes, I'm not happy with how it drives still, has a flat/ jerky spot when you go past 25%~ throttle and could use some refinement. I think after the plates and a tune revision, the car should be basically perfect!

 

 

Somewhere along the way I also had a small oil leak from the oil cooler on the engine which was an easy fix with a new seal from OMR at Subaru. Took the opportunity to grab some upper engine cleaner and a genuine filter from him whilst I was there.

 

 

 

 

That will do for this post. I'll write up the stereo mods in the post below!

 

Car has been driving fine since all this work was done. Although the clutch has started slipping which means gearbox out ONE. LAST.   ING. TIME....

 

Had a check engine light come on a couple days ago for camshaft sensor. Seems to be intermittent where it basically won't let the car turn over for a couple seconds, then fires up and drives fine. Will sort it this weekend hopefully!

[Barbbachello]

Id have burnt it long ago lol. Should get a gen 2 instead