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Well I’m feeling quite deflated. Sunday the project threw me a spanner in the form of my gear linkages not working properly when the interior trim piece is fitted.
That saw me back at work using the workshop to hopefully rectify that issue. I ticked off a few other things too. Sadly no pics because phone is frustratingly full. COP retainer plates made and work quite well. Battery tray modded/finished off. Turbo return line fitted to the RHS head - thanks Barbs for sending me this ages ago!
A pile of parts we purchased - low pressure fuel filter, efi fuel hoses, oils, spigot bearing and a visit to the local Subaru dealership workshop for some seals that I thought I had in my stash but must’ve used on the RS engine…
And it’s Wednesday. The brumby didn’t move from the carport while I prepped other bits. The clothes line became my open aired paint booth for all the brackets I made for this conversion. EJ PS rack fitted to the factory EA81 turbo engine crossmember - yes, you read that correct. Subaru was turboing their engines basically in the same configuration you see today all the way back in the early 80s with the EA81! Just we never got them in Oz unless it was a private import.
Engine and heads are prepped for fitting. This will be close to the first thing I do tomorrow, rearranging the backyard might take priority to get the brumby in position to pull its drivetrain out.
That’s it for now. I hoped to have the gearbox and engine in at this point… anyway, I know how it goes building cars, I just wasn’t ready for the emotional rollercoaster when things don’t go your way. It didn’t help that Mrs El_Freddo enjoyed a well deserved 24hrs without our family around her, this was planned ages ago. It took time and energy away from what I wanted to achieve.
I’ll get some pics sorted, most likely from Mrs El_Freddo’s rad phone.
Posts I've Made
In Topic: Redback Brumby
20 September 2026 - 10:02 AM
Back in August I packed the project halfcut onto a trailer and dragged it to work for access to lots of awesome tools and equipment I don’t have at home (but would love if I had a shed to use them in!). Here are some pics and explanation of the work done.
Unloading procedure:
Engine bay layout looking really messy (I think I took this to take a later “completed” pic - that never came to fruition):
Gearbox crossmember was the first item to be fabricated - previous to this I was bending up material, taking it home, checking, making notes, wash-rinse-repeat. That wasn’t working ultimately. And here it is with only half its bolts holding the mid section in place. The swaybar clearance/setup will be sorted once it’s in Redback.
From here I was able to sort out the gearstick rods/linkages with accuracy as I wasn’t guessing where the gearbox would be located. I used a brumby gearstick too, this one is cut down but it won’t be hard to swap in a stock length one if I wanted to (I don’t think I will as the ball pivot is mounted higher than stock). The brumby gear stick adds the benefit of being a short throw setup too:
To adapt the brumby gear stick to the EJ ball at the base I folded a piece of ally tube with a section cut out to suit the bottom of the brumby gear stick. This turned out to be the size needed to fit the EJ ball (it’s removable!) - I drilled a hole through the gear stick and fitted the retainer pin. Worked a treat.
I planned on using the factory EJ gearstick boot with an adaptor plate over the EA trans tunnel hole. In the end I figured it was just easier to cut out the section of the EJ boot that protects the ball and socket from any dirt etc (much like the boot on a ball joint) and use the factory EA81 gearstick boot - this keeps it all simple. It also means I didn’t need to go to the effort to retain the disc piece on the selector rod that the EJ boot secures to. This is now redundant and I might as well cut it off.
Here’s the pitch stopper rod, I’m pretty stoked how this turned out (pardon the pun - read on). I didn’t want to weld anything here. The lathe got a bit of a work out for this, but it was good fun making it myself. The factory rod was shaped on the press, trimmed and threaded for an M12 I believe - same thread size as the engine mount studs. There’s a crush tube in the factory pitch stopper rod bracket on the gearbox. Shame no one will ever see it!
This is the battery and airbox setup I’ve finally settled on. This configuration took ages to come up with - finding a suitable airbox was somewhat of a nightmare:
I still need to sort out some PS lines. Options are to steal a set from a turbo forester I was gifted but that’s not ideal as it’s a complete running vehicle awaiting club rego. Other option is possibly a gen4 or gen5 (unsure which one) remote mount res setup as this is mounted on the side of the engine bay - it could also have other unforeseen issues such as the brumby engine bay not being wide enough to accommodate that. One way to find out but that’s time and money I don’t really have to experiment at this stage.
From that battery and airbox location I knocked up a new battery tray to take up any available holes to bolt into or utilise as a mount point. It still needs a few things but you get the idea:
With the fitting of the EJ rack I needed to sort out the steering knuckle. This is what I ended up with, a cut down SF foz steering knuckle from when 1wdfoz did his monster lift, this was the original steering knuckle I buggered up when drilling out the original retainer pins. I drilled out the remaining two pins and threw out the rubber guts to just use the upper and lower uni joints. I still had a gap to fill so I lathed down a section of solid ally bar that I used for the turbo snout job to create a solid disc. From this I marked out four holes equally spaced to bolt the uni joint flanges to. This turned out really well. In the pic I’m only using two of the holes as I didn’t have enough bolts long enough to use all four with the uni’s offset from each other:
EJ throttle cable modified to fit through the Brumby’s firewall.
The halfcut project was packed up on Friday for the journey home. Yesterday (Saturday) it was unloaded into position to have various parts removed for prep of the big swap. Nothing like an open air shed and zero supporting facilities!
Still loads of things to do:
- modify the battery tray - essentially finish it off. This will also mount/hold the airbox.
- extend the AFM wiring to reach the new airbox and AFM location.
- finalise the wiring to mate to the main loom - this will be done in Redback. There’s a few other wires to be sorted in there too.
- sort out the tailshaft. I think I have a solution to this.
- finish off the gearstick rear mount bracket.
- heads on the turbo block plus everything after that.
- fit the modified diff stubs (yet to get a pic of these) and set the backlash as I swapped the sundials.
- setup the EJ rack with parts from Subarino’s care package for this project.
- find and fit the clutch cable mount to the gearbox. A Subarino 5spd clutch cable will be used in this conversion.
- sort out the WAIC radiator. Hopefully a long time forum friend will be able to help me out on this one. Problem is he’s flat out with work at this time of year.
I’m sure there’s more I missed above. Radiator and fans are basically sorted - two 11inch spal fans fitted on the factory radiator, good clearance with the engine and gearbox sitting that 20mm rearwards.
Hopefully Wednesday - three days away - will be the main drivetrain swap into Redback. That’s when “shit gets real”.
Unloading procedure:
Engine bay layout looking really messy (I think I took this to take a later “completed” pic - that never came to fruition):
Gearbox crossmember was the first item to be fabricated - previous to this I was bending up material, taking it home, checking, making notes, wash-rinse-repeat. That wasn’t working ultimately. And here it is with only half its bolts holding the mid section in place. The swaybar clearance/setup will be sorted once it’s in Redback.
From here I was able to sort out the gearstick rods/linkages with accuracy as I wasn’t guessing where the gearbox would be located. I used a brumby gearstick too, this one is cut down but it won’t be hard to swap in a stock length one if I wanted to (I don’t think I will as the ball pivot is mounted higher than stock). The brumby gear stick adds the benefit of being a short throw setup too:
To adapt the brumby gear stick to the EJ ball at the base I folded a piece of ally tube with a section cut out to suit the bottom of the brumby gear stick. This turned out to be the size needed to fit the EJ ball (it’s removable!) - I drilled a hole through the gear stick and fitted the retainer pin. Worked a treat.
I planned on using the factory EJ gearstick boot with an adaptor plate over the EA trans tunnel hole. In the end I figured it was just easier to cut out the section of the EJ boot that protects the ball and socket from any dirt etc (much like the boot on a ball joint) and use the factory EA81 gearstick boot - this keeps it all simple. It also means I didn’t need to go to the effort to retain the disc piece on the selector rod that the EJ boot secures to. This is now redundant and I might as well cut it off.
Here’s the pitch stopper rod, I’m pretty stoked how this turned out (pardon the pun - read on). I didn’t want to weld anything here. The lathe got a bit of a work out for this, but it was good fun making it myself. The factory rod was shaped on the press, trimmed and threaded for an M12 I believe - same thread size as the engine mount studs. There’s a crush tube in the factory pitch stopper rod bracket on the gearbox. Shame no one will ever see it!
This is the battery and airbox setup I’ve finally settled on. This configuration took ages to come up with - finding a suitable airbox was somewhat of a nightmare:
I still need to sort out some PS lines. Options are to steal a set from a turbo forester I was gifted but that’s not ideal as it’s a complete running vehicle awaiting club rego. Other option is possibly a gen4 or gen5 (unsure which one) remote mount res setup as this is mounted on the side of the engine bay - it could also have other unforeseen issues such as the brumby engine bay not being wide enough to accommodate that. One way to find out but that’s time and money I don’t really have to experiment at this stage.
From that battery and airbox location I knocked up a new battery tray to take up any available holes to bolt into or utilise as a mount point. It still needs a few things but you get the idea:
With the fitting of the EJ rack I needed to sort out the steering knuckle. This is what I ended up with, a cut down SF foz steering knuckle from when 1wdfoz did his monster lift, this was the original steering knuckle I buggered up when drilling out the original retainer pins. I drilled out the remaining two pins and threw out the rubber guts to just use the upper and lower uni joints. I still had a gap to fill so I lathed down a section of solid ally bar that I used for the turbo snout job to create a solid disc. From this I marked out four holes equally spaced to bolt the uni joint flanges to. This turned out really well. In the pic I’m only using two of the holes as I didn’t have enough bolts long enough to use all four with the uni’s offset from each other:
EJ throttle cable modified to fit through the Brumby’s firewall.
The halfcut project was packed up on Friday for the journey home. Yesterday (Saturday) it was unloaded into position to have various parts removed for prep of the big swap. Nothing like an open air shed and zero supporting facilities!
Still loads of things to do:
- modify the battery tray - essentially finish it off. This will also mount/hold the airbox.
- extend the AFM wiring to reach the new airbox and AFM location.
- finalise the wiring to mate to the main loom - this will be done in Redback. There’s a few other wires to be sorted in there too.
- sort out the tailshaft. I think I have a solution to this.
- finish off the gearstick rear mount bracket.
- heads on the turbo block plus everything after that.
- fit the modified diff stubs (yet to get a pic of these) and set the backlash as I swapped the sundials.
- setup the EJ rack with parts from Subarino’s care package for this project.
- find and fit the clutch cable mount to the gearbox. A Subarino 5spd clutch cable will be used in this conversion.
- sort out the WAIC radiator. Hopefully a long time forum friend will be able to help me out on this one. Problem is he’s flat out with work at this time of year.
I’m sure there’s more I missed above. Radiator and fans are basically sorted - two 11inch spal fans fitted on the factory radiator, good clearance with the engine and gearbox sitting that 20mm rearwards.
Hopefully Wednesday - three days away - will be the main drivetrain swap into Redback. That’s when “shit gets real”.
In Topic: Slightly Modified L series Subaru - Ruby Scoo
06 September 2026 - 08:18 PM
So here we are, a good year later and I’m finally getting stuff done - namely due to Subinats coming up in October.
I got her fired up after a jump start with a dodgy battery, pumped up some tyres to road pressure and took her out for a quick spin. Gave her a bit of a flogging (as much as you can with one of these) and she took it in her stride as usual.
After that I assessed the exhaust situation - a dodgy joint after the cat that was a patch job when M&D were borrowing her after the gen1 Y pipe fell apart somewhere on the Hume several years ago. Sounded a bit Honda spec and I didn’t like it. So I got a set of these and wrapped them:
While everything was cooling down, I took the old crusty roof rack off that was used when 4wdn - awesome for that, but not the current look I’m after. I put the original rhibo roof bars that came with Ruby Scoo that she used to rock for a very long time before the full roof rack came about to help accommodate the family.
I managed to get the UELs fitted after dinner and too her for a quick run. She’s got her old rhythm and beat back. Stoked!
I reckon I’ll get a new battery and a jerry can of fuel then start dailying my driving her - and do some cleaning. Inside, out and under the engine bay are terrible. I’m not proud, but she’s still here which is the main thing.
And she’ll get us to Subinats this year - bit of a big one from what I can gather - The legendary Hatchie and Settlement Creek Racing’s desert racing Brumby will be there. I’m hoping Lucky Phil can make it again. I believe the dark blue roll racing brumby will be there as will Tony with his show pony (non-offensive use!) EJ turbo converted brumby with the jump seats in the back.
Then there will be Ruby Scoo, “pre-rat rod”…
I got her fired up after a jump start with a dodgy battery, pumped up some tyres to road pressure and took her out for a quick spin. Gave her a bit of a flogging (as much as you can with one of these) and she took it in her stride as usual.
After that I assessed the exhaust situation - a dodgy joint after the cat that was a patch job when M&D were borrowing her after the gen1 Y pipe fell apart somewhere on the Hume several years ago. Sounded a bit Honda spec and I didn’t like it. So I got a set of these and wrapped them:
While everything was cooling down, I took the old crusty roof rack off that was used when 4wdn - awesome for that, but not the current look I’m after. I put the original rhibo roof bars that came with Ruby Scoo that she used to rock for a very long time before the full roof rack came about to help accommodate the family.
I managed to get the UELs fitted after dinner and too her for a quick run. She’s got her old rhythm and beat back. Stoked!
I reckon I’ll get a new battery and a jerry can of fuel then start dailying my driving her - and do some cleaning. Inside, out and under the engine bay are terrible. I’m not proud, but she’s still here which is the main thing.
And she’ll get us to Subinats this year - bit of a big one from what I can gather - The legendary Hatchie and Settlement Creek Racing’s desert racing Brumby will be there. I’m hoping Lucky Phil can make it again. I believe the dark blue roll racing brumby will be there as will Tony with his show pony (non-offensive use!) EJ turbo converted brumby with the jump seats in the back.
Then there will be Ruby Scoo, “pre-rat rod”…
