1987 RX Turbo EJ22 conversion

[el_freddo]

Don’t bin the legacy until your conversion is up and running properly. 

Otherwise Murphy might pay you a visit! 

Cheers 

Bennie

[1980ea71Brat]

Here's some pictures of the progress I made this weekend. All the surface rust from the rear diff back has been sanded, cleaned, painted and sealed. Couldn't be happier with the results.

 

[1980ea71Brat]

I also finished installing the fuel system, and rewired the fuel pump. And now I have a runner! It starts and idles off the tank gas and so far I haven't had any leaks. Was a huge success this weekend.

I still have a lot of progress to make, next few items I will be working on, probably in order:

- Throttle Cable

- Radiator/Coolant hoses

- Power Steering

- O2 sensors + Exhaust (bare minimum to get both sensors working)

Much more after those few items. 

[1980ea71Brat]

Been a little bit since I posted, I managed to get those four items taken care of. The throttle cable fought me till the end, but I realized a really simple way to get the L series one to work. I needed just a centimeter of space maybe so I just bent the bracket in the direction I needed - Problem solved.

[1980ea71Brat]

Finished the radiator install. And despite what people said online, the lower hose and upper hoses were a nightmare to get sorted without kinks. The bottom hose I ended up using a 1 1/4 steel pip insert plus two other hoses to get the right angles without kinks. Doesn't appear to leak - so at least that is actually sorted.

[1980ea71Brat]

Lastly I got the power steering lines in but they are too long to flow naturally with the rest of the engine cavity. I am going to get these shortened correct at a shop in the future after the car is sorted enough to make real journeys.

 

And then I also got the rest of the exhaust on it (up to the 2nd 02 sensor) and I took the car on it's maiden voyage!. No leaks so far from anything. Nothing too crazy just a couple miles to the gas station and back. Satisfied how everything has worked out so far.

[1980ea71Brat]

 

On to the next chapter. 

-Steering Wheel removal - I am struggling to get this one apart without damaging the wheel. If anyone knows what the proper tool is that I can rent to get this off please let me know. I have already started to damage the nut and threads a bit (nothing I cant fix yet) and I don't want to ruin it.

-Dash removal

-Get wiring all sorted + maybe EA wiring thin out.

-Heat core removal + repaired? The previous owner of this car had bypassed the heater core, and I can see that one of the copper inlet pipes is slightly crimped (so codswalloping easy to mess these up). I decided I will take out the core and try to get it repaired or tested at a professional shop so I can avoid a catastrophe down the road. I live in Montana - I NEED the heat.

 

Future items still on my list to do:

-Re-upholstery I have new seats for the car and I am going to get them upholstered in the original or near to correct patterns from the old RX interior. I have all that saved on shelf.

-Torshion Beam engine mount - I don't know how to weld so I have to get that sorted still

-Battery tray - I cut out the old one because of rust, I have a small hole to patch in the wheel well too

-Other rust repair - There is a small hole under the car, might have this professionally done (doubtful but we will see)

-Driver side door won't open from the inside

-replace interior lights while dash is apart.

-Transmission mounts/fluid/shifter linkage - it all feels a bit sloppy and could use a refresh

-Repaint / windshield seals / trunk lid replacement ( I got a newer trunk lid that doesnt have rust).

I am sure there are a bunch of other things I need to do too like brakes and suspension... tires.. but yeah. plenty to do, slow and steady.

 

Edited June 12, 2022 by 1980ea71Brat

[el_freddo]

Don’t bother thinning out the EA loom. Just tape up any wire ends to isolate them then tuck them out of the way. 

A new heater core is worth the coin if you can still get one. I replaced the one in Ruby Scoo with an all copper unit and I haven’t looked back since! That was after blowing two heater core end tanks. I got sick of removing the dashboard! 

On that note, the dashboard doesn’t need to have anything removed from it to pull it out of the car. It goes in and out as a complete unit  It’s just weight to deal with - and avoid it touching the windscreen. I lent mine on the windscreen and cracked it from the inside - right in the view of the driver! 

Cheers 

Bennie

[1980ea71Brat]

Well I decided to update here the progress I made up to this weekend. Quite a few things have been crossed off the list.

1) I removed the dash, heater core, and blower motor. I cleaned everything and all the vents, there was quite a lot of dust and debris in the system and I really wanted to make sure I wasn't going to have any problems with the ventilations system. I mentioned at the start of this forum that the car was abandoned for 12 (? ish) years outside, and there has been some evidence of mice so I really wanted to make sure everything was clean for that reason.

Edited July 1, 2022 by 1980ea71Brat

[1980ea71Brat]

2) I removed the carpet and had the heater core pressure tested and flushed. They found nothing wrong with the heater core, and I learned that the unit is entire copper- no plastic tanks. I also had to replace the insulation that isolates the heater core in the box, stove threaded sealing material worked really well for this and has a heat rating well beyond what the heater core will see.

I scrubbed and cleaned the carpets with an extractor in an attempt to remove any stains or residual smells. I also found a hidden pack of unopened cigarettes from the 1980's. So clearly this had been a smokers car at some point (no surprise since its from Montana).

Edited July 1, 2022 by 1980ea71Brat

[1980ea71Brat]

3) and 4) I got my power steering lines professionally shortened and I got my oil pressure sending unit plumbed for the 1987 oil pressure gauge. Each cost me about $50. I should mention the heater core cleaning and testing cost me about $70. Still all worth it in my opinion. The power steering lines aren't perfect, but good enough and now they are out of the way of the air box. I wanted to keep the original air box and stuff for now, maybe one day I will worry about changing it.

I've never been much a believe in the 'cone filter' upgrades. *Most* intake systems are designed to be extremely efficient from the factory.

[1980ea71Brat]

5) I fixed my door. If your door only opens from the outside latch, but not from the inside latch, the lever is out of adjustment. In the photo below, the lower of the two levers controls the action from the door handle. All I had to do was loosen the nut, pull it more taught, and retighten the nut. Plenty of room for adjustment there. I didn't get a picture of it, but I removed 80% of the old vapor barrier sealant and replaced it. The vapor barrier was in terrific shape, and I think I am the first person to have removed the door card. Using proper tools is extremely important to not breaking any tabs.

[1980ea71Brat]

6) Last item, but not really finished yet. I decided I am going to cut a hole in the fire wall. Yeah, I cringed when I first came up with the idea. But the fact is, this RX is not an original car. It has a few rust damaged spots that need to be repaired (pics on those later...) and its got an EJ22. The paint is in terrible shape, and the interior needs some reupholstering. I'm not going through the fender for a rather selfish reason... the body kit. On a normal EA81 or EA82 car, you don't have a body kit in the way of removing the fenders. On my car, I have to fully remove the front and side body kits in order to get the fender to separate correctly. I don't want to do that. I'm worried it won't look the same or be perfectly level if I have to reattach it myself.

So hole in the fire wall it is. I looked around this is the spot I chose:

I am going to put a 1.5 inch hole to the left of the A/C lines, and use a grommet to make it look factory. I am going to store the ECU in the foot well on the passenger side, just like the EJ22 was done originally. There looks to be enough room to hide the main power loom behind the blower tube to A/C tubing:

 

[1980ea71Brat]

That's basically it for now. It took a while working with shops to get some of that stuff taken care of. This weekend my goals are:

1) Cut a factory looking hole in the fire wall. Relocate the ECU to the passenger foot well.

2) Finalize all wiring to the ECU. In a separate post, I have been trying to figure out the last of the wiring. As of me posting this now, I have 7 out of 8 wires sorted. I am not 100% on the neutral wire but I am just going to wing it for now, and correct it later if it poses a problem (I don't think it will). Surprisingly I am having trouble finding an exact pin out for my EA82T ECU.

3) Figure out how to do the check engine light... if I don't do that today I am going to proceed with the rest of wiring and worry about it later. Surprisingly, if you go about the way I am, almost none of the wires go to the gauge cluster. They can all be tapped elsewhere. I eventually want to go through and replace the bulbs with LEDs (maybe) so I might worry about the CEL later for when I do that.

4) Wire the radiator fans. THE FANS ARE COMING EARLY - I am supposed to get my 2 10" fans today from Fedex, and I bought some relays just incase they do. So I am going to mount the fans this weekend, test the relays, and finalize that part of the ECU wiring. 

5) Hook up new heater hoses. (I did get the heater core tested and reinstalled, so this should be obvious...)

6) Reinstall the dash

7) Reinstall part of the interior

8) Replace transmission fluid

Test drive.

If I can get all that done this weekend, I will be stoked. My priorities after all of this will be new tires, alignment, possibly brakes, and reupholstery (hoping to saving the original RX material!!!). Later down the road, I need to weld in a new battery tray, and repair a couple of smaller rust spots. Then you know - save like 10k for a paint job (probably will never happen).

 

Anyways, one thing a time. This weekend should be a banger.

Edited July 1, 2022 by 1980ea71Brat

[el_freddo]

I still don’t understand why your PS lines are so messy - I use the EJ hoses from the pump to the rack, but over here we don’t have that funky block to hard lines setup as our rack input is on the right side of the car so the PS lines go straight into it. 

Everything else looks good to me. With the firewall hole, you couldn’t route the wiring through the guard with the length you had in your cutdown loom? 

Cheers 

Bennie

[1980ea71Brat]

I ended up using the EA82T power steering lines, for some reason the EJ22 lines off the 96 were not going to line up correctly at all. Could be a US spec deal, or maybe its a different rack in the RX. The EA82T weren't perfect but with that little bit of fabrication it was mostly a straight shot.

Not sure what you mean by guard, but the loom itself was pretty small. Here's a shot of what the hole looked like:

After the loom was mostly installed:

Here's my loom for the oil pressure, coolant temp, switched power, constant power, and tach. Extra fuses for the relays.

 

[1980ea71Brat]

The hole is a little messy, I used a lot of oil to help the hole saw get through it. But once its cleaned up, it fits really nice.

Here's where most of my wire sits out, including the fan wiring. Out of the way, I forgot to throw the starter wire into the power loom so it sticks out a bit lol. I was tired after ~8 hours of wiring.

 

Here's the fans I went with. Not sure on the brand, but two 10' pushers off of amazon. $50 each was right for me. Wiring wasn't sorted yet at this point.

Here's after I finished all of the endless splicing:

 

[1980ea71Brat]

Lastly, I got a little fancy with it and ordered some sound matting off of amazon for the hell of it. I have never used it before, and it was really cheap. I am probably going to order more when I get to the back of the car.

And here's my last pick after 3 days straight of getting after it. I owe a lot to my wife for helping me out. We cleaned for hours and hours. The carpet actually smells nice finally, and all the dust from the vents have been Q-tipped and cleaned out. She helped out a ton with getting the dash back in. All the gauges are working how they are supposed to now too.

 

[1980ea71Brat]

Still got a ways to go on my check list for the weekend. Just finished up replacing the trans fluid tonight then called it for dinner. I have two more days off, I am hoping by Tuesday I will have the rest of the 'front' interior cleaned and installed, and go for a test drive. 

[el_freddo]

3 hours ago, 1980ea71Brat said:

Not sure what you mean by guard

Mud guard in Aussie terminology = fender in US terminology  

Good effort and the extra effort to clean the interior out was a great decision. 

The wiring looks pretty tidy which is what you want. 

Keep up the good effort, it’s not far off now! 

Next: NA turbo conversion   

Cheers 

Bennie

[1980ea71Brat]

Appreciate it Bennie, you might be the only one reading this progress blog and I appreciate you lol. Once I am done, I might save this story for my daughter when she grows up.

So at this point, I have driven the car maybe 20 miles and things are mostly working correctly. Not overheating, low oil pressure at idol, but that's okay. Used engine that I did absolutely nothing to before putting it into the RX. It won't be the permanent engine, just a place holder to get everything else around it sorted.

Part of the motivation for this project was I had parts piling up for 3-4 years in the garage, and I had completely run out of space. Now that this is mostly finished, I can finally get rid of all my old EA82T parts in confidence and not have to worry so much about needing them. The garage is making a recovery.

Issues I need to sort out with the swap still:

- IAC P0505 Idle Air Control valve error code is my only engine code. The car seems to be running fine and idling fine, so I'm not sure how much time I am going to invest into fixing this

- Center Diff lock not actuating. I believe part of my vacuum system has been compromised since I did the engine swap, I imagine this will take me a long time to sort at... if at all. Its actually pretty low priority at the moment.

- Heating vents not working correctly. They are stick in the default position and wont go into defrost mode, I have check all the internal connections under the dash, so I have a vacuum problem under the hood (perhaps related to the center lock problem).

- Passenger window doesn't roll down from switch (easy fix I have a spare mechanism for the switch).

- Torn inner CV boot on the drivers side front axel. I have a replacement, need to get that fixed before it can go on a serious drive.

- Brake signals/lights in general, not all the lights are working, probably due to burned out bulbs and I have to do a repair for the license plate lights, the original mounting point is one of the worse rust spots on the car.

- Clutch does not seem to be adjusted correctly, it is very stiff on the disengagement and it engages near the top of the pedal. Not sure how I am going to fix that bit yet.

Besides all those various items, I still have rust repair/ battery tray, and the torsion bar to cut and weld together. I am going to slowly be working on the above but I have hit the point in the project where things are going to slow down. I really wanted to get this 85% tackled before my daughter is born (due date is 9/5) and I feel as though I have accomplished that. I have three other car projects waiting, and now I can finally move and drive the RX around so I can swap in other projects as needed.

Doesn't mean I wont fix those other items eventually, just going to take a lot longer from here on out. Oh and long term, if I keep the car (yeah might even sell it), I'd like to put a new EJ22 in it, maybe even turbo the N/A engine. We will see, that takes a lot of money.

[1980ea71Brat]

to "finish" off this project, or at least put it in a place where I just try to tackle one small probably a week, or every 2 weeks - I am putting on new tires:

And getting an alignment. These are just RP18 West Lake stock tires. I have the original hub caps for the car, and I plan to just keep it original. No fancy lifts or 5 lug swaps. (for now). I am also getting the interior reupholstered. I am literally going to spend ~2000 for this to be turned new:

Its all there. The original seats, front and back. Its going to cost me about 600 per seat, plus extra for bolster repair. I'm going to fix up the rear carpet as best I can (its in terrible shape) and I am going to apply sound deadening to the whole back.

 

Once all that is finished (and after I replace the CV boot) I am in coast mode. 1 project every week or two. Feels good to get this car that far along. I have a rather unique collection of vehicles and am super happy this one got saved from the crushers. 

*Edit* And get a cat back exhaust. It's currently too loud. I'm not 18 anymore and 30 year old me appreciates an aggressive, great sounding car, without the ear piecing neighbor cursing loudness. Probably another $500 or so but worth it.

Edited July 9, 2022 by 1980ea71Brat

[1980ea71Brat]

Welp. Cross the heater not working off the list. Like I suspected, the vacuum source I picked off the EJ22 was not sufficient the first time. Now I am tapping directly off the throttle body and the defroster vent works. I hear a clicking noise when I try to put it into center lock - but not sure if its working, the light isnt coming on. That could just be because the tach I swapped in doesn't have that circuit. So going to have to figure out a way to test that, and or eventually see if I can get the tach light to work.

Honestly that was my biggest worry because I need defrost for the winters around here.

[el_freddo]

The diff lock light will activate the 4wd light on the dash if you’ve got a PT4wd dash centre fitted. If you still have the original centre instrument panel you can swap it in. Why did you swap the instrument clusters anyway? 

With the locking diff actuation, Jack one wheel up, start the engine and flick the switch, then rotate the raised wheel until the lock latches - at which point you won’t be able to rotate the tyre. Unlock it before you drop the wheel back to earth  

Get the pitch stopper rod done before you start driving it, you’ll be surprised how much the engine moves without it! This can cause other issues such as fan belt or pulleys making contact with the rad fans. From memory others report odd issues when driving. 

I’d totally have one of these if we got them over here! 

On the NA turbo conversion, it doesn’t have to be expensive. Keep an eye out for a TD04 that’s in good condition, a set of WRX/turbo foz turbo exhaust manifolds (your EJ22 has dual port exhausts?), dump pipe and you’ll need a turbo water pump with the thermostat housing. 

You can opt to add a factory oil cooler or leave it out, it doesn’t matter. 

The expensive bits are the oil lines and T piece - these are important to get right. Coolant lines aren’t difficult to do, there are several ways to do those. 

You can shave the throttle body where the inlet pipe connects to. This shortens it’s overall length by about 10mm - this could be just the amount needed to clear the intake piping to the intercooler from the spare wheel mount - many cut that off but I’d be inclined to keep it in case the vehicle was ever reverted back to stock. Some argue that you’d never go back to original but I prefer to have that option. 

All the best with the safe arrival of your expected new arrival! 

Cheers 

Bennie

[1980ea71Brat]

Aye - Thanks Bennie. Been looking forward to it. Its been a couple weeks so I wanted to throw up a few things that I have done/fixed.

I solved my Diff lock problem. The reason why I swapped clusters was because the gas gauge in the old RX cluster wasn't working (I did all the diag that lead to that conclusion). But what I didn't know is that the center light configurations change over the years. So the center panel on the left is from a 93 Loyale, and the one on the right is from my RX. They look mostly the same, but they are not. I swapped these out and it looks like my Diff lock light is working correctly, and the hazards lights (these were previously only blinking one side).

I also had to swap out the plastic center piece that I didnt picture here, but that made it so the lights lined up correctly. I probably could have just swapped out the gas gauge side in the RX cluster but this is ultimately what I ended up with. I also have several spare clusters and parts now for the future if anything breaks.