Subaru EJ22 powered first gen Rx-7
 

As probably not tons of people troll the first gen build threads, I thought I would throw out my motor swap that I come up with and decided to move forward with.

So I'm sure most the people always ask why, well I like to say, why not. But the real story of it all was this car showed up to me with no drive train what so ever. And what it was going to cost to piece together a full drive train was going to cost way more then really it was going to be worth. So with some innovation and imagination this is what I came up with.

The basics of it all:

83 chassis
94 Subaru Legacy EJ22 with full chassis and engine harness
W58 transmission from a Toyota Celica
Front subframe from a FC
Rear axle from a toyota 4 runner

If you want to scroll through my full build thread, the link in is in my signature.

Now on to the pictures.

First hanging of the motor.

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Putting the whole thing in for the first time

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Setting it in to start mock up of mounts

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Drivers side clearance

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Passenger side clearance

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Front engine clearance.

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Rear engine clearance

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Strapping the motor in place

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Motor mounts and tranny mounts

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Final incarnation of motor mounts

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Mounts to subframe

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Sitting in its final spot

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Hood clearance

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That pipe is the front axle center line. So I almost call that a mid engine. :)

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Header

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Drivers side header, steering shaft, head area.

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Finished Header

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Lets start the wiring, that is an entire car in a rubber maid tote.

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Sprawled out on the shop floor.

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Removed all the unnecessary circuits and unneeded extra crap.

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The final lay out of the wiring. Oh shoot, it's got a check engine light. :D

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Factory Subaru fan mounted on the stock Rx-7 radiator.

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Lower rad hoses

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Rad and fan mounted

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Intake

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More mounting of crap, including most beefy strut bar ever.

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Putting the front of the car back together.

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First time pulling it out of the garage.

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Hood on and everything back together.

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Finished, painted and out driving.

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Here's a couple of videos of it, one of the first start up, and one of it out running and starting.

Cool man!... Good job, are you planning on slapping a turbo in there?..

Not at this point, as I'm going to school and money is tight. But maybe something down the line, there isn't tons of room around it, so it would have to be some creative plumbing to get it to fit all right. And I'm not going to do that until I could afford to do it right, rather then slap a hacked up system in there.

That is pretty great. I've measured the fc for this swap but the motor is too wide by 2 or 3 inches. Glad you could shoe horn it in there.

Might as well stick with the motor and do some rallyX!

Actually I'm planning for it to be a full stage rally car.

I bet that thing is fuuuunnn! Awesome swap!

Thats one way to make a subaru handle better, put it in a mazda!

Very cool

It really is. I have lost track of how many different kind of cars I have driven through out the years and this one really ranks up there as one of the best ones. And mainly because just how simple the whole car is. Solid motor with bullet proof EFI, no power anything, a LSD and 4 wheel disc brakes. It doesn't get much better then that. :)

I'm glad you like it man, is that the 135hp motor? And did you make your own custom bellhousing for the w58? Thanks

yeah it's not tons of power, but it moves the car along just fine. with a full cage it comes in at just 2400 pounds.

As for the bell housing, no i didn't make it, but I am the one that got it made. I ran across a guy out east that was making bell housings to mate 4G63s to rwd transmissions, so i pretty much bugged him non stop for about a year seeing if he would even contemplate doing it. He finally said ok, so a packed up a chopped up tranny, a bunch of clutch parts and shipped it out to him. about a year and a half later he sent me his first one. and it works flawlessly.

hes now making full castings of them and selling them. I wish i could do half of what that man could.

but here's his site if you want to check it out.

http://www.billsautofab.com/recent_mit.asp

I wish I had the skills to accomplish something like that, everybody tells me my 12a sounds like a leaf blower. But I love the sound of a subaru and I love your car man!

hey I'm just a guy with a welder and some imagination. I really don't have any awesome fab skills, I just can picture how I want it to be and roll with it. I guess its probably not a bad thing the fact that I am going to school to be an engineer, so maybe those kind of skills will come in handy. Ok and the fact I have been welding for 15 years might have something to do with it.

BUt I think most anyone could do this, the bell housing, the rear axle machine work to match lug pattern, and the rear brake calipers were the only things I had out source, the rest was an angle grinder with a cut off wheel and a welder. No fancy tools used.

Hey, awesome job. But one question: Why do you not used the original gearbox and adapt the engine with a adapter plate?

LG Olph

There was several reason actually, first, I didn't have a Mazda transmission to start with, and the Toyota gear boxes seems to be more readily available as they were offered in a whole range of Toyota cars and trucks. Second the gentlemen that makes these bell housings didn't work in the Mazda realm of transmissions when I got this (he does now). His main focuses was the Toyota R and W series, T5, T56, GM350, things like that. 3rd, there is multiple gearing options for the W series depending on what vehicle you get them from. After running the W58 I found I could benefit from lower gearing in 1st-3rd, so I tracked down a W55 from the Toyota truck which has a reduction in gearing of about 15%. And lastly I'm also running a Toyota rear axle, so fitting a driveline was as simple as shortening a Toyota 2wd truck stock driveline.

Ok this is awesome. Bookmarking so i can look at the pics on my laptop later

If anyone is interested I got a FB going of the things I’m doing with the car, because you know the internet needed another thing about cars.

I kind of gave up on forums years back and really haven’t been back much. Except to find parts.

https://facebook.com/mazdaruMS

Wow. Somehow I missed this project. This is awesome. I like Subarus.