The Sincerest Form of Flattery

So with all of this excellent engineering having been performed overseas, there doesn't seem much left to do but order parts and start bolting things together...right? Wrong. Way wrong.

Parts in the UK and Australia that are sold out of country are not subject to the 20% VAT, so you get to dodge that bullet. But you still must convert to US Dollars. For example, if you're buying a pair of £140 exhaust manifolds, convert GBP (£) to USD ($) which as of this writing is £1 to $1.62, then pay the currency conversion fee (about 3.9% of the total.) Then add $90 for shipping (and that's the slow boat) and you come to a grand total of: $310 USD for a pair of excellent exhaust manifolds.
Now imagine how much shipping a custom radiator, an intake manifold inverter, and an engine carrier bar would cost. Unless you are independently wealthy, you're either going to save for a long time to buy these limited run parts, or you're not going to do the conversion. At a shipping and exchange and tax rate that high, the cost to perform a conversion means that, rather than across the ocean, those parts may as well be on the moon.

If you weren't sure, this is what the rest of the world feels like trying to buy products from the USA.

So inevitably, there are compromises that have to be made. The finest conversion available would be using the RJES Bellhousing adapter, the Fellows Speed Shop Radiator assembly, and the Turbo Thomas exhaust. But even ignoring all of the other ancillary items like coolant hosts, cab heater matrix, surge tanks, and the expense of having someone else perform the wiring harness conversion for the engine management system, the cost of parts, with myself turning the all of the wrenches, would come in somewhere north of $8000-10000.

There must be a better way, and it doesn't have anything to do with smuggling. It is called 'The Sincerest Form of Flattery.' Be a bald-faced plagiarizer. Seeing how there are no copyrights on physics, I'll take pictures of worked examples around to local vendors, and we'll get to watch the price fall.

For starters, the RJES bellhousing adapter is the cats meow because it allows you to use the less expensive, and much more common Subaru clutch parts. It allows for smoother performance at low RPMs. It uses a Subaru starter, which mates perfectly with the Subaru 9 inch flywheel and is better built to turn a high compression engine like the Subaru.

The machined adapter plate design popularized by Kennedy Engineering Products (KEP) has none of these benefits. In addition, it moves the whole engine 22mm to the rear in the engine bay, as it is sandwiched between the engine and the original bellhousing. This causes other clearance problems depending on your particular application. In my case with a VW Bus, there is a non-trivial problem of the intake manifold crowding the firewall, getting so close that you can't fit an intake pipe and filter upstream of the throttle valve. You can flip the whole intake manifold around (so that the intake points to the rear, where there is plenty of space) but then you occlude the alternator and need a special adapter to move that. And now you have nowhere to put your A/C compressor (should your aspirations climb so high.)

Throttle valve reverser
with engine in place,
firewall shown to the right.
It is a very tight fit.

So every move has consequences. Fall off the ideal for one component (the transmission to engine adapter) and there are lots of consequences down the line.

Thankfully, this problem has already been licked, and simply, without any moving parts at all. An adapter that rotates the throttle valve 180* so that it is pointing to the rear, it also rotates the throttle valve so that the  mechanisms are on the correct side to easily receive a stock VW throttle cable from the stock cable location in the engine compartment. Cost? $$150 from Rocky Mountain Westy. No more occlusion penalties for any of the engine components, and easy to fit off-the-shelf intake hoses and filters (like K& N ) too.

So lets do a quick budget check:

1996 Subaru US market Legacy, Outback, or Impreza with a Normally Aspirated (non-turbo) EJ22 SOHC engine and preferably low miles on the odometer. (Low for an EJ22. These things are almost indestructible.) Preferred: A vehicle that will pass emissions but would otherwise fail inspection. Accident damage, etc. But runs, and I get the WHOLE vehicle. High end of cost range: $1500
KEP style engine adapter, $556 shipped from Rocky Mountain Westy in Colorado. No one has it cheaper as of this writing, not even KEP, who tend to clip you on the shipping and will not assure a delivery date.
Throttle valve reverser, ~$150, from Rocky Mountain Westy in Colorado.

So far, we're up to $2156, and we can't yet cool (radiator, plumbing) or deal with exhaust gasses yet.