There are two matters, and they disturb me. The first is that, despite having run a pretty exhaustive budgeting process and still being well under budget for the total project on the Bus, I'm broke. I mean, so broke I don't even waste quarters on the soda machine at work. No movies, no McDonalds, not even Taco Bell. If my wife and I want entertainment, we'll go to bed. (That, thankfully, is still fun AND free.)
But I am completely broke, owing to a dozen odd completely unanticipated, unbudgeted expenses all having come due during the last 10 weeks. I'm not even buying beer.
Since broke-ness tends to make me pull up sharp and re-evaluate, I've been doing so on everything from the brand of laundry soap we use to this Bus project. The Bus really can't be done any cheaper than it is being done now, especially with me blindly staggering around an unfamiliar engine. The circumstance is not helped by trying to rebuild an engine solo that requires tools and skills that are vastly outside my experience. It also puts me in the position of having to rely on a dwindling community of experts on this engine, almost all of which live 3000 miles away in Orange County, California.
The Confession
I originally started this blog with the intent on documenting the conversion from a Type4 engine to a Subaru EJ series boxer engine.That's why the blog is called DIY-BusarU (A mashup of Bus and Subaru.) After I got 6 months into the process and realized that I had gone far afield down the Type4 engine path, the early posts were just an embarrassment. I was so stuck on going the Subaru direction and spending half a dozen posts explaining how I got to that point of view, then I vectored completely to the Type4 solution because the combination of cost and support available from the community. I didn't feel confident about my ability to do the engineering to make all of the components work together for the Subaru solution without having someone having created a 'worked example' that I could crib from. Also, most of the products for 'bolt in solutions' that have been developed and are sold in the UK and AUS. The price tag just mounted outrageously and I lost my nerve and folded, especially since it looked like the original engine was going to pull through with just a little TLC. Obviously, it didn't work out that way.
So I'm back re-evaluating the Subaru option, despite having a fair amount of money already into a T4 rebuild. Why? Because from here out, it is not going to get cheaper, easier or more straightforward. I'm not going to get any more help than I'm getting now, which is pretty thin considering that all of the help is by email. But there is one last....pain point. (I was going to say deal breaker, but it isn't quite. Yet.)
The T4 is O-L-D. So old that parts are even more scarce than I was led to believe. The new parts that are available are of inferior quality, and will likely yield an engine (even if I do everything right!) that may not make it to 50k miles. The pain point has been discovering that the cylinder heads (which are a major bugbear and represent over half the total cost of the engine) which I had stressed to find...are trash. And I have to start over and spend more money. I don't want to spend more money for an inferior solution.
Below are some of the numbers I generated. Unless I want to become fabrication man (HA!) I'm going to spend well north of $3750 to get from where I *am* to where I would need to be.
The Re-Evaluation
To use an EJ20 or EJ22 engine would require:
Lazy: $
KEP engine adapter: $520 from Outfront Motorsport
Wiring Harness: $550 complete (or take my time and DIY)
Engine: $500 used, pref with less than 200k miles. (+$100)
Radiator: $75 Aluminum/Plastic VW Mk3 Scirocco style
Fabs: $200 ( radiator enclosure, and throttle body reverser)
Engine Support: $430 Rocky Mountain Westy
Cooling loop: $200
Exhaust: $1000 (Cat Magnaflow 53034 $77+shp, Walker SoundFX Direct Fit Muffler #17828 $28, 1x Walker U clamp 35795, or
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