'71 Deluxe - Now with Super Secret Subaru Swap!

Great stuff! Always nice to see more pictures of your bus, I'll take another look at instagram!

Cheers

Alistair

aogrady said:

Great stuff! Always nice to see more pictures of your bus, I'll take another look at instagram!

Cheers

Alistair

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I guess you did take another look at instagram! I had 97 likes from Mr. O'Grady here on Sunday morning LOL, it was quite the surprise. Thanks for the support, bro! Made me want to get in here and update my thread.

Not much new going on with my bus other than it's getting used quite a bit. My wagon is down with a leaky water pump so I've been driving the bus daily for the last few weeks.

Yesterday:



Took the kiddos out for burgers last night. We had a nice view of the bus so we could watch people take pictures of it, and boy did they ever hahah



I drove the bus to several shows over the summer, the Subaru swap is working great, no issues to speak of whatsoever. In fact, I'm getting ready to have a new 091 freeway flyer transmission built for it. Currently I'm at 4000+ RPM on the highway at 65 mph which is loud and exhausting, so I'm trying to get my 091 set up for about 3000 RPM at 70 mph. I'm planning on rebuilding my 091 with 1.14 3rd gear and .70 4th gear, and it already has the 4.57 R&P. It should completely transform the way the bus drives. I can't wait.

More to come, stay tuned...

Nice to see you back again!

The gearbox sounds like it's going to be a great improvement. I wonder what the top speed would be?

I think karlos on here has a Porsche 901 five speed conversion, might be useful to you? I can't find the thread, on my phone at the moment...

Keep the pictures coming!

Cheers

Alistair

aogrady said:

Nice to see you back again!

The gearbox sounds like it's going to be a great improvement. I wonder what the top speed would be?

I think karlos on here has a Porsche 901 five speed conversion, might be useful to you? I can't find the thread, on my phone at the moment...

Keep the pictures coming!

Cheers

Alistair

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I looked up my top speed with the new box, it would be 139 mph at 6200 rpm! My Microsquirt EFI is governed to 6200 rpm max. If I went back to stock tires it would be 150 mph @ 6200 rpm. Ridiculous. I probably won't try it haha. Currently with my stock 002 transmission and my little tires I'm at 101 mph @6200 rpm, so you can see what kind of improvement it will be.

Alistair I did a search and found the thread you were talking about. It's actually Tofufi who has the Porsche 901 5 speed- K@rlos has a Rancho built 4 speed gearbox. I actually talked to Rancho about building my 091 box but I think I'm going to go with Benco Racing instead. The Benco spec. sheet had more heavy duty Weddle parts rather than an OEM rebuild with tall 3rd/4th gears that Rancho quoted me at close to the same price. The Porsche 901 is not sounding like a good option for me, from what Tofufi said in his thread the gears are not tall enough.

Anyway I thought I'd tell a fun story about the time that I got called out in a subybus vs. subybus race earlier this year. My homie threw down the gauntlet on instagram, and it was on.



We decided to race after we attended a local Euro "Cars and Coffee" meet. Here's some pics from the meet:







After the meet was over... we found a good spot to line up on a private street...



Hate to leave ya hangin' but Race footage up next haha...

I am using a 091 with longer 3rd +4th and it is good, but I would consider a subaru box and reversed gears from subarugears if I were doing it again. You get a gearbox designed to take the power, 5 gears and are able to use subaru clutches and starter motors. But I guess 091 and rebuilds are alot cheaper for over there, here unknown boxes are £600 now before rebuilding and changing gears.
.

paul_q said:

I am using a 091 with longer 3rd +4th and it is good, but I would consider a subaru box and reversed gears from subarugears if I were doing it again. You get a gearbox designed to take the power, 5 gears and are able to use subaru clutches and starter motors. But I guess 091 and rebuilds are alot cheaper for over there, here unknown boxes are £600 now before rebuilding and changing gears.
.

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Paul_q, what gears do you have in your 091 and what engine are you running?

I did consider the subarugears setup- I do agree that it is ideal to run the suby 5 speed, but the issue is cost. I was very seriously looking at going that route early this year. I costed everything out on a Friday when the Subarugears website had all the prices in AUD, but then Monday came around and the website had been updated to USD prices driving up some of the component costs pretty significantly. If I remember correctly I think it was going to be roughly $2700 for everything I needed, which was already a pretty big strain on my wallet (but worth it), and then practically overnight that price was $1500 more which killed the option. I have a lot of other plans for the bus such as AC and heat so I need to keep other future upgrades in mind as I pour money into this beast.

Funny thing is that I had left the browser window open over that weekend so I was able to capture the old prices and confirm that I wasn't imagining the price increase. One benefit of going to subarugears is that I could sell my KEP adapter, flywheel and clutch to recover some cost, but then I'll need to buy a subaru starter, flywheel and clutch. I haven't costed that out but it might be a wash. Oh yeah and the shift linkage needs some modification so there's some cost to that too.

Anyway, you are right that an 091 build is probably less expensive here in the states. I picked up my 091 for like $300 (a hella good deal for a six rib), and the rebuild with tall 3rd and 4th gears was quoted at $1700 ish exchange. So total gearbox investment will be roughly $2000 vs. $4200 for the subarugears remanufactured non turbo trans and related mounts. Plus I'm going to trade in my extra 002 transmission core to get an additional discount on the 091 build, so it'll be closer to $1700. That's even less than the current price of just the subaru reversed r&p kit. And if you bought that, you'd still need to buy a used trans to put it into. #mathematics

Dannnnggg I've spent way too much time on this... I'll have to get the race videos up later.

I would have to find the paperwork for the 3+4th as it must be 5 years ago now. I'm running a ej20 NA without cat, air con and steering pump. I have the rjes bell house and input shaft so I'm running the Subaru starter and clutch anyway. I think if you are starting from scratch with a full donor car than its a good idea. My vans 1st and 2nd are short when you put your foot down so yours must be crazy.

paul_q said:

I would have to find the paperwork for the 3+4th as it must be 5 years ago now. I'm running a ej20 NA without cat, air con and steering pump. I have the rjes bell house and input shaft so I'm running the Subaru starter and clutch anyway. I think if you are starting from scratch with a full donor car than its a good idea. My vans 1st and 2nd are short when you put your foot down so yours must be crazy.

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If my donor car was a 5 speed it would have been sweet. But it was an automatic so I couldn't use the flywheel and clutch stuff, nor could I use the transmission itself. Hard to pass up at $400 for the ej22 engine (111k miles) full wiringing harness and ECU (which I didn't use). The subaru engine was the least expensive major purchase of the whole swap, other than the microsquirt ecu. I don't use 1st gear at all unless I have a lot of weight in the bus. The gearbox is definitely holding my bus back.

On to the race footage...

Race 1:

Race 2:


I LOST BOTH TIMES, even when Carlos had a late start hahahaha

I didn't use 1st gear because it's only good for like 10 feet before I have to go into second. Carlos has a bug transmission in his bus so he had the gearing advantage of four useful gears and a taller final drive. Also you should have seen how much shit he pulled out of the back of his bus before the race, there were spare tires, tool boxes, dead bodies, sheeeit I should have at least been able to take my back seats out. Those are the excuses I'm gonna go with hahaha. Clearly I just suck at racing vw buses. We'll have a rematch someday.

Some more poor quality footage. Sounds cool tho lol

Forgot to post these pics with the 'rrari...

I told him to watch out for my paint.

I know this is old but I love your conversion and am hoping to be able to do a similar conversion in my split bus. I just had 1 question. Why did you abandon the filler tube plumbed into the lower suction line?

volkswagenbug said:

I know this is old but I love your conversion and am hoping to be able to do a similar conversion in my split bus. I just had 1 question. Why did you abandon the filler tube plumbed into the lower suction line?

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Thanks man I am long long looooong overdue for an update to this thread. Bus has been running great, no issues to speak of. I've made some upgrades as well but I'll just answer your question for now... the lower suction side filler tube was abandoned because I was losing coolant. In that configuration I had no overflow/expansion tank, so when the coolant got hot and expanded the pressure cap would open and dump the water on the ground. When the engine cooled it would suck air into the coolant reservoir instead of pulling coolant back in from an overflow/expansion tank. Moving the filler to the top cross over tube between the radiators makes it easier to fill, helps with bleeding air, and the addition of the overflow/expansion tank ensures that the cooling system stays full.

Any other questions, just ask!

Awesome thread - just followed you on instagram too!
Cool bus, great pics

StuF said:

Awesome thread - just followed you on instagram too!
Cool bus, great pics

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Thanks dude! I'll catch you on IG...