Motor swapping

[RawrImAMonster]

So, it looks like I'm being roped into helping my friend swap a motor in his 04 Forester (non turbo).  This will be my first time actually doing the full motor swap myself.

I've found some decent instructions for doing the swap on youtube and forums, but are there any common pitfalls?  Anything in particular I need to watch out for?

We'll be buying a habor freight engine hoist and load leveler.  I also recently purchased a Quickjack so at the very least I won't have to mess around with jackstands.

[.RJ]

on those cars, leave the trans in.

its a pretty straightforward engine removal.

[Senor_Taylor]

on those cars, leave the trans in.

its a pretty straightforward engine removal.

I can't imagine an easier car to get to the bell housing bolts on

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[ScottyB]

did the headgaskets asplode?

on those cars, leave the trans in.

its a pretty straightforward engine removal.

this. you don't have to, but its easier to connect the trans to the engine out of the car. but because of that, you'll need to remove the front driveshafts which will mean you also probably need to disconnect the struts...so get an alignment after you're done if you do it that way.

how old is the "new" engine going in? EJ's love to leak oil after about 100k and its hard to get to the cam seals once the engine is in. check those as well as valve cover gaskets. now is also the time to check your steering rack boots. when you swap the trans, check the throwout bearing and grease the clutch release fork pivot ball.

[RawrImAMonster]

He lost a timing belt at 215k.

It's an old motor (150K) going into an even older car. He's just trying to get it back on the road as cheap as possible. I don't think he's worried about oil leaks. I am putting a gates timing belt kit on while it's out though.

Yeah I'm planning on leaving the transmission in the car. No need to complicate things.

[Senor_Taylor]

No need to complicate things.

You're acting like somebody else; gets me frustrated.

You fall and you crawl and you break and you take what you get.



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[RawrImAMonster]

The main thing I'm worried about is pulling out the torque converter. It seems like some people have issues with the torque converter getting pulled out in the process of removing the engine.

Any way to prevent that? I'm not at all familiar with automatics.

[ScottyB]

couldn't help you with the converter, sorry.

for the Gates kit - does that come with the idler pulleys as well? you HAVE to change those out. they are responsible for a huge number of timing belt failures when people neglect to change them with the belt every 100k. the pulley bearings disintegrate and off comes the pulley, then valve soup shortly thereafter.

[Senor_Taylor]

Torque converters just kind of click into the input of the transmission, afaik. If it comes out with the engine after you unbolt it, just click it back in, I guess.

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[.RJ]

may need to drain the fluid out of the TC before removing... i dunno how auto transmissions work, voodoo magic. Or magnets.

[Senor_Taylor]

may need to drain the fluid out of the TC before removing... i dunno how auto transmissions work, voodoo magic. Or magnets.

Voodoo magnets

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[RawrImAMonster]

Torque converters just kind of click into the input of the transmission, afaik. If it comes out with the engine after you unbolt it, just click it back in, I guess.

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Yeah after doing some more reading I think that's about right.  The subaru one kind of clicks into position 3 different times.

The problem was coming from people not realizing that it had moved out and then trying to bolt the motor back on.  It can ruin a few different parts.  Now that I know that's something to watch out for I should hopefully be ok.

[Senor_Taylor]

The three click thing is just about every torque converter btw

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[RawrImAMonster]

Ok, we're finally getting around to starting on this. The guy took a while to get a motor, but he dropped it off at my house last night. Surprisingly, the whole thing (on top of a pallet) fit inside a volvo wagon.

This isn't going to be a straight swap so it will be a little more complicated than unhooking stuff and hooking it back up, but it shouldn't be too bad based on what I've read online. The JDM ej20 n/a is nearly a direct swap for the n/a ej25 that we had in the us. You just need to swap the wiring harness, pretty much all of the belt driven accessories and one of the cam gears.

This particular example has 96,000 km so just below 60k miles. Because it's such low mileage I think we're just going to throw a timing belt on it and not worry about the pulleys and water pump for now. I think his plan is to sell it soon after anyway.