[Another note of caution here:]

With the the Air Conditioning electrics now removed, it seemed a good idea to de-clutter the engine bay a little by physically removing the Air Con system in its entirety. If you compare the pictures of before and after, looking at the alternator in the center, you will see that I have removed the compressor, brackets, drive belts with adjusters to the right and also the pipework that comes from the front of the radiator right along the right hand side and along the firewall at the rear. It still looks pretty complicated in there, but that's a huge chunk of bits that have now been replaced by space.







Another note of caution here:
The Air Con system is pressurized with some nasty liquid gas that is harmful to the environment. What you are supposed to do is to go to your nearest air con specialist to have the system discharged before messing about. What you are not supposed to do is crack open one of the joints until you hear it hissing and go for a cuppa.


I have also removed the air con and entire heater unit from inside the car to give me a clearer view of what is going on, but I have refitted the original heater matrix so that the water cooling system is left in its standard state for the time being with everything being plumbed in as it should be. I`ll tackle the cooling issues at a much later date.





More good bits removed for ebay in order to fund the project   

In order to be able to connect this rats nest of wires to the Beetle, it makes sense to think about what the guys from VW gave us to play with and try and recreate it in here.

The Original VW wiring could not be more simple. We have a permanent feed from the battery, we have a switched ignition feed that comes from turning the key, and if you turn the key a little further, you get another switched feed for the starter motor. That is really easy to recreate with a little panel.

So this is my Beetle - my intended vehicle. I have a permanent feed going to the left side of a fuse box, I have a big red FIA key that is going to pretend to be my VW ignition switch (I`m using this so I can also remove it for security) and this will give me a simple ON/OFF supply to the right hand side of the fuse box, and to replicate the second position of the ignition key, I am going to use a simple push button, which will also go through the fuse box just so we can see how its all connected.





This panel is completely independent of the Subaru wiring, and is simply fed via a circuit breaker directly from the battery.





Mounted in the middle of the dash, the challenge is now to be able to run everything via this panel, and when I have managed this, the loom will then be ready to tidy up and install into another vehicle with ease.





Starting to think the £300 loom conversion charge was a good idea   

Dave,

Still think you are a god of green(not yellow; Rob), with the patience of a saint.

Paul

Anyone who has looked through the Subaru wiring diagrams will have understandably noticed that a great deal of security has been added around the starting systems in the form of interlock relays and immobilizer modules for obvious reasons. However, we are not actually transferring any of this tech over, so we can pretty much ignore most of it and junk the lot. VW gave us a simple starter wire from the ignition key directly to the starter motor solenoid and as we will be retaining the Beetle starter, its important to recreate the same setup on here. I have therefore joined a heavy wire from the starter solenoid to my push button, and when I press it, the engine turns over - simple.

We are playing with a lot of electrics here though, so whilst 99% of the relays can be ignored, we still need to supply a signal to the ECU to let it know that the engine is cranking and the easiest way to do this is by means of a White/Black wire from the Beetle starter solenoid to B135 Pin28 on the ECU.

Bosch and VW kept it simple on the 411LE a ignition wire into the injection control unit, a rpm sensor at the flywheel, temperature switch that also worked the excess fuel cold start and the accelerator butterfly things have progressed to nightmare wiring in the last 40 plus years..

things have progressed to nightmare wiring in the last 40 plus years..

I know what you mean Keith - when (and why) did cars become so complicated? Believe it or not, there are still more wires to be found, and the main power loom from the engine fuse box to the cabin actually runs inside the inner wheel arch. Not the easiest of looms to strip out, but I want to make sure that everything is visible before chopping too much about.





Most of the wiring from the engine is via a number of plugs on the drivers side, and the access to the rear bulkhead is a right PITA to get at from both the cabin or the engine bay. The size of the Air Filter inlet and resonator box cannot be understated, it is absolutely huge, and removing this gives me a lot of room to play with at the back. You can also get a better idea of just how short the engine block is here too.





Removal of the air box does mean that there are now some rubber pipes to contend with. There is a 13mm breather pipe from each of the rocker covers, similar to what we sometimes fit on the Bugs, and a 13mm pipe from the top of the inlet manifold. because I want to maintain the original setup at the moment, I will get some short bits of hose and a few connectors so that they can be joined together and fed back into a 70mm aftermarket air filter.

The majority of the wiring loom to the engine connects via a series of plugs that can be found just to the rear of the block on the drivers side. Subaru also seem to have colour coded these too, which does make things a little easier to work out what is going where.

There is a 16 pin brown plug down the back of the engine that Subaru call B22 and most of the wires go back to the main ECU.



For the time being, I am not concerned about going into too much detail about how the various sensors work etc, (we can delve into that at a much later date), but for the moment I am only looking to map the wiring out from A to B so that I can get the loom to work independently.



Main ECU Pinout diagram also updated

I had a bit of a diversion today as some of my ChineBay goodies arrived.

Now this is another one of my "Pro-Loom Annoyances" and its to do with a Rev Counter / Tacho / Call it what you will.

Some may view them as a bit of nonsense, some minimalists may hate them, but personally I like them, so splashed out a whopping £8 (including postage) to upgrade my new Dashboard. My annoyance is that the tacho feed wire is usually chopped off by the conversion companies and you are seldom given the easy option to retro fit an aftermarket one. To me this is just madness especially as there is a wire coming out of the ECU that we can use, (or ignore if you so wish) - but at least you should be given the option by retaining the wire.

Wiring in an aftermarket tacho is easy and only takes three wires. A fused ignition live and an earth will take care of the power, and on a Buggy, we would connect the sensor wire to the coil negative. However, the Subaru does not have a conventional ignition system, but what we do have is an Orange / White cable coming out of the ECU on B134 Pin 30 - Connect your sensor wire to this and the tacho will work.





I know that an £8 rev counter sounds cheap, and there is a reason for this. It looks nice in its standard guise, it actually performs pretty well and if it lasts until the end of this project I will be very surprised. However, when you switch it on, there is a tacky blue backlight from an internal bulb that has been so badly placed behind the mechanism that it casts a terrible shadow across the face at night. Serves a purpose for now though.

Trying to remember where I left off, as its been a while. I have now finished mapping out the B22 plug and that list should now be fully populated

One of the other wires that is often not connected is the Green/Yellow wire that goes to ECU B135 B24. Most doing this conversion retain the original VW speedo and do not see the need to add this wire. Again, you are missing out on some valuable power here. Give or take, a standard VW lump will red line at around 4500 revs per minute. If the Subaru ECU thinks that it is stationary and not moving, then after 30 minutes, many of them go into a "Limp Mode" allowing you to continue to your destination albeit under restricted power and performance. Some modern cars are really hard to drive in limp mode, but the Subaru will simply limit you to around 4000 Revs with full accelleration. You can understand that with this figure being close to what the VW lump gave, that with your foot flat to the floor, you may not actually realize anything is wrong. With a speed pulse taken from a small unit strapped to the speedo cable or magnetic pick ups on the rear wheels, adding that wire will allow you over 6000 revs with no problems whatsoever.

This maybe of interest, seems rancho are now doing rear engine conversions for Subaru gearboxes.

http://ranchotransaxles.com/rancho-subaru-5-speed-conversion-for-type-1-2-and-vanagon/

Seem to recall that their Subaru boxes were megabucks, about $4k (before importing)

I`m actually using a 1600 Type 1 Rancho box (extra strength) that I picked up from Heritage

Classic Car Rescue did a subaru conversion with the orginal VW box left in and then hardened the hubs/drums for the extra horsepower.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTt2sYR1Xss

[6 Pots...stuff your bhp, torque is king]

Nowt wrong with a Corvair. You can build one for bigish Type 1 engine money really. You'll need a mortgage for fuel though, ideally mates in the shipping industry and a while heap of bloody luck to find another engine in this country....

And that's the issue with these really. Rarity. Whilst a very different (but bloody great) way to go to power a buggy, having to ship EVERYTHING from the states soon becomes a chore. I just buy several.of everything I need at once now. Several.spare oil filters, air filters, fan belts etc in the garage shelf now.

Dave,was talking,sorry getting talked at,at Bristol volksfest about a scuby conversion. Red 9 design have done a few. Use the vw box on their van for over 10 years. Also they know a guy that sorts the looms out for you for not much £££££. Give them a ring,they can chew your ear off then !

good project

there are 4 VW Beetles in VWDRC that run the Subaru conversion if you need any help .

Loads of conversion information here -

  http://www.kennedyenginc.com/Pages/SubaruVanagonGen.aspx

i've just ordered my Rotary Conversion kit from them .