El_Freddo
Forum Member
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2008
- Messages
- 2,399
- Location
- Bridgewater, Vic
- Car Year
- 1988, 1990
- Car Model
- EJ22'd L series; Targa Brumby
- Transmission
- Locking FT4wd 5spd Manual, 4.111:1 diff w 1.59:1 low range & front OBX LSD ;)
G’day all.
This write up is designed to help those who are after information for dropping an EJ series motor into an L series Subaru. While the write up is heavily weighted to my experiences it will not answer all your questions, particularly if you’re using a late model EJ – wiring may be slightly different in the later models and where a factory immobilizer is involved this will need to be retained. I hope that you do find an understanding of what’s involved and save you asking some questions later…
First of all you need to decide how you are going to do the conversion:
- Do it yourself or with help from others/have a mechanic do it for you
- Adaptor plate or EJ gearbox or shove the EA box into the EJ casing
- Donor vehicle/halfcut/gather the parts
-EJ18/20/22/25 – put a decimal point between the two numbers and you have its capacity in litres. Eg – EJ18 = 1.8 litres in capacity.
In terms of parts – if you’re going to collect the parts yourself the best bit of advice I can give is in terms of the wiring: Make sure you get the wiring that matches the ECU and that of the engine, this is the wiring that plugs into the loom near the battery, it will be two or three plugs and passes under the intake manifold to the various sensors and injectors. Best practice would be to get the sensors too as I’m not sure about the difference in sensor wiring between the years/models if any.
Other than the wiring, the rest of the mechanical bits can be a mix and match. I have read recently that the EJ18 does not have a cam gear angle sensor for the firing of injectors in 2 batches. Some say this is the reason why they use more fuel. If your wiring loom has a cam sensor, I believe this will fit the EJ18 as there is a mounting point provided.
If you’re going to get a donor vehicle or a half cut it’ll have everything you need. If you’re going to do a crossbred brake conversion a donor vehicle will have the brakes to match the engine conversion.
To get you started, what you need:
-EJ motor, matching pollution gear and exhaust Y pipe
-wiring loom – all wiring under the dashboard and under the bonnet. This will need to be cut down (refer below)
- sensors:
-> Mass Air Flow Metre or AFM – located on the air filter box, you’ll need the top of this box too.
-> Oxygen sensor, found in the exhaust Y pipe
->Cam angle sensor (on motor near the bottom of oil filler pipe)
-> Crank angle sensor (on motor directly above crankshaft, under the alternator)
-> Temp sensor (back of water channel, under intake manifold on driver’s side [Aust])
-> Throttle position sensor (side of throttle body)
-> Knock sensor (on top of block near bell housing on passenger’s side [Aust])
- EJ alternator
- High pressure fuel pump (EFI rated – VL turbo is what everyone goes for, a VN 5 litre V8 one will do the same and probably be a lot cheaper too)
- PS pump – if you have power steering or will be adding it (worthwhile exercise to do)
- EJ flywheel and clutch if using the gearbox or swapping internals
- Radiator modified to take the 40mm radiator hose from the EJ. Best option here is to upgrade the radiator to a twin core custom job that will handle the cooling needed for the EJ. You can fit the liberty radiator in but you’ll need to chop the body cross-member below the L’s radiator and replace it with something that will retain its strength. A few members have done this on the forum (Subafury comes to mind). Here’s my Radiator – custom 3 core for the L, with now modified ports – different angle and 40mm as shown in the pic:
Other pieces you’ll need from the local auto store are:
- fuse panel – a 4 fuse panel did the job for me
- electrical clips, joiners and shrink tube
- some sort of protecting cover for the wiring. I used spiral wrap with a layer of electrical tape.
- new water pump and timing (cam) belt. It’s usually best practice to do while the engine is out, especially if you don’t know the history of the motor. Head gaskets can be done too.
For the wiring there’s two ways I’ve seen it done. The one that I have no experience with is wrapping up all the wiring in a protective conduit, connecting everything that needs to be connected (motor only), working out what is power (fused), ignition (fused), fuel pump (fused), oil warning and temp wires. Only the important wires when into the cab, including the ECU wiring and ECU.
The way I have done mine was to cut out anything that was not needed – Bascially I started by tracing the wiring back from the engine plugs, taping together the wiring that I needed and cutting out the rest. When I got into the nitty gritty’s (when it became very messy) I traced all wires to the ECU and taped them with a marking tape (green/yellow electrical earth tape). I then refered to Ben’s wiring diagrams to get the wiring cut down completed.
The wires you need to find to run the EJ wiring:
(Fused):
- main power
- back up power (join to main power)
- ignition
- fuel pump
- starter circuit wire
(non-fused):
- oil warning light (I used the factory L’s wiring)
- temp guage wire (temp guage will sit lower than it did with the EA – again, I used the factory L’s wiring)
- ECU dash light – will most likely need to be added unless its an MPFI touring wagon
- speed sensor wire – this can be left out, I’ve connected mine because I aim to add cruise later on.
Other wires you can find are:
- AC relay wire
- AC cut wire
- AC fan wire
- plus a few I can’t remember
^ these wires are not used in my conversion at the moment.
Fitting the wiring to your L:
The engine plug wiring was run under the dash along the front of the heater then up over the AC box before passing through the rubber grommet on the left and continuing under the guard (oz passenger’s side). The EJ engine plugs are mounted roughly where the old EA coil was mounted.
Wiring from the rear top of the EJ engine and the AFM wiring passed through the fire wall through an unused hole near the clutch cable’s hole. Using an old clutch cable grommet the wiring was threaded through and the grommet sealed with a few layers of electrical tape. This made it neat and easy to do.
This write up is designed to help those who are after information for dropping an EJ series motor into an L series Subaru. While the write up is heavily weighted to my experiences it will not answer all your questions, particularly if you’re using a late model EJ – wiring may be slightly different in the later models and where a factory immobilizer is involved this will need to be retained. I hope that you do find an understanding of what’s involved and save you asking some questions later…
First of all you need to decide how you are going to do the conversion:
- Do it yourself or with help from others/have a mechanic do it for you
- Adaptor plate or EJ gearbox or shove the EA box into the EJ casing
- Donor vehicle/halfcut/gather the parts
-EJ18/20/22/25 – put a decimal point between the two numbers and you have its capacity in litres. Eg – EJ18 = 1.8 litres in capacity.
In terms of parts – if you’re going to collect the parts yourself the best bit of advice I can give is in terms of the wiring: Make sure you get the wiring that matches the ECU and that of the engine, this is the wiring that plugs into the loom near the battery, it will be two or three plugs and passes under the intake manifold to the various sensors and injectors. Best practice would be to get the sensors too as I’m not sure about the difference in sensor wiring between the years/models if any.
Other than the wiring, the rest of the mechanical bits can be a mix and match. I have read recently that the EJ18 does not have a cam gear angle sensor for the firing of injectors in 2 batches. Some say this is the reason why they use more fuel. If your wiring loom has a cam sensor, I believe this will fit the EJ18 as there is a mounting point provided.
If you’re going to get a donor vehicle or a half cut it’ll have everything you need. If you’re going to do a crossbred brake conversion a donor vehicle will have the brakes to match the engine conversion.
To get you started, what you need:
-EJ motor, matching pollution gear and exhaust Y pipe
-wiring loom – all wiring under the dashboard and under the bonnet. This will need to be cut down (refer below)
- sensors:
-> Mass Air Flow Metre or AFM – located on the air filter box, you’ll need the top of this box too.
-> Oxygen sensor, found in the exhaust Y pipe
->Cam angle sensor (on motor near the bottom of oil filler pipe)
-> Crank angle sensor (on motor directly above crankshaft, under the alternator)
-> Temp sensor (back of water channel, under intake manifold on driver’s side [Aust])
-> Throttle position sensor (side of throttle body)
-> Knock sensor (on top of block near bell housing on passenger’s side [Aust])
- EJ alternator
- High pressure fuel pump (EFI rated – VL turbo is what everyone goes for, a VN 5 litre V8 one will do the same and probably be a lot cheaper too)
- PS pump – if you have power steering or will be adding it (worthwhile exercise to do)
- EJ flywheel and clutch if using the gearbox or swapping internals
- Radiator modified to take the 40mm radiator hose from the EJ. Best option here is to upgrade the radiator to a twin core custom job that will handle the cooling needed for the EJ. You can fit the liberty radiator in but you’ll need to chop the body cross-member below the L’s radiator and replace it with something that will retain its strength. A few members have done this on the forum (Subafury comes to mind). Here’s my Radiator – custom 3 core for the L, with now modified ports – different angle and 40mm as shown in the pic:
Other pieces you’ll need from the local auto store are:
- fuse panel – a 4 fuse panel did the job for me
- electrical clips, joiners and shrink tube
- some sort of protecting cover for the wiring. I used spiral wrap with a layer of electrical tape.
- new water pump and timing (cam) belt. It’s usually best practice to do while the engine is out, especially if you don’t know the history of the motor. Head gaskets can be done too.
For the wiring there’s two ways I’ve seen it done. The one that I have no experience with is wrapping up all the wiring in a protective conduit, connecting everything that needs to be connected (motor only), working out what is power (fused), ignition (fused), fuel pump (fused), oil warning and temp wires. Only the important wires when into the cab, including the ECU wiring and ECU.
The way I have done mine was to cut out anything that was not needed – Bascially I started by tracing the wiring back from the engine plugs, taping together the wiring that I needed and cutting out the rest. When I got into the nitty gritty’s (when it became very messy) I traced all wires to the ECU and taped them with a marking tape (green/yellow electrical earth tape). I then refered to Ben’s wiring diagrams to get the wiring cut down completed.
The wires you need to find to run the EJ wiring:
(Fused):
- main power
- back up power (join to main power)
- ignition
- fuel pump
- starter circuit wire
(non-fused):
- oil warning light (I used the factory L’s wiring)
- temp guage wire (temp guage will sit lower than it did with the EA – again, I used the factory L’s wiring)
- ECU dash light – will most likely need to be added unless its an MPFI touring wagon
- speed sensor wire – this can be left out, I’ve connected mine because I aim to add cruise later on.
Other wires you can find are:
- AC relay wire
- AC cut wire
- AC fan wire
- plus a few I can’t remember
^ these wires are not used in my conversion at the moment.
Fitting the wiring to your L:
The engine plug wiring was run under the dash along the front of the heater then up over the AC box before passing through the rubber grommet on the left and continuing under the guard (oz passenger’s side). The EJ engine plugs are mounted roughly where the old EA coil was mounted.
Wiring from the rear top of the EJ engine and the AFM wiring passed through the fire wall through an unused hole near the clutch cable’s hole. Using an old clutch cable grommet the wiring was threaded through and the grommet sealed with a few layers of electrical tape. This made it neat and easy to do.
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