Details, details.

Some other small bits I did that might escape the view of the overall build.

1. Tightened up the RT4WD shifter.  As new bushings aren't available anymore I thought why not just take up that wear by decreasing the space the bushing has to move.  The shifter feels much tighter after making this mod.  We used some metal banding and cut it to fit and tacked it to the bottom of the bushing area.

2. Stage 2 clutches 'ain't nothin' to fuck with.  So we welded in a bracket to strengthen the OEM pedal assembly.  It's not a lot, but it should prevent the thin punched out metal from the factory from bending.

3. Swapped over a cluster.  8k EDM cluster is dope, but it's not a 1-1 swap.  You have to take everything out of one housing and put in your OEM cluster. It's an evening of work, but damn if it doesn't look good installed. 

It's been a long time since I left you...

I did stuff, I didn't do stuff.  Time passed, did some more stuff.  That's the long and short of it.

Lets get right into the current status of the wagon project.

Interior is basically done, a little more wiring for fog lights but the EDM 8k cluster is in and new fancy EDM mats cut to fit.

I assembled the motor and added a lightened flywheel (9lb as advertised) and ACT stage 2 clutch.

Quaife quicker steering rack in place.  New manual rack, manual subframe and quaife rack and pinion gear in!  You need to modify your rack to get the quaife gearing to fit, so look into it before ordering.

Also changed the timing belt, water pump, and tensioner.

At some other point I changed out the bushings in the front control arms with HardRace bushings.

There was an attempt to modify the manual mount to work with the auto bracket.  It didn't work.

We then tried to make a new mount that we would use in place of the OEM mount but the prototype was too close to the shifting mechanism housing on the transmission and even V2 didn't fit well enough.  We could have filled it with the center point of the mount being low, but I didn't think it would be a good long term solution.

I contacted Innovative mounts and they were open to the idea of making a custom mount for the swap (how awesome would that have been!) but then I realized that with the failure of the prototypes a custom mount wouldn't really work either.  There just isn't enough clearance using the AT mount.

So with that realization there was only one solution.  Find an manual RT4WD mount and harvest it.  Luckily I knew of one nearby and went to work.  It was a PITA getting it out without full access to the engine bay and it was a bit of a hack and bend job, but I got it out.

Next step was to repeat the process on my car, prep it and get ready for welding.\

Welding!  A big shout out to my friend Alan for coming over to my place to weld.

Now, at long last the engine is ready to go in!

So what's left?

• Install motor
• Modify header if needed to fit past oil pan
• Mount the Mishimoto 1/2 radiator and fan and see if the Mishimoto hose kit fits.
• Drive the car to the exhaust shop for the HKS exhaust to be custom fit. 

I would really, really like to get that stuff done this weekend.  Fingers crossed.