Im wanting to do the subaru swap in my bug. But for donors I'm having a real hard time find a car thats not an auto. So my question is can I use the automatic car as a donor and source out a manual trans later? Or are the harness and ecm different? I know the auto won't work with the suby reverse gear kit. But I found a good deal on a auto car that was wrecked.

an auto would as a rule be less thrashed, if its a good deal buy it , yes you will have to do some wiring changes on the loom for the manual but the ecu ect will work.

Is it AWD?
auto AWD boxes fetch good money

It wont matter if the donor is auto, the engine and ECU are the same, just the ECU is wired different so it knows it's in an auto.

As seagull said autos make better donors

Awesome thats what I wanted to hear. I don't think its an awd, he didn't mention it being one and I haven't seen it in person yet. They just wrecked it recently and are wanting to sell it. It got flipped but is suppose to still run and they only want $500 for it. So bewteen scrapping whats left and selling off the auto trans and whatever few parts are still salvageable I'm hoping to make most my money back on it.

FWD auto boxes are worth nothing, only the AWD are, mine went in the bin, couldnt even give it away.

yeah I didn't think it would be worth much. But maybe some one well need one, before I get tired of tripping over it and scrap it.

But this is what the guy told me.

"My niece wrecked this car while i was out of town working. just talked to my sister she said the key wouldn't turn off or come out after the wreck.Motor was running after the wreck until it ran out of gas i guess."

So I think I'm going to take some gas and a jumper box and see if I can't get it started. Or at the very less turn the motor over by hand to make sure it didn't lock up. Anyone know what size socket I need to turn it over?

Remove the spark plugs first, then crank it over. stop it, replace the spark plugs then start it

or hydro lock = bang and a nice conrod will say hellow just behind the alternator

You said that it got flipped in an earlier post.

If it was on it's roof and running I probably wouldn't buy it.
Just find out it it was on it's roof or if it flipped the whole way back onto it's wheels.

Engine running upside down for too long = me no likey



Smiley

As above if the car has done some acrobatics the engine may be rooted but even if it is I wouldnt let that deter you.

If you can get it cheap as because of that you have everything there to make a conversion work, another engine is the easy part and it gives you the option to go much much newer if you wanna go EJ20 from a imp, lib or forester or bigger if u wanna go EJ25.

Some of the early EJ25 are a plug and play with an EJ22 ECU

Im going to try and get it from here. waiting to here back and hoping it doesn't sell before I have a chance to go get it. And if the motor turns out to be locked up, oh well. I was planning on freshing it up anyways. Hoping not though.

not worth the freshing up / cost & time , find another

I can't find deals on Subarus around here. $2k buys a car with well over 200k. So I'm goin to go get it Wednesday for $400. I can get atleast half that back just by scrapping the car once I pull what I need. So I'm goin to go get it wednesday morning after work and then work on it thursday and see what I got.

Ah so you are in the US, I was thinking that might have been the case by the american fenders on the bug in your avatar.
Subis are just alot more common on the roads here which is why it was suggested to just get another engine

Well went and picked up up yesterday and will be working on it today to see if she spins over. Going to pull the plugs and see if I can't turn it over by hand. If it does then I'm going turn it over by the starter by remote. But I got an issue, if it does spin over and feels fine. I don't have the key, it apparently went missing when the car was sitting. So whats the easiest and cheapest way to bypass the ignition switch?

Just pull the plug of the back of the ignition switch, find which wire has power to it then jump it onto the other ones till you find the one that brings all the warning lights on.

then you can jump the starter solenoid wire to crank it over, just make sure its in park

can tell Ive never hotwired a car

K, will try tomorrow. Pulled the plugs today and they actually look decent and sprayed some oil down the cylinders. she spun over by hand with ease. so may luck out after all. She had some oil in her still, dirty but just alittle past the low mark. So do this have a flip over sensor? i know newer cars went to them but don't know much about subis.

Well she runs. Took the colum cover off and just poped the cover off the igntion swithch and took the tumber and used a screwdriver to turn it. Charged up the jump box. She cranked over after bout 15seconds. Not bad for a car thats been sitting 6 months. Got a tank of gas, wasn't even a 1qrt low on oil and coolant was full. She is smoking but motor sounds good. Not coolant smells like oil. just hoping its crap in the pipes from being on its roof. Goin run it some more tomorrow and see if it doesn't clear out. Thanks guys

I dont think it would have had a mecury switch installed.

On another note , I purchased a Ls400 lexus ( V8 ) a few weeks ago from my old boss. it had been sitting for 4 years and never started, new battry and 20 seconds it started and ran on all 8 cyl.

Now I am driving VIP for $800.00 Au. He payed Au $87000.00 for it new LOL !

ok. just got the harness all pulled. Got all the dash and engine harness out. took me bout 4hrs. helps when you dont have a roof in the way. Only question I got is do I need to have any of the harness that goes towards the back of the car? I just unhooked the wires right where they ran along the bottom of the doors. Do I need any of that?

if you want to use the subaru fuel pump its handy to keep that wiring intact

I didn't bother, there's nothing engine related cept the fuel pump wiring.

You will have more than enough left over wire once the main loom is stripped to run cable for the pump.

well finally got the subura motor pulled. harness pulled. and tank pulled and the car scraped. paid 400 for the car scraped it for 300. so I got 100 invensted so far, not to bad but was hoping to break even. No to decide on a trans. I still think Im learing mostly to the subi trans and getting the reverse r&p kit for it.

Is it an AWD box?

The kit doesnt work with the front wheel drive boxes.

don't have a box. car was an auto and wasn't goini to use that.