BBPeik

So pulled a bit of a Whit Wednesday today. Wife was out of town so I went and picked up an STI transmission. Its an 05 StI USDM transmission. Its DCCD with a helical front diff. Picked up the shifter for it also. It is about 2 inches longer than our transmission and you can definitely see the difference between how built the STI trans is vs ours. Comparing the two it looks as if I am going to have to use the bell housing bolts to fab a mount for the engine. Should work real good. Here are some pics.

That is what I am thinking. The only real benefit to using the hubs is the 5x114 so you have more wheel choices. I know the STI shafts are a bit stronger, but I am not exactly going to any rallys any time soon or anything.

Here is the fsm diagram of it

Ok so I am in a quandry. I am trying to decide which way to go on this. The question is do I really need the STI hubs? I can get the r180 diff and should be able to use spec b axles. This would be a less expensive way to go since I would not need new wheels. It would be easy enough to swap to STI hubs later if I wanted to. What do you guys think? Yes I know go all the way or go home and all of that, but if I could cut 2k off the bill by keeping my wheels that would be nice.

I thought the same thing. There is something that sure looks like an oil cooler there.

So I just finished watching the latest episode of the grand tour. Changed my mind about what I will drive next(dream of course). I new I liked it when I saw it at the auto show last year, but this episode summed it up. The new Giulia is it.

Given that I just finished completely disassembling my transmission I can say that the center diff would be relatively easy to replace diy. Conveniently I have a whole trans in pieces so I can give anyone that needs them very specific pictures.

Thanks to a helpful tip from Mike at Infamous, I just found a local place that can get me all the parts I need for my swap. He has several options available. I really wanted to find one locally so I could look at it in person.

Freakin amazing. Nice work fellas. Glad we have finally been heard.

If the car is bucking a bit during tight turns it it almost guaranteed to be the center diff. It can be replaced without pulling the transmission, but still not a cheap repair.

Nice too see some 3.6 results. I am very interested to see where you end up with your xrt tune. Thanks for sharing.

Gear display only pops up when clutch is out.

Those look really nice. Can't wait to see it all installed. You will find fronts. I have faith in the Subie Gods. They will bless you with front Koni's. They just want to make sure you really want them.

I was not aware that you could turn the gear indicator off. That seems like the easiest solution. As far as the boost in certain gears. It is limited factory in 1st and 2nd, but as soon as you get a tune that goes away so it is no longer an issue.

^^^That would be great. I will keep you in the loop as for whether I need them or not.

I know that there is no sensor on the transmission that tells what gear it is in. There are only two sensors on our transmission. Neutral and reverse. So it would have to some kind of calculated figure to determine gear.

Yeah as far as I can tell the only sensors are the reverse and neutral sensors. Depending on what year trans I get it may have a vss as well, but that is not an issue with our cars so I can just plug the sensor hole or ignore it. Obviously I will hav ethe DCCD wiring as well. I know that on a lot of cars you can go into the ecu and set the gear ratio, tire size etc. Hopefully this is the case on our cars as well.

I thought it knew what gear you were in based on engine rpm and speed. Not positive though.

BTW Do you think we should change the title of this thread to something with STI swap in the title. This is directed at GTeaser.

^^^Come hell or high water this thing is gonna be bullet proof dammit. At least that is what I keep telling myself.

I have thought about the gear display, but it might be possible to reprogram the ecu to let it know what gears are in the car. A tuner will need to chime in on this though.

So here is my overall plan for the swap. I am planning on buying as late a model as possible STI trans with DCCD and just using a DCCD controller for that. I will also be getting driveshaft, axles, hubs,diff, etc.. Here is the basic plan. 1. Mount trans to engine and bolt up with existing trans mount. Should be possible. 2. Figure out how to mount it to existing mounts 3. Looks like the STI shifter will work based on the measurements that I took already. Might need some fiddling, but should work. 4. Wiring for reverse and neutral sensor should work fine with our harness. 5. Install rear diff. This part is pretty easy. 6. Figure out what I need to do to the driveshaft. Again easy, any mods can be done at the driveshaft shop I use. STI driveshaft is beefier, so I plan on modifying that. 7. Attempt to install the hubs. Not sure how these will mate up to our cars. If they go in I will use them as the STI axles as they are much stronger. If they do not I will take the STI axles and hybrid them with our axles. 8. If I use the STI axles and hubs then I will get some Brembos and new wheels and call it a day. Thoughts?

Both great offers and both accepted. Thanks guys

From what I can tell the STI is not exactly going to swap right in, but it will fit. If it fits then the rest I can fab up and all should be good. This is going to be a long road though. I am hoping to have my car back by summer.

So I just finished tearing down the transmission. Turns out that both front diff bearings were bad as I suspected, but the real noisy one was the bearing at the back of the center diff. When you spin that rear gear it is noisy as hell. Mind you this bearing was replaced 20k ago when they replaced the center diff. Very disconcerting for any of us with a lot of power. Mind you most the time I drive like a grandpa and I pretty much baby my car driving wise. It is not like I race all the time. This transmission is a weak link for sure. The last picture is the bearing that is the most noisy.