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Jessekrs123's 1984 Subaru BRAT


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Ofcourse my day off this week and it is 100 degrees out. I had planned on patching up the floor in the cab, but welding in the 100 degree sun was definitely not an option...

 

But I did tackle a few electrical problems with the taillights. There was most certainly a ground issue because turning on the right blinker set off the stop light and they blinked together, it would also slow the rate of blinking down when I applied the brakes, and the brake light on that side would go out, plus my reverse lights would not go on as well, plus while applying the brakes with no signal, it would turn the left blinker on and dim.

 

I found a few exposed wires on the right side of the harness, and figured while I was in there I might as well wrap everything up that was exposed or hadn't been previously wrapped.

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And the previous owner attempted to wire in a third brake light to the bed cap, which he got half way done because the taillight side was crappily vampire crimped, and on the other end the wires weren't even shaved to splice anything to. Plus there is no brake light in the bed cap so it seemed like a pretty futile effort on his part...

 

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All the electrical issues have now been solved.

 

I also need to get some insulation material to solidify the tailgate latch mechanism in the tailgate because it rattles like crazy. Especially when I shut the truck off, it sounds like something is going to shake right out of the tailgate. There are just a bunch of loose, thin metal arms just dangling in there so that will be my next objective if this weather continues to be too hot to weld.

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No parts store has wiper blades for my BRAT, and I needed new ones badly so I got myself a pair of 16" blades and redneck rigged em' to fit.

 

Shoved the bolt throught and threaded it in enough so that it won't turn itself loose. Then I bent the blades so they would sit nice and straight.

 

Job done, bring on the rain.

 

You might want to put the plastic clip back in just as a spacer, because as your wipers are now, they could bend over under heavy use.

Having the spacer in there will spread out the load on the arm and make it less likely to fall over.

 

As for my car, I got a ton of stuff put on, put in and modified in the BRAT and my phone isn't playing nicely with IMG code right now, so I'll get them posted up as soon as I get the pictures on Photobucket.

 

Twitch

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hey dude, i seen you rocking your brat in watertown the other day!! you were pulling out of charles street onto french street! how funny...

 

hey i have the inserts and stuff or even whole wiper arm assemblys for your brat on my hatchback. the hatch is about to go to the scrap yard from rust (i had a plow on it the last 5 years for doing my driveway). but most parts are the same. let me know if i can help you out with any parts before it goes (within the next week).

 

i was at my buddys house on french street, i heard the tell tale subie sound (i can hear em coming a mile away and completely unmistakeable lol), and i saw you drive by his house, and said to myself sweet brat!!!

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hey dude, i seen you rocking your brat in watertown the other day!! you were pulling out of charles street onto french street! how funny...

 

hey i have the inserts and stuff or even whole wiper arm assemblys for your brat on my hatchback. the hatch is about to go to the scrap yard from rust (i had a plow on it the last 5 years for doing my driveway). but most parts are the same. let me know if i can help you out with any parts before it goes (within the next week).

 

i was at my buddys house on french street, i heard the tell tale subie sound (i can hear em coming a mile away and completely unmistakeable lol), and i saw you drive by his house, and said to myself sweet brat!!!

 

Haha, yeah, you can hear this thing coming from miles away. It is like driving around in a portable, raspy machine shop.

 

Got my wagon wheels all set.

 

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Christ, it is hotter than hell out. I didn't sweat this much doing ball joints and tie rod ends on the Legacy...

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  • 1 month later...

i was at my buddys house on french street, i heard the tell tale subie sound (i can hear em coming a mile away and completely unmistakeable lol), and i saw you drive by his house, and said to myself sweet brat!!!

 

Wait, does your buddy have that nice white hatch? I drive by the house all the time. I think he has an old white XT wedge too... I rode by on my bicycle tonight and I saw I think it was an old red sedan with some extra lights in the front as well.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Did a little work on this monster this morning.

 

I have an issue where the car is a little hesitant until it warms up, just a little tough to launch when cold. I sprayed some starter fluid around the carb and found that the revs would raise if I sprayed the insulator where the carb meets the intake manifold.

 

So I got two new gaskets and the insulator for my Hitachi.

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These old carb'd engines are nice to work on because there is no electrics, but the amount of vacuum hoses is enough to drive you insane...

 

Crappy Hitachi

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The old gaskets were caked onto the intake manifold and the carb, but I scraped them all off and went over everything with a scotch brite. (I stuffed the intake manifold with a clean rag and covered up the flaps on the bottom of the carb so no foreign crap would get in)

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You can see that a stud came off the intake manifold. It seems that someone had welded a nut to the stud so the whole stud came out when I got it off. No big deal though, everything went back together just fine.

 

Those 4 10mm bolts were so hard to get at. No room for a socket, and very little room to unbolt them. It took so long getting them off only going like 1/4 of a turn each time with just a regular wrench.

 

Cleaned all the old stuff off and put in the new gaskets and insulator.

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And then everything went back together.

 

Started the car up and it is still a little hesitant when cold. Then when it warmed up it ran like complete ************. Idle was okay, a little throttle was okay, half throttle made it bog big time, and WOT was okay. The car was far from drivable. I was really pissed and ended up having to take my Legacy to work.

 

Come home from work and started the car up. No problems, auto choke ran good, idled fine, still a little hesitant when cold. I let the car warm up and go to see if it would do the same thing. To my amazement, it ran like a champ. No more bogging out half throttle, damn thing resolved the issue while I was at work.

 

I plan on replacing all of the vacuum lines and fuel lines when I get the chance, maybe that will solve the cold hesitation issue.

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Somebody please help me out.

 

I recently replaced the 2 gaskets and the insulator on the BRAT, with a Hitachi, and ever since then it has a warm start running issue. Here are the basics.

 

If it is a true cold start, the car will run fine, no ridiculous hesitation or anything.

 

But after driving, if I shut it off for about 20 minutes, and then come back the car stumbles really really badly, the car is not drivable whatsoever. All vacuum hoses are connected and in the right place, I replaced all of the spark plugs, wires, rotor, and disty cap.

 

It really gets me because I can go out for work in the morning and the thing will drive fine. Get out of work, it drives fine. Come back 20 minutes after shutting it off and I cannot even drive the damn thing.

 

It is not a fuel issue because I can see the main jet squirting fuel like it should with the throttle opening and closing. Compression checks out, maybe it is a spark issue. Has anyone dealt with anything like this before? Thanks for the help.

 

I'll try to get a video of the problem when I get the chance.

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Wait, does your buddy have that nice white hatch? I drive by the house all the time. I think he has an old white XT wedge too... I rode by on my bicycle tonight and I saw I think it was an old red sedan with some extra lights in the front as well.

 

yup, thats the house. white xt6's were mine, white hatch used to be mine, and is actually going up for sale soon, cux my buddy with the hatch just bought my other xt6. the red hatch you saw was a parts car, my former plow car, that just went to the scrap yard last week. it went to fuscos, so if you need anything, im not sure if they crushed it yet or not.

 

you know anyone insterested in that hatch? he is asking $1500 for it. new clutch, radiator, full tune up in the last 6 months. has ice cold a/c also. going to post it up in the for sale section as soon as he gets me a few pictures of it.

 

OH!! BTW, i have a set of new chrome trim rings that will fit those wagon wheels if your interested. i paid $50 for the set when i bought it.

 

heres the red hatch u saw, and an old pic of the white hatch when i owned it. it also has my first silver xt6.

Edited by themoneypit
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is the valve at the end of the air cleaner box working? that shuts out fresh air and sucks from the exhaust when cold to help warm it up quicker. if its not working and thats staying closed, that could be your problem. just pull that air line off, look into the end of the air cleaner tube and the valve should open up. then just plug that air line and forget about it...

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is the valve at the end of the air cleaner box working? that shuts out fresh air and sucks from the exhaust when cold to help warm it up quicker. if its not working and thats staying closed, that could be your problem. just pull that air line off, look into the end of the air cleaner tube and the valve should open up. then just plug that air line and forget about it...

 

Yes, that vacuum line has been disconnected, it is constantly open.

 

Here is a video if it helps any...

 

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hard to tell from the video, but it almost seems like its skipping... ive seen coils go bad only when the car is hot. could swap that out quick/cheap to see if that helps. ive got spares from an xt6, not sure if they are the same or not. otherwise, put an inline spark tester on one of the plugs and see if the spark is sporadic when this is happening, that would rule out the carb if spark is the issue, and vice-versa. your sure that abortion of vacuum lines are hooked up right??

 

ive got an inline spark tester, i can take a look at it and try and help ya out. i might have some time on monday.

Edited by themoneypit
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nothings ever more likely to be messed up than after you fix it. Id first retorque the carb nuts, double check that the ports are all hooked up correctly, and readjust the carb from scratch.

 

If you had a large air leak from the base gasket the carb was probably tuned to make up for it. If the choke is not working properly then it might not show symptoms until it goes up in temp.

 

I had symptoms similar to that when I had a vacuum leak on a ported vacuum line. would idle and run ok, till you tried to give it gas and it would stutter from the vac leak. try the carb spray trick at normal idle, then turn up the idle screw to 2k or so and try it again.

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I'll re-check my vacuum hoses and get a new coil. I was thinking it might be the coil because it runs really good one minute, and then if you let it sit shortly and come back it spontaneously runs like crap.

 

It is so weird though, if it is a cold start, the car will run fine. I've driven it for an hour after a cold start and never had this happen.

 

Once I shut it off and come back 20 minutes later, this is what happens.

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seeing as you tuned it up at the same time, thats why im saying you gotta rule out one or the other. ive put new defective parts on several times... sucks, but happens. could be something with the cap/rotor/wires, or could be an issue still with the carb. you need to rule one or the other out before you just start throwing parts at it.

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The issue happened to me on my way home from work. I sputtered my way home but I think I might have found something.

 

While it is sputtering, I noticed that the sputtering goes away once I apply enough throttle to engage the secondary jet. It was really bad getting home because the car only ran well when the throttle was above like 70%. Would this mean that there is a problem with the primary jet? Perhaps something got stuck or is clogging it up? The primary jet looks like it is spraying enough gas but it just sputters away. Once I give enough throttle I can see the secondary jet and valve open up and the thing revs with no problem. I am going to take the carb out anyway and give it a really good cleaning and see what happens.

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the normal carb adjusts only the idle circuit, so it may be out of whack. since the secondaries are preset it wouldnt affect it then.

 

unless you have removed the systems there is a vacuum system that acts like a second choke and is set to change the carb settings and different engine temps. might be a bad valve in that system or something. maybe running good at either extreme but not working properly in between.

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I checked everything on the BRAT yesterday, while it was sputtering. Spark checked out well, it wasn't sporadic or anything. I even checked out compression just because, which was 160 psi across the board. The carb is obviously getting fuel because I can see the jets spraying.

 

My thought is that when I took the carb out to replace the intake manifold gaskets, I might have knocked something loose like debris or something. This car had sit for an upward of 7 years before I bought it, so I'm guessing there was some build-up or accumulation in the carb from sitting so long.

 

Either way, I had the Weber on my mind, because I am well aware of what a pain the Hitachis can be, so I ordered the Redline Weber DGEV kit and I will be installing it as soon as it comes in.

 

I am also going to rebuild the Hitachi just because. It'll be my first carburetor rebuild so I'll take it as a learning experience and I'll have a spare carb on hand.

 

I miss driving the BRAT already. Going from the BRAT to the Legacy is like night and day. The Legacy is quiet, rides smoothly, the 5 speed feels like a short throw from the 4 speed, there is much less clutch travel in the Legacy, I actually have A/C, power steering, power locks (the BRAT has no locks right now), power windows, music, and fuel injection. Despite all the luxuries of the Legacy, I would much rather be driving my loud and ugly BRAT.

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Swapped the Weber on today. Didn't give any more power, but it sure is noisier. You can clearly hear when the secondary kicks in, makes a lot of noise, but doesn't really go anywhere, kind of like VTEC haha.

 

Oh well, now it runs well at least.

 

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You won't notice a ton of power in the higher end. I noticed more of increase in low end with mine, acceleration was a bit better as well. But most importantly drivability and milage were both much improved. I could only get 25 highway with my worn stock carb, I'm getting around 30mpg around town now (car is fwd, I got around 25-27 with my 4wd with a weber)

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