Leaderboard

Another update, its been a while. Its running pretty good. Well it was until I messed with the charge pipe clamps. Have a boost leak now and I've already checked the clamps I messed with. But its not smoking like it was, so the rings have sealed. Also adjusted the valves again. From the way it was running before the boost leak, this engine is going to rock! Cant wait to finish breaking it in, then I can do the fuel mods and slap the VF39 turbo on

Resurrecting an old thread. Another success using Trans X, I have a beater 2000 OB with about 280K miles, it had been running pretty well then started with the delayed engagement pattern, it was bad enough I wondered if I was going to have to get a new transmission. I added one 15oz bottle of K&W Trans X and it is vastly improved. BTW I am not a person who trusts snake oil, magic in a bottle, etc but this stuff works.

Hubs and halfshafts removed and in Parts. Passenger side rear stuck in the hub, soaking it. 99 Trans with spin-on filter remove and available. Brakes and rotors removed and available.

Yes, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80919. I think the trans is going today. I will pull the axles and hubs... In storage!

Just being an old ea81 I’d go through a few items, maybe one at a time and test after each. There’s a few changes as the EA81 goes on but yours may have the black plastic flying saucer looking thing which is upstream from the carb. One recorded event was that plastic breaking apart and minute bits and even chuncks getting into the carb. Also the flaps on the air suction valve. Four Phillips screws on the metal box with hard metal tubing. Check those flaps for serious degradation at the lower edge kind of like an old carburetor slide if you’ve ever seen a lawnmower or motorcycle carb. Heat causes expansion so then can create leaks. Spray some wd40 or carb cleaner around the base of the carb as it’s warmed up and running and see if the idle levels out. Several folks here still active with EA 81s so you’ll get more advice soon.

This pdf only covers Subaru to 1980 but there were a lot of Hitachi carbs using the same solenoids. http://tomco-inc.com/Catalog/idlesolenoids.pdf http://tomco-inc.com/CarbCatalog.htm

The solenoid contacts are the same as Toyota 20 & 22R starter solenoids. It's the bendix gear and motor that are different in rotation. Somewhere in USMB history I made a post about this same subject. There it is! https://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/167347-86soob-wont-start/?do=findComment&comment=1387840

Looks awkward but simple, seats are cumbersome to maneuver in and out of the cabin but otherwise it’s not too bad. The seat rail ends/bolt down tabs want to stick out and catch paint if you’re no careful. Hopefully you’re not knocking that out with a foot of incoming snow. yours are probably fine I don’t see this too often, but it’s annoying if it does and you have more rust up there than me so just in case:I’ve had a few that the seat bolts are rusted and have had seat bolt threads strip before. If they feel tight - work them back and forth to slowly break the rust up. If it’s really tight take a break once the bolt turns two or so times. The tighter it is the less turns per break. Go work on something else and let the metal cool down. The threads strip and bolts sheer largely due to heat build up. Heat increases plastic deformation of metals and it also causes things to expand - making the problem worse. Heat will strip a bolt well before the use actually will. let it cool. Spraying lubricant is a lubricant and helps conduct heat away from the point of friction too.

You need to bleed the lines closest to the master cylinder first(front calipers), then the rear. If you do the opposite you may siphon air from the short un-bled lines where the lines connect at tees, hill holder, etc. Bleed M/C with lines just loosened a little until fluid pushes out, then tighten them up. Put an oil pan underneath to catch the mess. Hose it down with brake cleaner afterward. Bleed order is Left front, then right rear. Right front, then left rear. Get a one man bleeder kit with a check valve in it. Put the valve end in a small plastic bottle with a little brake fluid in it to stop air from going back up the bleeder hose. Pump slowly with full strokes of the pedal 6 to 8 times at each wheel then check the reservoir after closing the bleeder. Not trying to discount what you know of bleeding brakes, just repeating what has worked for me since the 70's when working alone. Used to be a NIASE dealer mechanic. Good luck!

Bennie, that carb kit # 254556737560, is on sale right now out of Ontario Calif. for $33.99 USD and ships for $23.40 USD. MUCH less than $200 AU. Even if it isn't the quality kit you get over there, at least you'd have something to work with if needed.

local you pull yards around CT https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ANrceU4oXw4?feature=share

Just checked Discount Tire for sizes etc and the standard Impreza 2.0 uses 16in or 17in wheels with a 205 sidewall. I think this might be a better idea for her. Now I need to find some wheels she'll like

$20 says that post will be edited in the next week to add a link to a sketchy website

I remember my days of EA82 4wdn with a welded rear diff - very impressive and very easy to damage the floor pans if not careful! Cool pics, the area looks stunning! Cheers Bennie

Took her on a great wee trip up the Edwards valley last weekend with a few mates. She performs unbelievably well offroad with just the tyre and rear locker in, considering it's still standard height and has the EA82. Such a weapon!

Bennie, it sounds like the float level could be low, leaning out the mixture. If it were a sinking float with a leak in it, the needle & seat would be open too much of the time, high level fuel flooding over into the venturi. Some times you can see drips of fuel while at idle. This sounds like a gurgling while at cruise. If it were a brass float, leaks can be found by putting it in a pan of boiling water & watch for bubbles escaping. Carb kit on fleabay, item # 254556737560 I'm guessing at your MY.

@moosens- after today’s drive home I’m leaning towards the issue being the carb too. This morning’s drive to work was pretty good. But I noticed that gear changing to go faster would result in a jolt from loss of power then instant power return as I put my foot on the throttle. But if I let it over rev a little bit as I disengaged the clutch to change gear there wasn’t an issue. The drive home tonight was the same every gear change and the misfiring at cruise was back. And I’ve noticed when down shifting the burble with engine braking isn’t what I’d call normal, it’s popping and farting without a pattern to it unlike its regular rhythmic subaru burble during engine braking. Also at idle it sounds like it’s sick - almost as if it’s got a hot cam in it but it’s missing that cool semi misfire noise about it, and it’s not liking to idle. I’ve bumped the idle “up” to get it to ~800rpm atm which helps raise the red flag for the carb. Fun fun, I’m not wanting to put any time into the carb! Efi is where it’s at for me, much easier to deal with. If I do anything about the carb I’ll post back here, don’t hold your breath! Thank you for everyone’s thoughts on this issue! Cheers Bennie

@Rupart 4° btdc isn’t much and certainly not over advanced. They’re usually tuned at 6° to 8° before top dead centre. I think you might have the retard and advance the wrong way around in your description. I know this engine consumes oil and this brings down the effective RON rating of the fuel, even if it is slightly. @Steptoe's photos I don’t see how my EA81 would punish me for not liking the EA82 much, the EA81 already knows it’s a superior engine… Admittedly I am limping this EA81 along and I know that it won’t like this coming heat over summer. The next engine swap will be the EJ and it’s known this for a long time as it’s collected the various parts with me. It was flawless in its two trips to Sydney, the first one being at the drop of a hat and the second one planned. It was on this second trip that I ran the octane booster to avoid pinging in the warmer inland temps on the way home. I think I’m on my second tank of fuel since then and now is when this issue arose. To answer other questions - electronic ignition, new NGK spark plugs. Dizzy cap inspected and seems good, rotor button and tabs on dizzy cap had signs of corrosion. They’re cleaned up now and look good. Carbon button in dizzy cap present and in good shape. Shaft play would be less than 1mm in any direction. Can’t test drive today as it’s a great drinking arvo while tinkering away and I love having my licence… so I might drive her to work tomorrow (~80km round trip, what could go wrong?) to see if there’s any change with the build up on the dizzy tabs removed. This still doesn’t explain why there’s no issue under load when the ignition system is under the most stress. I’ll report back when I’ve got an update Cheers Bennie

I forget if you ground it I think it goes full hot. You can check the resistance and see what it does with increase of temperature.

I've had good luck with the repair kits.

Wobble, excessive play, and maybe that little carbon cylinder thing atop the rotor. Geez it’s been a while and I’m right around the corner from running an even older distributor engine - EA71 once again. You know I’m no mechanic, right? I mean I have a long history of using and abusing and wrenching but I’m not sure what else to think at this time. Maybe a short in a wire.

Little more progress today. Not the great report you wanted to see but we’re closer to cranking it over today than we were yesterday. Some slight differences between 78 and 79 and I’m using a 78 engine. So I’ll be referring to all my pictures and if I’m lucky maybe someone has both a 78 4wd and a 79 4wd or Brat can help. Couple basic brackets vary according to A/C used etc. Would be nice if I could see yours but I’ll likely be able to zoom in on my pics and hopefully all works out.

If the starter-solenoid 'clicks' when you try to start, that means that the clutch-pedal has been depressed and is working as it should.

There are no performance issues at this point, the engine and car is running better than ever, there would be no point for tests.

any experienced builders out there found a sweet ring gap ? Basic theory is about 12 thou for 92mm bores, up to 19 thou for harder working, mildly hotted up or turbo engines. The factory manuals even list a maximum of about 60 thou, and std being around 7 thou up to I forget ...40 thou?

Hi all, I'd like to introduce you to my current project: This is Gladys, my 1987 GL hatchback. I bought her in August of 2021 and she was a wonderful car to have, until she blew her first engine in late October. Two more engines and a blown HG later, she has been sitting on a friend's property for the past several months awaiting her new engine, or rather, her new motor. See, I plan to replace the gas engine in this car with an electric drivetrain out of a Nissan Leaf. Part of the reason its taken so long to get this project moving has been waiting to find a suitable donor car in my price range (>$3,000 USD) but just a couple of days ago I was fortunate enough to get my hands on this crashed 2015 Leaf from Copart for a grand total of around $2,800 So in this thread I'm planning on documenting the swap and any problems or workarounds I'm encountering as I go along. The basic plan for the build is to take the motor from the leaf and mate it onto the existing 4 speed transmission using an adapter plate made by Angus over at http://bratindustries.net, who performed a similar swap on a 1983 BRAT (a little off topic, but he used the third eye mechanism to hide the fast charging port which I think is really neat). Since it's not strictly necessary with an electric drivetrain I'm forgoing the clutch in favor of a direct connection from the motor to the transmission. I then plan to power it using the battery pack from the leaf, stored in the back since I'm planning on a rear seat delete to preserve space and weight. The whole system will charge from a standard J1772 charging port located where the filler neck used to be. I intend to keep the look of the car as stock as possible inside, going so far as to replace the modified center console with an aftermarket head unit that was in the car with a stock unit I was able to find on eBay along with a factory cassette deck. the accelerator will hook up to the control electronics through the throttle cable and the stock gauge cluster will remain unmodified save for allowing the fuel gauge to read out the battery's state of charge. Should this project all go as planned, the car should have the equivalent of a 107hp motor with 184 lb/ft of torque and about 60 miles of range, give or take some thanks to regenerative braking. Of course if I want more range I might decide to upgrade the battery later on down the line, though I think this should be plenty sufficient for the time being. I plan to use as much from the Leaf as possible, but I'll use third party components to get stuff like the brake booster working on battery power Now, this project is still very much in the early stages even though I'm months in already, but I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about the project, as well as taking any suggestions you might have about how to get the conversion done

Quick update on the car, I've gotten one of the old shocks out, only to find that the top hats which match up with the car will not fit the GR-2s I was planning on installing without drilling out the strut hole. For some reason they have a "D" shaped hole for the piston to mount to, whereas the strut has a round shaft. Everything to do with this project is taking about 4x as long as I had planned for it, but thankfully I've got all the pre-built parts for the car and all that remains is the custom stuff like the motor couple and battery box. While I was working on the car, I pulled out the old seats... Previous owner had seat covers on them and I can see why. Thankfully I found some much nicer ones out of an '89 hatch and they'll go in once I've got the battery box situated where the backseat used to be.

The wagon is now my daily driver,such a fun drive My 9 year old daughter has already reserved it as her own,and I’m under strict instructions to keep it until she can get her licence in it at age 15.. After 15 years in a field and destined for the wrecker,it feels good to keep some 80’s history on the road. Weirdly its not the oldies that stop to chat at the petrol station,more so the sticker on the cap youth,that either have never seen one before or follow hoonigan;) Lots more to post here as continue to document,learn,tune,fettle,but out of data onsite for images,cheers Westy

INTERLUDE: Doing the Shocks! While I gather up the funds for the last couple parts I need to start putting everything in the car: new shocks! Well, not new new, at least in the front, but certainly better than the popped ones that are in the car right now. I had the good fortune of grabbing some spare parts with Gladys when I bought her, including 2 sets of front coilovers, and since a pair of brand new rear shocks can be had for $50 off Amazon, I'm replacing all four once the rears arrive on Friday. In the meantime, I've grabbed the front ones from my parts stash. Funnily enough, the pair I grabbed are KYB GR-2s, which means that with the Excel-Gs going in the rear, all four corners are gonna be on KYB struts. I dunno I just think that's neat. Here's the new(er) front shocks loaded up for transport to Gladys in The Imp, my GFC. In other news, I just got back from the junkyard with a couple of parts which'll be very useful if I plan on stopping the car A vacuum pump and reservoir, which I pulled from a Volvo, but it's the same model used in 2014+ Foresters and the Tribeca (which I was originally gonna harvest this one from but someone beat me to the one on that lot) Also on the lot was this weird little thing: A ZAP Xebra, a weird little 3-wheeled electric "car" from the late 2000s, with a top speed of ~40mph and a range of 20-40 miles depending on the model you got Anyways, update over, I'll be back on Friday with a report on how the shock replacement goes!

Took her for a spin today down the Waimakariri river, locker in and muddies on. Traction is incredible! Clearance and power are now the main issues... Which will be fixed with a lift and EJ22. Can't wait to get it fully built.

Locker is nearly in! Up on the hoist at Crowesport today...

Exciting stuff...

Finally acquired a set of Peugeot 14" steelies to fit my Maxxis mud tyres to. Looks good if I may say so myself. Before anyone asks, Torqlocker is in the mail... Just waiting on Subarino to finally release their lift kit, then I can crack on with putting that in, along with an injected EJ22 and a rare part time 4wd dual range EJ box from an early Legacy. And then get it engineer certed haha 😂

UPDATE 2: Everything Has Been Pulled From the Leaf Well, that was surprisingly quick and easy, but with just 3 hours of work both the transaxle and the battery pack have been removed from the Leaf. I had to pull both front tires to get at the driveshafts, but after that it was pretty smooth sailing. After disconnecting the harness and the connection to the battery pack, the engine came right off the engine mounts really cleanly. Right now, the whole unit is sitting on a furniture dolly until I can get it up to the GL on Saturday With the motor out, we used the hoist to get the car as high up on the jacks as possible. After then removing the aerodynamic paneling under the car, we then used a couple more dollys on floor jacks to hold up the traction battery while we undid the bolts holding it to the chassis. from there it was easy to lower it to the ground and roll it out When we rolled it out, there was maybe 3-4mm of space between the top of the pack and the bottom of the car, but it didn't catch on anything thankfully. With the pack removed, the easy part was over, mostly due to the thick rubber seal which surrounds the whole of the steel casing which holds the battery together. After copious use of a heat gun, several blades, and a completely ruined outer shell, I was able to get access to all the battery cells inside. PLEASE NOTE that this was extremely unsafe and I would not recommend doing any of this without proper safety equipment and expertise. That being said, the battery has been taken apart and now I've got it stored until I can get it into the other car.

UPDATE: The Leaf Has Arrived! Thanks everyone for taking an interest in the project, things are starting to move along now, the Leaf I ordered just arrived a few minutes ago Hopefully in the next few days I can get the motor, battery pack, and anything else I might need pulled from the car. Yeah, I was looking into past conversions people have done to old Subarus, apparently 15-20 years ago someone put a forklift motor into a 3rd gen wagon for a solar powered car, things have definitely changed now that we have readily available wrecked production EVs to pull parts from sadly no, I was just planning on sending the rolling body to the junkyard after I get what I need from it, though if anyone in the Denver area wants it sans drivetrain for whatever reason, feel free to get in contact with me Yeah, I plan on documenting everything that happens to this car on here as well as maybe a Youtube series on the conversion as well. My goal is to have the car at least moving under its own power in 2 months, which might be a bit ambitious given my lack of knowledge on these things besides intermediate self-taught experience with mechanics and electronics, but I hope to have the car ready for an EV show in August at the latest As far as the adapter plate goes, Angus (the gentleman who runs that site) was kind enough to design this updated version of the adapter plate for me, it uses the bell housing off of the EA81 for proper spacing and mating to the transmission bell housing. Actually that reminds me, if anybody is interested in 2 parts EA-81s (one with blown HG, one seized) and an unknown condition EA-82, I'm planning on selling the parts I have off to anyone interested, ditto the fuel tank, exhaust and any associated parts once I get those pulled from the GL again just contact me with an offer

This is a Nice Project, please share Photos with us as it goes. Saw the Brat industries website, very interesting... Kind Regards.

Subarino lift?? It’s going to be awesome! I was pestering him for a three inch but I doubt he’ll ever do it, or I’ll ever actually go through with it anyway, I’d rather get his 5 stud conversion once it’s sorted, I’m about 90% there with the kit, I just need a couple of key pieces. Anyway, that project is on the back burner for now. Cheers Bennie

Lift kit, springs and bullbar are being arranged from Australia...

Hehehe those DL headlights are so 80’s! It’s as if the L series was trying Romero the delorean dream alive Cheers Bennie

How about this? http://jdmfsm.info/Auto/Japan/Subaru/--Articles--/--Endwrench--/