DaveT

A little more info about where the diode is would help. I forgot to bring my manual to work to scan the heater wiring today.

The O2 sensor can also fail in a way that does not trigger the CE light. And fry the catalytic converter. Yes, I learned this the hard way.

22mpg on the highway sounds normal. My friend had a big diesel pickup. SiMilan numbers. But I spend so little on maintenance, taxes, insurance, car payments, that it is still cheaper per mile than anything newer that gets 40mpg.

I have always had low 20s mpg with all of the 3AT wagons I've run. I am heavy on the throttle.

Skishop69 - yes, autocorrect garbled my writing!

Maybe the distributor is off position, or off a tooth.

There are threads on here about how to install timing belts. I'm on mobile, can't link them. The flywheel mark is the center mark of the 3 lines, not the TDC + angle marks. The edge of the arrow in the view port is to align with the center mark. Passenger side belt goes on, hole on pulley aligned with notch on top of plastic. Any belt slack on the tensionerror side. Then turn the crankshaft 1 full turn. Put on drivers side belt, pulley hole aligned with the top notch. Any slack on tensioner side. Re check after setting the tensioners. The timing holes on the cam pulleys must be 180 degrees apart.

Schematic for the rear wiper. From 1990 Loyale manual. Should be good for most EA82 cars. _0224133508_001.pdf

Basic lead acid battery stuff - Fully charged, resting for 24+hours, should read 12.6V Fully discharged, 12.0V Battery end of life is 5 years, under ideal conditions. Under the hood of a car is not ideal conditions. EOL is something like 70% of original capacity. A battery at 0 F is about 1/4 of what that same battery is at 70 F. When new. Especially in cold climates, get the biggest battery that will fit in the space, not the one listed in the cross reference book. Jumper cable note: typical store bough cables are pretty wimpy. If you make a set with copper wire the size your finger, you can start a car with no [or totally dead] battery. Yes, they are big, heavy and expensive. But I have jump started construction equipment.

The leaking wont hurt anything. I've run around with partially failed exhaust gaskets before. I've pretty much got a set of helicoils for all of the bolts in a Subaru. The best way I have found to avoid needing to use them is to run the car up to normal operating temperature [if possible] before trying to loosen sticky bolts. Then go easy. If you pay attention, you can usually feel the difference between a bolt turning sticky and a bolt twisting off.

I've helicoiled the ones that have stripped. There's a lot of wide heat cycles and expansion contraction going on there. I would be very surprised if jb or anything similar would work.

A factory service manual is something to keep watch for. Shows every wire. If your car is an ea82, I can look it up tonight, but it will be after 9pm. Some times things get Scrolled down before someone who has an answer sees it

Quote : " the other bolts fit in but the threads are slightly buggered i will chase them with a tap and put antiseize on them." Good idea.

There is a plastic panel under the steering column. It has to be removed to see the real ECU light. The LED that displays the trouble codes. Once the plastic panel is removed, there is a metal case about 6" square that houses the ECU. The LED is visible through a hole facing the driver.

They only need to be 1/4 to 1/2" longer than the thickness of the rubber bushings on the pump plate

There's a thread around here with a picture of my strut compressor.

Sounds normal.

If the blower doesn't run on the low speed settings, the problem is usually the resistors that the speed switch selects the speed with. The 2 slowest settings are notorious for failing. The resistors are mounted withe 2 screws on the blower housing so that the resistors are in the path of the air existing the blower. There was a recent thread with someone having low heat output. That case , turned out to be that the pieces of foam that seal the heater core in the plastic heater box had deteriorated so that the air could get around the core, thus not get heated well.

Oh, yes, I don't want to try to run it without finding all those pieces of spline that have to be somewhere. There was nothing in the pan except clean ATF. I also figure, if I'm opening it up, I should check stuff like bands, clutches, seals. No point doing all the work and having some other stupid small thing kill it again.

Online should be "o".

The only reason I've seen coolant or bubbles overflowing the recovery tank is blown head gasket. Check for leaking of water pump seals, and the online ring and the short 1/2" 90 degree bend hose that is above the pump. In case you or someone new seeing this, there are 7 coolant hoses on an ea82. If you replace 1 due to age or failure, you should replace them all.

Yes, the pump shaft is very long. One of 2 cars is back in use. I am setting up to work on transmissions now. Since this is not going to be a quick project, in the meanwhile, I'd like to find a working 3AT that I can swap into the 2nd inoperable car. I am in central CT, if anyone knows of a 3AT laying around, or a scrapyard likely to have such old cars, let me know...

I had a cat fail - the ceramic part broke loose, and plugged the exit port. The car got really sluggish, no power, sounded wrong. You can try loosening the y pipe bolts. You want a good gap between the flange and the heads for this. It will be loud, but if the power is back, you know the exhaust is blocked.

On the coolant leak, is there a puddle under the car, or does the coolant just keep disappearing from the recovery bottle?

It's been interesting reading this thread. It does bring back memories from years ago when this sort of thing was discussed. The pieces I remember from back then is that there are a lot of things that are not conducive to power in the head design, and porting has little effect because of the other limiting factors. Size of valves being one, all the bends in the passages being another.