CornerHard

I didn't have time to do too much troubleshooting myself, so I dropped it off at a shop, and they verified exhaust gas is pressurizing the coolant. Sad times!

Hello, I have an 83 Subaru GL with EA81 that's been overheating recently. The issues started with leaking coolant, which I narrowed down to a hairline crack in the radiator close to the lower radiator hose connection. After sealing it up with JB weld, things seemed fine, but a short trip to the library saw my engine temperatures rising above normal (about 3/4 of the way up the temp gauge), and coolant started exploding out the top of the coolant overflow container. Every time the car gets up to temp and I start driving around, coolant starts spurting out the top of the reservoir, even though the top driver's side of the radiator is cool to the touch. A couple details: - I just replaced the thermostat after the issue started, but it didn't change anything - Compression is between 160-170psi for all cylinders - Since this issue started, I've noticed that the intake manifold gaskets appear to be leaking a bit of coolant - When the car gets to the point where coolant is exploding out the coolant reservoir, I also get lots of steam coming out the engine exhaust - If I take the oil dipstick out while the engine is running and the car is warm, I can see steam come out My guess at what is going on: The water pump is bad, so the coolant just builds up in pressure on the driver's side and pushes coolant out the reservoir, despite the radiator being cool to the touch by the radiator cap. The extra pressure has caused the intake manifold gaskets to start leaking, which is making steam come out the exhaust. Am I on the right track here? Any other suggestions as to what's going on?

Initially the distributor was just really old and worn out (280k+ miles on the car). The shop mentioned that the brushes and various electrical stuff inside were all shot. When it came back from them the first time, something must've come loose during transit, because it wouldn't work at all. The second time was the charm however My subie has been working great ever since.

If I corner really hard in my 83 Subaru GL, the engine bucks and loses power, and I get a big blue oil smoke cloud behind me. After searching on here, it looks like EA82s have this issue when the PCV system is bad, but I haven't found anything about the EA81. Is this something I can fix, or do I need to keep my high G antics for my other vehicles?

I'm still not sure why the fan affected the tach functionality, but replacing the distributor fixed the tach issue.

My Subaru finally works! Despite generating spark and appearing to be fine, my distributor was in fact bad. Once I had Philbin do a complete rebuild on it, the car started working great again It now starts instantly, hot or cold. Thanks for all the help everyone!

In my case the fuel pump wasn't working because the distributor wasn't sending an RPM signal. Apparently, the car won't even prime the fuel filter unless there's at least some signal. Once I got the distributor working, everything was good again.

Yep, the shop warranties their work, so I may end up sending it back. So the yellow wire on the distributor is the one that has its ground interrupted by the reluctor, correct? That would cause the current to stop flowing through the ignition coil.

Thanks for the help, Cougar. I suppose I don't really know if it's the same one or not, since they rebuilt just about everything in it. I'm trying to understand what's going on here, though: The wires coming from the car harness: Black wire (power supply): +12v and almost perfect continuity with ground Yellow wire (tach signal): No voltage or ground The wires coming from the distributor: Black wire (+ terminal): some continuity with ground Yellow wire (- terminal): slightly less continuity with ground The ignition coil fires when there's a change in the current flowing through the two terminals. The distributor either causes flow through the coil periodically or interrupts flow through the coil periodically - I've heard conflicting reports as to which way it works. What I'm wondering is, why is the power supply wire also a ground? It seems like almost all the current is just going to flow through that circuit and not go through the coil at all. Is the power supply wire supposed to be a ground? What changes about the distributor wires as the rotor goes around? Could I wire a straight 12v to the positive terminal or is that where the external resistor is needed?

It looks like that's what it is - if I turn the ignition to "on", then take the black and yellow harness wires from the ignition coil and tap them together to create a fake RPM signal, my fuel pump and tach start working again.

Thanks for all the tips guys (and GeneralDisorder - I'm amazed that you always have something useful to say in every one of these troubleshooting threads I've posted on ) I have 12v at the coil, but I'm not getting any sort of tach signal or spark. I just got my distributor back from having it rebuilt at Philbin, and now it doesn't seem to be working Before it would work, but the car just wouldn't run. Now I have these fuel pump problems as well I was under the impression the fuel pump should get full voltage if I'm cranking, regardless of the tach signal, though?

Ok, I traced the fuel pump wiring back to the FPCU, and it was having the same issue at the source - the voltage blips to about 3v when you start cranking the engine, then it goes back to 0v. I tried wiring the black power wire from that connector directly to the fuel pump wire, and with 12v, the fuel pump started working normally again. I assume this means my FPCU is bad?

Sorry, it is indeed the 83 GL wagon listed in my profile, and no, I don't have a timing belt I thought the FPCU was a black box above and behind the hood release?

A bit of a dumb question, but I haven't found the answer yet by scouring the FSM or searching around here: Where does the power wire to the fuel pump come from, and how is it wired? Today my fuel pump stopped working, and testing voltage at the fuel pump showed that it would get just a tiny blip when starting to crank the engine, then go back to 0V. Does the power come directly out of the Fuel Pump Control Unit?

How do I test mine to make sure it's working? I haven't seen anything about it in the FSM. Check the voltage on the yellow wire with the engine cranking/running for blips? Check voltages/resistances of other wires? Thanks

I haven't found/tested the rev sensor yet, but I started testing a bunch of wires working my way back from the ignition coil, and noticed that in several places, such as the A and IG connections on the starter key cylinder, wires have both continuity with ground and 12v when the ignition is turned on. Ultimately I tried the - sides of all of the fusible links, and the green and middle red ones have only a couple ohms separating them from the negative battery terminal! This seems like a bad short circuit, and I'm sort of surprised I'm not blowing fuses or catching things on fire

Yeah, I checked the compression earlier in the thread, and the numbers were all okay, except for one cylinder which was a bit low.

Okay, after studying my FSM for a while, I've noticed that the mysterious yellow wire from the ignition coil is wired to the tach and oil pressure sensor, both of which have gradually gotten flakier over time, with the tach eventually no longer working. Hmm! This seems a bit suspicious, since that's basically the course my starting issues have taken over time. The ignition fuse sees voltage fine, so I took out my gauge cluster to poke around and see if I could see the important wire shorting out somewhere. According to the tach troubleshooting chart, I need to check for conduction between Combination Meter #9 and the (-) terminal on the coil. Anyone know where meter #9 is?

The pink colored plug is just fine, and reads 12v. The weird thing is, the steering wheel side has five wires and the firewall side only has four I picked up a new ignition coil and quickly realized that it tested the same as my current coil and my current one is not blown. I guess I don't understand how it works though: The ignition coil has the two terminals and the beefy output to the sparkplugs. The terminals on the coil are labelled + and -, but they have continuity between them. The black wire going to the coil has a full 12v and continuity with the positive battery terminal. The yellow wire has 0v and poor continuity with the negative terminal (~150ohms). If you measure the two together, you get about 7v, apparently since the yellow wire is a poor ground. The weird thing is, with barely any resistance between the two terminals on the ignition coil, why don't you blow a fuse as soon as you hook the wires up? I thought the ignition coil was supposed to produce large voltage when current was suddenly applied to the two terminals. How is this switched if they have it hooked to a ground? How is this supposed to work?

Aha, I wondered if that might be what's going on! I have to order a new ignition coil now, but I'll be seeing if I can fix this voltage drop. zzz

The spark is faint blue since replacing the ignition coil, which isn't quite the best. I replaced the old starter that was on there with a brand new one pretty recently, and they both performed the same and had the same starting issues. Unfortunately, I think I threw the old starter away, so I can't try switching them again. Re: hot vs. cold, the car seems to be getting worse recently, and it won't always start back up even if the engine is hot. Also, the hill in front of my house isn't very steep, and sometimes I can't get the car started with gravity alone and need a roommate to push me downhill before I can get the engine to kick over. I almost tempted to dump the car at Smart Service and have them sort it out, but I'd rather figure this out myself with the help of people on the board

This is my current theory. I can still see a spark if I pull one of the plugs and crank the engine over, but maybe the voltage is low enough that something along the way isn't quite right when starting. I played around with my multimeter and used jumper cables to ground different parts of the car directly to the battery to see if I could find something that wasn't getting grounded properly. I also tried hooking up a bunch of extra batteries to the starter to see if I could get the car to turn over more quickly and simulate rolling down the hill, but the starter stayed pretty constant. The interesting part came when I tried testing the ignition coil with my multimeter. While my battery reads 12v just fine, the ignition coil only reads 9v! Apparently whatever part of the harness is routed to the dashboard volt display also runs to the ignition coil. I tried running cables directly to the ignition coil from the battery and played around with it a bit. Unfortunately, I seem to have blown the ignition coil in the process It now reads 0v with the ignition on, and has continuity between the + and - terminals, as well as being warm to the touch and smelling a bit of burned electronics. Time to buy another one, apparently Where to look to figure out why it's only getting 9v? I don't want to be careless and blow another one.

Plug wires in the right places? Check. Try pinching the return line to see if it fills the carb and starts. I actually ditched the return line with the weber, so it's just one fuel line going to the carb. The car worked fine after the swap for the better part of a year, so I don't think it's an issue. Make sure the choke works. Check. The starter fluid should have done something. I agree! Very frustrating, espcially when I can see that I'm getting spark. Does the starter turn the motor fast. will a push start make it go? The starter turns somewhat slowly, but even if I hook three batteries up to the starter directly in parallel, it doesn't speed up. Right now a good rolling start is the only way to get the car started. PVC valve clogged? Where is it on the EA81? Spray mist water or carb cleaner all over to see if you have a vacuum leak. I tried that, and the idle speed never changed, so I don't seem to have any leaks. Check Vacumn lines. This might be an issue. I haven't noticed any issues, but there are a lot of them. Thanks for the ideas!

Alright, I just came back in from trying a couple things: - I hooked two spare batteries in parallel (to keep the output 12v) and wired them directly to the starter. The starter still turns at about the same speed. - I tried connecting the positive terminal to the ignition tab on the starter in case the ignition switch wasn't giving it enough juice. It turned over the same as before. - I played around with cranking the car while putting different amounts of load, such as turning on the brights. With my triple battery setup, the brights had no effect on cranking speed, but they did make the dash lights all get very dim, and the dash volt gauge almost bottomed out. When I've measured the voltage at the battery itself, it's always fine, but the interior volt gauge always dips a bunch when the battery is off. How beefy are those three fusible links next to the battery? They don't look like they'd hold much current.

Hmm, I just replaced my starter though, and the new one didn't do anything different. I've tried hooking a jumper battery directly up to the starter (+ to the terminal and - to the housing) in addition to hooking a jumper cable between the in-car battery and the starter, which should provide all the current the starter needs to crank quickly I'm tempted to hook every spare battery I have laying around in parallel to the starter to see what happens if I give it (more or less) unlimited current.