jnorion

The car has been sold. I was not parting it out—selling it as a whole.

I'm still hoping to send the whole thing out the door as a package, although that hope is slowly fading with time—not quite ready to start dismantling it yet, though. What parts are you looking for?

Bump for fresh interest... anyone need a car?

Yeah, I think I was mistaken about the welds... I hadn't looked at it closely in a while. The skid plate itself is bolted to the bottom of the bull bar. I believe the side bars are custom, though, as a way to hook it up to tow behind an RV or something.

Now for sale on craigslist as well: http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/cto/5638823278.html

No idea. This is the only car of this generation I've ever looked at in detail. They look stock to me, but who knows what that actually means.

Pretty sure this is basically a summary of every car forum thread ever

Ah, got it, I misunderstood what you were asking. The back side has definitely met with some cargo in its lifetime, but not falling apart badly: The rust you see is not the only rust, but it's representative of what's there. There's a fair amount that is strictly surface rust, ugly but cleanable, like this: There are a few places where it's worn through, but not in a way that's structurally compromising: The wheel arches look pretty good—some rust, definitely, but still appears to be mostly surface: Rocker panels in front of the rear wheels have seen better days but are still intact: Spare tire well is in similar condition—some rust, but seems to be structurally sound: And the underside has very little rust at all: The mustache bar bushings are somewhere between "bad" and "nonexistent":

I'm not in a huge hurry to get rid of it and the reason I'm going this route is because I don't have a ton of time, so it'll probably be a bit before I seriously consider parting it out. However, if I do get to that point.. The skid plate is a custom thing that's welded to the bull bar—no shipping one without the other. If I end up parting it out I don't mind shipping it, but it probably won't be cheap. I would estimate the whole thing as around 70–80 pounds. I bought the Weber new on Amazon for $260 and has a total of about 30 minutes and zero miles of use on it, so I'd like to get a good chunk of that back if possible. Probably $200 + shipping? If I do end up parting I'll come up with a more final number. EDIT: Whoops, just realized I skipped the question about the back seat. The upper section is in the same condition as the lower—very clean, very little wear. Much better than the front seats. Here's a picture from when I first brought it home:

Update: now SOLD I have a '78 wagon that's been sitting in my driveway for the past year while I've attempted to work on her, and I think I've just run out of time and energy—hoping that someone else can do better. Currently not running, although I think all that's needed is a tune-up. Read on for details. NOTE: The "probably for parts only" bit in the title is due to a missing piece in the chain of ownership transfer—the car has changed hands several times in the last 15 years and somewhere along the way a bill of sale has gone missing. I'm trying to hunt that down but without it titling and registering the car may not be possible. I'll update the ad if I find that. As she currently sits: When I bought the car, I drove her home (roughly) across town. Shortly after that she stopped running. I've revived her briefly a couple of times since, and I believe that the current issues are due to timing being off. I've replaced a LOT of parts in the past year. Here's what's new: Brand new Weber carb Distributor cap and rotor Distributor points Spark plugs and wires Vacuum lines Fuel filter Battery and terminals Ignition coil Voltage regulator Alternator Coolant overflow tank There's probably more as well. My work has mostly been documented here and here. When running, the clutch is fine, transmission shifts well, 4WD works, brakes work, electrical systems function as best I could test them (except for windshield wipers, which may even be something as small as a fuse), and she doesn't overheat. There's very little rust, and what there is appears to be mostly on the surface—the left front fender rusted through in one spot, but otherwise everything seems to be pretty solid. Odometer reads 76,984 but it's only got 5 digits, and I have no idea if it's rolled over or not. Title reads "exempt" from 1999 so I would assume it has. Notable problems (aside from the bit about not running): Parking brake only works partially. Won't hold on a steep hill. May just need adjustment. Rear seat back bolts broke when I tried to remove them. The seat back is out and the mounting holes are plugged. Will need to be drilled out to reinstall the seat. Windshield wipers didn't work. I haven't tried to diagnose the problem. Exhaust is rusted out somewhere near the front. There are probably more of these as well—it's been a while since I've done much with the car and my memory is fading. Suffice it to say this is a project at best. In addition to the car, I will include: Two full sets of wheels, both of which can be seen on the car in the pictures. The grey ones came with it and are stock size, with tires that are usable but not good. The black ones were purchased separately, and require spacers in the rear (also included). Three of them have good tires, the fourth one is badly worn but still usable for now. I've cleaned up and done a fresh coat of plastidip on two of the black wheels (the ones currently off the car). Happy to throw in a can of that for the fronts as well if you'd like. Any of the old parts you'd like, including the old Hitachi carb and stock air cleaner. Not sure if the others will be useful, but you're welcome to them. Some random spare parts—I have a fresh oil filter, thermostat, a second set of spark plug wires, a distributor, probably some other stuff. A full skid plate and bull bar, which has been cleaned and plastidipped so it looks fairly nice. I'd like to get $750 for the full package. I realize this may be a bit high for a non-running car, and I'm happy to negotiate, but if it goes too low I'm going to sell at least the carb separately, and probably the skid plate and second set of wheels as well. Would probably be best to trailer her out, although in theory there's no reason you couldn't flat tow as well. Located in SE Portland, Oregon. More pictures:

Yeah, that's not normal here. Apparently yesterday was the wettest day in recorded history here, and today is expected to have even more rainfall. We'll see how things go. It doesn't affect me directly much, but a lot of the city is having trouble.

OK cool, that sounds like an easy process. Sadly won't get to it today because the car is parked outside and the city looks like this today: Not really feeling like working on electrical stuff in that. One question, though—when I finally replaced the distributor cap, I believe the numbers were in different positions from the one I removed from it. As far as I know I kept the wires in the same positions (i.e. if it was at 2 o'clock on the old cap it's at 2 o'clock on the new one) but they may be marked differently. Those markings are just for convenience, right? As long as the wires are in the proper firing order and the in the proper spot then everything should work normally?

Thanks for the tips. I checked the grounds and contacts that I could find today, and wasn't able to discover a problem that way. There's exactly 12.71 volts everywhere in the system that I can measure until it gets to the ignition coil: 12.71v from positive to negative battery terminals 12.71v from positive battery terminal to chassis 12.71v from positive battery terminal to engine block 12.71v from positive battery terminal to ground screw on alternator 10.3v from positive ignition coil terminal to negative battery terminal I think something is bad in the positive wire to the coil, although I haven't hunted it down yet. However, that got me close enough to test some other stuff. I jumped the positive battery terminal straight to the positive coil terminal, and now that I've replaced the alternator I did get a spark out of the coil wire when cranking. So, with the jumper in place, I sprayed some starter fluid in the carb and tried to start the car. What happened when I did that was a big puff of something out of the top of the carb (didn't look like smoke—vapor maybe? the starter fluid?) and it bogged down and wouldn't crank for a moment, like pressure from the engine was counteracting the starter motor hard enough to stop the starter motor from being able to turn it over anymore. My initial guess from this is that either 1) the timing is WAY off, to the point where it's firing on the upstroke and stalling out the movement of the engine, or 2) the plug wires have been mixed up and it's firing in the wrong order. I've been very careful not to remove more than one plug wire at a time so I think it's extremely unlikely to be option 2, but I don't have enough experience with timing to be confident in that diagnosis. Any thoughts? Also, how do you set timing if the engine doesn't run to begin with?

Quick update to this—I bought and installed a new alternator. The results were... odd. Previously there'd been no power at all to the positive terminal on the coil. I jumped it straight to the battery for testing, at which point I had 12v there, but it still didn't spark. After replacing the alternator, I now have 10v at the positive coil terminal without the jumper. So, a couple of questions: Why would changing the alternator affect this? Keep in mind that the engine is still not starting, so there's no actual power coming from the alternator. The only thing I can think of is if some piece within the alternator burned or separated in some way, and broke the circuit. Where would I look for the missing 2v? Would that be a grounding issue? I measure 12v between the positive terminal of the battery and the car body and between the positive terminal and the engine block, and there's nothing visually wrong with any of the grounds, although I haven't inspected them in detail. EDIT: Another important piece of information is that I recently replaced the voltage regulator as well... it's been a couple of months but the engine has never run in that time.

Anyone know what the amperage rating for those is?

Ooof, yeah, that's way too much. I think a slow fuse is going to be the way to go.

The next question is where do I get a replacement? Rock Auto doesn't have them, Amazon and ebay don't have them, local parts stores don't have them.

I haven't specifically checked the alternator... the electrical system didn't seem to have any trouble until after the car wouldn't start anymore, at which point the alternator isn't easily testable. I wouldn't mind replacing it anyway, especially if it's recommended to do that with the voltage regulator. I didn't find anything loose on the fuse, although I still don't necessarily trust it, but I did also replace the fuse with a screwdriver to bypass it and jump the connectors directly to each other, and that didn't help. However, now that I know what the fusible links are, I think that's probably a big part of the issue. I'm assuming it's these: … and I'm also assuming that the hole in the insulation (and whatever caused it) is doing me no favors in this process. That probably explains why I wasn't getting 12v to the + terminal on the coil, and also could mean that other things aren't getting power even when I jump that directly to the battery.

I'm not sure I understand the difference between fusible links and fuses, if there is any. I checked the fuses under the dash and also tried just jumping the contact points of that one, so I don't think that fuse is the problem. Should I be looking somewhere else for fusible links? Yesterday I also discovered that there was no 12v feed to the + side of the coil, so I jumped the battery directly to the coil for testing. A buzzer and warning lights on the dash turned on immediately, so I suspect that something is very wrong in that wiring (ignition switch, perhaps?). But the car still wouldn't start. I realized this morning that I'd never pulled the coil wire after jumping that to see if there was power getting to the distributor, so I still haven't fully isolated the components. Going to do that tonight, hopefully, if it's not too cold to work outside. I also properly set the breaker points yesterday (didn't have access to a feeler gauge the first time around) and replaced the condenser on the outside of the distributor, but then the battery was half dead so I didn't have a chance to test after that. Battery has been on the trickle charger overnight.

Still having a lot of troubles getting it to start, and as part of testing discovered there's no spark from the coil (as far as I can tell, anyway), so I replaced the coil today. Asking questions in a separate thread (here) if anyone has ideas on how to test what's wrong.

OK, time to revive this thread for part 2. Not long after my last post above, the car started having trouble starting again, and for the last couple of months it has just refused to start at all. I finally decided to go back to basics and pulled the coil wire, and couldn't get a spark from the coil at all. So today I replaced the coil (for $14 it was worth it for peace of mind), and it still won't spark—as far as I can tell power isn't getting to the distributor at all. I checked the fuse and it appeared to be fine, but for fun I pulled it and jumped the connectors with a screwdriver, and it made no difference. So, what else is in that system that should be checked or replaced? Is there an ignition controller somewhere, and if so where is it? Are there capacitors that need to be tested or replaced? Could this be an alternator problem (seems unlikely because the battery is good)? How do I test where the disconnect is? Battery is new and fully charged. Coil is new. Coil wire is new. Voltage regulator is new. Ground between battery and body is tested and good.

Was there ever cruise control on these models? That looks vaguely like a cruise control module that I had in an old Volkswagen years ago. Have you opened it up to see what's inside that cylinder?

Plasti-dip is a wonderful thing.

Have you by chance already talked with mkiiiracer? He's parting out a '78 wagon that's too rusted to drive: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/154085-i-have-a-low-mileage-78-subaru-wagon-complete-part-out/

Ah, that makes more sense. I didn't realize they were exposed to the elements on the back side. I'll have a look under the car later, but I doubt there's going to be easy access with a cutting wheel. I think the fuel tank is underneath there. Luckily it's not a critical issue for me, because I plan to build it as a camping vehicle with only two seats anyway, but at some point I'll want to drill those out.