jnorion

A few developments in the last week or so. First, I finally got around to digging into the interior to clean it. The carpet in the cargo area is actually in really good shape, but the rest of it is absolutely trashed. Unfortunately, as part of the cleaning I pulled the back seat out, and managed to shear off the heads of all four bolts in the process: I have to assume that it's something I did wrong since ALL of them broke, but it was weird because all of them turned freely for 5 or 6 turns and then just snapped off suddenly. Not sure what went wrong. I don't need the back seat anytime soon, so it's not critical, but I'm going to have to drill those out at some point. In the meantime I'm planning to set it up as a camping vehicle anyway. Then I started to clean up the outside a bit. There are a number of rusty patches, and I wanted to at least cover those up with some paint to slow their growth. So I sanded them down and sprayed over with Rustoleum. They are by no means pretty now, but look a little less messy. The car no longer looks like it's been sitting in a field for a decade: After the paint dried it looked closer to the original than that. Next, I decided to swap out spark plugs. The plugs were changed right before I bought the car, so they had maybe 20 miles total on them. However, that 20 miles included replacing the carb and a couple of attempts to tune it. Turns out that the plugs foul VERY quickly in those conditions. All four were entirely black and gummed up. After swapping the fresh ones in, the car started right up, blew a big cloud of black smoke out the back, and then idled smoothly, and when I turned the key off it just shut down immediately without dieseling. I noticed during this test that I'm going to need to adjust the choke, because I still needed to give it a little gas for the first minute or two before it warmed up. Finally, I bought a new distributor from turbosubarubrat which has the correct housing for the year, which means I can finally replace the distributor cap. I also got a new set of points while I was at it, and am currently in the process of cleaning and rebuilding it on the bench.

No specific tutorials that I know of. Lots of threads on here with information on how to do it, though, and Weber provide installation instructions with the carb anyway (also can find those online in a PDF).

New voltage regulator and now she starts and idles again.

Added some minor engine bay upgrades this weekend. When I got the car it had a basically brand-new battery, but the terminals were in pretty terrible shape and it had no tie-down or insulation on the positive terminal. Replaced both terminals, added a rubber cover and a tie-down (I had to do some custom fab on the outer post for that, because a standard aftermarket one was about twice the proper length). That should eliminate the danger of things flopping around and shorting to the hood. I also discovered a couple of weeks ago that there was no coolant overflow tank—apparently the weren't built with these in 1978? In any case, it had only the vent hose coming off the radiator cap, and when I was idling it for a while and messing with the carb it decided to spill a bunch of antifreeze onto the street. Not cool. So I added an overflow tank. I ended up cannibalizing the space where the jack normally mounts, because I figured I can come up with a dozen other places to put that, while the tank needs to be close to the radiator. And then, after all that, I discovered that something's now wrong again and the engine's not starting correctly. Granted I never did finish properly tuning the carb (really I barely started before I ran out of time), but it's pretty frustrating that last time I worked on it, barely two weeks ago, it was starting instantly and idling consistently, even if it was too rich and too fast. I don't like backsliding. Haven't had a chance to actually dig in and figure out why it's not working.

Does this one have a tachometer? If so, how much for the gauge cluster shipped to 97202?

Apparently the main problem was in fact the old carburetor. I replaced it with a Weber and did a quick basic tune and she starts right up now!

Finally finished all the connections to the Weber and did an extremely basic adjustment on the new carb today, and it starts instantly and idles (mostly) smoothly and I drove around the neighborhood a bit. Generally feeling very good... still definitely needs a good detailed tuning and I still need to check all the other basics of timing and such, but I feel fairly confident that it's just tuning from here on out. Side note: I discovered the easy way (i.e. while testing in the driveway rather than driving at speed) that I had in fact removed the bolts that held the crossmember in when I took the brushguard off. I tried starting the car to test the new carb tuning and there was a LOT of nasty shaking and rattling. Killed it immediately to see what was going on and realized my mistake quickly. Replaced the bolt and it's nice and smooth now.

You're not missing anything in text or in pics... I haven't been able to find a part number on either the distributor or the cap. Haven't actually removed the distributor from the car, so it's likely that it's hidden in a hard-to-find spot. I did notice that the rotation arrow on the cap was different, but I also didn't think that actually mattered. Does it? The contact points should be the same either way. That being said, the image on ebay didn't show that arrow, so I didn't know it was marked differently til I received it in any case. How would one do a distributorless ignition on this car?

Not quite done yet, because I ran out of time before finishing all the vacuum and throttle connections, but it looks pretty damn good in there!

A shiny new Weber is a beautiful thing.

Good to have the review, but we've already been PMing about that in the background :-)

This morning I decided that my time and mental energy was worth more than my money, and ordered a new Weber carb and adapter plate. I don't know enough about carbs to feel confident that I can diagnose and tune the Hitachi properly. I'm going to start fresh with something new and simpler, and put my attention to other parts.

That's good feedback, thank you. But... I'm actually not sure how to check the timing if the car doesn't run. Do I do that by rotating the engine to TDC and then rotating the distributor til it points to the #1 plug wire and hoping I get it close enough? EDIT: "How to keep your Subaru alive" says that my timing spec is 8°, so I would amend my question above to rotating the engine to 8° to the right of TDC and then rotating the distributor.

Anyone have brilliant ideas on this?

I don't have a picture of the carb taken with that in mind and it's too dark now for a fresh one, but here's a shot from above. It's definitely the electronic choke:

You mean just swap out the whole distributor, right? I'm leaning that way at this point. Even if I do figure out which cap fits this, it would be nice to have a more standard option.

I think I need help troubleshooting this process. The engine needs a good deal of tuning at this point still, but right now I just want to get it to start reliably. For the moment I don't care if it runs like crap afterward, I just want to be able to get it started on command. Currently it takes minutes of cranking and pumping the gas for it to catch (if it ever does), and sometimes a shot or two of starter fluid into the carb. Once it starts I can usually keep it going with some careful pumping of the gas until it's warm and then it will idle, albeit fast and not very smooth. But more often than not the starter just cranks with no hint of life from the engine at all. This is a 1978 DL with an EA71 and the stock Hitachi carb. So, back to the starting bit. Here's what I know: The fuel pump works great and pumps lots of gas when cranking. The float bowl fills up to the proper mark. It fires up almost instantly if I spray starter fluid in, so I know the spark is there. This makes me think it's a fuel delivery thing, but I'm not sure where to start. I did a partial rebuild on the carb, in which I replaced the float valve, the accelerator pump, and a bunch of top-end gaskets. I also cleaned the top of the carb and all moving parts on the outside, and adjusted the float. Prior to doing this the float bowl wouldn't fill at all. Where do I go next?

Did a very little bit of work on the engine tonight, mostly replacing vacuum hoses and properly capping off nozzles that had previously been covered with electrical tape, which doesn't seal especially well in the heat of the engine bay. Also tried and failed yet again to replace the distributor cap... I've bought five now, none of which have been correct. Details in this thread. I checked fuses for the first time tonight, and all of them by the driver's knee seem to be intact. But... is there another fuse box somewhere in the car? I seem to remember reading that there is a fuse specifically for the choke, but I didn't see anything labeled as such in that box. After replacing the vacuum pieces I decided I'd try to start it up and see if it ran any better, and it wouldn't start at all tonight. But I think that's material for a separate thread.

OK seriously, WTF kind of distributor do I have on this car? I received both the one from ebay above and a replacement from Rock Auto, and although they both have the captive screws, neither one is correct. The screw holes are offset incorrectly. Look at the bottom mount hole: Here's the side-by-side comparison of the screw holes: This one's close enough that I may be able to just hack it together... the rear screw goes in just fine, and the whole thing sits nicely on the inner lip of the distributor, so I can probably just clamp the front somehow. Still very frustrating though. For reference, here's the inside of the distributor: Looks like that could probably also use a good clean and rebuild, but I don't think that's causing any of the current problem.

Portland in general is an awfully small world for its size. It's weird. I randomly run into more people I know on the street here than I ever did living in a town of 6,000 people.

Somewhat off-topic, but this picture is immediately in front of my house... my garage door is the one on the far right, hidden by the tree and the bed of the Brat. Pretty sure I was outside working on my car when you pulled up.

It's been too hot for me to feel like doing any engine work the last few days, but it cooled off this evening and I decided I wanted to accomplish some little thing, so I decided to test the can of Rustoleum that I bought earlier in the week. I sanded down a couple of patches of rust on the back and did a quick test spray just holding a piece of cardboard as a shield. The test came to an abrupt end when I couldn't find the roll of masking tape that I had on hand, without which I didn't want to spray around little things like the window wiper mount, but I learned a few useful things. It already looks way better, even though the paint is clearly not the same color. Just hand sanding is not enough in the places where the metal bubbled up underneath. I either need to use the disc sander, or add Bondo after sanding, or both. This'll actually look pretty clean with a coat of spraypaint.

It's a 4WD, but perhaps the distributor wasn't for that originally?

Ah, yes, good catch. Definitely rotated correctly with the mounting screws not dead center. Sweet, can't pass that price up! Bought it. We'll see if Rock Auto can come up with a correct replacement... if so, i'll have a spare as well, which is never a bad thing. Thank you both for helping out.

That certainly looks like the right one. The application list on that ad doesn't match my car, though, which is I think why I've been running into problems. The car is a 1978 DL. To the best of my knowledge it has the 1.6L engine, as that's what would have been in there from the factory, but I bought the car a month ago from craigslist and know none of its history so it's entirely possible that something in there is not stock.