crockettbrat

Hey all: Recently finished my ej swap into 84 brat. My idle seems to surge when I'm warmed up and every time I start the car. The idle switchsignal at the ecu is 2 volts with the ignition on and it should be 4.6 per the manual. Where is the idle switch located. I cant find it in the manual. Any help appreciated. Daniel

I recommend Jerry's 5sp kit. Made the swap easy. If you dont use his kit then youre going to have to modify your tranny mounts to fit properly, and with his kit you can use the original shift levers and boots.. I also went with having my original one piece drive shaft rebuilt with new greasable joints instead of using the two piece ea82 shaft. Good luck Daniel

Was it right hand drive? I met someone with one a few months back. Daniel

Hey there: My brat after the ej swap is getting an indicated 26mpg according to the odometer. I believe my actual is closer to 31mpg because I'm running 27" tires. That beats driving my old rover which got 15mpg while I was doing the swap, plus the brat loves 87 octane and the rover needed 91 to be happy. I love my brat!

Do you have an adapter plate for the engine to the tranny? The shaft of the ea tranny is longer than the ej tranny. You need an adapter plate to overcome this and to mate the two different bolt patterns. If you have the adapter plate already try the trick of loosening the bolts for the pressure plate. You can tighten them through the starter hole after the tranny is in. Some one had this problem last week and this solution was posted and it worked for them. My ea tranny slid right on to the ej motor with the adapter when I did mine, so there is no tricky thing to do. Good luck. Daniel

Looking Good! Nice to see another California Brat! We should have an older generation Subaru get together. Daniel

It probably what every one else says but also check your sway bar bushings. The sway bar can make a mighty thump when the bushings are gone. Good luck. Daniel

Yes you can. My 84 brat has the adjusters just below the lower spring perch. There is a plate below the spring with two bolts going through it. You need a 21mm wrench and you twist the nuts on the bolts counter clockwise to put more preload on the spring and raise the stance of the vehicle IIFR. Good luck and bust out the deep creep for this one. Daniel

Oopppss!!!!! Sorry, but on closer inspection they are the 390mm version, not the 15". I didn't know they had 390mm and 15" versions of the same wheel. Daniel

Hey all: FYI there is a peugeot 505turbo at the Richmond pick and pull with a set of four 15" 8spoke aluminum wheels with lugs. One of the wheels has some curb rash but the others are very clean. I was gonna grab them and resell, but thought I'd just pass it on to others. Good luck. Daniel

I didnt know that there were any 89 brats in the states. Post some pics please. Daniel

Right On! I understand your addiction! I'm looking for a hatchback now. Dont tell the mrs.! Daniel

I dont know how many sensors there are on the EJ20, but I just finished my swap and am an idiot when it comes to electricity, and mine worked. I would highly recommend that you spend time with the pages of the service manual that show the pins on the ECU and what electrical signals they are supposed to have. It will list all the sensors that send info to the ECU, so you will know what to keep and what to get rid of. Do this while actually looking at the ECU and find all these wires and mark them. You will know what wires are what before you start cutting down the harness. Of course I didn't do this until after I had cut my harness and plugged it in and it didn't work. It did work in the end, but my understanding of the harness came together quickly after going through the pins on the back of the ECU and seeing what signals were needed. I really was just guessing when I cut my harness and after actually reading through the manual I thought how much easier it would have been if I had read through the info first. There were several things that I hadn't cut out that I didn't need and removing them reduced the clutter. Good luck with the swap. Daniel

Nicely done! How many ej swaps have you done now? Mine took me 9 months, I think, from the time I got the legacy donor until I drove the brat under ej power. Lots of slacking during that time, but I also had the goal of getting my $350 purchase price for the legacy back by selling parts and scrapping everything else. I think the brat was actually undriveable for just under two months. I'm down to disassembling my ea81 for the aluminum and stripping down the remaining wires from the legacy for the copper. My five year old is doing all the work and enjoying it, so I'll let him keep some of the money. When I take it to the steel yard to recycle it I'm going to get some steel for making a swing away tire carrier for the back of the brat. Hope you get the car running tomorrow. Cheers, Daniel

JUST WENT FOR THE FIRST DRIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I took the brat for a spin around the block. I've got some work to do on the throttle cable and the clutch cable, and I know that both of my rear wheel bearings and one of my front wheel bearings need to be replaced. My front end needs to be aligned and my tires need to be balanced, but man it felt good. The EJ has much more power. The EA was definitely working to turn my 27" tires and the EJ doesn't seem to notice at all.

Great. Thanks for the info. It must be nice to be able to do a swap in over a weekend. Practice makes perfect I guess. Daniel:banana:

Alrighty then, the nuetral switch will go to the back burner for a bit. I got my dash back together. I still have a bit of soldering to do. My new switched power, tach, and CEL, and then to stuff the ECU up above the steering column. I think I've got a nice spot for it. I also replaced the vac line to my brake booster today and put the hood back on. I still need to run my "real" fuel pump line and reinstall my center console and driver's seat. The center section of my exhaust with the second cat seems like it will fit ok. Has anyone else used this section of the EJ exhaust. I held it in place and my quick eyeballing of it seemed like it might work. I'm thinking I could get away with just having the muffler shop whip something together from the end of the mid pipe back to the tail pipe. Thanks again for all the helpful insight. Daniel

Do you have a CEL hooked up? Does it throw a code for the nuetral switch? I'm in California, so for my swap to be smog legal I've got to have the CEL fully functional, and have no codes during my inspection. So far the CEL comes on with the ignition switch, but goes out once the engine is running, so no codes thrown yet. I think I'll hook up the nuetral switch and see what happens. I'm hoping to get my dash back together today and figure out exactly where to mount the ECU and get my interior all put back together. If I can get that far then I'll be off to thew muffler shop for my exhaust tomorrow. Then I can park the gas gussler SUV and start driving the brat again. Thanks. Daniel

I mounted some Hella 500 lights on my bumper. I made my own bumper, but I just drilled a hole and mounted the lights. Most lights will come with mounting instructions and wiring instructions. Good luck. Daniel

\ PROBLEM SOLVED! Yeah it was my switched power source.

New Problem: When I've got the engine running and I turn on my lights the engine dies. I assume that my switched power source is the problem, but any advice would be appreciated. Thanks. Daniel

Has anyone found a way to hook it up to the block? I've seen it in a bung by the upper radiator hose but thats all I've seen. I also got my CEL hooked up today. I ran a wire straight from the pin on the back of the gauges that powers the ECS light (which even had a bulb in it already) to the wire off the ej ECU. I put the key in the ignition and the light came on so I think I'm good. I have a question about the VSS. I found the plug on the back of the speedo which I believe is for my VSS. One wire is yellow red and the other is black. I was intending to hook the yellow red up to the ECU and ground the black. Does this sound right? Also with my 5sp d/r there are three plugs. One of these is a neutral switch. I was going to try wiring this to the ECU also. Has anyone else tried this? Thanks, Daniel

Hey All: I think I just got really lucky, but I'm not sure. I'm trying to figure out my coolant temp and oil pressure gauges and I noticed a bung on the side of my new radiator and it happens to be exactly the same size as my ea coolant temp sender from the ea manifold. Is there any reason this sender wouldn't work in the radiator? Thanks. Daniel

I did the fuel line already. I haven't had a pitch stop since I did my lift last year. I have my original and the one that came with the 5sp, so I'll whip something up for that. My brat never had an overflow tank. I've got the legacy tank and it looks like it might fit up by the new battery location, but I'm not too worried about that one. Is the surge tank necessary? I guess I'll be finding out soon enough. I found a nice fan off a small mazda at the pick n pull yesterday. It fits really well in front of the radiator. I hooked it up to the ea fan wiring with the thermo switch in the radiator, so hopefully this will be good enough. The legacy motor ran nice and cool before the swap and the ea radiator is brand new 6 mos ago. I think all I have left to be drivable is to finish up the interior wiring (ie- VSS and CEL), run my "real" wiring for the fuel pump instead of my "lets see if it works wiring", and then get the exhaust work done. I still haven't decided how I'm going to handle the coolant temp gauge and the oil pressure gauge, but I'll get that stuff hammered out in the next couple of weeks. Then I'll tackle getting this thing passed by the "smog ref". I'm not too sure how this will go, but I am not due for another smog test until next may so I've got some time on this one. Thanks everyone. Daniel

Thanks you guys. I lost the retainer clips for the clutch and throttle cables so I'll go to the pick n pull in the next couple of days. I need to find a couple fans for the radiator too. I got my driveshaft back today from the driveline shop. I didn't have enough time to install it today because I focused on cleaning up my wiring and removing all splice connectors I used when getting it started. I bought one of those butane torches with a soldering tip. I liked it way better than my old cheapy soldering iron. Here are some before and after pics of the engine bay: I took my gauges out today to figure out the CEL and the VSS. There is no wire going to the CEL, so I'll have to run a wire to the multi plug there. Is the VSS the black plug coming out of the back of the gauges above the speedo with a yellow red wire and a black wire? Thanks for any info. Daniel