mountaingoatgruff

i'm reinstalling the second fan (from the a/c system) in my hatch and wiring it into a toggle on the dash to help keep things cooler, mostly for my smog test but it'll come in handy beyond that. i'm just using what i already have: the fan, a spare relay, an illuminated toggle, a 15A inline, and wire cut from the leftovers of my spfi donor harness... how's that for frugal! well, i'm no elecrtician so i wanted to run my wiring by the resident experts. the relay is the same as used for the fuel pump where terminals 1 & 2 have contant continuity and 3 & 4 are the relay switched terminals. also, i should be able to tap into about any 12V supply under the dash since the light in the switch will only pull a little bit of current, right?

i have to switch out my spfi hatch's evap can for emissions testing reasons to match oe part for my 92 spfi system. no big deal, i already had the can with the rest of my spfi donor parts. thing is, i'm wondering if there's a reason why the bottom has a hose on it that would mean i have to keep one there. these cans are usually open to batting on the bottom (like my ea81 can) so the only reason i can think of for having the hose is to direct whatever fuel vapors may escape away from the battery (cuz ea82 cars have the can and the battery inside the driver's fender, right?). i'm just leaving the swivel elbow pointed to the fender without a hose. its gonna be hard enough to convince him that the carb'd and injected models both used cans with four ports on top and injected models just had the bowl vent ports capped (maybe a dealership printout will help if the part no's are the same), let alone explain a hose going nowhere...

i've got new cardones on my fronts and they work just fine. lifetime warranty + low price (i paid $50 each) = good enough for me. just check them out before you accept them, kragen's is pretty shady and they tried to give me a used one. i'll dump a golden brick before i pay for mwe's!!

there's different part numbers and the gaskets even look different between rebuild kits for the early 80's dcp's. i went through them while i was trying to figure out what year my carb was and there were three different kits. the first kit i bought had an insulator that didn't fit (it blocked internal passages) and the air horn gasket had some holes in the wrong spots. i compared pics of kits online to my old gaskets and got the right kit with proper gaskets.

my dad's vac gauge shows there's different amounts of vac on the two ports on the tb below the iacv. the one my egr was plugged into has no vac at idle and only goes to 2-4 inches with 3k rpm. the other has no vac at idle and goes to about 15 inches of vac with 3k rpm. during the swap i tore the tb apart and cleaned it pretty good, blowing the passages out with compressed air before reassembly. i bent the tubes out a bit like GD's wrietup covers and checked to be sure there was no obstruction or anything afterwards. so i switched the hoses, put the evap canister line on the lower vac side and the egr supply on the higher vac side. egr opens more frequently that way, but still closes sporadically. my dad said it has to be an intermittent ground issue and i tried messing with the connectors, the wiring, and the pulgs at the ecu - nothing appears wrong there. also, the car has a definite dead spot right off idle. i eyeballed the position of the tps when i rebuilt the tb and after checking it appears my tps is bad. it showed proper open/closed conditions with the feelers on the stop screw but when i checked the "signal wire" it doesn't act like the hayne's says it should. hayne's says at closed throttle the voltage should read 0.5V then smoothly raise to 5.0V at wot. mine has 0.5V at closed and shoots to 5.0v as soon as you slightly move the throttle, no steady increase. should i replace it?

swapping ecu's didn't fix it. the egr was moving nicely when i checked it that day but after doing my brakes this weekend, the thing is running like crap - i can hardly sputter down the street to see if my brakes are tight. i've got a vac gauge now, just need to sit down and check it out...

there was an 83 wagon at the stockton pick-n-pull last sun when i was there. odo shows 129k and its a d/r 4speed.

stock exhaust, 4speed, no i don't have a vac gauge. i'll be going to my dad's to borrow one as soon as i get a chance. time for work again already... edit: i decided to try my other (black) ecu real quick and holy smokes! :banana: i'll a bumpy pickled banana if that egr ain't opening with the slightest bump of the throttle!!!!! :banana: AND (as if that's not good news enough) the black ecu is giving an id code saying its federal emissions so i shouldn't have to worry about an egr temp sensor code, the whole reason i avoided using it in the first place. i'll drive it for a couple days and keep an eye out for the egr to stick again or for any codes but i think the problem is solved... my 92 ecu was apparently malfunctioning.

replaced the egr with a brand new unit and swapped in another solenoid that i fully tested before installing. same scenario, egr doesn't open till 3k rpm's and still acts funny. i had the mulitmeter out already so i checked the connector while the car was warming up and the egr solenoid connector has 13.35V across the terminals with the engine idling cold - that shouldn't be should it? i've got another ecu but i think its a ca model (with egr temp sensor). i'll be trying that one out soon enough... at this rate i'll have moved to co by the time i get it figured out and i probably won't need to have by then. my brother in thornton had no trouble getting his 88 nissan stanza to pass and i know that thing was a rolling shoebox of soot.:-\ edit: i've also noticed in the last couple days that the hatch seems to be running rich, definitely smells like it at least.

unfortunately that's gonna be unlikely on the first ?, and even more unlikely on the second.

that's much easier but i haven't always had the best luck with that method. its worth a try at the very least.

you mentioned the air cleaner isn't on the carb. isn't there a pantload of vac lines into those blue kidneys? wouldn't that cause critical vac leaks if those hoses are just laying open? even more impaortant that that, though, i gotta go with the guys telling you to check the timing. if you have to, have somebody help you by bumping the starter while you look in there with a flashlight. maybe try VERY CAREFULLY taking some light sandpaper to it as they bump to clean it up a bit, then follow up with a rag and some cleaner. i'm sure you already know but disable your ignition by removing the coil wire or something before you do this. if you have no other option, you could pull the rad for enough space (and pull the spark plugs to lower resistance) then get a 22mm socket on the crank bolt and use a breaker bar to spin the engine while you find the marks. go slow, clean the rust if necessary and you'll find 'em. then mark 8 degrees with a brightly colored paint pen or something similar as soon as you find it. definitely get the timing verified by any means necessary, though. until you do you're stumbling in the dark. good luck, man.

did this test this morning. i took a connector with wires long enough to go to a power source and a ground and i slipped a couple pieces of vac line over the ports. solenoid opens and closes no problem. when closed, there's zero air flow - when open, the passage is clear and air flows easily through there. i know folks who have tried these kinds of "fixes" and not only failed but had the tech warn them not to try it again. ca's newer sniffers seem to be able to tell and its thousands of dollars in fines if you get caught so i don't think that's very intelliegent to try, especially with a bar ref. forgive my ignorance but what is SNAFU? when it comes to politics i can spend hours, days, weeks justifying my position as i'm sure most who have a position would. i have paid close attention as a ca resident to the kinds of things going on here and i can say that if they wanted to balance the budget, it'd be done. its that simple. ever since this country abandoned it's constitution we have seen nothing but political plundering from the federal, state and local elected criminals, that's all it is - exploitation of ignorant citizens that won't end until american society says "we've had enough!" i firmly believe that time is coming and i am a donating/participating member of multiple organizations with the goal of galvanizing americans behind true liberty once more (and i don't mean the stupid "democracy" propaganda that the establishment uses to justify it's terrorist behavior abroad - i mean the legal, constitutional liberties that our nation's patriarchs left for us). i fully agree with your logic here. one has to understand the mindset of society, though. in the area i live in, your car is not just a status symbol - its a statement of identity, class, social affiliations, and even morality. the automobile is the religion of choice for the average superficial californian and your make/model/year is your denomination. nobody here thinks logically when it comes to cars because people have used cars as a language that transcends previous social signals. seriously, why else would any self-respecting adult be caught dead in a 91 geo metro with 20" rims so shiny its literally painfull to look at them in the sun and low profile tires that force you to go over every bump at 10mph or risk loosing your $3k rim investment (on a car that's not worth $1k in showroom condition)? i see it all day long and it makes me SICK TO MY SOUL! the mileage of any given automobile is carefully designed into it. we could easily be getting what we believe is ridiculous mileage now but the powers that be will simply not allow it. any why does 100 or 200 mpg sound ridiculous? because the industries that control mileage have conditioned consumers to belive that 30 mpg is something special.... have you ever read any of the cali air resources board executive orders? i have and i can tell you there's many of them that are designed specifically to prevent people from introducing ultra-efficient vehicles onto ca roads. personally, i'm putting all my eggs into the "get the hell outta ca" basket and i'm not ashamed to admit it. just watch a film called "who killed the electric car" and i'm sure you'll understand. like i said, the powers that be will not allow anything but what already is. you're talking to a diehard libertarian who's been doing his homework and i have no porblem having this discussion in greater detail with anyone who is interested. like i said, i am a member of multiple organizations aimed at the greater solution. also, i take every opportunity to educate my fellow countrymen about the state of emergency we face. i spend time at work, while i'm out running errands, and here at the usmb trying to get people to realize this is it - we can either stand and fight peacefully for our rights or we WILL lose whats left of them. the infringement of auto enthusiast's rights is only a symptom of a greater more dire problem. we as american citizens need to educate ourselves about our legal constitutional rights or we will continue to watch them slip away. there's not enough dedicated folks to stand up for us in washington or in state capitals, we must do it ourselves. so i'll ask you, what have you done?

found a local store that carries 5/8 fuel/emssion line and its cheaper than heater hose, too. it is progressing, slowly and in between all the rest of life's drama but that's how it always is. lots of other things haven't been going so well lately and i'm just glad this is the extent of crap i have to do to get this thing finished.

i grabbed a couple spare solenoid when i got that one and i planned on seeing how it acts with each one. it idles at about 750 warm.

and the rubber boot. looks like a nice custom job, gives it a much better look than those butt ugly ea82 boots.:-p

that's why i said "...if you're that interested in safely flushing an lsd you should just change the fluid a few times in 100-200 mile intervals. i'm sure that's more than would be necessary in itself..." my mopar buddy is in montana right now so i can't ask him what he used to clean his posi's with, but that's 60's and 70's mopar 8 3/4's and danas.

first thing i did this morning was pull the egr off and set it to soak in some b-12 (i was careful not to soak the diapragm) while i adjusted the valves. they were all too tight, so i backed them off to specs - .010 intake, .014 exhaust. i thought if anything this would make it louder but it seems quieter now. i pulled the rad to make it easy to get a socket on the crank bolt and to flush the system, refilled with fresh coolant/water. once i finished the with the valves/rad i used some compressed air to really clean the egr, but not much crud came off, it was pretty clean already. after warmup i found the egr is opening sporadically now. i failed with higher hc and nox on wed than on mon, and now the egr doesn't want to open unless you give it enough throttle (a lot) so whatever it is seems to be getting worse. i had my lovely assistant sit in the car and repetitively bring the rpm's to 1k, then 1500, then 2k, then 2500, then 3k. the egr wouldn't open at all untill 3k and it would barely budge at that point, maybe an eighth on an inch. sometimes it would open and instantly close, sometimes it would open and "wiggle," sometimes it would stay just open till the rpm's came down well below 3k. so i checked for vac at the egr end of the vac line and i had a hard time feeling it but it seems to be there. to make sure i checked for vac before the solenoid and the vac seems stronger there. then i pulled the solenoid, checked it over and over and it opened every time. also i verified that the vented port is connected to the egr, the valved port is connected to the tb and of course the vent has the filter on it. next i checked the vehicle-side connector with the engine warmed up and (from idle and up) there's 13.45V between the terminals of the connector, so the ecu signal is there. also, while the engine was warming up i decided to unplug the cts to see what would happen, the idle dropped to about 750 rpm's and it seemed like it was unhappy. i plugged it back in and the engine instantly went back to just over 1500 rpm's and seemed happy again, so i'm gonna guess the cts is not likely an accomplice here. its looking like a bad egr valve to me. my lovely assistant is going to go to kragen's for me this afternoon while i'm at work and pick up a new one. i don't really have time to hit up a yard and its not much more for a brand new one with a 1 year warranty. i'll install it after work tonight and i'm planning on using one of my spare relays and wiring a switch on the dash to turn on the second rad fan that was originally part of the a/c system. my car got pretty hot sitting on that dyno all rev'ed up in 90+ weather am i'm thinking maybe it'll help if i discreetly switch it on after i pull it up the dyno again.

i really wish i had the answer. all i can say it that when my buddies cleaned their mopar 8 3/4" posi's they'd pop the axles out and pull the whole carrier (bajo axle) then dunk it in some kinda home-made soup of cleaners. i'll try to get ahold of one of them and see if they'll share the recipie but i think if you're that interested in safely flushing an lsd you should just change the fluid a few times in 100-200 mile intervals. i'm sure that's more than would be necessary in itself, and costly enough too!

my 92 canister has 5 lines with one capped off - there's one on the bottom. i need an spfi system schematic from a 92 fsm to verify this setup for the ref (the one i have is from an 89 fsm and only shows 3 lines, 92 fsm is probably the same exact schematic and the page doesn't show a date but this whole thing sailed over the boundary to ridiculous long ago...). i can cap and ignore the bottom one since he didn't look there this morning, but i'll have to have conclusive evidence that the fourth port should be plugged in factory configuration. i called around and i can't even find 5/8" emissions hose. the girl at the parts counter of my closest dealership laughed when i asked her for 5/8" emissions hose. (i've been keeping them posted on this saga, too. they're all getting a kick out of the fact that anyone around here even works on gl's anymore). i think i'm going to try some different solvents to "erase" the print. even if i have to replace them after the test it'll be fine with me. i asked if i could just write it on the clear plastic or put a sticker on there...nope. has to be on the face of the tach right by the ecs light "so there can be no mistake." ca's bureaucracy has to cut medical care for children, seniors and handicapped persons cuz they can't balance their budget - but they can somehow afford to write and enforce some ridiculously detailed and obviously useless smog laws. they should vote themselves another raise for this. i really didn't want to be an rump roast about the solenoid thing, but i guess i got offended cuz i really did know what i was talking about. i'm sure its hard for folks outside of ca to imagine their neighbors in ca are so definitively stupid, but things like this are exactly why my number one goal in life is to get my family the hell out of ca, and soon. i'll be damned if i'm gonna raise my son here!! i'll be doing that in the morning, too. i've got a non-aerosol can of b-12 with my egr's name on it. i'm guessing i'll be hard-pressed to find another federal egr in a local yard. he asked why i didn't have the egr temp sensor and i admitted that my 92 loyale donor was a co car. he said he'd let it go as long as my car is 100% compliant to the 92 loyale's factory federal setup. that means if i add an egr with the sensor i have to go full ca smog spec and wire the sensor in and replace the ecu with one that will use the sensor. the ref is a decent guy. he told me where i could find the carb executive orders and explained to me the laws that are forcing him to make me do these things - it really seems like he let me slide on the things he could without jeopordizing his integrity/job. for instance, i've only gotten this far cuz he's putting it down as a motor swap, but i still have an ea81 and if he were really being pig-headed he'd make me come back with an ea82. also, i mentioned that my block is from an earlier gl (i soon found out that's a no-no in ca, you can retrofit a later engine, but you can never legally use an earlier engine) and he just kept saying "huh?" with a big grin till his assistant quietly let me in on the joke. he then joked that this whole thing would've been a breeze if i had brought him my car with a newer wrx engine. i don't want anyone to think the guy is responsible for this situation - its the ignorant bureaucrats in sacramento that have created this sad situation.

i have always warmed the car up before messing with the egr, so we're okay there. when you say "part throttle" what rpm range are we talking? i can't see the tach from where i can see the egr, but i can have my lovely assistant hold the rpm's steady in specified increments. i just need to know just how much throttle it should take to open that sucker. i know for damn sure it opens, it just seems like it takes more engine speed/vac than it should. i tested the ecu signal when i had my code 34 problems, as well as the solenoid. i'll retest both in the morning. if the coolant sensor were bad not only would it likely throw a code, it would also exhibit other fairly obvious symptoms too, correct?

if you don't mind the drive there was an 83 wagon at the stockton pick-n-pull last sun when i was there. odo shows 129k and its a d/r 4speed. i almost pulled it myself but i do want to do the 5speed conversion. if you're gonna nab it, better hurry. they don't leave them out there long once a hood and fender are missing. are there any good d/r 5speeds in sac/rancho cordova p-n-p's? as far as 5speeds there's only s/r's in modesto and a ft4wd rx in stockton. btw, i'm sure you know that shop is wrong - any ea81 d/r 4speed is fully compatable with any 4wd ea81 car.

very nice! i particularly like that wood knob, hatchsub. how does it feel shortened? does it require more effort to fully engage each gear after the loss of leverage?

here's the bar ref's verdict: he's going to let me smog my hatch as an 84 model with a 92 engine once i resolve my hc and nox issues and i have to meet 100% compliance to 92 emissions standards. to meet 100% compliance i have to: replace my 84 evap canister (which has 4 lines) with the 92 canister (which has 3 lines, no bowl vent - it can't just be capped off). replace the 5/8" heater hose i used for the pcv and iacv with 5/8" emissions hose (a good idea anyhow cuz apparently heater hoses only resist glycol, not oil). the "ecs" light must be clearly labeled with the words "check engine" or "service engine." having an operating light isn't enough for carb, it must be properly labeled. so, for anyone wanting to do an spfi swap in ca this is what the bar and carb will expect of you before you can smog it as an engine change. and for the record - the ref DID verify the presence AND operation of both the purge and egr solenoids as well as their vac line routings. he had me point them out then he pulled off the hoses and checked for vac. they have to be there and operating properly! now, as far as the emissions are concerned... after all that testing i did yesterday to rule out my egr, the ref said its not opening and he's sure that's the problem (and the hc's concur). i don't know what the hell to do with it but replace it if it works just enough to look okay, but it fails a sniffer test....

yes, of course - pics please.