Snowman

Well, I would post my actual reaction to this, but the swear filter would probably break.

Yeah, if you're looking for an EA81 and dual range swap, you can get the engine and tranny from a brat of that vintage, I think through 87, a wagon/sedan from 80?-84, or a hatchback from 80?-89. If I was doing the swap, I would get a 5 speed dual range tranny out of an EA82 car from 1985-1989. It will mate to the EA81 engine with minimal trouble. Another consideration if you're into it is to swap the SPFI fuel injection system from an 87-94 EA82 car onto the EA81 engine while doing the retrofit. You'll get better power, drivability, and fuel economy. General Disorder has a fantastic writeup on doing the swap. 1978 brat w/ EA81, SPFI, and d/r 5 speed = Keep in mind that with that setup, it still will not be "fast", unless you spend a ton of money on serious engine mods, but it'll definitely be quicker, and the d/r tranny is a tremendous improvement.

Are ring kits available and not ridiculously expensive for these? Honing the cylinders and re-ringing on a 2-stroke is a cakewalk, especially if the cylinders can be unbolted from the crankcase and honed separate from the rest of the engine. At that point, you could also turn the crank without any drag from the pistons and see what kind of shape the main bearings are in. Does it make any noise when it's seizing up?

Definitely run the narrower tires. They will dig down and find the traction, and in deep snow you'll be pushing less surface area through the snow which will result in less drag and less of a tendency for the car to be thrown around by the snow. I want to find some of those ice rally tires they run in the WRC that look like freaking donut spares.

I didn't notice any real difference in height. Just a major difference in comfort.

Yeah, that would do. Most of that is probably due to Austin's super powers though:grin:.

I put some seats from a gen 1 impreza in my loyale with minimal modification. I used the loyale mounting frames, and just had to drill new holes to bolt the impreza seats to them. Everything was the same width. Knowing Subaru, it's very possible that lots of their newer seats are the same way.

How does it run right now? If you're getting good fuel economy and it handles the cold well, there's little reason to touch it unless you're looking for performance gains. The stock Hitachi carb runs really well even in super cold temps when they're working right. I had very poor luck with a Weber in the cold temps combined with relatively high humidity we get here, and eventually went to an SPFI swap to get the drivability I wanted. If performance isn't a big issue and it's working well now, I wouldn't mess with it. Save your money and buy a legacy in a few years.

Seriously, with all the people doing EJ conversions, nobody has any experience or even opinions about this?

Check your CV axles on both sides. This is one of the most common problems with these cars, and can do all sorts of crazy stuff depending on exactly how it failed.

My rig isn't really an offroader, but I figured this would be the place to ask. I've noticed that the first gen EJ22 engines have a lot of trouble with water getting down into the spark plug tubes, which causes arcing that destroys the plug and boot, leading to a horrible misfire, which is not very helpful when you're trying to drive through deep water. Surely you offroaders have figured out a good way to seal around the spark plug boots to keep water out. I've thought you could either just put a crapload of dielectric gease there, or use some of that light blue RTV that doesn't stick super hard. I'm also curious about the air intake. I know it goes into the fender, but what happens in there? Have you had trouble with sucking water? I've thought about bypassing the whole fender area and cutting out bottom of the airbox like people do on loyales, because at least then the whole underhood area would have to be submerged before it sucked any water. What are your thoughts and/or experiences with these two areas? Any other places on the engine or electrical system that are particularly susceptible to water intrustion? Thanks for your help.

Did I read correctly that you're technically not allowed to have any exhaust that's louder than the factory setup? If so, I think it would be prudent to print copies of that and tape them to all the ricers with super-loud exhausts. Interesting sidenote: The rafting company I work for has mostly 1990s era Bluebird TC2000 busses w/5.9 cummins engines, which were old schoolbusses. They came from the factory, intended for schoolbus use, with the exhaust pipe exiting in front of the axle on the left side (which looked pretty cool). Two years ago, DOT told us that for our use, the exhaust had to exit at the back of the bus to avoid safety issues with gasses coming in through the windows. Apparently it's not okay for tourists to get gassed out, but it is okay for kids (or was up until at least 1998, the year of our newest bus).

Car that sat for a while having stumbling/power problems? Nasty fuel and/or debris is clogging your fuel system and probably trying to kill the fuel pump. Change the fuel filter and cut the old one open to have a look in there. It's possible that all the crud is caught in the filter and your good to go, but you should check further by draining some fuel from between the tank and the pump and see what it looks like there. If you're still getting nasty fuel out of the tank, flush it with a few gallons then refill with good gas. Once it's sorted out, it wouldn't hurt to change the filter again after a few hundred miles. A partially clogged filter is really hard on the fuel pump.

Wow, that's in amazing condition! A lift of 3-4" won't have any real adverse effects. With the type of lifts used on Subarus, the driveline and CV axle angles are virtually unchanged, so most of the problems normally associated with lifting a rig are nonexistant. It'll handle slightly differently, but it really doesn't make a big difference. Of course, getting a lift installed professionally won't be cheap. With that few miles on it, I'm assuming it has sat for a long period, which is not good for oil seals. Keep a sharp eye out for oil leaks. Luckily with that engine, it's not hard to deal with most of them. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to replace most or all of the cooling system hoses if they haven't been done. Even with little use, at that age they are a ticking time bomb of overheating destruction. Flush the cooling system at the same time to get any rust or debris out. Best of luck to you. This will be a fun project.

I'd run it for a while, change to oil to flush any junk out from the HG job, then give it the old "italian tuneup" to make sure all the lifters get a chance to be fully pressurized. It generally doesn't hurt anything to run with a bad lifter, so I'd give it a chance to sort itself out.

Sounds like it's probably time for a tranny soon. I wouldn't be too worried about driving it for a while though, as it most likely will not fail suddenly. Manuals usually give plenty of warning before they die. So, if you can find a better deal on a tranny or a better place to work on it by waiting a while, I wouldn't be afraid.

Sticking calipers perhaps? Or degraded hoses causing the calipers to stick (in light of the nasty fluid)? Doesn't sound too likely, but I'd rule it out.

Prepare the ship for ludicrous speed!

No, the only real option is to get new stock rear struts and mount the Honda springs to them. Subaru had a couple different versions of the rear struts depending on body style, 4wd/fwd, etc, but I'm assuming you're doing this on a 4wd wagon since that's the most common candidate for this mod, so you already have the tallest struts. I actually found the honda spring mod, with RX springs in the front, to be fantastic. It's definitely a bit stiff for unloaded, slow speed driving over bumps, but for taking large whoops at speed (like the frost heaves on our highways here) with a load in the car, it was great. The car handled so much better, and never bottomed out.

I was wondering about that myself, as my manual-converted legacy does the same thing. Has anybody had trouble with fuel starvation when the tank is almost empty on their converted cars? I remember when I had the SPFI conversion on my EA82, that was a problem at times because the carb fuel tank doesn't have as many baffles as the SPFI one.

The ECM is getting power and working, right? Make sure the check engine light is coming on. I had a 96 chevy 1-ton die on me last spring, and I thought it was the fuel pump because it stopped running, but it turned out all the fuel pump stuff was fine but the ECM wasn't getting power at all.

You should make one of those things that shoots flames out the tailpipe.

I've seen minor pitting in a lot that I've worked on... never to the point that it was a problem though. I suppose that since that's one of the hottest points in the cooling system, any corrosive or otherwise unfriendly chemical reactions would occur faster there than somewhere else.

If you're going to be on nice clean paved roads all the time, it probably would be okay. I just could never bring myself to do this because I would be terrified of the effects of even a small piece of debris getting caught in there. With all the crap that flies up into my engine bay driving here, I think it would be only a matter of time before something found its way into the wrong place and broke a belt.

Heck, if you're going to go that far and want to keep the loyale body style, what about swapping in a whole EJ22 w/ 4EAT setup? That way you'd at least have a whole engine and drivetrain package that goes together.