Snowman

My n/a EA82 has been running fine for over 20,000 with no retorque. I'm curious about what subaru did when they sold these cars...were you supposed to come in after driving the car for a while, or did they run the engine at the factory and retorque, or what?

I would be really scared to go over 9:1 compression on an EA82T with the stock fuel system. Some sort of standalone would be mandatory in my book. Same with an intercooler.

With fuel prices the way they are right now (over $3.10 at home last time I heard), I would kill for a diesel brat to run around town in! Actually, I now remember two ways to adapt (relatively) readily available diesels to the subaru. You would have to run a T-case for 4wd or just do 2wd, running the diesel version of the 22RE toyota engine which was sold in Canada for a long time and in the US for a short period, or you could buy an adapter (yes, they make them) to run the VW 1.6L diesel with a toyota tranny.

Hrm, I've never seen a Subaru with a Toyota body....Interesting conversion Zap:lol: !

If the sealing surface on the shaft has a groove worn in it, you can put new seals on forever and it will not fix the leak. Find a seal that is either shallower or deeper, relocating the sealing surface to a nonworn part of the shaft. You may also be able to find a speedi-sleeve kit that places a sleeve over the shaft, accomplishing the same thing.

Ditto. I saw mudrat's hi-comp EA82t at WCSS6, and that thing flat out screamed with stock boost and no intercooler.

Why not just put in the EJ20G?

From the few EA82s I've had apart, that appears normal. I've been able to CLEARLY see the honing marks on engines with 140k and even 205k. The bottom ends on these engines just don't wear very fast. If you could keep heads on an EA82, it would run forever.

I did my EJ22 swap primarily with a chilton's manual. I double-checked a few things with the FSM, haynes, and Mitchell, but I'm pretty sure I could have done just fine with only the Chilton's. An EJ18 in a hatch? SWEEEEET!

I don't know how the price would compare, but the EJ22T out of turbo legacies is a great engine that would meet all of your requirements. I would imagine you could find a wrecked turbo legacy for a reasonable price.

I've been running my factory struts (190k on them) with honda springs for almost a year now with no problems. The damping seems adequate, but they are HEAVY springs so it will ride more like a truck.

The legacy only came with multi-point fuel injection, not TBI/SPFI. Please clarify. If you're talking about putting an EJ22 from a legacy in, it's a substantial job requiring either a tranny adapter plate or putting the whole legacy drivetrain in. It can be done, but is not a small project.

Actually, you should talk to Austin about the wiring...he knows more about it than I do. However, it's REALLY easy to hook up. I spent an afternoon stripping all the tape and conduit from the harness before labeling the necessary wires and like two hours putting it all in the car. Get a chiltons manual for the legacy so you know what color of wires to look for. There are three power connections, several grounds, tach signal, start signal to the ECM, and that's pretty much it aside from plugging in the sensors. (I know there are a couple more hookups, but I can't remember them right now.)I'll try to get some pics of the ugliness, but my digital camera doesn't work now so it might be a little while.

Through some sort of miracle, my lifted EA82 wagon (Roxanne) just drove nearly 900 miles, not with the old EA82 engine, but with an EJ22 under the hood! This project has taught me two things: 1. Complete drivetrain swaps NEVER get finished in the time you thought it would take. 2. Duct tape, bailing wire, and zip-ties can make ANYTHING work. Sooo, here's how it went down: After seeing some sweet EJ conversions in older soobs at WCSS7, I knew that I had to have one. I talked to Austin and others about what exactly had to be done, which seemed like it would be within my abilities. As soon as I got home from the show, I traded my engineless RX for everything I needed to put the whole legacy drivetrain in, since I knew I didn't have time to adapt it to my stock d/r tranny (that will come next summer). Having less than a month to finish the project in my extremely scarce spare time before I HAD to drive the car to Anchorage for school, I got to work right away. The legacy engine and tranny bolted up easily once I welded the legacy tranny mounts to the EA82 crossmembers. I then got sucked into fixing friends' cars for quite some time and didn't get the engine fired up until last saturday, when I discovered that the radiator leaked. I called up the guy I got everything from, and he said that he had another rad for me and was coming down the next morning to pick up a car so he could drop it off. After installing that rad, I gleefully fired up the engine again only to find that this one leaked worse! With less than a week before I had to drive the car almost 900 miles, this made me less than excited. Thankfully, my local parts guys found a new rad in Juneau, which they had flown up for me monday afternoon. Yay, no more leaks! I then got to work swapping over the legacy rear diff (4.11 instead of 3.9) and putting in the EA82T front axles that matched up with the legacy tranny. Well, the rear axles wouldn't come off... and wouldn't come off.... and wouldn't come off.... Eventually, I had to grind away a substantial portion of the joint casing and hit them with a huge sledgehammer. I figured that I could just go to the parts store the next day and get two new axles... And boy was I wrong. I ended up ordering two used axles from seattle, which were to be expressed up at a cost of $90. That would give me two days in which to finish the car and test drive it a little. Well, by thursday at 5 pm, they hadn't shown up, and I thought I was screwed (since the new tranny is AWD, I couldn't drive the car without rear axles). Again, I called up the guy I got the parts from, who lives 250 miles away in Whitehorse, to see if he had any axles. He said that he had some but they were on a car and he couldn't take them off until the next morning. So, I hopped in my mom's outback at 7 pm and drove to Whitehorse at 80 mph, got to his house at 11, slept in his motorhome, and got up in the morning to find that he had to go to a meeting and would be back at 9. We then took the axles off and I was on my way home at 90 mph so that I could finish putting my car together. After making the trip in 3 hours and 22 minutes including a long construction delay, I was finally ready to finish my car. I threw the axles on, double checked everything, and fired her up. At this point, I still had no alternator or cooling fans and the exhaust wasn't hooked up. Oh yeah, the hood wasn't on the car either. It got some strange looks on the drive through town! I then had to fab up some alternator brackets since they didn't come with the engine, which still need to be revised as the alignment and tension are not adequate. I could only keep the belt from squeeling like crazy by spraying a ton of belt dressing on. Finally, at 11:30 pm on friday, I test drove the car out the highway 10 miles with no problems! Of course, the rad was held on with zip ties, the alternator was held in position with bailing wire, the air filter was duct-taped on, and the wiring harness, ECM, relays, etc were all piled in the spare tire area under the hood. Amazingly, the trip went well. I ferried the car over to skagway so I could go to a music festival over there on saturday before starting my drive sunday morning at 6. I had to keep putting belt dressing on at every gas stop, but the belt held, and I still had no cooling fans, so once I got into the city I had to turn the heater on full blast and take the most direct route to the campus, but all of my band-aid fixes did hold well enough to get me here. Thanks to the new power boost, I was able to cruise between 75 and 80 most of the way, even over the passes. That's the extremely long-winded story of my EJ22 swap saga. I now get to spend the next month actually installing everything correctly!

Before you do anything, go talk to an emissions guy. Tell him what you are thinking about doing and see if it would pass the test in your state. In Anchorage AK, you can't do ANYTHING (even if it makes the vehicle pollute LESS) to the engine and pass because of our strict visual inspection. If you aren't afraid of a little electrical work, the SPFI conversion is REALLY easy and simple. Whether it makes more power than a Weber is debatable, but one thing is for sure: unlike the Weber, it will ALWAYS run right. If your weather conditions or elevation changes, the Weber will need tuning to run like it should, while the SPFI continues to work fine. I have run a Hitachi, a Weber, and SPFI on my car, and the SPFI is by far my favorite setup. Look in the USRM for the link to my SPFI conversion manual. It will answer a lot of questions as to the difficulty and complexity of the swap.

Mine was around 2000 each way to the show I think. My odometer read 183,950 when I left, and I turned over 188,000 just before I got back, but remember that my tires are 15% larger than stock. As Matt mentioned, I made a side trip over to Spokane and back to pick up some body parts for an Outback. Any time Zap! What should we bring next year? Moose steak?

My apologies, but I think this deserves one of these...

You are the road trip KING!

Hey Numbchux, I don't really know much about the area you're headed to, but definitely talk to Matt and Jon about it. They'll show you around. Too bad I won't be up there in time. I'll be headed to Anchorage at the end of August. Dang Matt, you were flying! I had about 33 hours of driving time and my trip was 600 miles shorter. Hey Spark, you should talk to Austin. I think he'd be up for a road trip next summer, and we'd love to see some of you guys come up.

Two of the three studs on the steering column lined up on mine. I used those two and added zip-ties.

DUUUUUUUUUUUUDE! You have no idea how excited this makes me! Please elaborate on exactly how it was put together (pics would do wonders). Did you use the entire SPFI engine and fuel system and just add the external turbo stuff? If it's not too much work, I SO want to do this on my lifted wagon!

Hmmm...Somehow I think that this has something to do with Qman asking about the Honda springs....

Get a new pump from 1stsubaruparts.com. Cheaper than NAPA. I reused the old pump on my first rebuild because it looked like it was in decent shape, but it leaked and didn't make good pressure, even by EA standards. That engine eventually came apart. On the next engine I did, I put in a new pump, and it makes great pressure with no leaks from the oil pump.It's $120 well spent, even if you don't "need" it.

I assume you're getting backfires because there is no cat. I had the same problem when I gutted mine, and removing the ASV solved the problem. I plugged the hoses with bolts and that worked well. If you do have a cat, then fix the valves.

The flywheel only goes on in one position. Remove the right side valve cover and rotate the engine until it is at TDC with both valves on #1 closed.