Snowman

Yeah, it was a good time. Always nice to meet some new folks. Congrats on the win, Matt. We definitely need to get together down here sometime in April before I have to take off for the summer.

Yeah, it's running richer than it should be, which is entirely possible on an older carburetor. It has "tuned" itself to run at that colder temperature.

If they've got a warranty I'd say go for it. As far as rebuilt axles go, the quality varies. I had a bad experience once when I bought one from NAPA. Seems they forgot to put grease in the outer joint. That cut down the longevity of the axle a wee bit. Then they tried to weasel out of warranteeing it because I had taken the boot off in order to verify that there was no grease in there. Sorry for the rant.

Actually, you have to remove the pistons before you can split the block. However, since you've got it this far apart, I would highly recommend taking it the rest of the way apart and putting in new bearings. To remove the pistons, you must pull the pins out through the holes in the sides of the block. On the older motors there were plugs that you had to remove, but I'm not sure how it's done on that engine. Sorry, I don't have a headbolt tightening diagram on me. Any service manual for the car should have that in it. Best of luck to you! (BTW: You speak better English than lots of people over here do:grin: .)

Definitely remove the flywheel. That can be worth some $$$.

Look in the yellow pages for a clutch rebuilder. I just talked to Alaska Clutch Rebuilders up here, and I think I found the hookup. I bet other similar places could do the same. They said they can build be a clutch with kevlar facing that will hold about like a regular clutch but will not be destroyed by aggressive use and will last a lot longer. That's going in my offroader/daily driver next time i need a clutch. They've also got a "half and half" clutch that I'm going to put in my RX. The flywheel side has organic facing on it like a regular clutch, and the pressure plate side has a ceramic facing on it that will grip like a mofo. This is especially cool because it will hook up almost like a pure ceramic clutch, but it will give a little so it's not harsh, and it won't chew up the flywheel like ceramic will. The kevlar disk adds about $100 to the price of the unit. I didn't get a chance to ask about the half and half ceramic design.

Sounds like the pilot bearing might be fubared.

I've had good luck with the Quaker State 75w90 synthetic that's been in there for a while now. I'd try the ATF trick then switch to the synthetic of your choice. If that doesn't work, find a good tranny at the JY.

I would be wary of needing to use the bolts to suck the engine and tranny together. In the engine installs I've done, it hasn't been necessary to do that. It is entirely possible that the clutch disk was not aligned properly. That could have caused mangled the disk so that it won't disengage, or something could have gone awry with the pilot bearing. I have not personally dealt with installing soob clutch disks backward, but that is a possibility as well. How does the pedal feel? If it doesn't feel like there's anything there, then it's probably a case of either an improperly installed throwout bearing or damaged linkage. If it feels normal, then it's likely either disk or pilot bearing related. Probably the best thing to do is separate the engine and tranny so you can look in there and inspect everything before anything gets damaged or broken. Like you said, it's probably something simple like getting the disk in backwards or not installing the TO bearing properly.

Sorry if this comes off as sounding greedy, but I wouldn't include any of the clutch components with the engine. To my knowledge, junkyards, rebuilders, and dealers generally don't include it with the engine. If they want that stuff, ask for an extra fifty bucks (my apologies for not being aware of the exchange rate to AU dollars). If I'm not mistaken, one of the purposes of selling things is to make money, and making money entails charging according to what you are selling.

I've heard good things about the Kennedy kits. They aren't cheap, but they work well. I know a guy who's got an EJ22 hooked up to the VW tranny in his street-legal sandrail and it has worked flawlessly.

Take a look at Qman's old hatchback in the photo gallery. It's got a nice snorkel on it. I think I'm going to build mine in a similar fashion.

The stock gauge basically tells you if there is oil pressure or not. It's not an accurate gauge. Subaru motors are notorious for having low oil pressure, but they last forever even then. Your pressure is pretty darn good. Mine runs a little lower than that, and that's with a new pump in a rebuilt 205k engine. My Mobil1 10w30 is a bit thinner than most oils, so that brings the pressure down a little bit.

Eww, orange sealer on carbs is generally not cool. I'd yank the top off and look at it to see what kind of shape everything's in.

That TMIC is soooo tempting.....

I have no idea what might work, but the old VW Rabbit pickups look to be of similar width to a Brat. The biggest issue with finding a topper to fit is that the Brat's bed rails curve, whereas most pickups have flat rails.

It sounds like you may have a vacuum leak, which would cause it to run roughly. What kind of shape is the carb in? Recently rebuilt? I had pretty good luck on my old EA81 with taking the top of the carb off, shooting cleaner in every hole it could go in, and putting it back together. I'd throw in a new accelerator pump and top gasket too.

Hey Matt, if there's a time you can come hang out for a while for lunch or something on saturday, give Brad a call as I'll probably be running around with him then.

We've been working on this for a while now (sorry it's taken so long), but the Subaru Klub of Alaska (SKA) is now officially starting up. We even have cool stickers that you can put on your soobie (Thanks for that can go to McBrat. Nice work, Mick). Lifetime membership is the price of your first sticker, which is $10. Additional stickers are $5. All proceeds will go into a club fund which members can decide what to spend it on (sorry, we won't use it to buy beer). Soooo, all you Alaskan and Western Canadian Soob-heads that I know are out there, show yourselves, buy a sticker, and join in the fun! It looks like we're going to have a mini-meet in Fairbanks this saturday, and I'll try to get something going in the Anchorage area in the next month or so.

7/8" is close enough to the right size.

I've never tried this trick and I would be really careful about it, but I've heard this works: Drill a small hole in the seal and thread a screw into the hole. Pull the seal out with the screw.

I will buy the front coil springs off of it!

That's WAAAAAY too big. I highly doubt it would work out very well. Most people that upgrade carbs on soobies go with the Weber 32/36 DGEV, some have run the 38/38. Those carbs are about all you need/can handle with a stock engine. I think even the guys with 150 hp EA81's are running the 32/36, but I'm not positive about that.

When my vacuum modulator went out and I couldn't get a replacement for several days (one disadvantage to living in rural Alaska) but still had to drive the car, I just took out the actuator pin and plugged the vacuum line so that it would shift into whatever gear I put the shifter in. Dunno if it messed up anything... I was pretty cautious about it and the tranny seemed fine afterward.

Don't run it with that high of voltage. It can damage all sorts of electrical/electronic components. Generally, the system voltage on most vehicles while running should be 13.5-14.5 volts. More importantly, the difference between the voltage reading with the engine running should be no more than 2 volts or so above the reading with no loads on after the vehicle has sat overnight (that's true open circuit voltage). Since OCV should be 12.5-12.7 on most batteries, charging voltage should be below 15 for sure.