Snowman

Thanks Calebz. I was pretty sure that it's supposed to be that way, but I wanted to make sure before royally fubaring my car or something. I guess I'll just pop the struts at the ball joints since they are shorter than putting the strut tube into the hub.

Okay people, I'm in the process of installing my BYB lift (EA82) during my non-existant spare time (i.e.: no sleep). I need to get it done soon, so this is sort of urgent. My query is this: The round blocks, of which there are six that hold the tranny crossmember and two that hold the body brace, as well as the two pieces that hold the rear driveshaft carrier bearing, are two inches tall, whereas all the rest of the blocks are three inches tall. Is this right? I mean, this is a three inch lift, so doesn't everything go down three inches? My confusion is compounded by the fact that on the four outer tranny crossmember connection points, the bolts were a wee bit too long and I had to grind them down to fit right. Further, with the tranny and the attached bits of suspension an inch off from where the engine and its bits of suspension are, it looks exceedingly difficult to put the strut back in place. Somebody please tell me what's going on here?

I've never done just the clutch before, so I'm not positive. Just to be safe, I would budget a weekend for it, but it's probably easily doable in a day or less. I dunno if this is the case with a turbo and fuel injected car, but on mine, It's easier and quicker to just yank the engine rather than drop the tranny.

Asking that question here will get a wide variety of responses. Here's mine: The ea82 is most definitely a "good" engine. As with most soob engines, they last a long time, are relatively efficient, can be made to produce decent power, and most importantly, are easy to work on. Now for the reasons that you will probably get some negative replies. Unlike the ea81, you have to deal with timing belts. I personally don't mind this. As long as you replace them with Subaru belts every 60k like you should, they won't give you any trouble. The ea82 also tends to be a leaker of oil, generally moreso than other soob engines. Again, this is something I deal with. If you replace all the seals and redo the cam-tower mating surfaces with anaerobic sealer, it probably won't leak for quite a while. The last major gripe I can think of with this engine is that it is common for the lifters to make noise. They still run fine with this condition, it is mainly just a nuisance. However, if you reseal, you can take apart and clean the lifters while you are in there, and they should be quiet forever as long as you keep up on your oil changes. Finally, I would add that you might consider an early EJ engine, primarily the EJ22. These are AWESOME engines. The bugs of some of the EA engines were worked out by the time these went into production. The only real issue here is that you have to deal with all the electronic stuff.

Well, let's see... aside from the normal tools that you should have, you'll need a clutch alignment tool to, guess what, align the clutch when you put bolt the pressure plate to the flywheel. Unless the EJ cars are different from EA cars for this procedure, you shouldn't need any other special tools.

Hmmmm.... That's kind of a tough question. With overheating, damage can be mild to catasrophic. Is the ONLY problem that it won't idle, or has it lost power or started using coolant or oil, or mixing the two? If it's just the idle problem, I would hold onto that engine. Then again, depending on where you live, you might be able to locate a good-running replacement for a few hundred bucks, which might be easier and cheaper. To answer your engine code query: EA81: 1.8L OHV (the engine in your brat, assuming it wasn't swapped for something else. Actually, if your brat is an early one, you could have an EA71 OHV 1.6L). EA82: 1.8L OHC EJ18/EJ20/EJ22/EJ25....: Numbers corresponding with displacement in liters, OHC (some are DOHC), which are in Legacy, Impreza, Forester.

Could you elaborate on just what the "5" designation means? I've seen them listed in manuals but never actually noticed one. Is it something like the "GL-10" designation?

I would offer the same advice. When I first put cams into my ea82, it wanted around 25 or 26 degrees advance at idle. Below that, power SUCKED and it was kind of rough. Now that I've got an ea82 with cams and SPFI pistons, it wants a bit less timing, but almost as much. I'm not sure how your recurved disty would affect all of this, but it sounds to me like she just wants some more timing.

That's quite impressive. Would you mind filling us in a bit on exactly how this engine is producing that much power? I assume it's got to be turbocharged and running pretty high boost, surely with a plethora of additional modifications. Is it the phase I or phase II EJ25?

How mechanically inclined are you? Have you changed a CV axle? If so, you can do wheel bearings yourself pretty easily.

It sounds like your main question was answered pretty thoroughly, so I won't go into that. I didn't see any replies to your one about being off a tooth though. I can tell you for sure that having just one cam off a single tooth will (delete string of explitives) up how your engine runs. Mine had NOOOOOOOOO power and backfired like crazy, despite having a relatively smooth idle. It's pretty easy to get it right if you just take your time and double check, or in my case triple check the alignment of both belts after turning the engine over a few revolutions with a wrench.

I've made a couple of observations on this topic while owning a weberized subaru that has had three, that's right, three (grrrr....) engines in it during the past year. The first thing you should do after getting all the adjustments perfect is run a bottle or two of some good fuel system cleaner through it. At the same time, use the trick of pouring about a cup of water down the intake a little at a time to "steam clean" the combustion chambers. The reason for doing this is that a hot chunk of carbon can provide an ignition source after the plugs cease to fire. Unless your engine has been torn down recently, it probably has some carbon in there. I noticed that the bit of dieseling I had with my old engine all but disappeared when I swapped in an engine that had just been assembled. Those two things should help. The other thing that had resulted in a dramatic reduction in dieseling is switching to a set of spark plugs that are one heat range colder than the factory plugs. While my old engine was in, I tried that, and the dieseling was reduced dramatically, since there is less tendency for the spark plug to turn into a glow plug. Although I had no problems with this, you might be wary of plug fouling if you take this step. Good luck.

Wow, I am speechless. I knew solid rear axles were in the near future, and sort of figured that Ken and the rest of the crew that pulled this off would be the guys to do it. Good job, and I can't wait to see how this thing does on the trail (and, fingers crossed, at WCSS6).

Welcome to the board. It's great to be getting more and more international people here (Although it's a constant reminder of the cool stuff we miss out on in the states:-p ). Wow, subaru made a van aside from the old 360??!!! I gotta see this!

"'No photos of it sitting on a trailer" Crikey, is this beast even street legal any more???!!!! Can't wait!

Just thought I would announce to everybody that I drove Roxanne again, under her own power, for the first time in too long last night. In case you didn't hear, she threw a rod on the way home home from college. As of friday afternoon, the engine was entirely disassembled, aside from the heads, which had been redone 5,000 miles ago and had no damage. I spent several hours friday night, all of saturday and sunday with evenings off, and monday night working on it, and fired her up for the first time around 8 pm monday night. So far, everything looks good. Still a few issues to deal with, but it's gone much smoother than the last time I did this. Some various pics of the engine, my garage, and stuff are now posted in my gallery, under "working on subarus/fubar page". Oh yeah, I also got the pug rims on tonight, I'm doing bearings and CV shaft this weekend, and the lift should be here in just over a week. WOOHOOO!

Hey everybody, So today I heard that somebody was going to scrap their 83 wagon. Luckily, they decided that they would let me take anything I wanted off of the car, in return for transporting it to the yard for them. It's rusted really bad, has no windshield or rear glass, and it's got a bad fuel pump. I got it to run for a bit and the engine is in good shape (129,000miles). I already pulled the engine out, and grabbed the radiator, battery, driveshaft, headlights, and some trim pieces. What else should I take off of this car before towing it to the yard?

Sounds to me like the way to go is to just have your old driveshaft lengthened, that way we won't have to mess with the carrier bearing. Also, the driveshaft from the donor car has a bad U-joint or two, so we'd have to find another driveshaft if going that route.

Here's a couple pics of my engine after throwing the #3 rod at about 2500 rpm. OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On the vacuum advance connection: I haven't yet decided on that issue for N/A cars, but this is a TURBO. I don't know what would happen once it got on boost, but I can't imagine that it would be good.

The SHOULD be able to look up the O-rings, but I would recommend taking the old ones in just to be sure. I've heard of people doing this with the engine in the car, but it looks like it would be a major SOB. You might as well yank the engine and do the rear main seal and oil pan gasket while you're at it. The way I see it, since there is so little room with the engine in the car, that's going to slow you down more than just pulling it out.

I think it would be easy to make some adjustable cam sprockets. Just turn the holes into slots and go.

That sounds like a blast! Get the 93 in there and then do a few full-throttle runs somewhere safe, each time advancing the timing a couple degrees until it starts pinging, then back it off. Just make sure you put the timing back to where it was before when you're done!

Well, I just made it home. 15 hours in a truck is something I don't want to do for a while again:drunk: . The roads were pretty good, and Aragorn, my dad's Chevy, was running quite well, so I made it there in 6.5 hours and back in 7.5. Not bad for 390 miles each way. I was amazed how well the truck/dolley/car behemoth handled. The only thing that gave me trouble was loose gravel in the construction zones, where I had to slow down to about 40 mph to keep the car from going all over. I should have the engines out of Roxanne and the parts car by saturday, and I'll post pics of the carnage when I can get some. I never would have imagined that an engine could have THAT big of a hole in the top of it!

Update: 11:30 pm, made it Haines riding with a friend who happened to be coming back from Tok. I've got a tow dolley and my dad's truck, and will head out at about 6:20 am, in order to get to the border when it opens. If all goes well, Roxanne and I should be home by this time tomorrow night.