Singlecoil

I hate to resurrect an old thread, but I'm having mouse problems in my '86 GL wagon. I first noticed the smell and a funny noise when the vent fan was running. I removed the fan and found two dead mice and tons of nesting material. Then today I heard a loud clicking when I first started the car with the vent fan running. This time I knew what it was and pulled the fan again. This sucker was still alive, though the fan broke one of his back legs. At least he didn't stink up the joint. I have a Weber carb on this car. Where is the intake for the fresh air vents and fan? I need to put some chicken wire over wherever they are getting in and pronto. This car obviously doesn't get driven very often and garaging it is not an option for the moment. Thanks.

Xlnt news! Thanks.

I'm going to be selling my 86 GL wagon with a one year old weber in it soon. We were going to keep driving the subie when our third child comes in March, but we recently found out we're having twins! Four kids and a subie don't mix, so goodbye subie, hello Honda Pilot. Anyway, I don't have to do emissions tests where I live and I'm wondering who I can sell it to. Is it an automatic flunk because of the weber? Is there anyway somebody can register this in an area that has emissions tests? The other issue I have is that I got rear-ended about 2 years ago which ended up totalling the car. I got a new tailgate and bumper from a USMB member and fixed the car. Unfortunately I didn't get the VIN number off the parts, so the Washington State Patrol decided to give it restricted title. I can't sell it out of state for 3 years (1 more year). To sell it I provide a notarized release of interest to the buyer. I have a friend who is interested right now, but if that falls through, I'll post some pictures. It has 194,000 miles, dual range 4x4 5-speed. This car is pretty much rust free and I've owned it since 1994. At 162,000 miles, we had a factory new engine, new clutch, water pump, and oil pump installed. Everything works: all fan speeds, A/C, rear defogger, Panasonic CD player with aux input. It needs tires and possibly front struts as the front tires seem to angle in a bit. They are maybe adjustable, I don't know. We recently had a front brake caliper rebuilt as well as new pads and turned rotors. The right front passenger door is a slightly different color, which I didn't notice until about a year after I bought it, so I think it was hit on that side before I bought it. I've been rear-ended 4 times, all were pretty minor except for the last one when a Ford F-250 slammed us. They did a great job putting it back together, though.

Man, that was fast! Thanks.

So we have kid #3 on the way and the Subie just refuses to die. That's a good thing because we certainly can't afford a new car right now. I'm not sure we can fit three car seats in the back of our '86 wagon, but I do know that we need shoulder harnesses to properly use the booster seats. Has anyone on here done that mod? Is it something the dealer will do for cheap? (yeah right) Thanks.

UPDATE! Three years later (almost) this rebuilt resistor block is going strong with the NTE resistors shown above. I broke off the ceramic coating, though I'm not sure if that was required, and soldered them in as shown in the other picture. One bit of advice: After I soldered the second batch, I did not turn the fan on until they were reinstalled in the housing so they would have immediate cooling. They will glow rather quickly without airflow. I don't know if that is what made the first batch fail quickly or if the different brand of resistors didn't work as well. I suspect they were just not the same quality as the NTE ones.

You know, I wondered about that. When I raided the junkyard for my relay, I grabbed the connector as well by just snipping the wires with my leatherman. I plugged the relay in and it worked so I figured I was good to go. Do you think it is worth taking the panel off and replacing that connector or should I be OK if it works? I'm generally from the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of thought. Thanks.

Good idea. Mine is an '86 GL wagon. The relay I got at the junkyard was off an '87 sedan. The numbers on it were identical to mine and it was in the same location as mine.

Done!

Here is a picture of the relay Skip was talking about for the fan motor. You need to remove the lower panel in front of the driver (six phillips screws-3 metal, 3 plastic, then pull the rear down firmly to release the big clip over the steering column), then remove the fuse box with three phillips screws. It is the relay with the colored wires as shown in the picture, green/white, red/yellow, white/red, and blue/red; I think it was the one furthest to the right (passenger) side. If your fan is totally dead, i/e won't work in position four and your fuses are good, this is a likely culprit. If your fan works in position 4, then you have a resistor block project, see below. And if you want to make a custom resistor block, here is a link to a thread from a few years ago when I fixed my own with some electronics store resistors. http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=18580 It has been going strong for 3 years or so without any problems, though my fan relay did just burn out as pictured above. That may or may not have been related. The first pic in the thread of the two ceramic resistors are the ones that failed rather quickly. The second pic of the NTE one are the ones that have been going strong. I just used pliers to carefully crush the ceramic coating.

Thanks Skip and Gloyale! Thanks to you two, the relay was easy to locate. It was obviously bad when I pulled the plug and saw the scorched lead. I went up the road to Meridian Auto Wrecking in Graham and found a replacement. They didn't even charge me for it! I plugged it right in and it worked immediately. By the way if anyone is doing this in the future, you don't have to pull the ECU, just the fuse box to access this relay. Another USMB save!

Thanks for the tip, Cougar. Where exactly are the relays located? Left side? Right side? Do you happen to remember which panels need to be removed to access them? Thanks!

I'm having a hard time troubleshooting this one. The fan for the A/C, heater, etc went totally dead. The fuses for the fan and heater are all good. I checked for power at the motor and didn't get any. I pulled the dash cover and put the multimeter on the harness to the switch and can't detect any power to any of the five leads on there. Is there something that would kill power to the switch but not kill the fuse? All four fan positions worked prior to the sudden death. Any tips for troubleshooting this one? It's getting hot and my A/C is actually functional if I can just get the air to move.

I don't suppose you have a picture of that setup? I trashed a couple of the solenoids that were in that general area, so hopefully a trip to the junkyard isn't in my future. Thanks.

Can you give me a hint? I have a torch, some baling wire, several rolls of duct tape, and some JB Weld so I should have my bases covered.

86 GL Wagon EA82. Just did the Weber conversion and I'm noticing that the AC kicks on when I select defrost with the temp selector on hot? Is that normal? It also kicks on when AC is selected and doesn't for the other selections. I'm wondering if I have a vacuum line plumbed incorrectly or something.

...and when you cut the three wires on the plug, be sure to wrap them in electrical tape so they won't short out and kill the engine when your wife is driving the car. Don't ask me how I know.

Take the disty cap off, take a spare vacuum hose, put one end on the vacuum advance port and the other end in your mouth. Suck. You should see the insides of the distributor rotate clockwise about a half inch or so and stay there until you stop sucking. Mine was bad because they would move, but then move back while I was still sucking meaning I had a small leak in there somewhere.

I got a used disty at a junkyard yesterday for 25 bucks that seems to work fine. My old one had a bad vacuum advance and bad bushings. I switched from Nippondenso to Hitachi and so far so good. Definitely don't do what I did and forget to mark where the rotor is when you pull the old one out.

Well, somehow I managed to get it goin'! I'd love to give Dave the credit, but I walked out right after I posted and did some more tinkering. I ended up reinstalling the disty with the rotor pointing toward the rear plug terminal with the crankshaft at 0 degrees. That was how the old one was I think. I installed the plugwires and cranked and cranked. It barely came to life. In fact I had to rotate the disty a little to get it to run at all. I then proceeded to set the timing to 8 degrees with the light. I had to unplug the vacuum advance otherwise it wouldn't run. After I plugged the vacuum advance back in, the RPM's plummetted to 500. I adjusted the idle and idle mixture on the Weber and it runs like a champ. The idle is MUCH smoother than before. I think the whole disty was bad, not just the vacuum advance. It had an audible click as the shaft was rotated by hand and the pinion could be slightly pushed in and out with another audible click. I guess it is 20 years old. Anyway, 25 bucks for the distributor, and 20 bucks for a cap and rotor and order has been restored in the universe. Thanks Dave!

Ok, my ea82 nippondenso had a bad vacuum advance so I looked around pull-a-part today for a similar distributor to either completely swap, or swap advances with. No luck. Then on the way home I happened by another junkyard and they had a hitachi that looked pretty much the same except for the different cap and single vacuum advance instead of the two on my nippondenso. I just switched to a Weber carb, so I wasn't using the second vacuum port anyway. I foolishly didn't read my chilton manual and simply swapped the two units without noting where the rotor was. In other words, I've turned a 30 minute job into a 3 hour and counting job. The chilton manual said how to manually turn the crankshaft to 0 degrees on the timing port while feeling the #1 sparkplug hole for the compression stroke. That seemed easy enough, you turn until you feel air coming out of the cylinder, then keep turning until you are lined up at 0. Now what? I tried to remove the distributor and realign it so the rotor was pointing at the #1 sparkplug wire, but that didn't seem to help at all. From what the chilton book says, the firing order is 1-3-2-4. It is a little unclear as to which is which, however. As near as I can tell, facing the engine (both knees touching the front bumper), #1 is the nearest one on your left, #3 is the further one on the left, #2 is the nearest one on your right, and #4 is the further on on the right. Is that correct? Is there something I'm missing here? I guess that was a rhetorical question. I've checked the coil wire for spark, and checked the spark plug wires to 1 and 3, and they both have spark, so I'm guessing it has to be timing. Does it matter where the wires are placed on the cap as long as they are in the correct order? I'm guessing it does, but as long as #1 is at TDC and the rotor is pointing toward the #1 sparkplug lead it shouldn't matter I think.

It seems to have been the nut. I took the cotter pin out, put the 36mm socket on, and the nut came off easily with just my hand, no breaker bar or wrench. There seems to be a flat washer on the thing. I'm guessing the cone washers allow you to keep the nut tight while ensuring that the holes for the cotter pin line up. Otherwise, you may have to back the nut off slightly, thereby loosening the nut. Looks like I need a couple of those. Autozone was out of the GCK axles, like you suspected. I looked at a new A1Carbone, but it looked quite a bit different than the OEM. I actually have one on the other side and it doesn't seem to fit all that well. I picked up a reman A1 with a lifetime warranty that looked excellent, but I might be taking it back since the noise has gone away. Set it at about 8, turned the idle down, and things seem pretty good. I'm a little confused about the removing the vacuum advance to set the timing like the Chilton book and the timing light manual said. It said to remove the vacuum advance line and cap the end. Which end, the disty or carb side? I tried both, but it didn't seem to matter at all. My engine ran the same with it plugged in or not. This may be my culprit. I popped the disty cap off, unhooked the carb end of the vacuum advance line and sucked away. The pot moved when I sucked but then moved back even though I was still sucking. I tried several times but there was no way I could keep the pot in the moved position; it kept going back. That means the vacuum advance is bad? Can I just replace that, or do I need a new disty? By the way, the second vacuum port on the disty, the outer one, is supposed to be left open, i.e. not capped, correct? Thanks again everybody for the replies.

Excellent news, and thank again for the reply. I have been adjusting both the mixture and idle speed at the same time. I do hear a ping on occasion, but not consistently at any setting. That has me definitely thinking I need a timing light to do things precisely. Im much more confident now that I can resolve this myself. One other question that I had is the vacuum line that I bought. I think that I bought a slightly too narrow line. I had to really work it to get it on the carb and the disty. Would too small a vacuum line cause problems¿ Can you tell Im typing on a Mexican keyboard¿ Anyway, my coworker, who rebuilds cars, thinks it would be wise to replace the PCV as they can cause strange problems so Im going to do that as well. I think there is a Harbor Freight on my way home from the airport so Im golden there as well. Thanks.

The yellow wire goes to one of the side posts on the coil, and the black with white stripe goes to the other side post on the coil.