el_freddo

Welcome to the forum Ivy! Youve got one of the best colours that Subaru ever brought out! I love that blue and would love to have an MY wagon in that colour too. I’ve got an L series in that colour (or slight variation of). Keep the pics coming! Cheers Bennie

Correct dizzy cap? Is the little carbon tip present and making contact with the rotor button? I’m not 100% sure that the dizzy caps are different between the two dizzy models, but it’s highly likely that they are. Cheers Bennie

If doing head gaskets do both. What if you get the wrong one? Or you replace one only to have the other pop a few miles own the road? Another trick for the TOD is to add a small spacer behind the oil pressure relief valve’s spring. 3mm is probably about the most you’d want to go. Even a clean out of this area could help. There may be decades of crud stuck in there stopping the valve ball from closing completely. Cheers Bennie

I had the same issue on the brumby, although it was with my sister for a few weeks up in the “hot interior” of northern Vic in the middle of summer. She kept topping up the water (no use putting coolant in at this stage!), temp didn’t flare but I was suspecting a blown head gasket. Once home I found it to be that pesky coolant line from the block under the intake - it was a steady drip at idle that got worse with revs. How she didn’t run it out of cooling fluid I don’t know. Head gaskets still fine If you get an EA, this is the first hose to swap out! Cheers Bennie

Upgrade the rear springs to Honda units and you’ll be able to load it up as needed without any sag Cheers Bennie

Yeah sorry, I should’ve been more specific about the series of vehicle it came from - basically the L series platform as such in the models mentioned above. Awesome box if you look after them. Mine goes very well off-road and it does what I want it to do onroad. Cheers Bennie

G’day Jared, ”Welcome” to the forum! Cool looking RX you have there. And yes, if it’s got the dual range awd box, this is the only AWD gearbox Subaru produced with a locking centre diff Look after that centre diff, they wear out easy if you don’t run tyres of the same make, model and mileage. As soon as you hit anything that’s a loose surface, lock the diff! You don’t want to be spinning wheels with this box. One trick I’ve heard with maintaining these EA82t engines is to put a small radiator, such as a motorbike radiator, in the turbo coolant return line. The idea behind this is to waste some heat from the returning coolant before it goes back to the engine then to the radiator. I’ve seen this done on two EA82t converted L series over here. Cheers Bennie

I’d like to know where he’s getting a dual range AWD with front LSD. Or is this box built already? Make sure it’s an EJ AWD box. What did the box come out of? Asking as this will determine what low range it has. If it’s the 1.19:1 swap it out for the L series 1.59:1; if it’s the 1.477:1 then leave it. Also what diff ratio is it? All you really need is the AWD box though. You can add the L low range and your desired diff ratio once it’s landed over there. The low range is worth the effort. You should ask your Aussie contact to leave the engine off the box and to send over another two or three boxes - then sell two off and keep a spare for yours. Our EJ engines are really no different to yours. Cheers Bennie

Gloyale, I think he’s building an Impreza going by the title... And I suspect the 3:9 ratio dual range is the part time (selectable) 4wd gearbox from the loyale? If so, your best bet is to use this box. If the diff ratio isn’t low enough, lift it higher and run a divorced T-case aka a “Sammy T-case”. If the 3.9 dual range is full time 4wd then I’d recommend swapping the diff ratio to 4.44 ratio. You may have to shave some meat from the crown wheel to clear the low range gears. Well worth the effort! ^ this can only be done if that dual range box is AWD. If pt4wd there’s no place for the AWD pinion shaft. Cheers Bennie

It shouldn’t make selecting reverse difficult, unless the rear mount is really shot then it *could* make reverse selection difficult. The work pitch stopper road will allow the engine and box to move in a way that it pulls you out of reverse. You might find other mounts that are toast too. Cheers Bennie

It’s easy to keep them working. Just find the dry joint and resolder it. Mine’s not missed a beat since I did this fix. Cheers Bennie

If you’ve got an L series just run the manual MPFI or MPFI turbo drive shafts, they have the correct size inner cups for the diff output stubs on the EJ. If you’ve got a brumby/BRAT/MY model, you could swap the inner DOJ cup from 23 spline to 25 spline. The trick is to make sure the 25 spline cup is for the six ball joint and not the three plastic thingy setup @Al Zhiemer - best of luck mate, I hope the issue is in that adaptor plate! Cheers Bennie

On the front end you should always do things in pairs. Replace the rhs bearing, do the lhs as well etc. Cheers Bennie

AWD with DCCD is basically the same as what mine does, except that mine’s mechanical and parts are NLA ;( Using a standard EJ AWD box with the DCCD makes it easy to get replacement parts, and build it in the first place too. 4.44s would be nice but modifying another pinion shaft for this ratio is asking too much of the wallet so I’ll work with the 4.111:1 that I’ve already got. The L AWD box from factory only has 3.7 or rarer 3.9 diff ratios. Diff ratio and tyre sizes should definitely be taken into account if you’re going to split and build a box. This mod alone will make all the difference over the locking centre diff. The factory centre lsd in the EJ boxes will work fine in mud and sand no worries. You can get updated centre LSDs if you really want one. Everyone with the DCCD swears by them. Cheers Bennie Edit: the r180 will bolt in, an adaptor maybe be needed on the input flange, or a re-drill might work too. The hardest part is adapting the output stubs to fit the diff and the stock drive shaft. Or have a custom drive shaft made up to be the adaptor - then have several made Once you’ve got all that sorted, read up on Rally’s and Dedman’s locker conversions of their r180 install on offroadsubarus. It’s on my wish list. But finding one in 4.111:1 ratio is proving difficult - and I don’t want to fork out for new R&P to get the ratio I want.

No, I’ve got an EJ ECU under the dash running an EJ22 You could make the EJ ECU run the EA82 but you’d be better off using the EJ18 ECU and you’d have to fabricate crank angle sensor tabs and a mount for said sensor. I’m sure there will be more stuff than just that but in my mind they’re the major hurdles. Really though if you’ve gone to this effort with the wiring the rest of the conversion is pretty easy! Cheers Bennie

Or tail/prop shaft Cheers Bennie

Why rebuild a box? If it’s working fine leave it be! Even better would be if you could test drive the vehicle that the box is coming out of. Generally I’ve not had an issue buying second hand high mileage boxes - so far! The age of digi dashboards is making it tricky to work out how far a box has travelled though. An EJ AWD box is a little more work to fit into the brumby but not by much. You can split the box and fit the smaller 23 spline diff output stubs. But that’d require busting open two boxes - and I’m not sure that the stubs in a brumbys 4speed box are compatible. If you do end up splitting a box, throw a front lsd in there. You’ll thank yourself later for the effort Cheers Bennie

Top story, and yes, been there before too... several times no doubt! I kind of did the same with my last gearbox rebuild. Starting with the reassembly of the box... three times - until I worked out that phase two internals physically fit in phase one cases, but reverse will never work - the MUST be in a phase two case. Bugger. Then once back in the car it was running really well - until I went to select low range on the day of a 4wd trip. Locked in high range. %*#^!!! Pulled box, modified low range selection lever as I thought this was the issue, put the box back together (now at my parent’s) low range lever still jammed in high range. Strip box down again, removed washer from low range selector fork’s pivot shaft. Reassemble, almost drop a bolt back into the box when putting the rear housing on (rookie mistake!). Gearbox back in car and haven’t looked back since... oh, wait, that was until I broke it when in Perth on the other side of the continent a few years later. That was a sickening feeling. Glad there’s an awesome Subi community over there that I had a link to. Now I actually WANT to pull the box to swap fifth ratio, and if I have to pull the whole box down due to the longer EA AWD pinion shaft to do this, then I’ll rebuild the obx front diff with the spring and washer kit that I’ve heard about since building this box. That’s one example. When in Perth with the box in bits I felt physically sick. That’s not happened before! If you want a better bed time story (or lunch break story) with lots of picks you can read our last Vic desert trip [url=https://ausubaru.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=38100]here[/url]. There are ALOT of pics, 49 if I’ve counted correctly! Al, you’ll get it sorted. EJ is the way to go. You’ll be looking for AWD next Also, on the PS pump, remove belt, rear nut and two front bolts, it’ll just lift away now for good access to that spark plug Im keen to see how you did your gearbox xmem for the 5 speed box - there are a couple of ways to do this from what I’ve seen! Keep up the good fight! Cheers Bennie

Are you sure you’re in neutral when you try to select the next gear? Have you found reverse yet? It makes a very different sound to the forward gears. Don’t try to aniticipate what gear you’re in, get a feel for the movements the box allows you get into then work it out from there. You need to rotate the input shaft when you’re in a gear. Do it for each gear. If there’s any resistance that’s not a constant there’s potentially an issue with the gearbox. As mentioned, removing the drain plug and inspecting the oil, or at the very least getting your finger in to feel around for an metal around the drain hole is also an important assessment to do too. I hope that helps. Cheers Bennie

I wish I did this when the L’s were easy to find in the parts yards ;( Cheers Bennie

Sounds good mate. I dunno why ppl want max boost so far up the rev range... I’m glad it all worked out for you! Cheers Bennie

You’ve missed my point. Gen1 body with a H6 is missing from the pic. That’s what I was getting at. Cheers Bennie

This was always my thinking with the 5mt. If this became available I’d seriously consider swapping to the 6 speed box as all the strain is removed from the drive gears when in low range. Keep up the good work. I hope you pull it off! Cheers Bennie

If it’s not ticking or squealing I wouldn’t worry about it. No oil is worse than high oil pressure in general. Interesting about those figures czny, my EJ22E with mechanical oil pressure gauge will read about 85psi cold with revs, ~60psi at idle. Once warmed up cruise is ~75-80psi and idle around about 40psi (from memory, I might have to double check next drive). Are your figures from the factory oil pressure gauge or an aftermarket unit? Cheers Bennie

Check your engine and gearbox mounts as well as the pitch stopper rod. These can cause movements the could pull you out of reverse gear if the gearbox and enginencan move. I’d be paying particular attention to the pitch stopper rod. Internally, there could be a broken retainer spring on the dedent that holds reverse. Since this is a six speed as you’ve suggested, I’ve not go any experience with these. Cheers Bennie