diluded000

You are the men. Ummm that sounds wierd. Individually: you da man. Anyhow, thanks for the excellent sources. I looked at all these sites an am leaning towards the RAAMaudio stuff. I like the closed cell foam for the floorboard and the self adhesive stuff for inside the hardtop. The carpet should just lay on top of a couple layers of spray adhesive'd Ensolite, and I can stick a roll of the RAAMat BXT to the inside of the fiberglass hardtop to help keep that toasty and quiet. Hell, if I get Sirius satellite radio in there I might start driving the thing to work more often. When I get this installed I'll try to post some pix (even though it is in a jeep ). thanks again James B

Yeah, as much as I like to talk about alternative uses for cat . . . I would really like to find that sticky floorboard insulation. I'm pretty sure there was a writeup with pictures of this in a gen 2. - James B

Naw, then I would feel obligated to eat them. Cat skin is the traditional material for drums on banjos. Supposed to be real tough and thin.

how yawl doing, Seeing as how I sold the lifted wagon, I haven't posted in a while. Good to see lots of activity still going on. Anyway . . . A couple of years ago somebody posted about some self adhesive floorboard insulation. I looked all over internet and this site, and couldn't find where to get it. Does anybod remember this, or know where to get something to put under the carpet on my current 4x4? It's loud and my feet get cold when gets around zero. thanks James B

Here is a link to the first part of the write-up: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=26281 Let me know if you have any questions about it. - James B

Here is a link that shows what to adjust for various patterns on the gear faces: http://www.drivetrain.com/ringpinioninstal.html But like Shawn said, he can adjust it himself if he is that concerned. - James B

Wasn't exactally clear, but did you swap the ring and pinion, or the LSD clutch pack thing and gear stubs? I just swapped the LSD cartridge and axle stubs on mine, and made sure to use the same number of shims as came from the factory on each side to keep the factory settings preserved. (Was it the shims from the donor or the other way around?) I marked the gears with spray paint to see how the gear faces were meshing, and it looked OK to me. My big horespower co-workers thought this was risky DIY job, but unless this is going into a 500hp full time rear wheel drive, I don't think the backlash introduced by the manufacturing variances is that big of a deal. If you have had this in a running vehicle, and there aren't pieces of metal in the lube, it is likely ok. Mine worked fine. - James B

Cuz I already had big tires and they wouldn't fit otherwise. (I tried) - James B

Mine quit doing that after the second charge.

Yeah, I agree with getting a car alarm. I have an alarm and a failsafe ignition lockout on my truck. The wagon stays in the garage or under the deck most of the time, and where I live now I don't really worry that much about it anyway. If you wanna check out city to city crime statistics (like vehicle thefts per 100,000 population) search on 'uniform crime report', it has some interesting info. - James B

So I know this is getting a bit off topic, and this is also somewhat politically sensitive, but with due respect to the attitude of others I gotta speak out. I moved from the fairly crime prone Southeast, to a comparitively crime free Colorado, and noticed a big difference in attitudes about firearms between places. I'll just say from personal experience that after you get your house broken into while you are sleeping - twice, you learn to understand the difference between paranoia and protection. - James B

After driving for a day, I went home and put the rest of my original can of R134a, and a 2oz oil charge/2oz refrigerant in. To get the can empty I actually drove around the neighborhood with the can hooked up, and this seemed to work quite well. A also opened and closed the refrigerant can several times while I was charging, trying to let it get warmed back up between charges. I didn't hear the expansion valve hissing as much after I added some oil, and the A/C output while sitting idle seemed better. It felt colder on the way to work today, than it did yesterday. - James B

I haven't torn down the motor yet, I needed to fix the A/C on my daily driver truck. The donor car was wrecked with about 200,000 miles on the odometer, but the fluids looked good so it was likely maintained. Hopefully the teardown can start tonite. I am leaning towards a re-ring kit from the autoparts store, and borrowing a ridge reamer and cylinder hone. I dunno about the heads yet, I'll look and see when I get in there. Maybe re-mans, maybe try to rebuild it at home and pay for the machine work I can't do myself. That $1200 kit from Ram engines sounds very nice. But this would go over what I want to spend, and not leave anything left over to get new hoses, wires, and exhaust parts. This is my first try at this, so for me it is more a learning experience than a necessity. My main problem is I want a nice engine, but don't want to pay for it. - James B

I just (yesterday) replaced a hose, drier, and expansion valve on my truck and used one of those $15 air-compressor attached vacuum pumps from Harbor Freight to draw a vacuum, then charged the system with R134a. It took two tries to get the system completely charged back, but only took one can of coolant. One book I have suggests jumpering the thermostat that turns the compressor on and off, to keep it running continous while you recharge coolant - but I didn't try this. From what I gather, it takes some time for the system to get stable when doing a reharge, and the compressor has to be running for this to happen. You might try driving it around the block to get plenty of air to your condenser coil so the compressor runs longer, then hooking up the can and adding more charge. I put the coolant can in some water to help it keep from freezing up. This was my first try at this, but I am making cold air again. There might be some other way to get more coolant in there, but my high side/low side pressures are right, and I am cool so I'm not that worried about it. It might be possible to add more coolant when the temeprature is lower, I might try then. - James B

Is there a 'one stop shopping' sort of rebuild kit for my EA82T? I'm looking for something with pistons and maybe bearings, but haven't seen any single kit that has everything I want. Here are the sites I have check out so far: http://ramengines.com/_wsn/page3.html (exactally what I want, but it looks like EA81 only) https://www.rockauto.com/dbphp/mak,SUBARU (can't tell what comes with what kits) https://www.1stsubaruparts.com/partscat.html (can sorta tell what comes with kits) Can anybody point me in the right direction? - James B

Josh, The part about too much work taking two wiring harnesses out is right on. I like the sounds of stripping out the motor control connectors, and leaving the rest as is. If it ain't broke . . . I still wanna make my own ECU, but would like to experiment on a motor that I know runs first. thanks James B

I had a similar experience last week. I tried to offroad my new D/R transmission and went up the trail, until it got so steep it just stopped. Being the kinda guy I am, I started it back up, red lined it, and popped the clutch. A big cloud of steam came from under the hood, so I backed it down till I could get turned around, then drove home with no water. I thougth it had water, but turns out my hose blew off the radiator. It made 15 out of 20 miles, then just stalled. I waited about 45 minutes for a cool down, got started again, and drive the last 5 miles home. I have a replacement motor on the stand now - James B

I pulled an '86 EA82T to put in my carb'd '85 EA82 wagon. Even though it was like 120F in that closed up car, I pulled the complete dash, wiring harness, ECU, digi-dash, and any electrical part that looked like it needed. My donor car had crusie control, power everything, adjustable ride height, etc, but the car it is going into doesn't have all this. So I am considering my options, but need some advice on the best one: 1) Pull the non-turbo wiring harness and put the turbo in. It seems like I will have about 20 un-used connectors for the cruise, power options, etc. Does anyone know if my lights and sensors (fuel & temp) will plug into the new harness, or will I be cutting and splicing? 2) Pull the engine management connectors out of my donor wiring harness and run dual ECUs. That way I keep my lights and sensors running, but use the turbo ECU to run the motor. Has anyone tried this? 3) Change the jumper on my existing ECU for turbo, and plug the new wiring into this. I have read secondhand reports of this jumper, but never seen a picture or had enough detail to know what to do. 4) Roll my own ECU with a laptop. Weeder makes a stackable 8-input analog to digital serial board for $59 (USD) bucks. I read a good bit on Mega-squirt but I haven't written assembly language for that family controller since college, and even then it wasn't much - so I could likely make my own version in the time it would take to learn their system. I can write Qbasic or Linux C code for a serial port sensor input from the Weeder, and use the parallel port to drive the output like a stepper controlled waste gate, and injectors. I built a parallel port CNC controller from scratch that runs on a Pentium 100 (inexpensive) laptop, so I am pretty sure I could get something driving some solenoids and a stepper. This wouldn't be easy, but the hardest part for me would knowing what voltage on a sensor correspond to what PSI or temp, then what to do with that information after I get it. Writing something that acutally gets the motor started would be tough. Anyhow, if anybody has done a non-turbo to turbo motor swap I would really appreciate hearing the easiest way to get the engine ECU controlled. - James B

I dunno about the good part, but I think I saw both of those things at the local pick and pull (Loveland Auto Salvage). I'm not positive about either item, but I think the wrecked 86 GL-10 turbo that I pulled an $80 motor out of Friday still had the rear disks. I already pulled the rear disks off one of the turbos up there, but I think there might be another set. Ditto for the ej22, did those come in a Legacy? I think I saw that stuff, but after hours in direct sun in the mid-90s I was getting a bit delirious. Pulling the dash and wiring harness with the electric windows up and the doors only opening 12" was a hot job, even for someone from Florida. They are good people to deal with. If you go up there for a motor keep in mind they don't have a forklift on weekends. - James B

I had trouble with reverse on a 3" lift in an 85 wagon, and made a 'Z' shaped bracket that lowers the piece that the shifter pivots in by about an inch and a half. In my case there was plenty of room for the shifter to move, it was more the angles of the linkage. - James B

Thanks for asking, and feel free to cut/paste, etc. I mean, how could I say no - you have explosion pictures. - James B

Thanks for the input. Both were manual transmissions, I'll be sure and clarify that when I move it after this upgrade. - James B

I was going to, but couldn't figgure out how. And in the spirit of good science, I thought a peer review might be in order before that. Any comments would be welcome. - James B

The swap from a pushbutton 4wd to a dual range 5-speed is all finished and running in my '85 wagon. I wanted to put together a collection of notes on things I couldn't find answers to before I started. This was my first attempt at anything like this, so some of these things might seem like no-brainers to the more experienced. Seperating and attaching the motor and transmission First off, the clutch stays with the engine. This was a bit of a mystery until I saw this pulled apart. There are four studs that are supposed to stay with the transmission, and nuts that hold the motor against the transmission. When these are removed there is a male splined shaft coming out of the motor which will slide off. This is the only thing that mates with transmission to make the mechanical driveline connection. About half of my studs came out of the transmission, and half had the bolts come loose. I pulled the motor and transmission together to get to the bolts easier. This may not be the easiest way to do this. There is plenty of info already around on how to pull a motor and/or transmission. To seperate the motor and transmission from their 20 year love affair, I used a chisel and carefully worked my way around until things came apart. To mate the new transmission get a few threads connected on the nuts, then rotated the (flywheel?) pulley on the front of the motor to align the splines. With some tension from the connecting stud bolts on these you can hear a 'clunk' when it slides on. The motor should turn freely after this, and the nuts can be tightened. Driveshaft issues When the driveshaft is removed from the transmission, gear oil comes out. If the bracket that holds the center u-joint of the driveshaft to the body is removed, there is enough play with the angles to get the driveshaft disconnected from the transmission. The nuts and bolts that hold the driveshaft to the transmission aren't captive. The driveshaft lenghts are the same between the d/r and the pushbutton 4WD transmissions. These don't have to be swapped. Electrical The pushbutton switch on the shifter now has nothing to control. Mine had nothing to control to begin with since I fabricated a shifter arm when mine was binding up and wouldn't work with the vacuum actuator. A clean snip of the wires and plugs (sprinkler goof plugs) on the lines coming off the two solenoids on the driver side firewall will clean this up. One of the wires has 12v, so be careful to cover it. The 4WD light on my dash still works. The connector on the both transmissions is the same, so this is plug-n-play. The speedometer cable is plug-n-play as well. Mine is off from the big tires, so I can't say if they are calibrated the same. Shift linkage This was by far the hardest part, and has multiple problems introduced by the 3" lift. For the 5-speed part I had to bend a bracket to hold the hold the assembly that connects the shifter arm to the linkage to the unibody. It allows the bottom of the shifter arm to drop down about two inches and forward about one inch. With the mounting point for the base of the shifters moved down, the dual range lever wouldn't engage. I fabricated a new lever that attaches to an angle bracket on the right side of the 5-speed shifter. Modifications to the stock shaft that connects the shifter to the transmission are shown here. The body opening is actually below the pivot point, not below as shown. But even after making this fine assembly, it still had enough driver to passenger direction slop that it was banging against the driveshaft. Driving with the hole uncovered is a bit unnerving, but when this thing starts grinding against the driveshaft it'll scare ya. The bracket to constrain the side to side slop is shown below. These are just rough drawings showing how I got around the problem. I'm sure there are other ways to do this. If anybody wants to make an identical version of this let me know and I can update this with dimensions. I just used trial and errror to make this all fit and not bang together.

I replaced the catch under the dash on my '85 wagon to get the glove compartment door working better. I am guessing here, but it seems like the two things that work to hold the catch closed are the spring inside the assembly on the door, and the fit of the pins in the catch. So if your pins are rounded on the ends, or the catch is wearing, it might make it easier for it to pop open. You might be able to file the ends of the pins down to make a sharper transition away from the catch, but this would wear on the catch. Or you might be able to drill or file inside the catch to increase the contact area between the pins and the catch. I think they are riveted together, but you might be able to get the latch spring apart and strech the spring out a little to get more pressure on that. I woulnd't try this without a spare. If you sent me one of those padded envelopes with a couple bucks postage on it, you can have my extra catch from an '85. PM me if you want to. - James B