KiwiGL

New wheels

Have fitted up a set of Ward minilite replicas. Looking good!

Yes, but the internals of a phase 1 EJ22 manual gearbox are identical to the GL box. To the point that it is possible to recase a GL gearbox using an EJ front housing to avoid the need to use an adapter plate when EJ swapping... this is what El Freddo has in his. Subaru strengthened the gearboxes a bit with the move to the SG series Forester.

Hey, download the "How to keep your Subaru alive" pdf that I have linked below. Should hopefully answer most simple questions. http://www.suberdave.com/USMB/HTKYSA.PDF Given how old these cars are, I would actually recommend keeping fairly stock unless you've done extensive reading and/or have bottomless pockets. There are a few turbo swaps around, but they're all fairly big-dollar builds by the time they're all sorted properly. Not an easy undertaking. I enjoy driving mine for what it is - a 1.8 carbie 80s car. No point making it something it wasn't. If I want power I drive my Nissan V6.

Up on the lighthouse road at Akaroa

Nah those last photos are from the Flea Bay road, up behind Akaroa. I've actually been into Skippers 3 times in the past year but haven't taken Gertie in there.

Went for a little drive yesterday... may have gone a bit further than I was intending to.

I just recently redid my intake manifold. The OEM bolts come with a flared head base but do not use a washer. The clearance is tight but the gasket is thick enough, at least in my case. I would recommend chasing the threads and cleaning up the bolts as best you can.

I just used standard height racks that are high enough to fit over the touring roof. Had to redrill the outer brackets slightly to make them long enough to fit over the trim but works fine. Have had 5 sets of skis and two kayaks up there at various times. I have them mounted fairly far forward, reason being so that I can still open the boot with skis or kayak on the roof. Also means the front rack sits over the low part of the roof. Pretty sure my racks are 150 mm high on the sides, and the mounts are just standard gutter design. The brand is "wildcat" - it's a 1.3 m wide new old stock 1980s roof rack for gutter mount I bought off a guy who used to own a Supercheap Auto and was clearing leftover parts out of his garage.

Also picked up this reproduction Omega badge courtesy of the NZ old school Subaru FB page. Actually better than the original, as the original was just painted on and this is a proper badge! 3D printed to the original design.

Took Gertie for a little blast up the summit road to celebrate the end of lockdown. Also, as a present for hitting 450,000 kms, I took her to Crowesport and had both CV boots on the left front axle replaced as they were cracked. Would have done it myself but couldn't get the castle nut off haha. Enjoy the pics! She's definitely got a "5 metre" paint job but it cleans up OK.

ADF and SJR both sell adapter plates. However the clutch may be difficult to get right. Probably best to read a few older threads to get a good idea of what's involved. Most people who swap turbo engines use the ej gearbox.

Hey, no worries, glad it was useful! The Brat would be the EA81 right? It sounds to me like you've got a blown head gasket. There should not be any coolant behind the oil pump, only oil. So if you have coolant coming from behind the oil pump that suggests to me that you have coolant contaminating your oil. The most common cause of this would be a blown head gasket, especially if you have recently overheated it.

A Weber won't give you much more power vs a Hitachi in good condition anyway. The jetting allows pretty much exactly the same fuel flow. I think the Weber has a bigger primary and a smaller secondary though so you could rejet the Hitachi to make it drive more like a Weber, but at the expense of some fuel economy.

https://youtu.be/oeWDQcWj9cQ

Damn, all my pictures have disappeared. In other news, Gertie is still going strong. I have now put 6500 kms on her in one year of ownership and she is sitting at 450,000 kms total. The new engine is going strong. Just this week, as a lockdown project, I have done a complete front reseal on it. This included new front main seal, front camshaft seals and o rings, oil pump reseal, new timing gear, and I also took the manifold off and resealed that, along with the carburetor onto manifold seals, and the rocker covers. I have previously rebuilt the carb. I also checked the timing, and replaced the thermostat as she has still been running a tad on the warm side at times (although I realised that she is actually missing the viscous fan and only has the electric secondary so that could account for it). Anyhow, she no longer has lifter tick, and shouldn't leak oil anymore (was getting pretty bad from the front main seal and left camshaft seal). Not bad for a couple of days work. The only painful thing was that two of the intake manifold bolts snapped off... had to drill them out and then chase the thread carefully. I managed to extract two bolts from my spare EA82, so no harm anyhow. I'm also running it sans timing covers, I quite like the look. A fun wee project!

Gertie (my 1989 Omega Touring Wagon) did 445,000km on the original carbie EA82. She's now getting close to 450,000 kms. Getting up there!

I highly recommend using a steering wheel lock to deter the casual thief. An unfortunate necessity with an older vehicle.

This looks awesome. I'm very tempted to set up my wagon like this but with some RE003s as a daily.

Very clean & solid base for a project. It would be easy enough to find a 4wd rear cradle and a 5 speed dual range to go into it. The rear cradle will need one bracket welded on is all.

Pretty much what I've done in my 89 omega tourer, but the OEM headunit had already been replaced and the replacement was broken. So I bought a $23 including shipping bluetooth headunit off aliexpress and installed it. As it doesn't have a CD player it's short enough to fit properly. This then bluetooths straight to my phone and I have a dash holder for that. As you say, it gives me full functionality. Works well.

The sohc ej22 is actually narrower than an ea82. The ea82 is stupidly wide for what it is, it's as big as a DOHC EJ. Probably easiest to keep the original trans and find an ea81 or ea71 for bolt in simplicity.