GeneralDisorder

Your new bearing wasn't new. It had 120k on it - I replaced a VERY bad bearing on a '96 with 115k on it not long ago...... It might have sat for years prior to you aquireing it and could have been exposed to moisture, etc in that time. Unless you have other reasons to suspect some other cause (severely uneven tire wear, etc) then you probably just got unlucky. Bearings are $35 and aren't that hard to install if you have a hub-tamer or similar tool. I have the one from Harbor Frieght - I think it was $79. Works fine but you need a puller to get the old outer cone off the hub which it doesn't come with. GD

They do fine with 27's. My EA81's with 74 HP will turn 28's or 29's pretty easily. Plenty of people do just fine with the stock engines. I've had my wagon on 28's up to 90 MPH on the freeway. There's been plenty of people that have put the lower performing EA81 into the EA82 body to get better reliability. The biggest reason for the swap is RELIABILITY and easy maintenance. Power is a secondary benefit. If you can't do wireing then you shouldn't be doing an FI swap of any kind. If it's not done right you can end up with a frustrating mess at best or a fire hazzard at worst. GD

You don't need an EGT gauge. You need a tail-pipe. GD

Doh! Makes a nice road trip though! A1 coupling will have something. GD

I would say that 10.2 hours is a good estimate, but ONLY for the actual head gaskets. If there are other things that are being done at the same time then more time needs to be added in. GD

Wheel offset plays a part as well - the larger the offset toward the outside of the car the larger the sweep of the outside and inside edges of the tire when turning. And while the tire/wheel combo may fit, it may rub on turns. Larger tires are not always better. While they may look cool, they decrease your gearing and power, and when fit to a car with only barely enough lift to clear them they will limit suspension travel. It is much better to pick a "sensible" size of tire for the amount of lift you have rather than the largest size possible to fit. For example - a 29" or 30" tire is a much more sensible size for a 6" lift. And to practically fit a 33" tire you really need 10" to 12" of lift. GD

They make right-angle fittings for places where the bend is too tight. Baxter's should have them. GD

Yes - the cost of running a business is much cheaper outside of the city. It also pays to entice customers with a bit of helpful diagnostics or even a minor adjustment for free or very, very cheap. People remember that stuff and it creates an air of honesty and integrity. I do that quite a bit actually - keeps people comming back and softens the blow when I have to give them bad news in the future. We used to do that kind of thing all the time at the machinery shop I worked at - especially for customers that were frequent visitors - minor adjustments and even small repairs weren't charged if they came to the shop. GD

Pretty common actually. Not desireable. GD

Labor is about right since normally it doesn't really matter what they are doing they will not charge fractional hours - so they are charging the 1 hour minimum. The part cost is pretty typical - they are probably using an OEM knock sensor since they are prone to cracking and various years have been redesigned so figure they are doing a 100% markup on it (not unusual) for a real price of $62.50 - which is likely wholesale price of an OEM unit from the dealer. The computer reset..... well unfortunately not all cars are equal and while some are easily reset, other's are not. So this may be a charge the shop has adopted to cover some of the messy systems other manufacturer's use and/or to offset the cost of the expensive equipment often required to do this sort of work. Not something I have run across before but I can see how it could come about these days. All-in-all I don't think they were trying to rip you off at all - you are simply discovering the value of doing the work yourself. This stuff isn't cheap and it isn't cheap to run a shop. Even I am surprised at the size of the bill's I hand people for work I have performed - and I only charge $35 an hour and typically I don't markup parts unless I have to travel a bit to aquire them or have to pull them from a yard myself. GD

Check for a short to the idle-cut solenoid (anti-deisel solenoid) on the front of the carb. The other symptoms sound like there could be issues with the secondary vacuum actuator or crap floating in and out of the main jets in the bowl. GD

1/8" would probably bend and tear under much stress - let alone a 6000 lb line pull with a snatch block. No way I would run that anyway. It would likely hold for a half dozen recovery's and then be pretty much hosed after that much of a work-out. 1/8" is really thin stuff. I can bend and shape 1/8" flat-bar with a small hammer and an anvil - not something you want to be putting a hell of a lot of stress on. 1/4" would hold if it's gusseted properly and the thing was bolted down well. Hell it's own mounting plate is only like 3/16" by the look of it - if anything the spool would tear free of the mounting bracket before the 1/4" bolt-down plate failed . I agree that more winch than that little toy is better, but it's better than nothing at all and sometimes just a bit of pull along with the vehicles own power is all you need. You aren't likely going to yard it out of a sink-hole burried half-way up the doors but then your rig probably can't get itself that stuck in the first place unless you find a nice big pit of quick-sand to fall into . GD

What is your problem exactly? I can't understand from your post what is going on - are you having problems with it cranking or with it actually starting? If you can't crank it with the key then you have classic ignition switch problems most likely. If the problem is that it won't start then you need to find out what you are missing out of these five: Air, Fuel, Spark, Timing (ignition and valve), or Compression. GD

If you only replaced the PCV valve itself and didn't clean the hoses and connectors associated with the entire breather system that might still be your problem. Also replace the air filter if you haven't in a while. When they get up there in the mileage it's not uncommon to see valve stem seals start to leak a bit of oil in the cylinders so don't be terribly surprised if the PCV system clean-out doesn't completely fix it. Rings on these engines just don't wear out. You could probably do a valve stem seal replace on it with the heads still on the engine and fix the majority of it's problems. Properly maintained the EA82 can do well over 300k before some major mechanical problem claims it - usually rod bearing failure will claim them long before anything else goes. GD

Mick is running Toy suspension, etc. I doubt they would come anywhere close to fitting a Subaru suspension. GD

Yeah - sounds like they are fine. I'll lookup that headlight thing in a few. GD

Off the top of my head....... the primary winding should be around 0.75 to 1.25 Ohms or so and the secondary should probably be about 10,000 to 12,000 Ohms (somtimes more on certain engines). Those are generic numbers for most automotive coils. Usually in a bad coil you will see the secondary side partially shorted and it will read low. The correct numbers are in the partial '89 FSM sections linked at the bottom of my EA81 SPFI conversion page: http://home.comcast.net/~trilinear/EA81_SPFI.html GD

Go for it - it's a lot of work though. And the EA82 engine is not highly regarded - most of us feel that would be a downgrade even though it's technically more HP. The timing belts, hydraulic lifters prone to ticking, etc really suck. The EA82 is a LOT wider. It is virtually impossible to service it without pulling it back out when it's installed into the EA81 body. The power steering won't work as the EA82 body is too wide to use it's cross-member. And a Loyale definitely does not have ABS. Only Legacy's and up got ABS. GD

Much like military equipment - as they say if you get on the bird and there isn't hydraulic fluid visibile leaking from something - get back off cause it doesn't have any left. Subaru's leak - that's pretty much their deal. If it's leaking on the exhaust it's probably something simple like valve covers, etc. Torn CV boots like to do that as well and it's worse because the CV grease is thick enough that it doesn't easily fall off or burn away quick. GD

EA81's do not have any sort of proportioning system unfortunately. GD

The EA82 feedback computer directly controls the fuel pump relay - they do not have a seperate FPCU like the EA81 feedback system. You will have to rewire that either directly to power or through a fuel pump control unit like the non-feedback's or EA81's (EA81 feedback FPCU is the easy choice since it does not control choke power). GD

It's a high-carbon steel so it may look similar to aluminium at the point of fracture but I assure you it is not. Aluminium of that diameter wouldn't hold for long . GD

Yes - used rack is the way to go. Very rare to see one leak or fail. Usually it's because someone put "power steering" fluid in it instead of the plain Dexron ATF they call for. GD

If I were doing it, I would cut the stub, then center punch and drill the head off the bolt and pull the stub out. Once you do that the bolt should just turn out without any tension on it from the stub. Aluminium isn't going to work - you can't weld Aluminium to steel even with TIG. Just weld a proper sized nut to the stud if you go that route. Then put an impact on it set to a low setting and just hammer on it for a while to loosen it. Should turn out relatively easily though I've had to weld nuts to broken studs anywhere from 1 to 10 times before I got the broken bit to spin out rather than just break the weld. I would drill the head off first though. GD

Glad you got it fixed - sounds like the cat was clogged. If you get a chance you might cut it open and remove the converter matrix - you can always install an aftermarket converter in the mid-pipe and still use the y-pipe for another project if it's good. Would also be educational to see what the matrix looks like when it's clogged. They often just break apart and get jammed in the outlet of the converter causing a flow restriction so there might not even be anything useful left in it. GD