GeneralDisorder

You are making the right choice. It would be a LOT of work to convert a non-turbo to run with forced induction - and by simply buying a turbo car you get all the goodies they came with - VLSD ('91 only), larger sway bars, sport tuned suspension, much larger brakes, turbo engine cross-member, turbo radiator (doesn't fit the NA core support), leather accented interior, sun-roof, premium sound system, and just a whole bunch of things that no one ever thinks about. It's really the total package so that even if you were to take an NA car and bolt on a turbo, etc - you would still have a car that handled, stopped, and rode like an NA car - just with way more power than those components were meant to support..... because they *look* the same on the outside (besides the badging and the scoop), people assume that it's the same car but with a turbo added on. When in reality there is very little that the two have in common. They didn't even share engine block castings or transmissions - about the only thing that is the same is the connecting rods strangely enough.... and of course body panels and interior and trim cross over, etc. But mechanically they are almost different cars making it very difficult to duplicate one. Just keep looking. Something will come along. Even an automatic that you can swap a WRX 5 speed into - those go cheap if they have bad transmissions typically. GD

Yep - it could have damaged the hub splines - those are typically softer than the steel in the half-shaft so they get chewed up rather than the shaft. If there was prolonged vibration involved it could have damaged the wheel bearings as well. They might be ok but they might fail in a few thousand miles. GD

People have used the 38 DGAS - virtually all of them agree that it's too large. Progression issues are rampant and the amount of fuel they eat is terrible - for virtually no gain. The 32/36 is large enough for small V6's so a little 1.8 is nothing for it. As to the VW comment - that's a completely different world. They don't have to deal with coolant and the cylinder jugs just unbolt from the bottom end. It's a much simpler operation to bore out or simply upgrade an air-cooled than it is to deal with the Subaru EA engine. About the only source of monster power for the EA81 is forced induction and about 200 HP is the reliable limit. Cost is prohibitive - $10,000 for a 200 HP EA81 vs. about $3,000 for a 265 HP EJ20G front clip from Japan...... GD

Where are you seeing this "water in the oil"? If it's just on and around the breather ports on the valve covers then you need to address a PCV system flow issue. If it's actually milkshake in the pan then you have either head gasket or freeze plug issues. EA81 head gasket failures are pretty rare. That is a very stout little engine and will take a serious amount of abuse without popping the head gaskets typically. Being these engines do not have overhead cams, etc. The actual head gasket replacement procedure is a cake-walk. I could do one in probably just a few hours. Other than the rocker assembly bolts that slip out through holes in the frame rail, the head will slide off the studs in the block without removing the engine from the vehicle. The most critical aspects are that you use the Fel-Pro perma-torque head gaskets but get the intake and exhaust manifold gaskets from the DEALER ONLY. I can't stress that enough. Aftermarket (including Fel-Pro) are total junk. Make sure to prep the surfaces well - soft wire wheel on the intake manifold and head port and 3M pad on the block and heads if you don't have the heads surfaced. GD

Call the dealer and order it. GD

As long as they are throttle body injection heads, yes. Turbo and MPFI heads are dual-port and are not interchangeable because the SPFI and Carb manifolds are single-port. SPFI heads will not have the ports for Air Injection drilled out on the bottom near the exhaust port. Those would have to be drilled or the AIS removed (may not be possible for emissions reasons in your area) for them to work on a carbed engine. GD

The rear will lock before the front unless you have a proportioning valve. More power (IE - larger bore MC) will cause this to happen with less pedal pressure - but still at the same relative braking strength. I don't think a larger booster is really needed if you can bolt the larger MC to the existing booster. They both matter but the MC piston diameter matters more and the relative difficulty of fitting a larger booster vs. just bolting on a larger MC (since they are obviously easily availible) makes it less tempting to even want to mess with it. And if it later turns out that you need it you are already halfway there with the MC in place. MC's tend to be pretty cheap in the aftermarket - you might just pick up a brand new one since now we know they fit. Brake lines can be cut, bent, coupled, and flared at will so that's not really an issue as long as it fits. And - as we have talked about before - your MC is probably toast anyway. GD

EDIS can and has been adapted to EA82's. There was a guy a few years back that did exactly that with an EA82T in a gen 1 Brat. He ran the early megasquirt that didn't do ignition control and used the EDIS for the ignition control. He still used the distributor though for the cam sensor input to the ECU. Unfortunately you lack the understanding to see that it is the computer that drives the spark control on the EJ's and not the coil pack. The coil pack is simply two distinct coils in one package. The SPFI does do ignition control but as it has only a single ignition driver circuit it cannot control the wasted-spark style coil pack that is used on the EJ's. You need two driver circuits and associated software to do that - which the SPFI does not have. You cannot get away from the distributor unless you fit a cam and crank sensor and move to something like MS. GD

It is not needed if you are using the 1800 distributor. The newer electronic distributors contain the ignitor inside them. But you should be using the matching '86 coil as well. The early coil may not be the same and could damage the newer distributor module. Head down to Discount Import Parts and order up a coil for an '84 wagon (trust me on this) that is 4WD if your distributor is a Hitachi or 2WD if your distributor is an ND. GD

You need to use loctite on the new bolts as some of them have the threads in the block open (they are not blind holes). Just use 242 (or 248 stick) on each of them. That parts guy is an idiot. But you do have to order them seperately. A good dealership will stock a plate and screw set at all times - mine does. GD

It's like '99 before they fixed the plastic plate problem. I just replaced a leaking plastic plate on a '98 OBS. If it's metal and not leaking I wouldn't touch it. If it's plastic for some reason then replace it for sure. GD

I love my '91 SS. Don't spend your money on an NA engine - and supercharging is laughable if you are driving a 94 Legacy. Trust me - you don't have the money for it. Save your money - love the car for what it is. When you see a deal on a '91 to '94 Legacy SS 5 speed jump on it. I run in the Subaru community and when my '91 became availible from someone that got in way over his head - I simply traded my '94 Legacy wagon for it. Straight across. I got my '91 for basically $1200 - what I had into the wagon at the time. The body has 160k on it and the engine has 110k from a wrecked '94 TTW. It is an amazing machine in my opinion - far superior in build quality to the newer stuff (WRX's etc). It has it's limitations but the engine is easily good for 300 HP without changing anything but the turbo, intake/intercooler, exhaust, and a bit of tuning. With bottom end work and head changes the engine is good for 800+ HP. It is the only closed deck turbo engine made for the US market and it's 0.2 Liters larger than an early WRX engine. With a 2.5 crank and rods it's a 2.35 Liter stroker and capable of amazing amounts of power. There's no point in doing anything to your NA engine. Get something that isn't going to just break when you really stick the boost to it. That said, you can turbo an EJ22E NA block. Several folks have done it reliabily at about 4 or 5 psi boost (the 22T can easily handle 20+ psi with some tuning). It's about 200 HP or so. But that's about what a Legacy Turbo is at with just exhaust and an intercooler on stock boost - WAY less work and tuning problems. Exhaust and intercooler and slight boost increase on the SS requires NO tuning changes and will put the engine right up to 200 to 220 HP with about 1 day of work. You do the math on that one. GD

Make sure you don't just need new manifold gaskets before you go and tear off the heads. GD

While I agree, I also do a lot of for-pay wrenching and when I write up a receipt for the work I performed I still charge for all that stuff and the labor to do it. So while it may have needed to be done eventually anyway, as far as engine swaps are concerned the point is that it's ALL got to be done at once. And to not figure all that stuff into the total cost of taking a running, driving car - ripping out the drivetrain - and then putting it back in operation again..... well that would be a mistake. Not only from the perspective of potentially having to do these things before they would naturally be due for service but also because that's simply the cost of the job as a whole. Wheels up to wheels down. Just as I charge a customer for time spent driving to pick up parts - I have to consider the entire scope of the job into the cost.... so I guess that's just how I think now. And I also think that the total cost from road-worthy car brought into the garage and then back out again in a similarly road-worthy state is the spirit of the question being posed. That is going to include incidental maintenance expenses - which will drive up the total cost of the job. If I agreed to do an engine swap for someone, but neglected all these incidental maintenance costs accociated with the job in my quote - I would probably be out a lot of money off the top of my labor bill. GD

Excelent - glad you solved it. Graphite does wonders for locks. The horn fuse does blow easily if you short it. Same with radio fuses that in later fuel injected engines also happen to supply power to the ignition system while not being labeled as such . GD

It all adds up if you want to do the job right. You get a used engine - great. Now you need a timing belt/water pump kit for it ($121 off ebay), and the knock sensor is cracked plus you might as well put in a new O2 sensor and of course you want a new OEM thermostat so you head down to the dealer for those. Then it needs plugs and wires - no use going with used parts there. May as well do the valve cover gaskets.... and lets not forget the rear timing belt covers that probably broke on dissasembly . Even a free engine is going to cost $300 by the time it's all said and done. Then there's all the new clutch parts - he used OEM XT6 components - not cheap. But it's a weekend racer so better to go with quality there. There was like $80 in all the 5 speed shifter bushings - but who wants a bowl of oatmeal for a shifter? I can only assume that people are doing really poor swaps with junk components because even *I* can't do the job *right* for free. Sure I could do it - but I wouldn't trust the thing to drive anywhere outside my AAA towing range . And that would be lame IMO. And no one has even listed the cost of oil/filter, coolant, hoses (radiator and heater core at a minimum), etc. I doubt many of the people here would consider going used with stuff like that yet no one considers those as part of the cost for some reason. GD

Sorry to rain on your tootsie roll parade but there are very *few* people that would dream about owning one of those - especially at that unholy price. That's just nuts. Seriously?!? $2700 for an EA82T? It's not April fools is it? Why didn't you people tell me it was still April!?!?! Sorry dude, but you got took. I have bought near-mint gen 1 Legacy's for under $1000 and I just bought a '97 with 147k on it and very clean for $1700. GD

No - I don't think having it upside down would make any difference. My autometer sender is sideways and it works fine. Definitely check the ground - just do a Ohm reading between the sender case and the negative battery terminal or the engine block, etc. GD

No - the EA82 distributor will not work without heavy modification and even then only one's from carbed engines would work. You would have to change the drive gear and cut off one of the mounting tabs as well as enlarge the slot. It can be done but it usually isn't unless it's with an SPFI conversion. GD

Pull the whole lock mechanism and take it to the locksmith. It will be cheaper than a new one if the dealer even still has them. You might have a switch problem as well..... GD

Just try a used one. That's about the only way to easily check them. They are not cheap new. I'm pretty sure that's your problem though. Given what you are saying. You can check for spark when this happens - get a spark checker and keep it handy. Though with the intermittant nature of the problem it might not be all that helpful. Does the tach jump around at all? Check the distributor for shaft play. It should be pretty tight. If it's sloppy like throwing a hot-dog down a hallway () then you should replace the distributor or have it rebushed. GD

Sounds like a bad distributor module to me. I've seen similar problems from bad modules. Will start and drive for a short time then just die out and have to wait till they feel like working again. GD

I did a 36" stainless braided line from the pump to the fenderwall where I mounted an autometer sender and it works great (EA81)..... Is the sending unit grounded? If you used hose that doesn't have any metal in it that would insulate it from the block - it needs to be grounded so it can provide a resistance to the ground path and thus give your gauge something to read. GD

It really depends a lot on how long you want to wait for the "deals" to come your way and your personal skill level with fabrication and wireing. If you have a couple years to wait for enough deals to come along, you could conceivably do it for just the cost of the parts you *have* to buy (for most people the adaptor and flywheel) - that's assuming you want to use a bunch of used and cast-off parts and get freebies where you can - I was given a '93 Legacy wagon a couple years ago for example. Free and clear just needed an alternator. Would have cost me nothing to part that out for it's 160k engine - I chose not to because the car was pretty nice. Then on the other end of the spectrum - renob123 (Jacob - I'm not picking on you - it's just an example) has spent a LOT of money getting the EJ22 and 5 speed D/R into his Brat and almost none of that went to me - I helped for the learning experience of it. He is well over the $2000 mark (maybe over $3000?) for the conversion - when you consider the flywheel and adaptor, engine, transmission, 5 speed EA81 cross-member, wireing harness, having the harness stripped by ShawnW, reseal and timing belt/water pump components, replacment failed parts, clutch parts, new shift bushings, custom exhaust, etc, etc and the list goes on and on and on. There are really just too many variables. At the end of the day - I doubt *I* could do it *right* for less than a grand on my own personal vehicle. You could get all the major mechanical parts for free - they still need maintenance work/parts done to them prior to installation (IMO), and there are lots and lots of incidental costs that just keep adding up - hoses, belts, fluids, etc. And if you don't have access to the equipment to machine flywheels and build adaptor plates you are looking at expenses there that really can't be removed from the equation. GD

Get a code scanner - it's less than $50. Check ebay. 87 Octane shouldn't cause a problem with a non-turbo. All EJ engines have knock sensors and should run just fine on 87. That in itself should not cause a CEL. GD