GeneralDisorder

Yeah - if you have have the 2x2 tubing to use as braceing between the blocks go for it. At least with the thin material it will make welding easier as there is pretty much no prep required other than to remove the paint. I don't know which is worse - the sheering forces, or the compression forces with respect to the engine cross-member blocks. The one's I witnessed didn't seem to have a problem with sheer so much as just compression from the weight comming down on them when the front end would bounce. You could also put "wings" on the blocks - just some strips of flat-bar that turn the vertical cross-section into a "T" shape. That would help keep them from bowing outward. GD

Just call up your local bearing house and have them check stock on the 6207-2RS-C3's. You need two per wheel. Usually about $5 to $10 each. GD

It's probably corrosion someplace - the ignition switch could be the culprit as well as the connections on the back of the gauge cluster where the volt gauge bolts to the circuit board. If you meter says 14.2 off the back of the alt you should be fine. The alt feeds directly to the positive side of the fusible links, which feed the battery. You can check the voltage drop across the circuit from the alt to the battery - just put your meter on the positive battery terminal and the back of the alt - if you get more than 0.1 volts then you should address the poor connections between the alt and fusible links or the battery and fusible links, or the battery terminal itself. With the gauge reading low, it likely means that some of your accesories that receive their power through the ignition switched circuits could be getting low voltage. GD

Yep - clutch cable about to snap. GD

I understand that you don't agree with some of my methods but to argue that he should learn for himself and make his own mistakes ignores the primary function of this forum - which is to help people NOT to make mistakes. He can choose to not post here and "learn for himself". IMO, posting here on the USMB is a consent to hear opinions on a subject - yours and mine. GD

So I'm rediculous.... but we are saying the same thing. How does that work? At any rate - to recap the consensus here: Reinforce or replace. Wheeling it the way you have it now, while it may work for a short time, is probably ill-advised. You stand a good chance of breaking something - not that this isn't inevitable with wheeling a Subaru, but at least try to forsee it and build to avoid it. That way maybe you actually get to spend some time having fun rather than just fixing or towing your machine. Try to avoid what I did - first time out with my wagon I went maybe 20 feet into a mud hole and it never moved again till it was towed back to Qman's place and the engine pulled out for a clutch job. :-\ GD

What's the alignment like? GD

Just install a Weber - you'll want it with the lift anyway. The EA82 Hitachi's are really boring - very sluggish - dangerously so with a lift. A Weber will make it a whole different car. GD

Primarily because with a single peice shaft you have fewer moving parts - less to fail. Stock EA82 two-peice units are not serviceable without modification and in some parts of the country they are very scarce in the used market as well. Add to this the cost of a replacement stock assembly at somewhere around $600 to $800 and you can see why people would rather pay ~$150 for a new shaft that has serviceable u-joints, etc. The price for converting a stock shaft to serviceable joints runs about the same. It's an economic decision more than anything. Here in the NW where used shafts are plentiful and rarely fail due to our lack of rust - we just run the two-peice unless there's a need to do a one-peice because of size limitations (EA81 hatch with a 5 speed for example). GD

Yeah - you are right. I just looked at it again - forgot about the 3rd wire . GD

Interesting - on the harness I just installed the remote sense lead was simply connected right to the white lead about 6" down from the alt. That was how it was wired from the factory. This was a 90 or 91 harness - maybe different from yours? I agree that closer to the main junction would be better but apparently Subaru didn't deem it all that important for some reason. Glad you got it working and the new alt fixed it up. I was pretty sure from your description that you were dealing with a bad part. That's super frustrating to have a bad part while doing a major wiring transplant since you are always second-guessing your installation. GD

They were crushed down about 1/2" or so - but they were 3/16" and an EA81 is lighter than your's. 1/8" is *really* thin. I can easily bend 1/8" mild steel with a small hammer and a vise. I don't think they will hold up to much - though at least they won't loosen since you didn't through-bolt them. If it were me - I wouldn't wheel it hard at all with those. As long as you don't drop the front end real hard it will be alright for a while. The biggest problem with EA front suspension off-road is the lack of dampening - you hit something hard enough or get enough air under the front and you'll bend the struts where they enter the knuckle. An additional shock in front of the strut helps a ton. But in your case your engine cross-member blocks will crush even before the struts bend. GD

Either you need an O/A torch to heat it with, or knock the spindle out of the trailing arm and work on it on the bench. Dissasemble the joint and pry the grease plug from the bottom of the cup - then you can pound out the spindle with a brass drift. GD

Are you trying to replace a ball-joint or was there other work performed that required it's removal? What's the story? GD

That would do for the weight and the neccesary extra large tires to get the approach/departure angles decent. Still doesn't solve the long wheel-base nor the size of the vehicle. Not without major cut/weld hillbilly style body work. Any of the side-starter transmissions with the right adaptor plate/flywheel/clutch combo. The most popular is of course the 5 speed D/R from the '85 to '89 GL's. GD

Sounds like a good plan. I think you have just been burned by the tendancy to think that it must be an installation problem vs. a bad part. But I think in this case the alt actually is shot - maybe it was borderline and the battery was low enough to send it over the edge. GD

Not neccesary. The bolts for the rocker's come out through access holes in the frame rail. They may not have known about those or they might be talking about EA82's where the valve cover bolts are difficult to access without jacking the engine up. These days everyone has a 10mm ratcheting wrench though and that makes even those easy to do without jacking the engine. GD

Have it zinc plated instead of painting it. Powder coat would probably hold also. Zinc is pretty cheap and you can get together a bunch of stuff and have it all done for maybe $100. GD

There is no timing on the oil pump. Highly reccomend you replace the cam and crank seals and reseal the oil pump while you are in there. It's very little extra work or expense and with a turbo EA82 the seals are bound to be cooked by this age. It would be pretty silly not to do them. GD

Hardly - most will agree that the EA81 hatch is the best choice for a trail machine. It takes the least amount of modification, and has the shortest wheel-base and lightest weight of any model ever made. The EA82 wagons are easily 500 lbs heavier and have a very poor departure angle. In stock form they have worse power-to-weight than any of the EA81's. The EA82 wagon *can* be a good machine - but it takes more lift, bigger tires, and more HP to do it. And then you have an overall larger machine that's harder to manuever. My first lifted rig (still own it) was a lifted EA81 wagon. It's too heavy and too long. As for the EA81's breaking axles - that's entirely dependant on how they are setup. The EA82's have the same axle joints in the rear - they swap back and forth easily between the two shafts. I've used EA82 rear axle joints on my EA81 wheeler for years. Axle breakage is a function of the speed and angle of the joint - nothing more. GD

Exactly - my point is simply that they need to be reinforced somehow. There's a couple ways to accomplish it, but 1/8" wall 2x4x2 blocks will not cut it on their own. GD

It's going to depend on what kind of load the battery was putting on the alt. Generally speaking, the battery is just another load like a fan, light, etc. But if the battery is low - especially if it's really low or dead - it can and will draw the FULL capacity of the alt. That is very hard on them - they are designed to run accesories and to top-off the battery - not to charge the battery. Yeah - you should have alternator voltage on the BW wire. That would seem to indicate a bad regulator as well and if it were hooked up properly to the dash you would see the charge indicator lamp come ON as the voltage at the battery would be higher than the voltage off the BW wire on the alt..... which is what you would expect with a burnt regulator. I would replace the alt first - charge the battery fully before installing it. Forget about the wireing on the car side - just use the EJ's wireing. Yank the EA regulator and run the EJ's large white output wire off the back of the alt straight to the fusible links. Then the BW wire through a lamp on the dash and back to positive side of the fusible links. I wouldn't even scew with the gauge cluster warning lamp - I would just mount a new one somewhere. GD

There are things you can do - if you are using bolts that go all the way through the blocks you could sleeve the bolts. Get some tubing that the bolts will fit inside of and then drill the holes in the blocks to the OD of the tubing. Then you can cut lengths of the tubing and weld them to the inside of the blocks. I'm not as much of a fan of this as it still uses expensive, long, metric bolts that tend to flex with the block and can tear the capture nuts out of the relatively thin body sheet metal they are welded to. But that's how most of the early lifts were designed and it worked well as long as you get under it and tighten all your lift block bolts after every off-road run. A lot of the PK lifts were built this way and members are still running them. We do still hear of the occasional capture nut being ripped loose though (mostly after folks fail to re-tighten stuff). You could also box-in one open side of the block, or half of each open side. That would allow enough room to slip a socket in and tighten the bolts but would increase the strength of the blocks by a lot. I can't find the pictures that we took of the failed blocks on my friends wagon - it was quite a few years ago. The problem area is the engine cross-member. It was an EA81 wagon with 28" tires and a 4" lift. The lift was built jointly by Mudrat and a friend of his - the story goes that John told him to use 1/4" wall tube, but he wanted to save money and bought the 3/16" wall instead. He sold the car to my friend who beat it hard. When we swapped the lift over to a new wagon (old one was a lost cause after a dunking in the ocean), we found the lift blocks to be very unhappy about the stress they had been put under. We had to replace them. GD

Looks good - functional. Although - why is it that you were burning out stock switches? I would be looking for a reason as that might indicate some other wiring problems. If there are too many circuits comming off the ACC side of the switch (too much current through it), maybe it's time to off-load some of that work onto relays. I happen to be doing an EJ swap in a fellow member's Brat right now and we found the legendary "burnt pink plug" due to poor wiring, leaky glass, etc. We are off-loading all the EJ's wireing as well as his stereo and probably anything else we can easily move to one of these (and we replaced the ignition switch and repaired the body harness as well): http://www.summitracing.com/parts/PRF-70217/ It can run 7 circuits - they are all relay controlled (so virtually no extra load on the ignition switch), and has auto-reset circuit breakers on the battery leads (so no need for extra fusible links, etc). I mention that one since you obviously have a few extra circuits going on in your rig there...... GD

Yep - the EA82 rear sway's are cheaper and just as effective. GD