GeneralDisorder

Anti-seize isn't enough for those silly things. Zip-ties are easier, quicker, and you know they will come off. GD

Don't install the outer cover bolts - just use zip-ties. GD

You would have to find washers exactly the right size to fit the shaft and no larger in OD than the spacer I show in the pictures - in theory yes it could work. In practice you will never find the right size - you would have to make them which would be a bigger pain in the butt than just changing the spacer. I can think of a dozen ways to shorten the spacer - do you have a hacksaw and a vice? How about an angle grinder and some vice grips? Hell give me an hour and a course draw-file. Dremel tool? It took me about 5 minutes to shorten that spacer - I used one of those 10" circular bench sander's from harbor frieght. This is the one - got it on sale for like $39 IIRC: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=47404 You just have to get the job done - you only need to make one. Even if it takes your entire saturday - it would still be worth it. GD

I posted a more comprehensive post about it with pictures.

Well - they came stock with t-type spares anyway so it's no big loss. I guess I have forgotton as I run SPFI on everything but my hatch and that doesn't carry a spare as i never go far from home with it. GD

Why aren't you able to carry a spare with the Weber in place? I don't beleive I've had that issue. Perhaps my mind is going but I'm not seeing why it wouldn't fit. GD

You used the wrong timing marks for the belt if you lined it up with 0. There are seperate marks for ignition (the numbered marks with the 0, etc), and valve timing. The valve timing marks are three lonely hash marks all by themselves about 1/4 of a revolution away from the ignition marks IIRC. You need to reinstall both belts using the valve timing marks. Only then can you time the distributor as I outlined above. And yes - often the aftermarket manuals for these are good for little more than emergency toilet paper. The factory manuals are sometimes difficult to understand due to translation issues and that may account for some of the very poor procedures I've seen in the "$20 special" parts store manuals. GD

LKQ is national now - check their web site and see if any are in your area. They bought up a chain of about 5 yards here and are killing the competition with thier low prices. Alt was $14.99 with a $5.00 core. So $20 for an afternoon of fun! GD

EA81's are factory with 50 amp alts, EA82's are factory with 55 amp alts. Most replacement EA81 alts are actually EA82 alts though so pretty much all of them are 55's by now. The stock units don't seem overly reliable and when you add a few lights and maybe a decent stereo they really don't cut it at all. As I understand it these came with all the SOHC V6 maxima's from 86 to 94. As long as it has a serpentine pulley it should be the one you want. They are mounted under the engine - accesible from behind the passenger side front wheel - just forward of that. They also have a neat tensioner bracket that I grabbed - I'm going to modify the stock EA81 alternator bracket using the tensioner system from the Maxima. GD

You REALLY need to print out the entire PDF. Seriously there's a TON more to it that I don't have time to bring over as images in order to post here. I'll give you the procedure so you have an idea as to what you need to do, but I can't copy the whole thing here. GD

Picked this up from an '87 Maxima at the yard today - these are 90 amp units. It's a Bosch reman (which I've had good luck with) - the Maxima had 282,000 miles on it . I swear if I didn't care about 4WD/AWD I would totally rock one. Loved the talking digi-dash last time I rode in one.... I digress. This pulley has got to go.... I pulled it off with my cordless impact (120 ft/lbs). They aren't tight. Looked through my box of alternators and parts and after trying a couple pulleys I found the fit I wanted in the EA82 twin-groove pulley. These are very common on EA82's with air conditioning. There needs to be a spacer behind it to space it out from the shaft's drive-end bearing race so it doesn't contact the case. The maxima alt has a pulley with a built-in spacer so you have to use the spacer that comes with the EA82 pulley. Unfortunately it's too thick. I rectified this easily by clamping it in a pair of vice-grips and running it against a belt sander. I then cleaned it up with a draw-file and lapped it as flat as I could with a peice of glass and some 120 grit sand-paper. It's slightly less than 3/8" thick now. I took off about 1/8" of material. Here's the setup I used (before I modified the spacer): And here's the spacer next to a stock one: At this point I was all ready to get to work on the wireing. I'm not a hack-wireing kind of guy so I was about to pull out the soldering iron & heat shrink to install the Maxima's deutsch style plug...... then I realized that this isn't neccesary. In fact NO modifications to the vehicle wiring are neccesary other than removing the female spade connectors from the white plastic plug they are installed in. The Maxima alt has two male spade terminals inside the deutsch connector - the stock female spade's on the harness slip right on . Even the Maxima's wireing was the same color and size. It was obvious what went where: Put the belt back on and fired it up. I got lucky at the yard - the dirty thing even works! And the output was excelent from the VR: Probably the easiest, quickest swap I've come across. WAY simpler than the GM and XT6 conversions (I've done both - XT6 requires shims on the mounting ears and I had to turn a spacer on the lathe for the pulley - GM required mount changes and wireing). And in fact it is 100% reversible since all you would need to do is reinstall the plastic plug over the spade terminals and bolt the old unit back in. Slam. Dunk. GD

As an update to this - I pulled an '87 maxima alt from the yard today. After taking off the pulley I tried out a few combinations from my alternator parts bin and came up with a pulley that works. I used the solid, two groove pulley from a later EA82 alternator - uses the exact same shaft diameter (I have need of two grooves for an upcomming EA81T power steering pump and crank pulley swap anyway). I then also had to use the spacer from behind the pulley but I had to take about 1/8" off the spacer to get the pulley on far enough to line up. No big deal - being the weekend and not wanting to go down to work to use the lathe I just clamped the spacer in my vice grips and took it to the band-sander. I made a mark all the way around and carefully sanded down to the mark. Then I smoothed it all out with a draw file in my bench vice. It bolts up with absolutely ZERO modifications to the mounting brackets on my EA81. Now I just have to do the wireing on it. I'll post pictures and a new post about it as soon as I'm done. GD

There is no differences in the basic engine gaskets - heads, intake and exhaust, valve covers, oil pan etc will all be the same. The turbo kit might include some extra gaskets that the NA kit does not. The rings may be different - that I don't know. The pistons are lower compression so it's possible they used different rings on them. GD

The D-Check is an entire procedure - including driving the car while it is in this mode so the ECU can check all it's systems. What you are using is refered to as U-Check and that's just reading the *simple* codes that the ECU already knows about. The 7 flashes is your model code - it means nothing. It's quite a bit of information - I sugest you get your PDF viewer working or maybe print it from the library so you have the whole thing to reference. GD

Well it does say "Loyale" at the top of the section he pasted on here. Much of the data does in fact mirror the FSM for the Loyale. The fuel pressure for example is exactly correct - which it wouldn't be for the EJ22 - the EJ's MPFI system runs higher pressure than 20 to 24 psi. I concluded that being the outright say the info is for a Loyale and it is *most* correct for the SPFI system given the metrics they claim.... it's a mistake at the most generous. I agree - they do tell you that often in the aftermarket manual's. I am more often dissapointed by them than not. GD

Read the PDF I linked in your other post. It will answer your questions. GD

I assume you are refering to the EA81T yes? There's a few good points about it that you noted, however it's not really a good design for modifications. Here's the drawbacks to it if you are interested: 1. Poor flowing heads - siamesed intake port like the non-turbo EA82's. 2. Weird injector design mounted ON the heads. Very difficult to upgrade if you wanted to go higher on the boost. 3. Flapper MAF and primitive ignition system - the distributor still has a vacuum advance. 4. VERY hard to find parts for. If you want performance from the EA81 you are better off building an engine using the SUB4 heads from RAM performance. It will cost you but they have proven reliable up to 200 HP with a supercharger. Better than the EA82T anyway - but very costly to build. For a car, the EJ engines are a better choice. For experimental aircraft the EA81 is an excelent choice. GD

I have one of their 115v mig boxes. Mine is a few years old - they seemingly don't make it anymore but at one time their smaller 115v unit could be configured with gas which I did. I purchased a quality 80/20 bottle and regulator (to go with my "nice" Miller that I planned on getting at a later date [and did recently]). It welds *ok* if you already know how to weld. I wouldn't sugest it for someone that's learning. The major problem I had was that the unit was designed before they switched to the push-in style tubing connectors for the gas tubing and the wire feed sheath on the gun end. I had to dissasemble the cheap thing, shorten the power lead and put on a new lug in order to get more length for the gas tubing and wire sheath. I then had to glue them into the gun head. After that ordeal it works decent. It can't weld much over 3/16" without multiple passes but I would say it was worth the $150 I paid for it - I've got my money out of it I'm sure. I put it back to flux cored wire when I got my Miller 230v unit. It's nice for repairs and friends houses or across the yard where I can't get 230v but that's about it. Their newer one's look better designed on the gun end with the push-lock tubing fittings - if you buy gas for them they do a decent job and are great for those that only occasionally weld something. As I said before though - if you are learning try to find someone to teach you that has a decent quality setup. These make learning more frustrating than it should be. GD

No - The D-Check is a special self-diagnostic mode built into your ECU. Read the SPFI section of the FSM here on my conversion write up page: http://home.comcast.net/~trilinear/EA81_SPFI_doc.html#final_thoughts It's the very last link on the page - the 1989 engine section PDF. But if you learn how to use your DMM (DVOM, whatever - most are not strictly DVOM's these days), you can test out most of the system to insure it's proper operation without ever turning on the car..... The D-Check is very useful for intermittent problems that only show up while driving, etc. GD

Sounds like a classic misfire to me. Have you tested the coil? Seriously - run a D-Check and see what you find. GD

Just so everyone is completely clear on this 93 Loyale's did not come with MPFI, so Alldata could only be talking about the SPFI system with respect to the vehicle they claim this information applies to. It is plain wrong and there's no way around it. For that matter - step 8 is also wrong as disconnecting a port that isn't doing anything will do.... nothing! GD

How far did you open the throttle - did you do this with the vacuum gauge hooked up? There should be no vacuum from that port at idle. I'll even take a picture of one for you: The port at the top is the FPR port - as you can see it is WAY above the throttle plate and as such receives a much reduced vacuum signal till the throttle plate is open quite far. That would be known as "Late Ported Vacuum". Your alldata is completely, 100% wrong with step #6. That's the problem with blindly following information sources like alldata - you are always going to be better off knowing the principle of operation of the sub-system you are testing than going by a 3rd or 4th party book. Sometimes even the FSM's are wrong. Lets not suppose anything. Lets be SURE. If you suspect the cat then cut it open and look. It would not cause an issue with engine vacuum at idle. It might cause issues under load but that wouldn't be an issue so much as a symptom and testing engine vacuum is not the way I would go about diagnosing a clogged cat. Of course you do - they aren't ported. That could be a lot of things. Have you checked for smooth operation of the throttle posistion sensor? Have you ran a D-Check on it? GD

I have to dissagree. The 22t is a better *block* simply because it's closed deck. It can get to higher HP reliably than the 22e can if you change out the heads. As far as anything below 300 HP they are pretty even though. It's got just as much coolant flow as the sand-cast 20t has - and remember the 22B impreza used the 22t block - stock with 320 HP. I wouldn't trust the open deck of the 22e to that kind of power for very long. GD

Having looked at the FSM, I see where the confusion lies. The FPR is designed to keep a constant 21 psi of effective pressure. It lowers the fuel pressure as the throttle body vacuum increases in order to keep the pressure at the injector nozzle a constant 21 psi higher than throttle body pressure (this keeps the engine from "sucking" extra fuel out of the injector nozzle - in other words the injector squirts a known quantity of fuel when it is opened for a known quantity of time under all conditions). I'm not sure what the max throttle body vacuum is as I've never tested it, but the alldata info you posted sugested 20.5 inHg. That's around 10 psi but that would mean a one-to-one ratio on the fuel pressure vs. throttle body vacuum which we have no specs on. Thus I can only say that it *might* trim the fuel pressure by as much as 10 psi (so about 11 psi on a gauge) immediately upon cracking the throttle plate open. It would probably never be that much in practice though. And it should NEVER be higher than 21 under ANY circumstances. Here's the problem - ported vacuum increases to manifold vacuum as soon as the throttle plate uncovers the port then drops with the manifold vacuum and continues to drop till it's very weak at WOT. So at WOT you would expect it to be the same 21 psi that it is at idle or close to it. Thus even if the port were blocked it would only momentarily effect the fuel sytem and it would be rich, not lean. You would be unlikely to even notice this slightly rich condition and your power would be perfectly normal at WOT. I surmise the reason you aren't seeing vacuum at the FPR's port is because you aren't cracking the throttle when you are testing it. It is my educated opinion that your fuel pressure is dead on and your issue lies entirely elsewhere. (I have also never seen one of these fail, so empirical evidence sugests it is highly unlikely). GD

I keep trying to warn people. Good choice on the ej swap. It wouldn't be so bad if there were either real performance potential in the EA82T or if it were really simple to work on.... sadly it comes in last on every single attribute you can catagorize Subaru engines into. Totally not worth the frustration. The 82's are dead in my eyes - i wont drive one even if it's free. GD