GeneralDisorder

Brakes are easily done. You might consider swapping the rear to disc's as they are plentiful in the junk yards around us and the swap is potentially easier than rebuilding the aging drums. All said and done it likely wouldn't cost any more either. There goes 3.5 minutes. Hold up just a minute there! ALL NEW?!? I'm certain you don't need that nor would you like the cost. You mean inner and outer tie rod ends right? Maybe the rag joint too? All fairly easy - should have a proper alignment done so you don't jepordize any tire warantee you might have. They are just dead. There are two behind the bumper - low tone and high tone. If they are both working they are quite loud enough. Aftermarket you could get some serious stuff if you were so inclined. Done at the same time as the brakes. 20 minutes per side on top of a brake job. If they aren't leaking or bouncy I wouldn't bother. 10 minutes. Grab an extra set at the junk yard so you can just throw them in and not have the doors apart for hours while you clean all the little bits. That's an easy job you could do yourself if you are inclined. Why are you inclined to think it leaks? What is broken. You DO NOT want to do this if there isn't a clear problem you are looking to fix. It would involve the removal of the entire dash.... for days. 5 minutes. Neither neccesary, nor reccomended. Fuses do not get old, and the links you simply inspect, check the connections and add some silicone grease. They should never require replacement. Consider swapping it to a Weber. That is the answer to your vacuum system, your power needs, and your carburetor cleaning/rebuilding concerns. Certainly wouldn't cost any more. I would agree with that. Tail light bulbs too. Have to see that one in person to get an idea of the extent. Weber - without question. That could be a number of things. Could be anything from the AC compressor/clutch going out, to the idle-up solenoid, to a bad distributor. I would have to see it. I can look at it. If you prioritize your list I could assist you with some of these things. It won't all get done overnight though - I don't have that kind of time. Perhaps you don't want to hear this, or maybe there are reasons which you have not disclosed for wanting to restore this car to something you could drive all over the US, but I have a sugestion. Buy a 1st generation Legacy. They are cheap, you'll spend far less than you will fixing all that stuff on the EA82, they have all the power you want, they are dead reliable machines, and they don't suffer from the myriad of problems the EA82's do. The EA82 is arguably, I'm sorry to say, the worst engine Subaru ever made. That's not to say that it can't be reliable and last a long, long time - it IS still a Subaru after all . But the EA82's are getting long in the tooth, the parts availibility is getting poor, and that means turning to aftermarket chinese infererior parts. At that point you might as well have a Chinese car for all the trouble they will give you. The timing belt system is primitive, as is the lubrication system and the valve train. On top of that, for all the added complexity, the carb model you have makes a dismal 84 HP - only 11 more than the EA81 did and the EA82 has a heavier body that eats up any advantage the 11 HP might have bought you. There are soooo many reasons you should get a 1st gen Legacy that I can't even list them all here. That is just a sugestion though, and if you would like help making repairs to your EA82 then I have no problem assisting with that. I could also help you find a Legacy if you are interested in looking. GD

Timing belts every 60k, water pump every 120k if you use OEM pumps. Every 60k if you use aftermarket. Test your oil pressure. If it's below 20 psi at idle when hot (radiator fan cycles) then replace the pump. Regardless do the seals and use only OEM seals. Aftermarket is fine for belts and tensioners but OEM is best for seals and gaskets. GD

If the crack is deep enough the exhaust port can crack all the way through to the coolant jacket. I've seen 4 foot gysers of coolant from engines with both head gaskets blown out. Cylinder compression is around 150 psi - more than enough to propel coolant skyward. GD

Looking over my wireing diagrams I think the component you are refering to is the ICU for the knock control unit. The ICU interfaces with the knock control unit to allow control over high-altitude spark advance. Above 1400 feet elevation it advances the timing by 5 degrees apparently. It is seperate from the ECU though, so I wouldn't think the operation of it would affect your fuel delivery unless the ECU wasn't receiving an ignition pulse. It certainly seems likely that you could bypass the whole mechanism and get the ECU to fire up the fuel injectors if you could get an ignition pulse. The ECU doesn't handle spark control as the early turbo systems used vacuum advance so you could just install a non-turbo EA81 distributor and assuming you have power to the coil you should get spark and an ignition pulse signal from the coil negative. That should get the ECU to fire off the injectors if it is otherwise functional. Have you checked the ignition relay under the passenger seat as I mentioned previously? It powers all this stuff.... And does the fuel pump run when you are cranking the starter? It should only run when cranking or seeing an ignition pulse. So if the fuel pump runs when cranking, then the ECU is turning on the fuel pump relay as it should and is likely functional but not fireing the injectors because it isn't seeing an ignition pulse. If nothing has power including the fuel pump then you have a power supply issue - something like the ignition relay under the seat. GD

As I told you before, you are not eliminateing blow by gasses. One of the byproducts of combustion is water vapor. It naturally cools and condenses in the area around the vent and mixes with oil already present there. The result is milkshake. You are also going to acidify your oil, eat your bearings, and be a very unhappy Subaru owner if you keep up this foolishness. GD

Yeah - that is too expensive for a 2WD with a bad Auto. I *might* take it if someone gave it to me. I would want to be paid if they expected me to actually do the tranny swap and make it move again. What a pain in the butt. If it were a Legacy even it would be worth it.... but not for an EA82. GD

PCV valve and lines. And remove the valve covers and clean the vent passages. GD

It's a grey area. Eventually it would get loose enough that the splines would strip out of the hub and probably be permanently damaged on the axle shaft. At which point you lose FWD and are only going to move the car under 4WD or with a tow. I've been there - it's not real cool. Still not a terribly expensive failure in the scheme of things, but one I would rather avoid. GD

Even though they are rare, we are quite familiar with your engine (I've owned two of them). It's nothing entirely out of the ordinary as Subaru continued on with a turbo system almost identical to yours from 85 to 90 using the EA82 engine - which is essentially the same but with overhead cams. The grill makes it an '84 model year. All EA81T's were automatic, and all of them have hydraulic lifters. The block is a normal EA81 with dished pistons to reduce it's comp. ratio, but the heads are quite special as they have injector bosses built into them. All Turbo Brat's were equipped with power steering and most of the other options (but not power windows ). If the original turbo hasn't been swapped out for an EA82 style water cooled turbo you should do that - it was a factory recall during the mid 80's as the oil-only turbo's were not reliable. You can pretty easily retrofit an EA82 turbo and run the coolant lines appropriately. Before you go through that, please yank out the passenger seat and check the ignition relay. It supply's power to the ECU on pin 24 and if it's on the fritz everything will go dead. Check that it clicks when you energize it and check for continuity through the contacts. GD

You can be just as screwed if you don't carry a spare coil on a '72.... it matters less what you drive and more what your know and what spares you carry. Would you go camping with no water and take the chance that you'll find some along the way? Would you visit a remote mountain pass without spare fuses? Eliminate the risk by carrying spare parts. That's one reason the SPFI is an excellent choice - it can tell you what is wrong, and parts are plentiful and accessible. A small box under the seat will carry all the spare's you need. Saying the SPFI is more likely to strand you is a specious argument because only YOU can prevent yourself from being stranded - in any car, bicycle, or on foot. YOU have to be prepared and that goes right back to my former statements about educating yourself about your equipment. GD

Replace all the bolts your over-torqued. They are stretched now and useless. They could fail if you put them in tension again even at stock torque value. GD

Carbs are 9.0:1 and are still too high comp. to use with a turbo. GD

I have a Craftsman spark plug socket that has worked fine on my EJ22E and EJ22T engines. GD

That's not neccesarily the case. The grill will give it away... the 83 would have straight horizontal louvers, and the 84 would have a honeycomb. Aside from that your problem is almost certainly not the ECU. ECU failures in Subaru's of any vintage are virtually unheard of. Beleive me - you don't want it to be the ECU either. The EA81T was only made for two years and is an extremely rare engine. What symptoms lead you to this conclusion? Just because it won't start? Does it crank? Do you have fuel? Spark? GD

Hitachi's definitely weren't horrible carbs. They have a problem being overly complex in the later years (EA82's) as they used the same carb for both feedback and non. Thus they have metering ports that require some form of external control for optimum performance. That control comes in the form of either a full feedback computer control as in the case of California models and Federal 2WD's, or it's a mess of vacuum hoses, thermo-vacuum valves, and orifices as in the case of the Federal 4WD's. This system doesn't lend itself to maintenance when those parts are rather expensive and eventually will be unavailible. The Weber in contrast has none of that. It's as simple as a carb gets and *can* have no wireing at all if you so choose. The parts will be availible forever, and they are high-quality which is often not the case with the Hitachi rebuild parts as they are not in demand and may soon be entierly unavailible. I *could* design a bolt-on SPFI system. It would sit in a water-tight box in the spare tire shelf and would need only a few wires to work. I could make it require even fewer wires by using Mega-Squirt instead of the stock ECU setup. And I may do that someday. Unfortunately I have more projects going than I have fingers and toes and that one doesn't fill any requirements that I have right now.... although it would be cool, it would also be more expensive than anyone with a need for it is likely to fork over so the market unfortunately isn't there. I would have to sell each one for $1000 to make it worth my time and effort as the MS parts alone would probably be about $600. GD

Weird post count and last poster information - I think the forum d-base ate itself on my last post . Love this wonderful internet. GD

Run a compression test. A gauge is about $10 at harbor frieght and that will tell you right away if something is wrong beyond the bolt-on stuff at the top layer. If you have bad/weird compression, pull the outer belt covers and look for limp belts. Turn the engine over with a socket and breaker bar and make sure the belts actually rotate (the teeth can shear away without them breaking). If everything looks good on the compression in all 4 cylinders move to fuel and ignitions systems. Check for spark - if you have it move on to fuel - if you don't stop and find out why. Timing belts and water pumps require no special tools. Just regular hand tools and the willingness to read a manual. GD

Yeah - but the used compressor market is a different beast. That just indicates how well a product keeps it's value. People are willing to pay more even for a used Quincy because they know they can do an annual service on it and have basically new machine. I doubt you could even get any significant parts for the 20 year old Craftsman - their business model doesn't require supporting things that far out. Buy a 20 year old Quincy, and in anther 20 years when it's 40 years old you'll still be able to get service parts for it. I just ordered parts for a 1965 QR-370 that's going in our rental fleet after being owned by a local parks department since the early 80's. It was making 60 CFM @ 125 psi when I tore it down . GD

I'm pretty old-school myself actually. Ran a lot of carbs and still have a Weber on my hatch. It's not a matter of liking wires and sensors and such - it's a matter of wanting what fuel injection offers and then taking an hour or two to read through the factory service manual and get acquainted with the system. The SPFI is actually quite simple - it comes from an era where fuel injection was, by it's very nature, so much more efficient than carbs, that it didn't need anything "extraeneous" to satisfy the bunny hugger's. It consists of only half a dozen sensors, all of which are easily tested with a DMM in minutes. No special tools are required to make use of it's self-diagnostic system. It neatly compensates for engine wear by it's very nature. Rather than trying to force feed the engine what your seat-of-the-pants dyno thinks it needs, it receives feedback in the form of airflow, temperature, and exhaust oxygen content and gives the engine precisely what IT wants. Change to a better exhaust, or a different cam profile and NO tuneing is required. The engine will get exactly what it needs, all the time, no fuss. I gaurantee that the SPFI system will outlast any carb. No (non feedback) carb out there can compensate for engine wear, and being mechanical they will naturally break down faster. The SPFI system is well known to last 250k+ without ANY failures. I understand your unwillingness to change, but give it a chance and learn something new in the process. I like carbs too, but SPFI brings things to the table that no carb can compete with. Performance and economy with virtually no maintenance or tuning. One has to appreciate that and by all rights any gear head worth his salt should immediately want to know more. GD

The hatch can't use a two-peice due to the length. But I prefer the two peice on everything but the hatchback. The joints can be replaced with serviceable units (for a toyota), and the two peice gives better clearance under lifted rigs. There are also tons and tons of them to be had in yards in the NW so there is little reason for me to spend the money on a one peice. It's got no advantages for me. One peice units are fine also as long as you don't exceed 15 degrees on the u-joints (unlikely anyway). GD

I don't have any EA82 manifolds or I would take you up on that. But generally they aren't too expensive from a yard. Have you considered just swapping the carbbed car to SPFI? It's actually quite easy on the EA82's since there's no modifications neccesary - everything just bolts together and you run a few wires and fuses. No more difficult than installing a stereo really. GD

More likely you have a partial short in the wire TO the idle cut solenoid. It cuts the idle circuit when it does NOT get power. The wire on the end of the solenoid is often freyed with broken insulation. GD

What's wrong with your SPFI? Beleive me - you don't want the Hitachi. And it isn't just a matter of bolting it on. The electrical and fuel systems have to be changed to support a carb. The SPFI fuel pump puts out 50 psi dead-head pressure. Carbs want 2 to 3 psi. GD

Well - they flashed it and the GF says it's better now. So it could have been a software issue. I'll know better when I drive it and check it out myself. GD

I wonder how much of that is related to straight mechanical design changes though. Early improvments like the 2.2 design change in 96/97, and head/valve designs. It is amazing though I know what you mean. I think it's mostly related to the ability of the huge/improved catalytic converters to burn off the stuff from running lean. Fuel burns more cleanly at richer mixtures than an engine actually needs at cruise so in the past they have had to hold back leaning the engines out to avoid excessive tailpipe emissions - the afterburning systems were not advanced enough to handle a fully leaned out cruise mixture. At least those are my theories on the matter. Turbo's are always poor on gas though - extra fuel just for cooling. Even the new WRX's aren't that great compared to the NA base Imp. GD