GeneralDisorder

Everything about you, your car, and especially your post indicates you should find a different car. You'll have nothing but problems with the RX. Sell it while it's still relatively untouched and get something you don't have to mess with. Sorry to be blunt my friend, but a finicky 88 RX is not the right car for someone who's 17 and just starting out. It's a good car for folks that have other vehicles, who can devote the time and money required to keep them going, and who doesn't have to rely on it to get to work/school. They also get terrible mileage. Get a motorcycle. - you'll be better off. GD

Nothing on exhaust studs. Red is for stuff that you don't want to take apart again without a torch. It has to be heated to release. Blue just requires some torque but holds things well. I don't find a lot of uses for the red loctite thread locker - mostly I use 248 (blue in stick form), and 545 which is for locking shaft sleeves and other close tollerance fitted machine surfaces. Also sometimes find use for the anerobic flange sealant. We have caulking gun sizes of it at work - boy they think a lot of that stuff - $178 a tube! GD

I don't generally torque them. Just remember to use locktite blue (242 or 248) on the bolt threads as they are open to the crankcase on the backside. Go with about 25 Ft/lbs if you want a torque value from outer space. It's not critical. GD

The ONLY company that makes EA oil pumps is Atsugi/Unisia/Paraut. All oil pumps from all vendors are the same. Some are branded with the FHI emblem, but they all come from the same place. I get mine through Discount Import Parts (http://www.discountimportparts.com/) - geniune OEM for half the price. Just bought an EA81 pump for $90 - their primary supplier was out of stock ($55) so they had to go through a Subaru OEM supplier in California. Still a lot cheaper. GD

Remove the flywheel and drive it out from the inside with a brass drift. That's how they are supposed to be done anyway. GD

Excellent - so we have narrowed the problem to a non-feedback issue (for the most part), and there's good evidence that the choke is at fault. Taking your whole situation into account, I think that possibly you have a bad choke bi-metal spring. Now the downside is that these are difficult to find in junk yards because they are nearly always broken, and they are ridiculously expensive from the dealer (somewhere north of $100). Pull it off and take a look. I think you'll find either that the spring is broken near the tip where it's supposed to form a hook, or you will find that it looks burnt, etc. I would pick up an $8 manual choke conversion kit from you local auto parts store and convert it to an old-school pull style choke on the dash. I did it with the Hitachi on my Hatch and it works just fine. As for disconnecting the duty solenoids.... your mileage will go in the toilet. It ran cooler because it went rich when you disconnected them. The added fuel cools the combustion - this same technique is used in turbocharged applications and is the reason turbo cars use more fuel when common sense says they should use less. To some extent the added fuel gave you more power (at a huge cost in fuel consumption I assure you), and running cooler allows the timing to advance without any ping. So your symtoms are right in line with a very rich mixture. To overcome that you would have to rejet the carb to non-feedback specs. Basically you would need a donor Hitachi that came from a non-feedback (non-california 4WD model) to pull the jets and air bleeds from - but you could just swap the whole carb a lot easier. GD

This is going to be very difficult to diagnose. You only get one shot to reproduce the symptoms every 10 minutes - that's a bummer. Well - I am of the opinion that you should try disconnecting the duty solenoids and seeing if anything changes. With them disconnected the ECU has NO control over the carb whatsoever. You're mileage will go in the toilet for as long as you have them disconnected, but this is just a test to see if for some reason the duty solenoids are being opened too much durring hot starts. If that changes nothing with respect to your hot start issue then you can safely assume that the feedback system has nothing to do with the problem directly (indirectly it does - It's existance in the first place changes the vacuum system in fundamental ways that are probably driving this issue) - in other words none of the "electronics" or "sensors" would be at fault. It could be a thermo-valve or thermo-vacuum valve that isn't controlled directly by the ECU. By FAR the best solution to all your problems (high idle, hot starting, acne, sinusitus, mother-in-law, etc) is to install a Weber. The price you will pay if you look for a deal is nothing compared to the satisfaction the little guy will give you, the performance increase, and the simplicity. I gaurantee you will spend less on a Weber and installing it than you are spending now wasting your time with an antique electronic carburetor. Your time is more valuable than a couple hundred bucks on something that actually works - and look at it this way - you don't HAVE to sell the carb when you sell the car. Keep the old system completely intact - buy a used manifold and pull the whole thing off in one swoop. That way you can put the Hitachi feedback back on it when you sell the car and either recoupe your money by selling the Weber to another member here or on eBay, or just put in on the next car you buy. GD

Beyond the basic work of swapping parts, lets not forget that one way or another you will need an alignment. If that means doing it yourself with some string or one of the gizmo's from harbor frieght it will have to be addressed. You will have a new rack and new cross-member so things will not line up the same as they did before. Replace the steering rag joint with a urethane one for a VW bug. EMPI makes them - about $8. GD

It's been retro-fitted then. Non-turbo Brat's did not come with power steering - ever. GD

If the CTS signals to the ECU that the engine is cold, then the ECU supplies too much fuel. The mixture is too rich, and the engine is hard to start. Now - that's an extreemely generic statement. It applies to a lesser or greater degree depending on how bad the sensor is, and how much control over the fuel system the ECU in question has. In the case of the SPFI for example, it would probably start and run very poorly if the CTS reported a cold engine when it was hot due to the position of the idle air control valve, the cold enrichment being applied, etc. But the ECU would likely figue out what was going on pretty quickly, ignore the CTS sensor input, illuminate the check engine lamp, and go on it's merry way using a suitable replacement sensor input - it pretty much knows the engine is warm once the O2 begins reporting so it can safely enter closed loop operation. Cold starting is more likely to be a problem as most times the CTS's fail to higher resistance rather than lower (indicateing the engine is hot when it is cold). In the case of the feedback carb the ECU doesn't have enough control over the idle circuit, and has no control at all over the choke, so it can't really cause difficulty in hot starting that I can see.... and if it's not throwing a CTS code then I can't see any reason to mess with it. The EA82 feedback is a mess of a system. You may have a thermo-vacuum-valve that is opening a vacuum leak when hot and closing it when cold. What symptoms do you have when it's difficult to start? Is it flooding or starving for fuel? Does it run rough? Are you pumping the pedal? Etc? GD

Rockauto should list them. They are listed many different ways so you'll have to dig - and make sure there's a picture listed. Why do you think it's bad? The ECU will throw a code for an out of range CTS. GD

The only Brat's that came stock with power steering are the turbo Brat's (83 and 84). If that's what you have then you are going to need some other stuff as well - the turbo Brat's power steering system is more like an EA82 power steering system than it is the EA81. GD

There's as many causes of the TOD as there are stars in the sky. That's awesome that you got your's to stop, but that same fix is not going to work for everyone. GD

First EA81's don't have overflow's. The engine warms up, coolant expands, and any extra is allowed to dump out on the ground. For this reason there will always be an airspace at the top of the radiator to allow for expansion when warm. I advise this because it is important to notice that there is air in the coolant at all times. Air dissolves into the coolant at the top of the radiator, and can form bubbles as it is churned up by the water pump. Now - there are several places you can be losing coolant. 1. Leaks. Upper and lower radiator hoses, thermostat housing gasket, carb base gaskets, manifold gaskets, heater core hoses, carb base heater hose (from heater core supply tube), heater core, heat control valve, and head gaskets (external). It's important to note that a leak of the size you are experiencing will usually NOT show up on the ground if it's near the engine. They will often evaporate due to engine temperatures before they hit the ground. The best way to look for leaks is with coolant dye and a black light - both are cheap. It's also helpful to use a hand pump system pressurizer so you don't have to run the engine. It is far, far more likely that you have a leak than a bad head gasket. 2. Internal leakage. Head gasket, manifold and carb base gaskets (burning it), and freeze plugs (into the oil). Head gaskets will often pressurize the cooling system resulting in VERY bad things - like splitting a radiator seam or blowing the tank off the end of the heater core - or blowing old hoses. You can do a compression test, but it may not show you anything useful if the leak is small. The best course of action is to do a hydrocarbon test of the coolant. That will tell you if cylinder compression is entering the cooling system. The cylinders have a LOT more pressure in them than does the 13 psi cooling system so exhaust gasses will always enter the cooling system if you have a compression leak into it...... If you had a leaking freeze plug you would probably know it already as the oil would be milkshake. GD

Now that you have a main board to sacrifice, it's actually not bad. Mine was a month-long nightmare because I wanted an '80 cluster with the vertical-moving needles . Turns out the circuits are different and the '80 cluster needed diodes added to some of the lighting circuits to properly interface with the car. You shouldn't have that problem. What I did was to cut the round plug's out of the main board and used them along with the connectors from an analog vehicle's cluster harness to build three adaptor harnesses. You will notice that the pressed-in pins of the digi's main board are convienently hollow on the backside. A bit of electronics flux and you can solder a wire inside of each pin very neatly. I used bullet connectors - all male on one side, and all female on the other side - to proto-type the harness. That allowed me to swap wires around if I needed to. I made color and pin charts for the two wireing schematics and I used small peices of heat shrink to color my wires from each plug. Two bits per wire of different colors gave me about 20 combinations with the various colors of heat shrink I had availible at the time..... now I would probably just cut lengths of color striped wire at work as I have access to it - or use 3M wire number tape. I had neither at the time though. Just keep it all organized and make charts of each wire, the circuits it feeds, and what color's and pins are associated with it on both the vehicle side and the analog side of the harness. If you need scans of any of the FSM stuff let me know. I have not only the FSM's but also the wireing troubleshooting book. GD

I'm actually in West Linn, and I work in Tigard near the Home Depot. GD

Yes - it's that way to allow room for the lip seal. Sounds like they are correct then. GD

I've used bolts - if you do it right it's not that critical. What's important is to NEVER allow the weight of the pipe to hang from the studs/bolts/etc when installing or removing the y pipe. That's what does them in every time. GD

That's just stupid. Go get a heli-coil kit. Leave the ghetto mechanicing in south america where it belongs. GD

Why do you say you are "better off"? I've always done it this way and have yet to see a problem with it. I see the reason they designed the procedure with the 360 rotation, but without belt covers it really doesn't matter as long as you have a good eye for straight up and down. GD

You would have to remove the sprockets to check if they are on in the correct order. It just so happens that they are 1/2 tooth offset - which could EASILY account for a lot of people's belts not lining up. The sprockets look identical except one has a groove for the front crank lip seal.... I bet it's also a big source of the "poor performace and mileage" reputation that EA82's have. GD

The cable may be stretching - you may want to just replace it in lieu of being stranded if it breaks (unless you know how to drive without a clutch - most people don't...). Haynes manual will give you a basic overview, yes. Read the procedure for replacing the cable and then ask any further questions you have here. If you like - send me a PM. You can pick up a cable (dealership ~$20) and stop by my place this weekend and I'll give you pointers on doing it. Looks like you are real close to me. GD

Really old EA81's and EA71's didn't have the spacers - the ASV's injected into the top of the cylinder head. Either way, it likely won't fit an XT due to the differeces in the size/shape of the dust sheilds and clearance with the cross-member. It's also almost certainly a smaller diameter - 87 XT is 95 HP MPFI - 82 GLF is 73 HP. GD

Have you removed and cleaned ALL the plastic T's and connectors as well as both valve covers? If there is any carbon blockage (there always is) you will suck oil. If there is oil in your airbox, you NEED to replace the PCV filter (white, scotchbrite looking thing). They are like $3 or less from the dealer.... get one and buy oil/air filters as well as an OEM PCV valve. Aftermarket are widely known to cause problems with sucking oil like that. The spring rate in them is wrong or something. It's best, considering you have questions about all the little bits and peices, as well as a feedback carb, to buy a factory service manual. Post in the wanted section, check ebay, or order from your dealer. GD

Make sure you don't have a leaky coolant hose or manifold gasket first. EA81's rarely blow head gaskets and I'll wager your's are fine. GD