GeneralDisorder

Corvallis is outside the DEQ boundary and will not require an emissions test. The VIN inspection (if they bother - often they do not on very old vehicles such as yours) will be $7 and is performed by a DMV employee. They walk out to the car and look at the VIN on the dash - nothing more. In other words - you don't need to make any changes to the car at all. GD

Front crank seal, cam seals, and oil pump seals are likely. Just do them all - you'll find the culprit in the process. Running the oil pump wouldn't do any good unless the engine was turning. Best thing is just to do it all. GD

Not worth it for 40 HP and an unreliable engine. EJ22 will be easier, and will give you around 60 HP without the trouble of the turbo. Either way the wiring is the trouble for most folks. There's some that have converted the EJ22's to run carburetors. Do a search. GD

Verify the temp with another gauge before you do anything. DMM with a thermocouple is useful, or a laser temp gauge. GD

You just need a refrigeration condensor that suits your size needs. Hell - you could build your own from AC copper tubing if you really wanted to. Find someone in your area that can work on refrigeration and enlist their assistance or pick up a book on the subject. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out what you need based on the sizes of the old unit, etc. GD

At the drivers side kick panel attached above the hood release cable bracket you will find the fuel pump control unit (or revolution sensor). It needs a tach signal to run the pump after it primes for a few seconds. GD

If you know what you are doing and have done it before - a few hours. If not - give it a weekend to install and tune it properly. GD

No one said anything about a beam style suspension. What we said was torsion "TUBE". The bars are encapsulated in a single tube. And no - it doesn't have springs. That's what the torsion bars are for. It has external shocks and an internal (adjustable on the 4WD's) torsion bar assembly. GD

32/36 DGV. Look for them on Ebay - often listed as VW Weber's. If you get familair with the terms used around the various communities to describe the same basic carb you can often get a good deal on them. Anything under $100 for one in good condition (probably needing a cleaning and gasket replacement) is a good deal. Figure about $200 or a bit more if you find one, rebuild it, buy the adaptor, and jet it yourself. About $400 will get you the complete kit from Redline. It's overpriced IMO, but works for a lot of folks that don't know carbs real well. There's also the SPFI swap if you prefer fuel injection and aren't scared of some wiring: http://home.comcast.net/~trilinear/EA81_SPFI.html GD

You are mistaken thinking this would "simplify" the swap. It would be a nightmare for a number of reasons. A full understanding of what is going on with the EJ carb/distributor swaps would help you understand. Hint: You can't just use ANY distributor. GD

EA81 Hatch. There's really no comparison. GD

A Weber sounds like your speed to me. 32/36 DGV - same as much of the VW world uses. Turbo or Supercharging, while possible, wouldn't go far without eating your transmission, then the engine, and ultimately your wallet as well. VW guy do this stuff all the time - sure. But at great cost in both money and reliability. Be happy you have a reliable 63 HP. GD

No - it doesn't. The torsion bars themselves (inside the tube) are independant. There's a seperate bar for each trailing arm. They have nothing to do with each other. That's why it's called "independant suspension" GD

The bar is connected to two points on each arm rather than the conventional arrangment of one point on each arm and two points on the body. Actually the point of the sway bar is to limit the amount of difference in the travel of the two arms. If one goes up the sway forces the other one to match - and so forth. This keeps the car from tilting as the only way that can happen is if one arm is up and the other one down. Going into a corner the outside arm will compress and the inside will extend. The sway bar causes the outside arm to exert a compression force on the inside, and the inside exerts a pulling force on the outside. The bigger the bar the more it tends to keep them level with each other. GD

At least as far back as '82 - I've seen them. GD

Some did - upper model GL's, all GL-10's, and all Turbo's. Only the Turbo Brat had PS. No other Brat came with it stock. GD

Weber kits are around $400 SPFI is whatever you can get the parts for - usually around $200 or so from a yard. GD

Tighter than you can get it with an impact actually. By the book it has to be 150 ft/lbs. 200 to 250 with a 3/4 drive breaker bar and a 4 foot cheater is where I stop. The cone washer under the nut is worn out - probably very badly at this point. Possbily the hub, and perhaps the splines on it and the axle as well. When these are allowed to loosen repeatedly all of these items can be damaged. You'll need to take it all apart, clean, and carefully inspect each peice for wear. I'll tell you right now you need a new cone washer and probably the hub it mates into as well. On a carb.... wouldn't hurt anything. The flow rate through them is low so as long as it runs it's fine. GD

Yeah - that won't hurt it any. Still - put up a wanted post for an EA82 sway - people are always upgrading the OEM's on their RX's and such with the XT6 version.... shouldn't be too hard to find one. GD

Did you completely dissasemble the oil pump and check the internals? What did you check, and against what specs? Of the pumps I've had apart, very few overall were not worn too badly to be reused. But then I've done mostly EA81 pumps. The pump design is similar though. It's usually not the rotor clearances that get you - it's the sleeve bearings and the end plates that get torn up. GD

An EA82 Turbo rear sway bar is much easier and cleaner to install - you just have to cut the brackets off the EA82 trailing arms and weld them to the EA81 arms. The ends of the sway bar have to be shortened slightly as well - a band saw would be best. Qman did that with his dark grey Brat IIRC. They mount ONLY to the arms so fitment is much easier as there is no modifications to the torsion bar tube. GD

Are you SURE you put the lifters back in their original locations? GD

You are better off leaving it be till you can replace it. After a 10 year study of bearing life by a major corporation that had people who's job it was JUST to go around and zirk everything in sight they determined that: 1. 90% of all bearing failures were due to OVER-greasing. 2. Only a thin film of grease is required to get maximum bearing life. 3. Adding or regreasing bearings nearly always results in shorter bearing life than just leaving it be till it fails. Baldor removed the grease zirks from their 50+ HP motors a few years ago, and I was told BY THEIR ENGINEERS that this was done because the tendancy was to over-grease the bearings and blow the shields out of them - having the zirk actually invites that tendancy. Alas the move generates so many calls to their tech center they put the zirks back in to stop the insane call volume . GD

Probably not - the cam seals also have a large o-ring behind their retainer plate that is replaced at the same time as the cam seals themselves. To replace the cam tower o-ring the cams must be removed from the heads. It sounds very much like the mechanic is not aware that the cam towers are seperate entities from the heads as that is not typical of overhead cam engine design - it's unusual, and specific to the EA82. The result is TWO seams on each side - one for the tower, and one for the head gasket itself. I would lay money on them mistaking the cam tower seam for the head gasket seam, and thus your oil leak is the cam tower o-ring and not the head gaskets. Highly doubt it. You're welcome. It's good they seem to be honest, but don't mistake honesty for knowledge. If they don't know what they are looking at then they are as useless as a dishonest mechanic. Hyundia and Kia are both a step down from your EA82 in my opinion. I've worked on both and of the two Kia is better but none of the Korean made cars can compare to the Japanese products for reliability and quality of construction. Most likely no. At the mileage you are at the head gaskets are extremely unlikely to be bad at all. The EA82's are good for 200 to 250k on the original head gaskets and usually 300k or more on the mechanical components with good maintenance. Even if they blew completely and you overheated it till it wouldn't run anymore (unlikely), simply replacing them would fix it. No permanent damage is likely to result. GD

That's weird about the GCK's having tripod's for the EA82 axles - the EA81 axles I've got from them weren't built that way at all. They pretty much dissapeared off the market so I've switched to EMPI axles. No problems yet - brand new, $57 each, no core Sounds like a lot of problems are comming together to create a pretty nasty operating evironment for your transmissions. The fact that the body is starting to flex out of control is going to over-stress things on a regular basis. The front axles do not like bad transmission mounts and loose movement on a regular basis. They get some off-road, but if you have bad mounts and bad axles, ect then you are stressing everything just going down a paved road. That will put years of wear on them in a matter of months. GD