GeneralDisorder

If you don't want to do an EJ swap, then buy an EJ based vehicle. No need to do a swap at all. Gen 1 Legacy's are cheap as dirt now. Either way you are talking about a 15 to 20 year old motor. Price differences are negligable. If you can't afford mods to one, then you can't afford mods to the other - you just can't afford mods. Perhaps a different line of work.... People come here because they are frustrated or to get opinions. People like me generally give anwsers in the best intrest of saving their money and time. If you are into wasting either or both, then you shouldn't ask me, or anyone else here - you should be able to accomplish that on your own. Wireing is ubiquitous - repair, modification, old, new - it's all the same. Automotive wireing is something you need to learn if you intend to work on cars effectively. People never swap those into EA's - they swap the EJ22's. The EJ22 is nearly flawless to 300k - almost always. If that's what you consider fun.... perhaps Heroin is for you. Specifically that's almost always in reference to "modding" the EA82 Turbo. Other EA's are treated with the respect they deserve. The EA82T has earned it's poor reputation, and I for one wouldn't shed a tear if they were all junked. You won't see anyone downing the "true" EA engines (pushrod). They were all excelent motors. It's the stop-gap EA82 (EJ series began development in '85 - EA82's were just EA81's with poorly designed OHC's) that is treated this way.. I generally ignore EA82T posts. But that's my preference. I don't dislike the EA82 body series, but I think that most times severe problems would be best solved by either ripping the thing out and replacing it with an EA81, or EJ22(T), or by just buying an EA81 or EJ22 vehicle. That's my veiwpoint, and that's the beauty of forums. I don't quite understand posts such as this ranting about veiwpoints that aren't going to be changed. Offer up your opinions, and leave it at that. People ask questions here to get the opinions of others. Just because they differ from your's doesn't mean they shouldn't be posted. Opinions are what forums are all about.... now blatantly incorrect, false, or misleading information is another thing entirely. GD

You aren't going to save money or fix your problems with an O2 sensor. The problems are related to your duty solenoid's and the sensors that drive it. There's more than just the O2 on these. There's a coolant temp sensor (CTS), and a manifold pressure sensor that come into play, and all of this stuff has to work together to provide the ECU with enough information to properly supply the air metering ports on the carb with filtered air. The O2 sensor is the least of your worries. It's probably a bit slow from being old, but that really doesn't affect cruise conditions much at all. You best bet is to install a non-feedback Hitachi DCZ-328 from an 85 to 87 EA82. It will bolt right on, be cheap to rebuild, and will give your 27+ MPG without any sensors at all. GD

You may want to order some ball-joints as well. Every EA81 I've owned has had worn out ball joints - they usually clunk and knock going over bumps, and make the car steer with the loud pedal. Very sketchy. I haven't found a lot of "bad" struts out west here - definitely good to replace them though. GD

I've never seen an EA valve get stuck open. I've seen valve seats come loose, and whole valves get sucked into cylinders. That will pretty much stop the engine from rotating though. You almost certainly have a blown head gasket. It doesn't have to be burning coolant - could just be a compression leak to the outside, or to the push-rod cavity. If you squirted oil in to seal up the rings and it did nothing, then you don't have a ring issue. Either you have a hole in the piston, or there's a problem with the head / head gasket. Pull the head and see. GD

Could easily just be a head gasket. GD

His swap instructions are for installing only a very slightly more powerful alternator. For the GM 100 amp, the sense wire should be larger, and should be located at the point where you want the voltage to be regulated after any line losses due to wireing. It's typical to see around a 1 to 1.5 volt drop between the output terminal of the alternator and the junction. The sense wire will allow the alternator to put out higher than 14.5 volts so that the voltage at the junction remains at 14.5. The other wire is the charge indicator/feild excitation wire. It's wired to switched battery positive, in series with a bulb that indicates failure of the alternator. There *should* be no flow through the excitation circuit unless the alternator fails to create acceptable DC current. It will flicker and flash (along with other indicators) if the rectifier goes, and it will come on steady if the brushes or the regulator die. Bearing failure will usually take out the rectifier diodes or the VR as it often causes the brushes to skip and arc - voltage spikes will kill the VR quick-like. GD

It's not a bad swap, you just have to get the external vs. internal wiring right. Remove the external VR. Any circuit that goes through it should be rewired to work without it. That may include your fuel pump but I would have to check the FSM to know exactly. Run a new sensor wire - forget the one in the VR because the white wire from the VR plug WAS the sensor wire - all of it. The external VR contains the sensor - not the alt. You need a good sized wire for the sensor, so run a new one from the junction to the new internally regulated alt. GD

EA82's have baffled oil pans - there's quite a bit more going on inside there than just a simple bowl shaped pan. It holds a lot of oil and residue. You may want to take it off and give it a cleaning. Some of your capacity may be taken up with un-drainable sludge. GD

Start with the most basic circuit - the crank circuit. It has no fuses, and no relays. It runs through the fusible links, and through a transmission neutral lockout switch. Obviously the problem is not the switch or you would have power everywhere else. I would suspect a bad connection at one of the links, or a bad ignition switch. GD

Depends on how bad the O2 sensor is. I had one so bad on a feedback carbed EA81 that it would refuse to idle once warm. You had to disconnector the O2. The dealership people don't understand the feedback carbs. The duty solenoids have quite an operational range with regard to mixture settings - the ECU bases the duty cycle on all the sensors - CTS, O2, Manifold pressure. Best bet is to yank that sucker off and install either a non-feedback setup, or a Weber. GD

Well - you aren't pumping more juice unless you are drawing more juice than the factory accesories. An alternator capable of 100 amps (and that's not an idle figure BTW - it's more like 30 amps at idle, and 100 amps at 4,000 RPM. But those numbers are what it CAN put out. Not what it IS putting out. That depends on what you hook up to it. An 86 Maxima alt is 90 amp, bolts right up, and cost about the same... I would return that huge GM thing if it were me. I know folks that have had bad luck with those beasts. Just using the fusible link box from an 82 to 84 EA81 will net you NO ability to run anything other than the stock accesories. The links are not sized for anything above their stock draw. You will need extra fusible link(s) for more accesories, and you'll need another fuse panel to feed with the new link. EA82 fusible link boxes have 4 posistions . You will need to properly size the links you use to the circuits they feed in your 81. Check the wireing diagrams and see what the circuits look like and what Subaru used for the original links. It very easily could be different than the links in the box you have. As for the wireing - why would you reattach the white wire going to the external VR? You are removing the external VR, so you should be able to leave that disconnected. In addition to the 6 gauge wire for the alternator output, you will also need a junction sensor wire going to the fusible link junction so the internal VR can regulate the voltage at the junction. The third wire off the alt goes to the charge indicator light in the gauge cluster (probably one of the wires from the external VR plug. GD

I'm aware of that, yes. I said with "very few" mods. IC, increase boost a bit, and turbo-back 3" will get you to 200 without doing anything fueling wise. My point was that for $500 in mods, you can hit a HP rating with the EJ22T that is near impossible with an EA82T. Of course you are starting with a 160 HP 2.2 vs. a 115 HP 1.8. The big difference is that the EJ22T was much more detuned than the EA82T was - out of the box. And to use the STi injectors you need the fuel rail from a 92 - 94 N/A EJ22 GD

There's folks with modded 22T's running in the high 12's. With very few mods you can put out 200 crank HP. GD

I'll make a test of the Hitachi I have when I get a chance and report back to you. Your discrepency may be due to the coil - is it original? If it's aftermarket or old there's a good chance the resistance isn't the same as it's supposed to be for OEM. GD

Lookup the alternator for an '86 Nissan Maxima GD

My FSM is extremely confusing on this subject. In the specifications section there is a line for "series resistance of pickup coil" - with an Ohm symbol. But in the data column there is only a reference to the models used "4WD: CIT-79, Other: K-31".... which is NOT an ohm value. There is absolutely nothing in the distributor section, nor in the ignition troubleshooting section about either pickup coil. The troublshooting tests everything BUT the disty and then concludes it must be bad if it still doesn't work However - the fact that it says "series resistance" makes me beleive you are testing it wrong. I'm pretty sure it has to remain connected to the coil while you test it - thus your testing with the coil removed is giving the wrong readings. At least that's my hypothesis from the data currently availible to me. GD

Let me check the FSM.... GD

You could use a wideband sensor that can mimick the output of a narrow-band sensor. Many of the wideband kits availible can do this. I would think that should be about the best narrow-band output you could get and you have the added benefit of a wideband for your other tuning needs. I got the wideband from NGK - I haven't installed it yet but I like what I've seen of it so far (sitting in the box still ). It has the narrow-band output so you don't have to add a second O2 bung to cars that require a narrow-band input to their ECU. GD

Intresting that they rated it at 26 MPG rather than a city/highway rating.... I suppose that's about accurate though. GD

You'll never get every last drop out of an engine. The "capacity" is for a brand new engine or a rebuild where there is NO oil present. There's going to be residual oil in the pan that won't drain, and there's going to be some in the valve area's, etc. Not to mention coating virtually every surface in the engine. Start off with 4 quarts - fill the filter till the element is saturated to prevent oil starvation when starting. Then fill the crankcase till it comes up to the proper level on the dipstick - NO MORE. Stop when it's full - not when you have used up all the oil - check the reading often after the 3rd quart. GD

+1 for changing your range. GD

I always install the disty with the flywheel at 8 BTDC. Pointing it at the #1 tower *by eye* I can install a distributor within a degree of 8. Last one I did (two days ago) was 8.5 when I started it. 0 or 8 - doesn't really matter. Using 8 just skips a step and gets you very close to spec if you don't happen to have a light. Valuable skill if you off-road, etc. I don't carry a timing light on me.... GD

Straight swap - the tranny's are identical for the puposes of your swap. Don't forget to swap the torque converter along with the tranny and FLUSH, FLUSH, FLUSH that tranny cooler passage in the radiator - it may have chunks of old auto tranny in it. Use a good fast-evaporating degreaser, and use at least a whole can on the lines and cooler line through the radiator. In fact it wouldn't be a bad idea to install a seperate tranny oil cooler and just forget about the one through the radiator. The 3AT's aren't renown for their reliabilty, but you'll increase it's lifespan if you do regular oil changes and add a cooler to extend the life of the oil. GD

I've blown enough stock one's to know better. You are an exception Rob - you have more patience than...... anyone I can think of at the moment. How many times has that engine been out!?! And all that work for 15 HP..... you and I both know you could have done an EJ22 swap several times over for what you have into the RX - especially considering your labor - and have the same HP without a turbo at all. GD