GeneralDisorder

It's a year thing - they chaged from solid to vented on all EA81's halfway into the 83 model year. So '83's are a crapshoot, everything older is solid, and everything newer is vented. 2WD and 4WD use the same size. GD

#1 Secondary air bleed. (should be 170) #2 Primary air bleed. (should be 160) #3 Secondary main jet. (should be 140) #4 Primary main jet. (should be 140) Front screw is the primary idle jet (50 is good) and rear is secondary (50 would be good here too). There are 4 correct ways to align the plug wires. For each one the distributor has to be in the correct location. Put the engine at TDC, compression stroke for cylinder #1. When air pushes past your finger on the spark plug hole AND the timing marks are in view on the flywheel you are at TDC #1 comp. Turn the flywheel BACK to 8 degrees BTDC and align the distributor so the rotor is pointing at whichever plug tower you want to be #1. Carefully done you shouldn't be more than 1/2 degree off on the timing by eye. Hookup the remaining plug wires in the 1-3-2-4 fireing order counter-clockwise from the #1 wire (wherever you decided to locate it). Your book shows 1 of the possible 4 correct ways to posistion the distributor and the wires. It was most likely hooked up in one of the other three BEFORE you touched it and now the distributor alignment does not match the plug alignment. You should just redo the timing completely so YOU understand it, and know how it's been set. GD

It never had one - don't worry about it. Only CA spec 4WD's, and 2WD's had them. GD

Measure the ID and OD of the seal and order one from a seal/bearing house. Look in the phone book. Keep in mind that this is metric land - you'll have to measure in metric. Use digital calipers. Viton would be a good choice of material if you can get it. Also the grease inside the rack & pinion gear housing is VERY SPECIAL. It's also insanely expensive from Subaru. I reused the grease that was in the last one I took apart. It's a lithium based gear grease that doesn't "flow" so it won't run out of the rack into the boots. It's "sticky" and white. There's probably some equivelent out there but I don't know what. GD

I've seen EA81's, EJ22's, EJ22T's, and EJ25's being spoken of with regard to experimental aircraft usage (the only classification they are allowed in without an FAA cert). They skip the EA82 completely because of it's weak timing belts and head gasket tendancies. GD

This is the thing that JB weld was made for. Or if you want to go hardcore and do it up right, the DevCon line of metal filler's and putty's are excelent and much higher quality than JB. Replacing parts is easy, but fixing parts is more rewarding and takes more skill. Don't throw it away just because there's a little gouge in the exhaust mating surface and you need to heli-coil a stud. That's just silly. Fix it, learn something in the process, and don't be like the rest of our throw away, instant gratification society. GD

This is a car - not an airplane. Airplanes are neccesarly more robust when it comes to seals on critical fluids. It's the nature of the beast - the potential for failure at 20,000 feet along with it's consequences precipitates the creation of elaborate, exotic, and astonishigly expensive sealing systems. Folks who deal with primarily automotive systems often fail to understand the extent to which other mechanical systems have gone to keep things sealed up. I deal everyday with labyrinth seals, teflon lip seals, viton o-rings, and mechanical seals using spring loaded carbon rings running on a micro-film lubricant over carbide polished to a mirror finish. Often a single seal in some of these machines cost more than your whole Loyale. And would fit in the palm of your hand. So yeah - they leak. No surprise there. The sealing systems are primitive 80's automotive tech. It's not going to kill anyone if a seal weeps a bit. Unfortunately without designing new (and expensive) sealing systems, it is something you more or less have to live with. You can fight it, or you can relax and add some oil. GD

Always been around $18 - $20 at the dealer for me. I wouldn't buy one anywhere else. GD

It's too much work - just find one that's 4WD. Trust me - I've done it. If you still want to know, do a search using my username - I've outlined the procedure. It's best to have a whole donor car. GD

No

I would definitely install the SPFI. The Carter/Weber is a notoriously difficult carb. The Hitachi's were actually better if you can believe that GD

Yes - all SPFI's had a neutral switch. It's the 90+ that ALSO have a clutch switch. GD

Heh. I see the problem now. I just went and looked in my 83 hatch and the pedal stop is indeed not there. It's just an L shaped bracket that bolts to the pedal assembly (holes are already there), and then you insert the rubber pad into the existing hole in the pedal. So I should have said that you need the CC switch, AND the bracket that bolts it to the pedal assembly IF you have a pre-'83.5 clutch pedal assembly. '83.5+ have a different clutch cable and the pedal assembly comes with a bolt (non-switch) that you replace with the switch style for CC installations. But the older pedal assembly will accept the bracket and the switch along with the rubber stopper pad. It's just like the brake light switch "bolt", but it's on the clutch pedal. Sorry about the further confusion. If my camera weren't broken at the moment I would take pictures to illustrate what I'm talking about. In this pic from my write up, the "L" bracket that the switch is bolted to is simply attached with two bolts to existing holes in the pedal assembly. The holes, and the spot for the rubber pad are present on my 83 hatch, but the bracket is not, nor is the switch. All EA81's were equipped for installation of option "dealer" installed cruise control - so all the pedal assemblies should have the provision for it. See my write up on EA81 clutch cable's for the differences in the older and newer style cable, and how it's mounted to the pedal assembly: http://home.comcast.net/~trilinear/clutch.html GD

Correct - you win a cookie. GD

The car could EASILY have been converted to 2WD. Actually much easier than converting to 4WD. There is NO WAY the VIN is a "mistake". It simply could not happen. Either the car WAS 4WD, or the dash was FROM a 4WD. It's that simple. Check the VIN on the firewall - that one can't be changed. GD

On his EA81, the dipstick is on the rear of the engine, passenger side side behind the air filter box. Only EA82's and newer have the dipsick up front. As long as it had pressure.... ball bearing couldn't really come from the oil pump, and there's no other ball bearings that I can think of in the EA81, so it must have fallen into the filler cap or down the dip-stick tube. That would be my guess anyway. GD

Make sure the air filter is clean. Check for vac leaks as Skip mentions above. Are there any codes present? CEL on? Clean the idle air controller and the MAF, check the CTS for proper resistance, and the TPS idle switch for correct adjustment/function. If you still have the problem after that, there's more detailed stuff you can get into. GD

Sure - that will definately give you a good start. Personally, I'm going with a wideband unit that is a bit more accurate. But for your purposes, just a regular narrow band such as that is more useful than nothing at all. Narrow band (almost all vehicles) is a 0 to 1 volt signal O2 sensor. Wideband (very few vehicles, around $250+) is a 0 to 5 volt O2 sensor with much more complex "controller". GD

EA81 pump and bracket should work. They mount way off to the side. The belt is long, and expensive. Shouldn't be too hard to run some new hoses from the EA82 rack to the EA81 pump. GD

It's interesting that people keep pointing that out, yet few have realized how simple it is to mod out the stock air cleaner box to fit on top of the Weber. You just buy a $15 Weber DGV air filter with housing from EMPI, and use the bottom plate. You cut out the bottom of the stock kidney-bean filter box and JB weld in the section that bolts down to the Weber. This allows you to hookup basically everything that the Hitachi had, and the few lines that don't directly hookup to the carb can be mocked up to look as though they do. With all of the lines and the actual carb hidden completely under that massive filter box, it remains only to tune it properly - which is fairly straightforward either with some trial & error, or especially with a A/F gauge. The smog morons are only looking for certain things (the ASV's, and the charcoal canistor, etc) to be IN PLACE. They cannot verify that these devices work. Their only actual metric is what comes out the tail-pipe. Passive systems such as the evap. for the tank and float bowl are not testable in any way. They only want to SEE them. As long as they see them there's no need for them to function, or even be actually hooked to anything as long as they "dissapear" under the filter box. They aren't going to take your engine bay apart to verify that you haven't shoved ball bearings in half the lines..... Appearances are everything to the smog nazi - as long as it looks like an 80's subaru, and you look like you don't give a fast flying fardle about anything automotive related.... they aren't going to question it. It helps imensly to understand the various devices employed for emmissions puposes on the stock Hitachi carbs (feedback or non) - once you grasp the technical side of it, it's easy to either adapt the Weber to work with them, or realize they aren't neccesary - even in CA. GD

Absolutely! There's a lot to the wireing. And I don't prefess to have the end-all-be-all of write-up's on the subject. I wrote that durring an unemployed phase of my life AFTER I had done two conversions. The wiring portion could be done better, and I intend to improve it when I do the next one as it will be easier for me to take the time to produce pictures and lay things out as I go. I have improved the production of my harnesses each time I have done one as I become more familar with how aspects of the conversion are affected by things done at that first, most critical stage of wiring. The harness preperation is by FAR the biggest roadblock to getting other people to try out SPFI with the EA81. If it were simple, then everyone would have it and no one would be buying Weber's. I have to disagree with you and say that I'm 99% certain you just don't understand what the CC switch is, or how it's mounted. To the uninitiated, the CC switch location looks like a stop bolt that contacts a rubber pad on the clutch pedal and stops it's upward motion when you let your foot off the pedal. It IS there - it has to be or the pedal wouldn't stop. This bolt is removed, and the CC switch mount in that location so that it closes each time the pedal is released. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear on this. But it IS there, and had I been more clear you probably wouldn't have had to do all that extra work. Oh yeah - it's definately easier to have a whole donor car at your disposal as I had the first time around. Plus a lot of parts cars in the yards around here. GD

Your injector may be leaking, or the fuel pressure regulator may be allowing more than 21 psi through the system. Higher pressure, or a leaking injector will show as high fuel consumption. Cars should seriously come stock with A/F ratio meters for problems like this. And fraknly, for what you are losing in gas mileage, you could probably easily pay back the investment in one. You might also want to check the valve timing. Even a single tooth off can run *almost* correctly, but the mileage will be horrible. My co-worker just found his timing off a tooth after owning his car for a YEAR. Needless to say he's seeing the whole vehicle in a different light now. GD

You simply are not going to be able to find the control arm online through a parts lookup. And even if you do you will still need the bearings and the spindle - they don't come with a control arm. It's either a control arm, or a trailing arm - depending on who you talk to. But seriously - PM Jerry - he will be able to help you I'm sure. Frankly if it were me, I would have that thing apart in 20 minutes. Doesn't look that bad off. Pound out the old spindle with a deadblow, heat up the bearing housing around the nut area with a mapp gas torch or an oxy-torch, and spin that ring nut out with a brass drift. New bearings, a used spindle and you are down the road. GD

Since when? There were problems with it last I checked... GD

Huh?!? There's exactly ONE sensor and an intake manifold.... how is that "too many"? You should probably take opinions from people who have actually done this mod. Or written about it even! The performace is good. The reliability is amazing, and the driveability is nothing a carb could ever touch. If you have the means, then I highly reccomend you give it a try. It's generally cheaper than a Weber as well. GD