GeneralDisorder

I think I know who Rob is speaking of - I know there's a lot of people on the board who feel the same way. Fortunately, that individual isn't around much apparently. GD

This has been discussed before, and the consensus was the Subaru engine is definately NOT a suzuki, or geo motor. Too bad actually, cause from what I understand the Geo and Suzuki motors were much more reliable. My neighbor had a brand new justy that went 120k before the motor went. He takes VERY good care of all his rigs - his 85 4WD wagon has 335k on it. Mountain Tech (subaru only shop here in OR), refused to rebuild the poor justy for him. He said he didn't care what it cost (his wife really liked the car), but they still refused - said he wouldn't be happy with it, and to get her something else. So now she drives a Saturn, cause none of the new Subaru's can be flat towed behind his RV. Sad, but understandable given the situation. I just wish he had told me about it before getting rid of the poor justy - it was immaculent, and I could have dropped a motor in pretty easily. Oh - and the Justy had a 1.2L engine here in the states, and they had 1.0L engines in Japan. GD

http://www.cvaxles.com Many on the board swear by their rebuilt units, and axles are only $55 from them. I personally get them from the JY - $10 - $15 is a good enough reason for me. GD

Yeah - I consider myself lucky to have caused as little mayhem as possible in my carb - seems to run just fine still. I think I will go put the screen on it anyway - leave it there for good I think maybe. GD

Yeah - I have been driving with the windows down - it does indeed smell pretty nasty in there. I thought maybe I had an exhaust leak or something, but when I found the AIS valve, I figured that was probably the source of my smell as well. I don't think the plastic silencers have melted tho - unless they melt from the inside or something - outwardly they look fine anyway. I have to drive it till I get my wagon back, so I hope it doesn't melt them in the meantime - I've been driving it this way for a week or so, and just now had the time to take a look. It ran fine when warm, so I figured maybe the choke was malfunctioning, and put off looking into the problem longer than I should have probably. Hopefully any peices of plastice that made it into the intake didn't hurt anything. I guess they would just melt, and be thrown out the exhaust anyway. I remember that big discussion we had - it did make it into the archives as I recall - I'll try to find it, and post the part number from there. GD

It's a nice looking little car - I've seen it in person. So when does the 4WD go in? And maybe a turbo on that NA block? With an IC, you may be able to get the NA block to take a decent amount of boost... GD

I think one of the reed valves has gone in my Brat. It was really hard to start when cold, and I took a look, and there was a couple big peices of melted plastic blocking the choke open. I removed those, and she seems to be running fine now - back to normal I would say, so I don't think the plastic hurt anything other than keeping the choke from closing. It looks like the plastic was already hard by the time it reached to carb. Anyway - what should I do? I could replace the AIS valve - should I do both at the same time, or just the bad one? Or maybe should I just remove them completely? I like the idea of removing them, but will I still pass emmisions? And how difficult is it to block off their passages if I should decide to give em the boot? Also - if I remove them, I know it will affect the ability of the cat to work correctly, but by how much? If I remove them should I remove the cat too because it really isn't doing anything without the AIS system.... or will it still function to a degree? GD

I can jump up and down on mine.... I'm 200 lbs, and jumping probably doubles that... GD

Probably not - that's just me and my EA81 knowledge talking - disregard if it does not apply. Just trying to give him some ideas - sounds like he doesn't have a manual. GD

For one I know it has an intercooler - I'm sure it is running increased boost. It is very fast - unfortunately, it didn't help him much in the rally - the Brat's and Durago's ruled the day! Turbo's are very hard to keep spooled under rally cross conditions. GD

The 60K mile one time switch was for older (EA81) cars. Try cleaning or replacing your EGR, or anti-backfire solinoid. GD

I call a couple guys over, and do this: 1. Car on Jack Stands, with tranny slid underneath. 2. One person uses the starter hole as a grip, and lifts the front of the tranny, another person uses a length of rope around the tail of the tranny, and lifts using the rope through the shifter hole area. 3. Third person slides under the tranny while it's being held up, and guides it into place, with the help of the front person guideing the shaft. The person in the front then slips one of the bell housing bolts in. tighten everything up, and your done. GD

Weber actually makes a snorkel adapter I think - saw one on ebay a while back. GD

Yep - your inner (DOJ) joint has failed. These can be rebuilt - the outer joints cannot. Get used to the axle thing - Subaru's of your vintage eat axles - it's just a fact of life. GD

Axles will eventually snap, and having that thing break at freeway speed would be bad - would probably bend up a lot of suspension parts in the process. You can drive on them for a while - but they aren't technically "bad" till one breaks in half - till then they are "annoying" and "making funny nioses" but still doing their job just fine - transfering power to the ground. I say replace them before they really do go "bad" and take some other stuff with them. GD

You can't just seal the disty up completely - it needs to breath like the reaf diff - you can drill a hole in the cap, and run a tube from there to wherever your snorkel is located.... GD

You wouldn't bind cause the front would be free to spin. It's the same as when people weld their rear diff's and then pull a rear axle to drive on pavement. No binding there either cause the rear end is free to spin at will. LSD is not neccesary. GD

Yeah - yours is really messed up, but that's because it was at the beach. Around here, that's the only place the gets the rust. That's to be expected tho, cause of the salt air. Anywhere around the ocean will be like that. And even Flo's is not rusty enough to throw away - good rally car, or off-road car. Since we don't see much rust here, there's no law against driving a rust ball, and we don't have safety inspections either, so as long as it has a tail pipe that's solid enough for them to sniff, you be gid-ta-go. GD

I don't think I've ever seen a rust bucket in a yard around here - they are all wrecked, or have problems that cause them to not pass smog, or not drive (these are usually minor). Most cars around here just don't rust. And we have LOT's of rain too, so that's not the cause of it. GD

Sure - you could do that, but since you would have to remove the axle to take the outer CV houseing off of it (not easy to get apart, since they aren't technically serviceable), and then put that back in, it would be just as easy to replace the axle, and still have everything correct. Also - the stub axles will be exposed, and might get rusty, so you should cover them up. In short - it would be more work than just replacing the axle's, so wouldn't you rather have 4WD since it's less work? Just go to the JY and get some axles there. I usually get em for like $10 - $15 each at the JY. GD

It would be really funny to see them try and give chase with that pathetic little 2 cylinder! GD

HEY! You stole my method! That's how *I* do it..... no fair! The water ou hear is air bubbles in the heater core - you need to let the air out. Park it on a hill (nice steep one), and turn the heater on to get coolant flow into it, then remove the radiator cap with the car running - should fix up your problem. GD

Do the lift - it doesn't look as good, and you will have to cut out most of the fenders to get them on. The lift looks meaner, cause the whole body is 4" higher than on his. GD

The fact of the matter is that everyone here is pretty much correct. You could run vegetable oil or probably even a good grade of mud in a Subaru engine, and it would still last a long time. Here's my opinion's and what I have heard: 10w30: Fine for low mileage cars, but tends to be too thin for high mileage engines and often is associated with louder clacking from the hydro lifters. If you have high mileage, or loud lifters, use something heavier 10w40: Better, but I recall that this stuff has too much viscosity modifier in it, and doesn't lubricate as well as the oils with less VM in them. Also - still too thin for some of our older soobs with 150k plus on the clock. Also gets too thin when adding MMO to quiet the valves. For off-brand oils this is the one to choose tho, because their 20w50 doesn't flow well. 20w50: (specifically Castrol GTX): Flows better than other 20w50's I have seen, and has that added thickness that gives your engine much needed oil pressure. MMO can be added without the fear of making it too thin. I run this year round but we have very mild winters here, so most people probably can't do this. Other people on the board know what works best for winter (many people mix different weights) Now haveing said that - anyone that runs 10w30 in an engine with 150k+ miles is asking for trouble. The engine will wear no matter what oil you use, and after that long, you need a thicker oil to get full oil pressure to the top-end of the engine. GD

Oh - I didn't realize they would fit such a large tire. I was going by what I have seen, and mostly I have seen narrow stuff on them. I think the narrowness of the pug rims makes any tire you put on them *look* narrower than they really are. I don't know if having a narrow rim is any help when off-road, but for some reason, they just don't look right to me. But I concede that they may be ok for some applications. My point was simply that you won't save any money really with the pugs, and the replaceability of the chevy's is good if you bend up a rim. It can be hard to find pug rims, and probably will get harder in comming years, so I figured it would be best to just go to something we will be able to find in quantity for a long long time. (and the chevy white spoke rims just plain look good!..... they come in black too) GD