the sucker king

I asked why would it be left in the diff in one circumstance and on the stub in another.

what year/car is this? Just curious. it looks like ea81 but I have never seen those connectors.

Why does the ring clip stay in the diff in the pics in the link and in my pic it stayed on the stub? bork- VLSD stand for viscous limited slip differential. The nifty thing about a vlsd is where a normal rear differential will supply power to whichever wheel offers the least resistance (ie the wheel that spins on ice), the vlsd transfers the power "from the wheel that slips to the wheel that grips".

Hmmm. I thought the steelies I tried were from an ea81, as the guy who gave them to me said they were off a brat, but maybe they were originally off an ea82. I think the H alloys are of the ea82 era as well, but I'll see if they fit anyway. I'll see if I can find some desidedly ea81 wheels and give them a shot too.

Okay I did this today and thanks for the advice. I found installing the rocker arms to be a complete PITA. The pushrods did not want to stay in the lifters and it just plain sucked. Would be a breeze with the engine on a workbench. the lift kit doesn't help, less room to work with and the holes in the frame for the long bolts don't line up. A good mirror on a long handle and a little bendy light made it possible, but not fun. Seriously, thanks, I would have botched this without you guys advice.

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Solid lifters I am told were modified by delta. The pushrods were unlike any I've seen, was told they are the late year hydro pushrods. they did not have the caps on the ends like the others I've seen and no knurl marks. This is still my biggest fear, time will tell.... So anyway, here's where it's at- So I got it running again. I re-torqued he heads, replaced the damaged pushrod and rocker arm and adjusted the valves on both sides. Fired it up and let it run for 25 minutes or so. After a few minutes the valves got noisy, but that doesn't worry me so much as I don't have that much confidence in my valve job, having just reinstalled rocker arms on both sides, the pushrods are hopefully nicely seated now in their new homes. I'll readjust the valves and go from there. With it running now, I can take it down to my shop (I rent an industrial space for my business) and park it inside to work on so now i have weeknights to work on my car. How do I check this? ................

That is not the air suction valve. It is a silencer or resonator. the ASV is contained in a rectangularish metal case further down the line from the resonator. just so you know..... BTW I have that resonator if you need it.

forgot to give some details on the leak down test. i could hear it in the crank case and in the intake, I couldn't listen to the exhaust. fixing all the valve issues should take care of that, but what about the air i heard in the crank case, do you think only having run for an hour the piston rings aren't seated propper yet? Also the engine was cold.

Unless aluminum H rims will fit, I 've got to find something before I get her sold. Sucks cause in the last couple years I sent at least 8 gen 1 steelies to the melting pot. I didn't know, I thought any gen 2 wheel would fit.

Thanks for all the suggestions, First off forgive me I work slow, the car is outside and it's winter and gets dark early, really I only have weekends to work on this. Did a leakdown test and the results were horrid, 45% leakage on the two "good" cylinders and 65% and 75% on the two bad ones. today I took the valve covers off and crazyeights is our winner, a pushrod jumped ship. The pushrod was damaged and the cup on the rocker assembly was damaged too. The damage was not the reason for the failure, but the result. valves all need adjusting on both sides too. So I got a replacement pushrod and rocker assembly and will put it all back together in the morning, then adjust valves. Hopefully up and running again. Why did this happen? Again this is a fresh rebuild, read first post. Did a valve come so far out of tune that the rod popped out? If the cam grind was wrong I guess this will happen again.

Thanks for the advice uber I shall give it a shot in the morning.

A few years back I found a 91 turbo legacy in the junkyard with only 60k on the odometer. I looked under the rear end, the vlsd was still there but missing a stub axel. I opened the trunk, and low and behold it was there. I don't know if somebody removed it so others wouldn't take the diff before they could get to it or what, but I took the diff and the stub. Now it's years later, and I want to use it. Here is a pic of the stub: It has a ring clip on the diff side, visable in the pic. How do you put this back together, am I missing anything, etc? Years ago I downloaded an exploded view of a VLSD but since lost the file. anyone? .................

Thanks, figured it out. It's a "feel" thing. Generally they stay in place as you install the rocker arm?

When installing pushrods, with the engine in the car, I can't tell? ea81.

So let me get this straight- to retorque heads you can: remove the two rocker arm bolts remove rocker arm and replace with two sockets used as spacers. replace rocker arm bolts torque all the head bolts in propper sequence remove rocker arm bolts replace spacer sockets with rocker arm replace rocker arm bolts torque rocker arm bolts. This is acceptable?

Was that the same problem, ie the trailing arm?

I recently tried to put ea82 wagon wheels on a 77 4wd wagon only to find on the rear they wouldn't fit because they hit the trailing arm. The other wheels I had also would not fit, I think they were ea81 era steelies. Anyone know what my wheel options are for this car? I've had jackmans on it for years, and am about to sell it and I want to keep my jackmans

How to do this, I understand the procedure is different from solid lifter engine, how so? I understand that you are not supposed to have to adjust these. but still they need to be set proper initially. Also I did a search, nothing doing there but a dead link that surely would have answered the question.

I'm thinking more along the lines of an intake valve is staying a little OPEN. That would explain both low compression and the backfire through the intake. Why this is happening is the other story and then also why the second dead cylinder?

I think part of the problem with how this thread is going is that people read the title and backfire through the carb = ignition timing or wires. But if you read the (entire) initial post, it suggests something quite different.

I apreciate the help, but please ubderstand the problem. The car ran Great for an hour. Like a finger snap it ran bad. The ignition wires are routed proper. The cap and rotor are like new. The compression is bad.

Again low compression seems to be the key here, but the leaky intake valve thing is where I am with you, It ran fine at frst. My worry is if a valve bent slightly that could explane the backfire, but now why two cylinders? I am just kicking around ideas, what if the cam was not ground right and it took out two valves on two different cylinders. Does anyone know how the temperature of the engine effects the compression test? All I can do to get it to running temp and retest run it is let it run on 2 cylinders, but is it okay to let all that fuel get dumped into the one and two cylinders without burning any off? Don't want to do any further damage. I would pull the wire on the number one so it didn't backfire the whole time.

I thought that at first when the timing was suspect. Now the real concern is low compression

I had an ea81 built for my hatchback with delta cam and ea71 pistons. I got it in and it ran great. I ran the motor, did not drive the car. I tuned the carb and timing by ear, never revved it above 3k. After I ran it to get it up to temp for maybe 20 minutes (this was the next day afer I got it running), It purred like a kitten for 20 minutes and suddenly went from purring like a kitten to running like crap and backfiring through the carb. This happened in an istant. It was a rythmic backfiring, Like one cylinder repeating. There is a total of probably a little under one hour of running time on this engine, Zero miles. Today I tested compression. These numbers are cold, as I didn't want to run the car for twenty minutes with it backfiring twice a second. 1. 90 2. 100 3. 120 4. 125 I am also at 5500 feet altitude, and should expect around 10 pounds lower than nurmal, but these numbers are way lower than the 125 to 175 than HTKYSA manual says is normal, especially when you figure in the ea71 pistons. I also put a gun on the timing and set it to 8 degrees. pop pop pop still. A little additional - just went and started the car and pulled the #1 wire, the backfiring stopped. with that wire still out, I pulled #2 and it didn't significantly stumble, so it's running on just the two. Any thoughts on what happened?