the sucker king

......on which to paint a masterpiece. This is my 1980 hatch. the second Subie I ever owned (I think I'm on #10 now), and this has always been my favorite. This baby is as clean as you ill find them, no rust at all. i am ready to put it back together after i just got it painted. I took this off the road a couple years ago and have dragged my feet, but it is time! my blank canvas has arrived. this is an interesting model, too. It was tagged "1800 DL automatic. It was one of the first models to have an ea81. Anyways, enjoy the pics. You wish this was in your driveway. It is really gutted and ready to be put together. I have so much sweet cheese for this car I won't even begin........

In Colorado i would guess the car you describe would go for $400 to $800. but you are in Idaho. dats right baby you da ho.

Rust free with 60k is definately a great deal @ $500. Sounds like you should not be accumulating more cars though. maybe pass this deal on to another USMB board member?

It'll be her daily driver, we don't have to put many miles on our cars, we walk to work. I will replace the auto with a 5 speed d/r if she wants, other than that, the plan is to drive it!

I got a great wife. She puts up with me and she is really pretty. Can't beat that. Recently she surprised me. We (my wife and I) run a print shop 3 blocks from our home. Our next door neighbor at work is an auto shop, of which the employees constantly give me crap and I them. Carol, my wife, drives a 97 Jetta which has been a great car but is starting to look like crap and at 160 k miles will soon need the original clutch replaced. It also has a plugged up exhaust therefore big power loss, and little things like coolant leak that needs fixin. I hate working on it. So my neighbor at work lives in Estes Park and his little old lady neighbor is litterally 94 years old and has had an 86 gl wagon which she bought new till two years ago when her son bought her a new volvo which she hates, and two years later is willing to let Wayne, my shop's neighbor, sell her old wagon it has 80k ORIGINAL MILES! The guys next door keep razzing me hey why don 't you buy that, which I won't even bother to ask my wife cause I got 3 subarus and she is not in the mood for more. Than they razzed me about it in front of my wife, and she turned to me and sid "would that work for me instead of the Jetta?" I love her. So we got an 86 4wd wagon rust free for $1200. It's a beauty.

What is the biggest obsticle? This is on an 85 that has a 4wd auto tranny. I have done a fwd auto to 4 speed d/r swap on a ea81 era car, all by my lonesome. I know what's involved, just wondering if the ea82 is equally straight forward. My main worry is, Is the tunnel big enough or does it need hammering and/or cutting? the hole for the stick need to be cut bigger, this i understand. I need your imput to decide to buy or not.

There is an uncracked gen 2 dash board at CAP on Radcliffe in a red hatch. It's the brownish tan color. There is a slant console also brownish in a red hatch in the U pull and pay on Zeno. Somebody need em? go get 'em! I hate to see rare parts go to waste.

I want parts, too!

Awesome. Thanks a lot.

Thanks it's amazing how hard these are to find "Illustration for reference purposes" the ones pictured are not for gen 1 subarus. I hope these are the right ones.

3 years later, I still need shocks. The part #s Subaru 3 provided all came back bad a couple years ago (either discontinued part or obsolete #). Has anyone bought a new set of gen one shocks in recent years?

Brat seats are almost always worth grabbing. Hard to tell from the pics how complete they are, often times the pistol grips are cut off of them because you can't squeeze much more than a child's rump roast between them. Even so, the plastic seats in good condition are almost always worth grabbing as well as those headrests, and be sure to grab them complete with the sliders. From the pics it looks like there is no longer a mounting frame for the seats welded to the bed. Whenever you find rear seatbelts for a brat, they are worth getting. When I say this stuff is worth getting, I mean they are rare enough you can always unload them for a more than you paid. You won't get rich, but these parts are easy to remove and as a subaru fanatic I actually enjoy saving these parts from being crushed. What is the light blue gen 2 car in the pics, and were any of the gen 2 cars you saw in really good shape, inside or outside?

and KEEP YOUR ARMS OUT OF THE WAY!

Drop the trans from down unda. Pull the torn up seat out of the car and slide it under the transmission and drop the trans onto that, crude and fast style. last bolts you remove are the crossmember bolts. everything else first. let me know what else you see at that jy.

I have done it from underneath a couple times. A transmission jack is a huge plus, and a second pair of hands is also a huge plus. I have done it without either and it's a pain in the arse.

Speedwagon, The number of yards with the old ones is fewer and fewer every year. This one: http://aurora.upullandpay.com/PriceGuide.aspx is currently the best. there are usually a few ea81 and a bunch of ea82 cars. They recently opened or aquired another in denver: http://www.upullandpay.com/Locations/denver/default.aspx I haven't been to this one yet, let me know what you find if you go. Definately check out the one in Aurora, though. There is also this place: http://www.pullnsave.com/weekendspecials.htm which until a few years ago was the best in all the land. Very few ea cars there these days, but worth a look. It's a shame about CAP. Used to be a great place. last time I was there I think they had one ea81. I gotta get used to the fact that there are not as many of these cars left as when I first got in this game. U pull and pay has a place in Co Springs as well. good luck and let me know what you find. In fact, keep me in mind if you see ANY Gen1 gars at all.

I see you are in albequerque, I suppose if it were a dealership in the 4 corners states, It's possible there were only 50 and we are more likely to see them around here.

I have seen a few maybe 4 of those "star edition" coupes over the years, one is currently running around Lyons, Colorado from time to time. One thing I've noticed is they all had the H style rims with a different centercap than most, as seen in the pics posted above. (I think most of the h style c-caps have "subaru" on them but the star edition had a diamond pattern on them). The xx/50 implies that there were only 50 of them, but that would make it unlikely that I would have come acrossed 4 of the 50. If they were really used to shuttle beauty queens around, that's pretty darned bueno. I noticed you called it "starfire". Was that a mistake or is your car badged differently?

my first soob was a 1980 std hatch. It was 4 wheel drive and had square headlights! I think after that year they always had round headlights and were fwd, but a I most certainly could be wrong about that. I saw one other 1980 std that was identicle to mine being used as a runaround at a junkyard. I still see later models showing up at jy's from time to time.

I have one in my shed, you won't get a pic from me though. Funny story, about 3 or 4 years ago somebody who shall go nameless (it was shawn W) and myself pulled a pefect dash out of a junkyard ea81. If you done it you know it's a pain in the rump roast. Then he knocked over our wheelbarrow with the dash on it and messed it up pretty good. we left it there.

And yes there is consequence, you can fry your new alternator. You should replace the VR. The stock ones were little gold box shaped things about 4 inches by 3 inches with a sizeable round plastic harness connector.

Starters from impreza era cars bolt up to ea81s? I didn't know that. very cool.

So then all electronic distys for ea71s and ea81s are interchangable?

It is an ea82, which is an 1800cc overhead cam engine. Just to be sure that the previous owner didn't swap in a jaguar straight six, EA82 should be stamped on the front top of the block, just left of center as you look at it from the front of the car upon popping the hood.

The fuel pump runs off of the alternator on those old ones, It's a "safety feature". If you are not charging right at the alt, your fuel pump can and will stop getting a signal. You can trouble shoot this by hotwiring your fuel pump when you encounter the problem. The logic behind this setup is that if you were to crash and cut the fuel line, the pump will not continue to spew gas all over the place because without the engine running, ie the alternator spinning, the pump gets no signal.