Slydog1960

Thanks all for the replys. I know what you mean. My son ain't intrested in too much but girls himself. I have had to force him all along the way to get him to work on the car and lawnmowers and anything like that but anyone who drives should know the basics at least. Your also right in the fact that there ain't a lot you can still work on yourself to an amount to anything. I have Chiltons and Haynes manuals on this car and many others as far as that goes. I have rebuilt several engines in my younger days so I don't doubt I could tackle it if I can talk my son into it. At least pull the heads and see if it's just a gasket. He has had several folks ask about it so he might wanty to just trade it off. If so I still have my old 86 Cutless to fool around with.LOL. But I have Also been Looking for a good doner car for a hybrid as well. Even if he parted it out he would get way more for it than what he paid. I think If its cheap enough for parts the smart thing to do is just fix it up though. I guess bottom line in the end it will be up to him though since it is his car but from reading this fourm it sounds like subarus are tough little cars and good on gas. Just what every teenage boy needs. Heck at the price of gas these days and the way my old cutless drinks it I need one myself.LOL. Thanks again guys.

My son bought a 1986 Subaru GL it was partly taken apart and the guy said he thought it had jumped time. We put it back in time and put it back together but the distributor wouldn't move or come out but it did fire on the number one plug at the right time so I started to check for gas and fire and all that to see why it wasn't starting. When I pulled ythe number 2 plug it was rusty. Thats not a good sign I say to myself. Everytime I turned it over I heard a lot of gurgeling and when I pulled the number three plug and was checking it for fire it was shooting water out of the sparkplug hole and I could actually see the warter runing across the top of the piston. I Am thinking this thing ain't worth fixing I dont know if it could be a blown gasket or far worse a messed up head. any thoughts on what this might cost to fix or other comments would be appriciated. Oh Yeah its a third generation EA82 engine.

during the cam rotations, do you think itys possible you have the disty 180 off? **Anything is possible I will double check that and see what I can come up with. This time I think I will split the middle cover for easyer access when I have to go into it again. ** use a pipe and a deadblow hammer to tap the mounting tabs on the disty to free it up, turn and pull **I will give this a try as will and get back to you on it.** for every 2 rotations of the rank, the cam will turn once. take off the belts and leave the cams as they are, then turn the crank 360 and re-install and see if that works ** Yeh I did that, but will do again, maybe something sliped and went un-noticed or something. Thanks, I have done several timeing jobs in my time but this is the first Subaru and my son is basically doing the work and he has never did any kind of work on a car before. I did try to do my homework first though LOL. When my son get's home I will put him back to work on it. Thanks again and I'll be letting you know how it's going****

Need Help The car in question, is a 1986 SUBARU GL RUNABOUT 3 DOOR, 1.8L L4 2BBL EA82 Engine with 107122 miles on it. I bought the car for a 100 bucks and was told it just quit as the guy was going down the highway. The timing belts was streached and had jumped time. I bought the car for my son and we/he went to work on it as I instructed what to do. First we just wanted to see if it would run so we reset the timing useing the same belts just to see if it would crank and run. If we can get it to run we will buy new belts and whatever. We pulled off all the front covers and turned the crank to the three lines on the flywheel and set the driverside cam timing mark straight up to aline with the marks on the housing and put the belt on and tightend up the tentioner. Then we turned the crank one turn till the drivers side cam timeing mark was straight down, then we turned the passanger side cam timing mark straight up to match the notch on the cover and put the belt on and tightend up the tentioner. Then we spun the crank around by hand a few times makeing sure the timeing was right and that the rotor button was on the number one plug on the distributor when the number one pistion was TDC on compression stroke. Put everything back together and tried to fire it up but nothing. checked for gas in the carb and it is getting gas. checked for fire on number one plug and it was getting fire. Decided to adjust the timing with the distributor and found that the distribitor would not turn even though the rotor button and everything inside seems ok and I could not take the distributor out it seems as if it is stuck in there. Not being able to move any of it i decided to pull all the plugs and wiggle the crank thereby moveing the cams and tring to get it out. No luck. I noticed when I pulled the number three plug it looked like moisture was on it and it looked kind of rusted. I hooked them all up to ground and laid them out in order and spun the engine around and all of them were firing. I don't have a compression guage but I did put my finger over each plug hole and it seems like I am getting good compression on 1 and 2, number 3 the one with the bad looking plug didnt seem to have very good compresion even though I could not reach it very well with my finger to seal it off good and number four has some what less compression as well but again I could not reach it well either. I guess my main concern at this point is whats the deal with the corrsion on the number three plug and how am I going to get the distributor out so I can try to set the ignition timing. Any ideas or help and help on this would be greatly appriciated.