I bought this soobie with a broken T/B. it has 160K miles no rust

i took it apart to do the T/B and the drivers side cam shaft is stuck.

I have a haynes manual. i took off the cam housing and oiled the cam and got it free and took it out of the housing. the rear journal ( closest to dist gear is kinda chewed up so i need to replace cam and housing. i have a spare good engine i can take the housing from

the car has sat for a couple years what should i look for to have caused this? clogged oil passage?

Yeah - probably a clogged oil passage. There is a passage from the head to the cam carrier that uses an o-ring seal. That o-ring is specially reinforced with a metal ring to prevent it from collapsing and partially blocking oil flow. Also people over-indulge in RTV on the cam carriers and a peice of it could have lodged in an oil passage. I would clean them all out carefully and blow all the passages out with compressed air before resealing the engine - and remove the passenger side cam and carrier also and clean that one out too. Replace the o-rings and also reseal the oil pump. Get your oil pump and cam carrier o-rings from the dealership.

 

GD

Thanks for the reply GD it appears it had the original T/B's on the car although someone replaced the water pump. when iI took off the cam housing the rocker arms fell out and I don't know which one goes where now. no sludge build up the insides look very clean so I assume regular oil changes have been performed. I was thinking of sliding out each lifter and making sure they are not stuck. what oil passages do I blow out? The cam shat it self or the ones coming from the head at the o-ring gasket you mentioned or both I guess I should just blow out all I can

don't worry about the rocker arms. try to keep them in the same spots but it won't matter if you cant.

 

yes, clean out all the passages you can.

If I am to take both cam housings off this car I am tempted to keep going and replace the head gaskets while I am at it since these engines seem to be notorious for head gasket failure. doesn't seem to be that much more work or expense if I am this far in? any input?

How many miles are on the car? If the car is fairly low miles and there are no obvious leaks, I would just levae the HG's alone. The head bolts have a tendency to strip threads and require helicoiling and that is a pain. I wouldn't go loking for the extra work.

160k miles no signs of leaks I think I will take your advice thanks

well said - i wouldn't go looking for extra work either on these things. seized cam...do you even know for sure the condition of the engine?

 

they aren't that hard to do in the car if you choose to do it, like if you think you'll actually get another 150,000 miles out of this thing then maybe it would be worth it but few EA82's will see that. use the Fel Pro headgaskets, they're the only ones that dont' require a retorque, thereby saving some work/time. use Subaru intake manifold gaskets too, aftermarkets are flimsy and prone to leak as the intake gaskets also share a coolant passage.