Will a EA82 flywheel work in a EA81 4 speed trans? Also do the pressure plates interchange? Thank guys

Other than the timing marks being wrong the flywheel will physically bolt to the ea81 after you grind a bit on the bottom of the engine bellhousing. The manual ea81 bellhousing has two spots of aluminum casting that will interfere with the ea82 flywheel. You'll need a late ea81 4wd clutch kit, and yes the pressure plate will bolt to the ea82 flywheel.

Will it fit?  Yes and no...

 

As mentioned, the early EA81s will need to have some aluminum ground off the lower engine-side bellhousing.  AT and turbo engines don't need to have this done.

 

While the flywheel bolt pattern matches the pattern on the EA81 flywheel, the EA82 uses fatter bolts, so you'll have to machine sleeves to take up the space between the EA82 bolt hole and the thinner EA81 flywheel bolt.

 

Not sure about the pressure plate interchange, but look up the part numbers and see.

Use the ea82 pressure plate with the 4wd 225mm ea81 clutch disk. The ea81 bolts work just fine with the ea82 flywheel. Thousands of people have done 5 speeds swaps using them and have never had a problem. Just put some loctite on the bolts and torque them to spec.

LOL at "thousands".  "Hundreds" would be more accurate and is still probably optimistic.

OP, it's your call on the flywheel bolts.  I chose to put sleeves on my bolts because, even with the bolts torqued to spec, it sounded like a rod was knocking when I started the engine.

I have a customer that wants to put a EJ engine in his EA81 and keep the 4 speed that's why I ask

LOL at "thousands".  "Hundreds" would be more accurate and is still probably optimistic.

 

OP, it's your call on the flywheel bolts.  I chose to put sleeves on my bolts because, even with the bolts torqued to spec, it sounded like a rod was knocking when I started the engine.

There's literally over a thousand results for ea81 5 speed swap just for usmb on google. Every one who actually drives their ea81 eventually swaps it over to a 5 speed when the 4 speed inevitably dies.

Edited April 12, 20178 yr by turbosubarubrat

 Just because you found a search result doesn't mean that person completed a 5 speed swap.