Hello all,

I'm helping a friend with his 82 GL wagon. I'm a decent wrench (motorcycles and Datsun 510s) but this is the first Subaru I've worked on.

The car died on a road trip and he had it towed home.  The distributor bearings were shot (shaft has a ton of wiggle).  He said the tach started jumping around along with a misfire and then it just stopped.

He had another friend who has a shop replace the distributor (twice as he determined somehow that the first replacement was bad?) but still no spark.  The coil is getting 12v but nothing at the secondary wires.  I hate being the second guy to try to fix anything!

This model has the control unit inside the distributor.  Is there any way to test that part?  The book says "NA" for a reading on this distributor.

Also does a color-coded wiring diagram exist for these old Subies?  The book he has has very crude drawings.

 

Thanks!

The crank angle sensor in the dizzy rarely goes bad, and I can't imagine both were bad. Is the rotor spinning? Sounds like a timing belt to me. Next would be to make sure the coil bracket is grounded, there is a transistor on the bracket that fires the coil and uses the bracket for ground.

Thanks for the suggestions.  This car has the EA81 motor which I think is a pushrod model.  I will definitely check that the distributor is turning.  There is a little capacitor/condenser looking thing inline on one of the coil wires.  Is that the transistor you mention?

 

 

 

EA81 is push rod.  Cam is gear driven.  The condenser thing is just a capacitor to help reduce EMI.   Transistors have 3 leads.  I'm not sure on EA81s, on EA82s, the ignition transistor is on the coil bracket.