im want to drop a 30k turbo crate motor with fuel injection in my '86 GL 4x. turbos good or bad? ive had a 22RE pickup with a turbo on it and that thing kicked a$$ !! are the subie turbos low maintanance with the exception of cooldowns and such? if you cool them properly will they last a while? ive heard too much about them heating up and cracking heads. let me know. the '86 has a EA82 with fact carb on it. ive get a weber but i dont want to deal with tuning.

amen on the weber comment. i have ditched two webers in favor of efi.

 

i have seen turbo subarus in the junkyard with 200k on the ticker. if you take care of them, they are no more problematic than a subaru without a turbo.

Ditto what Arch said. Take care of it, and it'll be fine. Turbo cars seem to have more issues than N/A ones, but that's just because they are less able to take abuse in conjunction with lack of maintenance than the N/A cars.

my turbo wagon has about 220,000 miles on it, and it would still be running if the ECU hadn't died a while ago. It was my university car, so it took all kinds of abuse because I was too broke to fix it right.

 

I have:

Washed it 3 times in the last 6 years.

 

Drove it for an undetermined amount of time with less than 2L of oil in the pan (oil press gauge was reading 0)

 

Drove it for an undetermined amount of time with very little oil in the front diff (dipstick was dusty when I first got the car I just filled it up, and it's run fine since)

 

Drove it with huge oil leaks (like 1L every 300mi) for months at a time.

 

Drove with a plugged radiator for a whole summer. (never overheated)

 

Drove with broken radiator fans for another whole summer. (never overheated)

 

Drove with a leaky upper radiator hose (500mi trip) in winter. (never overheated)

 

Abused the auto tranny by shifting it manually from 1-2-D.

 

Disconnected the wastegate for a while to see what it would do.

 

Slammed it into curbs sideways, bending rims.

 

That engine and tranny were bulletproof!

Disconnected the wastegate for a while to see what it would do.

I did that too on my first turbo sube, ran super fast for a while till I blew a head gasket, disconnecting the overboost sol was probly the final nail in the coffin.

IMHO the ea82t's are just as reliable as the NA's you just have a bit more to care for.