Right.. all this talk of others about timing and distributors has got me thinking of when I swapped in my new dizzy a couple months back.

 

The dizzy I picked up from the salvage had a frozen diaphragm. No amount of vacuum applied to the hose moved the arm. No biggie.. I needed the Brat running, so I installed it and got it to idle on its own and not backfire under acceleration. A little bit of high speed pinging, but completely driveable.

 

I then took it up to my buddy's shop to grab his timing light to make sure I was at least close to being right on. Base timing was at 26*! At the moment, that explained the high speed pinging.

 

I adjusted it down to 10*, idle was smooth as silk, so I tried a run around the lot. The slightest bit of load made for angry bucking and backfiring. Then down to 8*.. same deal, same results.

 

I asked my buddy about it, and he pulled out one of his thick fancy dusty books off the shelf. He showed me a line in the book where the base timing for a nonturbo EA81 WITHOUT vac advance was 22*. I found that to be odd, but tried it anyways. Sure enough, setting to just beyond 22 worked wonders. Under revvs, the mechanical advance bumps it up to near 27*

 

Now, the question: Although I've been running like this for a couple months now, and has been doing just fine although eating more fuel than usual, is this "bad"? I've since managed to free up the vac advance mechanism, but have found the diaphragm to be busted, so I've still got it all plugged off. How difficult is a repair/replacement? I know I cant find one at my local parts house... :-\

Try www.lithiasubaruoregoncity.com ??? speak with Ron if all else fails.

Definitely get that diaphagm fixed and time it to 8-10deg. You can get them reconditioned fairly cheaply, and if you take it to someone good it wil last longer than the original.