I have a 84 subaru and i just recived an 86 motor...(EA81 vs EA82) so its over head valve compared to over head cam....i was wondering if anyone has done this swap on here and if they had any problems with it bolting in....so far all ive had to do is switch the flywheel, pressure plate and clutch...my car is 4x4 and the new motor came from two wheel drive...the exhaust mani is the same size and fit...the tranny has same bolt pattern...so if anyone could get back to me. Im going to start this project real soon. Thank you

Hi,

I've done this very swap to my 82 DL wagon using an 87 carb motor. Apart from the steering wheel being on the other side (I'm in Australia) it should be mostly the same.

I had to re-drill the plates that hold the mounts to the engine so the mounts sit a bit further back. Also, I had to cut & shut both chassis rails as the EA82 is a much wider motor. I had to cut all the way back to clear the distributor on the LH side.

Wiring couldn't have been easier, took 5 minutes at the most to do. In hindsight I'd have moved the coil to the LH side, at the moment I have the world's longest coil lead stretched across my engine bay, wasting precious spark.

Top & bottom radiator hoses needed to be custom. I used a top hose from a 2.5 diesel Mitsubishi Triton as my top hose, and a top hose from a 1.3 Toyota Echo as my bottom hose. Depending on availability you might need to run something else.

Heater hoses also had to be custom, I bought some "Unicoils", put them on some standard heater hose and bent them into shape.

Since I was already running the 5spd EA82 gearbox, I used a stock clutch and a stock flywheel.

Stock throttle cable, stock exhaust headers (EA81), stock axles, stock radiator. Been 3 months now and no worries.

 

Oh, the car has 3" of lift too, and one of my lift blocks had to be modified as it was fouling on the motor.