zyewdall

yeah... Colorado is hard on winter tires, because even in the winter, our roads are mostly bare and dry and warm. But then once in a while, anytime between September and June, we get a foot of snow, and all season's don't work well..... It was so much easier in Washington, when you didn't get as many wacky storms in late spring and early fall, and you had pretty much snow covered roads all winter, so it wasn't to hard on the tires.

Hmmmm. I just took a look at the Blizzak's on the front of my '89 GL wagon, and they are about toast. The rears still look fine. About 12,000 miles on them I think. I suspect that this is a combination of 1) using them on dry roads alot (for example, even today, we had snow packed roads about 4 miles down from my house, and bare and dry for the other 60 miles or so I drove below that, plus I ran the blizzak's all summer :-\ though I drove the VW rabbit most of the summer instead of the subaru) 2) driving very fast around corners on the canyon roads on dry pavement. I've been accused of driving like a grandma, till I get out of town on the mountain roads, when everyone starts hanging on. I drive the same canyon almost every day, so I know exactly how fast I can take each turn, and my old GL can outrun alot of newer vehicals with twice the HP to weight ratio but not as familiar with the road. I suspect this hard cornering doesn't help the wierd camber the front wheels already have. Anyone else noticed that front tires wear out really fast. Or do I just drive like a nut?

Have you tried to sell it in the major urban areas, Seattle or so? People there actually prefer automatics I've found. The only way I managed to get rid of an old Honda Accord I had. I'd put the engine in the lifted rig though....

Yeah, Denver's really local to me. Half inch thick steel sounds a bit heavy... considering my truck rims are maybe 1/4" thick steel. What do yours weigh? Z

22" yesterday morning.... I got my 4wd truck stuck several times (it had all season tires on it, which suck in wet snow). Later in the day I took the subaru out. Didn't want to try it in the full depth, since it was up to the top of the hood, and wet. But it did great in the messy crunched up ice slick plow edge glosh (once I remembered to put it in 4wd -- barely made it out of the driveway at first and I couldn't figure out what the heck was wrong, till I noticed the back wheels weren't spinning)

But, keep the SPFI engine (or just the SPFI intake, if the longblock from your old one is still good). For offroading, I don't notice much difference between SPFI and carbed, but for a daily driver on the highway, fuel injection sure is nice for reliability and power.

Sh_t man. Sorry to hear that. Your car was pretty good looking for an east coast car -- better than some colorado ones I've seen. And right after all the work on it too. With this rash of wrecks maybe I should stop driving mine... Come to think of it, I almost slammed into a cow in Utah at 40mph this weekend, but it decided to not jump out in front of me after all. Gave me a pretty good adrenaline rush when it jumped out of the ditch about 30 feet in front of me when I came around the corner though. If you need any parts from Colorado, we've got alot of them out here... How far back is it smashed? If the frame rails are still good from the engine crossmember backwards, it is indeed possible to weld a new front end on. I've done it on a friends car -- it was about a 25mph T-bone incident just like yours. His was still driveable after the accident, except for the radiator fan. The radiator was still just a little forward of the engine and nothing vital broken. He put a tow line to a tree and backed up and pulled the frame out far enough to drive it for another few weeks as a one eyed subaru till he got the new front end.

yeah, the old EA82 wagon just seems to handle better than my other cars. Either they handle well, but lack the capacity to go off of flat pavement without breaking stuff, or they can handle mud and dirt, but not without lumbering through it -- like my 4wd pickup. The VW GTi is close, but you have to be too carful about tearing the oil pan off on dirt roads (tore it off once already), which of course are the most fun to tear around corners on. The subaru you just charge through mudpuddles, snow, whatever, and it takes it on. Shift on the fly to 4wd if needed. And if you keep the rpm above 3500 or so, it actually has good horsepower on the highway too (though I did almost get run over by a box truck last night -- I was doing 75 which was top speed for me, and the headlights kept gaining on me, and no passing lane )

Okay, completely unsolicited thread just to cheer for the snow last night. :banana: I got 11 and a half inches at my house. Didn't stop the subaru, except when I high centered it twice (once from sliding off the edge of my driveway, and once from trying to back over a 2 foot deep pile of snow the plow pushed up). I want to throw the chains on the '82 wagon and try it out in the snow too.... but I'm at work for a little longer this afternoon. Maybe I'll go take the '82 over to cut firewood this afternoon... Z

Hmmm. That sucks. Take a look at the nose-job thread http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=55437&highlight=nose+job. It cost us about $300 to fix that I think. But other times I've also swapped the engine for less damage than that, when i had a good body laying around with a dead engine in it.

The thought occured to me that it might just be tick of death. Especially because he says it still runs.... Hopefully I'll get a chance to take a look at it today. Zeke

Love that bumper for the OBW. I second the recommendation to buy a welder and tools and build your own. Welding is great fun, as many of us can attest to, and wirefeeds are pretty easy compared to learning stick welding. If you want to voyage out to Colorado, I'll weld one together for you. But then you get back to the cost of gas issue with the guys up NW. I'm going to put one together for my EA81 wagon when I get around to it. Just bought a 20 ton hydraulic tubing bender to go with the wire feed welder, chop saw, grinder, plasma cutter, etc... The plasma cutter is the most fun I think -- not so much for making tube bumpers, but for making art out of old metal, it's so nice. An artist friend of mine picked it up and in about half an hour made a piece of roofing into a japanese lampshade that could probably sell for several hundred dollars in the art shows. Sorry, off topic. Z

I think I found the 5 speed tranny for it. A parts car, '86 GL sedan, with a bad rod in the engine (that's what he said, but I haven't looked at it yet). Anyway, after I pick it up, I'll post it as a parts source for anything that I'm not taking from it....

I think the old hondas, vw, toyotas, and fiats (and possibly others) all have that same small four bolt pattern, though not sure if the offset is the same on all of them.

I'd be in at $300 for a set of 15's for my lifted EA81 project. Maybe $400 if they're all chromed like the picture. The only thing is that I don't like running wide tires (I think they handle poorly in the snow, which is mostly what I four wheel through, especially with a light vehical like an EA81 wagon), so I'd want to be running 195/xx/R15's, or at most 205/xx/R15's. So, narrow rims. And, I probably wouldn't by a full size spare, but I might.

They did switch to a different shape wiring harness plug for the SPFI engines sometime between 1988 and 1991 I know -- not sure if the '89 is the same as the 88 or the later ones. If you splice the same colored wires, the computer is apparently the same though.

I concur that the EA81 is better for off-road. It seems to be torquier than my EA82 SPFI (which has WAY more horsepower on the highway though). If you are going through the trouble of doing a fuel injected engine (nice for operating at extreme angles without starving the carb), might as well go for an EJ22 it seems. I'm going to be putting a VW diesel of some sort in my '82 GL wagon, but there is no kit for this at all, and I expect that it'll be over a year before I have results to post. I'm I'm sort of shooting in the dark for what engine to put in there as far as torque/rpm/etc... Plus, I'm looking at at least $3grand for the engine if I get a newer turbo one. Not a cheap project.

Yup, in Ward. It's sort of different for sure, but more affordable than Boulder, and I like it so far. Yesterday afternoon our fun event was moving a house by picking it up with a tracked excavator as a crane. Haven't met the viking guy yet, but I've heard about him. Yes, planning on veggie oil eventually, or maybe just biodiesel (the newer diesels don't like straight veggie oil as well as the old mercedes and vw's from the 80's). And yes, I can give the location of the '70's coupe. I actually have to talk to the owner (or owner of the land it's on at least) soon so I'll mention it. I'd love to talk to you about exactly how to do the lift on mine, since it sounds like you've got one already. Z

I hear you. I was thinking of the 1.9 liter TDI that's in the new VW jettas (the four cylinder version instead of the 3 cylinder). But the problem is fitting an inline four into the place of a horizontally opposed four.... The three cylinder is a shorter and shouldn't require relocating the radiator and grill. And only 3/4's the power of course. But given how much power the 1.9 has in a much heavier car than an '82 wagon, I'm hoping the 1.4 will be okay. If not, the 1.9 bolts to the same mounts and everything.... Gearing, I don't know.... It's going to be somewhat of an experiment. I know my mitsubishi diesel truck has that rpm gap between 2nd and 3rd, so on some hills I can pull third easily if I start in third at the bottom, but if I have to start from a stop, I can never get out of 2nd. I own one of the old rabbits too, and it's got good torque and can rev high as well (apparently the 1.6 liter engines rev way better than the larger 1.9 liter ones due to shorter stroke). Even though it's only rated at 52 horsepower it will get to 85mph on the highway if you give it time. But I've smashed the oil pan once already in less than 6 months driving it off road... Hence why I want the subaru.

Just calculated it. Got 31.6 mpg on the last tank, which was mostly mountain highways (3800rpm) with five people in the car. Not bad at all.....

I owned one subaru that changed owners every two years or so, and I think I was about the 10th owner. I've been both the third and fifth and seventh person to own one of my trucks. A friend was the second, fourth, and sixth. He gave it to me in highschool, but due to paperwork issues, I gave it back then bought it back. Then 8 years later I traded it back to him for a different truck, then a year later, bought it back again. Nice little '74 ford courier pickup with 40k original miles.

My experience. I bought a can of MAF cleaner at checker auto, cleaned the MAF on the '89 GL SPFI. Seemed to have markedly improved the throttle response. Before it hesitated at several points on the throttle, especially below 2900rpm. Now it revs nice and easy through the whole range, up to 5k or so. I had it up to 80mph on the highway today, no trouble at all. I swear it feels like a legacy as far as power now. Gas mileage also seems to be doing really well (30mpg or so, and I have been driving it pretty hard). I also recently changed the spark plugs, wires, and put two bottles of fuel injector cleaner in the gas tank, and gave it brand new synthetic oil. But the hesitation went away right after the MAF cleaning, not after the other stuff. Just turned 210k miles on the original engine, and it's running the best it ever has since I've owned it.

Yeesh. Those are the pictures from BEFORE the derby? That rear end looks worse than a loyale that I saw that was rear ended by a full sized pickup at 30mph. I can't believe you haven't pushed the radiator into the engine already. That seems to be what usually stops them, otherwise they just keep running with pretty extreme body damage. I might put a new bumper on it first just to get a little head start.

I'm going to use this thread to post updates on my '82 GL wagon project over the next year (or two, or more....) Bought the wagon from Luvmybrat two weeks ago, and picked it up from DrKrazy's house last weekend. It's a gold wagon, no rust, and only very slight body dents. Pretty sweet. I'll post a few off-road pics when I find my camera. Here's the plan: -Lift it 2 or 3 inches -15" pug rims -swap in a turbodiesel engine. The engine of choice right now is a volkwagen 3 cylinder 1.4 liter direct injection variable vane turbo engine that was used in the little cars in eastern europe around 2001 or so. It's only rated at 75HP, barely more than the stock EA81, but it gives 130 ft lbs at only 1800rpm, which will be really nice. I'm hoping by switching to the 5 speed and the larger tires I can keep the highway rpm below 3,000, because this engine redlines at 4,500 intead of 6,500. -5 speed dual range manual from a EA82 car. I'm not parting out my '89GL to get this, so if anyone on the board has a good tranny like this laying around, PM me, especially if you are in CO or WY. -snorkel air input for the engine -Brush guard/push bar on front -4,500lbs winch on the front, with synthetic line -heavy duty roof rack -Put 85 watt driving light behind third eye -New two tone paint job (currently thinking of using black bedliner below the door moldings, and some metallic light green to complement the gold metallic base paint, but haven't settled on this for sure. -remanufacture the vintage plaid seat covers -new sound system with good speakers and mp3 player -solar panel on the roof, upgraded starter battery and 800 watt inverter or so to provide AC power Any other suggestions?

I've heard that these have an issue with the synchros on third gear. The first one I owned ground regularly, but did go in gear usually. Does it go into third when the engine is off? If you are used to five speed trannies, make sure it is all the way over the the right, not in the middle like you are used to.