DaveT

Wagon? I can try to get pictures of an undamaged one.

What year is the car? What model?

Yes, I figure the cat would reduce them. But the idle isn't smooth, so I'm thinking something isn't quite right. When I swapped the known good exhaust = cats in, the O2 sensor came with them, so that's now been removed as an unknown. The engine twitches a bit with the uneven idle. It's not rhythmic, it's randomly uneven. I'll have to think overnight.... I could swap out the entire throttle body, or just the injector. It seems to be running great otherwise. I will also look at my other EA82 to see how it is idling tomorrow when I got to work. I don't want to drive this one much until I get it running right, so I don't kill a good set of cats.

Ok, I'll check those too. Didn't think of the booster, or the EGR. That one's a lot bigger pain to block! The RPM jumps is more like uneven, the needle will touch 700 once in a while, mostly at 800. Vacuum wiggling isn't much, just a division or so on the gauge. The PCV had strong vacuum on the side going to the manifold, near zero p or v on the side to the valve covers. I pulled the line at the T. The idle temporarily reacted to the change while the line was open, but went back to what it's doing when I blocked the lines. The purge line? is it one of the 3 on the canister? I pulled and blocked both sides of all of those one at a time.

More things... pulled each of the vacuum lines from the evaporate system 1 at a time, blocked them, no change. Pulled the vacuum line to the PCV valve, blocked, no change after settling out for the mix change. Pulled the hose off the iac valve, sprayed carb cleaner into it. Obviously all sorts of effects while doing, but no change after reconnecting. This engine is consuming far less oil than others I've run and passed, so that seems puzzling to me that it could be blowby.

The CTS reads 430 ohms at the ecu connector, actually lower than an old reference reading I have for 190F.

Idle 800rpm. But erratic, bobbing to 700 ocasionally. Sprayed vacuum hoses, intake boot with carb cleaner, no effect. Vacuum gauge on manifold port around 18" Hg. Needle wiggls a little with the unsteady rpm, but not rythmic. The variat ions are random. LED on ecu does not blink. Not in closed loop?

CT is every other year, until 25 year old car.

There are about 3 screws that hold the fuse box in place. Remove them, and you can get some different angles /access. There are a lot of wires so it will be stiff to move.

Use a photo editor to crop and / or re size them smaller.

Something is confused about the battery. No car battery is 700 volts. Resting voltage should measure 12.6V fully charged good condition battery. 12.0V fully discharged. Timing belts have nothing to do with the alternator. They are under the black plastic covers on the front of the engine.

Didn't put the tach on it yet. Wanted to get all the work / checks done before getting it all hot. Just going by my long history with these, the idle hasn't been abnormally high consistently. I was specifically paying attention to it after the test, and it would sometimes be pretty low, to normal. Although, the difference between the limit & fail reading might be hard to tell "By ear" without an A/B reference. Tuesday / Wednesday, I'll be taking it out for a drive, and stop to check Idle RPM when it's hot. If it reads good, and no other noticeable weirdness, ill take it back for the retest, right then.

PCV valve was a bit dirty, but the moving part wasn't stuck. Found another one, cleaned & checked it and put it in. The contacts inside the disty cap had grey crusty stuff built up on them, scraped that off. Center button normal. End of the rotor had black crud. Found a rotor in better shape, cleaned & installed it. Drew vacuum on the Modulator, with clear line, so I could watch for oil. Got some residual that was sitting in it, but not able to draw a continuous supply, or detect leakage. It was odd looking, not the same red as the ATF, not the same darkness of the engine oil. Going to put the known good exhaust system on it now. Only other sort of known unknown is that I'm running a 180 degree thermostat, instead of the normal 190 degree. Would that make enough difference for the ECU to not go into closed loop mode? How do I tell?

The AC compressor is disabled, as I have not had time to work on it. <--- strike that, that's the other car. But it was not used by me, wasn't on when I got back into the car after the test. It wasn't a hot day. I'd hope that the testing guys would know not to try to run the AC during a test. This place has been good in the past. Can't say about the other possible test operator errors, while there is a video feed, you really can't tell what is happening exactly. I just found some oil in the vacuum line at the 3AT vacuum modulator, so I will be testing that to see if it's leaking. I I'll look at / check the other ideas also. Plus the PCV valve.

So far- Going by tests in the FSM: CTS looks ok. Airflow meter test ok TPS looks ok Checked the spark plug wires, all look / measure normal. Checked the plugs. Light brown coating on all 4. Gap on the passenger side 2 about .039" Gap on the driver side about ..060" corrected to match the other 2. Tested the cat on the identical custom system my other car. it isn't firing either. I have the OEM exhaust &O2 sensor that passed on the car when I got it, so that will go on for the re test. Idle speed seems normal for what I see every day, not sure why it would have been high for the test. Since the new test that failed was the idle test, I wonder - the cat is dead, but it passes the cruising test anyway. Would idle inherently make more hydrocarbons, and thus fail since the cat is not removing them?

You may need to swap the diff. Have to look up final drive ratios in both service manuals. Or swap it, and see what happens. If it's not matched it will be obvious. Don't run in 4wd if it's not matched.

the trick to keeping the covers was to get them before they were rusted. Reassemble with anti seize, and they come off easy.

What fairtax wrote. I use the lube weight called for in the manual, Amsoil synthetic.

Engine idling in neutral I would think would work, BUT not if the oil pump is what is failed, so check for oil circulation if you decide to try that. I have flat towed my older 4wd automatics, slow not more than 20 miles, with no problems, but I know that the 4wd clutch pack is released when the engine is off. Awd could be different.

I've gotten a little oil and or coolant on them, nothing bad happened. They were either gates or subaru, most likely gates. The ones that snapped, were all before I switched to running without the covers. I have no plans to try to run a set beyond 40,000 miles. Reliability is #1.

I suspect that the belts and bearings run a lot cooler without the covers in place.

A decent quality battery is good for about 5 years under ideal conditions, simply due to the chemistry. I deal conditions are battery temperatures in the 70s. No discharge cycles, and maintained at the proper float voltage. Anything other than these conditions takes capacity / useful life off. and it is very unlikely that any battery in use in a car is being maintained under ideal conditions. Check the charging voltage, and the resting voltage. If they are normal, and you don't know the age, well, then its a gamble, since the test shows it as less than rated capacity. A battery at 0 degrees F is about 1/4 of it's rated capacity at 70 degrees, so it will be sketchy starting in cold weather if it's not within it's useful life span, or has been degraded by non ideal conditions. Headgasket seeping at that mileage, typical. It is due for timing belt and idlers replacement soon. Oil leaking from rocker covers, not a surprise. All of this is what I expect from a car of this age and miles. When I buy a new used car, I expect to put as much as $1000 into getting it into top shape, as it's unlikely that once the previous owner decided to replace it, it's unlikely that they kept the maintenance up as if they were going to continue running it for 10 years. Keep a close eye on the coolant level and amount of air in the upper radiator hose to avoid cooling system problems, or catch them before they become worse.

Directly from my 1986 factory service manual: EA82 Timing belt replacement is due at 60 months or 60,000 miles, whichever is first. Directly from my 1990 factory service manual: EA82 Timing belt replacement is due at 52.5 months or 52,500 miles, whichever is first. Somewhere a long while back, I came across a TSB about lowering the interval for the timing belts. Which makes sense, because I have been driving EA82s since 1988 and never had a timing belt make it to 60,000miles.

It's highly unlikely that any of that is causing noticeably low mpg. Except sticky calipers causing brake drag. Bearings and axles would have to be so fried there would be obvious other symptoms like noise. Strut? Only way that could have a milage effect would be so screwed up the alignment was way out, and that would tear up tires quickly.

Check the wires and terminals on the battery. The click no crank problem that is caused by high resistance in the starter solenoid circuit doesn't kill al of the power. It just does click and no crank. I've seen fairly new batteries fail due to a broken intercell connection. Easy way to find out is to jump with a pair of heavy gauge jumper cables. Like awg1 or awg0 , not the El cheapo ones with 10awg wire. Other way, hold volt meter probes on the battery terminals not the clamps. Have someone else turn the key. If the voltage goes away, battery I'd broken inside. Normal to drop to around 9 v if the starter is cranking. Fully charged undisturbed for a day, it should read 12.6v