Ever Victorious

Ooh.. Imagine what I found when I looked through my old files to scrounge up a pic or two of myself. That would be Mick and I at WCSS3, showing off our tats. I don't ever remember being that young. Me standing next to my FIRST 87.5 XT FWD. Yes, it's dirty, and yes, I'm about to autocross it, and yes I look like a dork. In my defense, it was 38 degrees outside that day. Me in my XT6 at WCSS8, just about to enter the mud pit. And this one was within the last few months, so y'all know what I look like now. I've actually lost a lot of weight over the past 2 years, I MIGHT even weigh less than I did at WCSS3. Maybe.

Well, it'll probably be nice to have the matched ECU and wiring harness rather than having to hunt for them. Plus you can do it at your leisure rather than worrying about when a yard is going to scrap the donor car. You might even be able to sell off a couple other parts you're not using for a little $$ to offset the cost... like the trans. If it's good and you're not going to use it, you can sell it to someone who needs it.

I ask because I like keeping options open. And I already have a Weber carb, anyway. This is all really preliminary anyway, since I don't even have a motor yet.

That totally sucks... I had an FC RX-7 once, they're known for turning into firebals. And mine was trying to become another one. I started smelling gas one day while driving and knew to immediately pull it over. Sure enough, the FPD had sprung a fuel leak. On those things,the FPD is mounted DIRECTLY over the exhaust manifold... so if you think an EA82T is a dangerous motor, try a 13B! There was a pretty nice, clean looking GL 3-door coupe at a used car dealer near me (5SP D/R EA82 non-turbo) recently. Of course, since it's at a dealership, "cheap" woudln't be the word I'd use to describe it. But depending on negotiating skills... Psyko - I LOVED my two 87.5 XT's! Of course, both were N/A FWD's. It's a cool little car to play around with.. just yank the EA82T and go another route (Oh, and my 88 XT6 5SP wasn't too shabby either once the flatlined air suspension was replaced!)

OK, I saw a car in the for sale section that looked like it had a CARBED EJ22 in it. The writeup for EA2EJ assumes swapping over to MPFI, what changes in the swap if carburetion is used? Is it a different intake manifold? What carb is used? How much does it simplify the wiring?

Just because it 1) pertains to this thread and 2) is funny... Everyone needs to watch this every now and then. Just because.

If you can find some EA81 seats in decent condition (increasingly harder to find thesedays), you can get them reupholstered to look stock. Otherwise, an early 90's Protege seat is almost a direct bolt-in replacement. And if you have a decent upholstery shop near you, you can always see about getting those re-done in a stock fabric, or very very similar. For the steering wheel, you can just unbolt the existing wheel and bolt on the newer style wheel. Don't take the whole column from the donor car unless your existing tilt column is shot. This is because the '80-'82 EA81's and '83+ EA-81's use different turn signal switches, and their wiring is not particularly compatible/spliceable. If you DO have to take the whole column, put your old turn signal into the new column. As the convertibles are so rare, anything dealing with the top will likely have to be worked on by a local rod/custom shop, and cost a pretty penny. If the top is not damaged or broken, protect it and care for it as well as humanly possible. Your wallet will thank you in the long run. Even when my dad had to replace the top on his Miata (common as all hell), it was expensive. Imagine what your custom Subaru setup costs. And +1 on the pics!

No Proteges that new in the Lynnwood yard. Newist one was probably 94-ish. The 91's seats are pretty darned comfy. No contest between them and the broken down BRAT seat. Closest Subaru seat that I've been in I could compare them to would be an XT6. Other than that, similar in feeling to my wife's '05 Tucson's seats, except with a better side bolster.

Ooh, that sucks... the Protege seats were just bolted to their rails. No welds or rivets.

Ignoring the adjustments all over those things, the basic seat looks identical to the Protege seats.

There were certainly quite a few sets at Lynnwood, in various colors and patterns. Wasn't hard at all to find a set in good condition, which I can't always say for Subaru seats, even newer ones.

Well, just got an excuse to go out for a drive, and here's a bit more info. With the seat "Adjustment" in the uppermost position and with the seat back almost completely vertical, I have a good 2.5 to 3 inches between my head and the bottom of the headliner (not the twin-halo, so this applies to ALL EA81's). Also, what I thought was a height adjustment for the driver's seat appears to be more of something that just alternates the seat between pitched forward a little and a normal driving position. Like if one had clearance issues with the steering wheel when getting in/out. Anyway... the seats are SOO much more comfortable than EA81's, and they also have a really good side bolster, more like an XT6 seat. If you're under 6', there should be no headroom issues. If you're over 6', it depends on if you're torso or leg. I can't really answer that question for anyone else. Anyone else around my area who wants to check it out and make their own judgement is welcome to do so.

I'm 6'0", a little more leg than torso. I can pretty much guarantee you I lost headroom from my old setup to my new, but part of that is because the old seat was broken and wouldn't sit anywhere close to upright, only reclined. Which is a position that drives me nuts. I'll drive it around for a couple days in a comfortable position for me and give you my impressions of it. It only took firing the BRAT up and putting it back in its parking spot to determine that the seats are WAAAAAY more comfortable than any EA81 seat I've ever sat it, no matter how good of condition it was in.

Alright, since you asked nicely.. They are from a '91 Mazda Protege. There were plenty of Protege's in the PaP, this happened to be the first one I encountered that had good seats where the bolts weren't rusted to the floor. There was a sport trim model that had even cooler seats, but the bolts were thoroughly fused into the floor. The driver's seat has a height adjustment for the lower cushion, so that may be why it looks like it's higher... it probably is at the moment. It's at a medium setting. Because of the mechanism they use for that height adjustment, EA81 driver seat rails will bolt directly to the driver's seat with NO modification (just use the bolts that held in the Mazda's rails). This adjuster mechanism doesn't exist on the passenger seat so the rail holder doesn't have any adjustment to itself, so the forward seat bolts on the EA81 rails need to be elongated slightly away from the front of the rail. Like about 1/8" at most. I did it in about 5 or 10 minutes per rail with an 11/32" drill bit (probably really hard on the bit for lack of support, so a dremel would be better, but I don't have one). But the WIDTH between the Mazda rail mounts and the EA81 rail mounts are EXACTLY the same, so no adapter plates were required. This was a super-easy conversion that is probably very plentiful in junkyards, given how many early 90's Proteges there are in JYs... not to mention that mid to late 90's Kia Sephias were basically rebadged Proteges and PROBABLY have the same mount spacing. Edit: Oh yeah, about the headroom... I didn't have any headroom issues in the BRAT before, and haven't noticed any since I put them in either.. so not sure if that's an answer to your question or not.

No on both accounts, but you are right in thinking they're not from a Subaru either.

So in the pokings-around in the BRAT over the past couple days, I found that one of the driver's seat rails was fractured in half, and the passenger seat back was almost completely toast. Hit the PaP today to look for replacement parts. Snagged a set of EA81 seat rails then help heading down the yard to see if there were any EA81 donor vehicles with good seat(s) I could snag. Then I found these... They are almost a direct bolt-in replacement for the EA81 front seats. In fact, the driver's side seat rails DID bolt right onto these seats, and then bolted right back into the factory seat mount holes with no problem! And the passenger seat rails just needed to have the holes slotted slightly on the front holes to mount the rails to the seat. Now... bonus points: Can anyone tell me what they are from?

I went on Weds. By that time the T-wagon was missing both the motor and the rear brakes.

Well, there is TONS of searchable info here, or if you have specific questions, you can always ask. Perhaps starting with pictures from the rear end so that the guys here can see the extent of the damage and advise you from there...

Yes, but when your budget is $20, this is the way to go. Remember: Still unemployed.

Kid went down for a nap this afternoon and I had tons of energy and drive, so I went to work on the old set of wheels I picked up from Ed just last night. They were VERY rusty on the back side of every wheel, and fairly rusty on the lip and face of each of them either. Here is the fruits of 3 hours of work: It's hard to tell because the sunlight kind of washed out the pictures a bit, but they're now silver. And the backsides, which you can kind of see through the spokes, will turn black overnight. After stripping and washing both sides of each wheel at least twice, I painted the backs with Duplicolor Rust Fix (which turns rust into primer). The faces were painted with Duplicolor silver wheel paint (5 coats) and clear (3 coats). They don't look perfect, but they look about 400% better than they did this morning, easily. See, Ed? Told you I was going to go to town on them . Anyway, now I have fresh-ish wheels to put tires on once the ones on the BRAT crap out, which won't be long.

Ok... took apart the connector behind the right tail light and cleaned it out, and the problem has not changed or gone away: The gauge reads WAY too high. Currently, after having driven 100 miles on the tank, the gauge reads that the tank is 125% full. :-\ Next course of action?

There was a wagon near the front (white) that I think still had a decent hood. The car had obviously been sitting for a long time given how much moss/lichens had covered the car.

Wow. Don't go there for a while... unless you need EA82 body panels. NO EA81's of any kind. About 8 or 10 EA82's, all wagons, only one or two had motors. Interiors pretty much gone from all of them. 6 Legacies. One motor between all of them, no transmissions. The one motor is questionable because the car was hit so hard from the side it broke the timing cover and threw little bits of itself inside the motor. One Forester. Or more accurately, a Forester frame. No motor/trans, no doors, no interior... Row B2 was almost completely empty so they are probably cycling stock, but I didn't see any Subarus in the holding area so I wouldn't hold my breath.

+1 on the wish you were closer... Vintage Subarus like that don't come along very often.

Lowball him, tear out the motor, and find yourself something nice to put under the hood. Like an EJ25T. (but that's just my opinion.)