cubastreet

Mind telling me where that was from? I'm about to start an EA81 rebuild.

I've convertd acouple of vans to LPG when I was living in England - one 2 litre ford v4 and on 3.5 rover v8. Both ran much smoother on LPG, and the running costs were about halved. Very easy to set up, I did the installations myself and had no problems. One thing you do need with LPG is a good electrical system as it's harder to make a spark in a lpg/air mix than a petrol/air mix. It's real good in cold weather as you don't have any trouble getting the gas to vaporise like you do with petrol. Another big plus is that wou don't get cylinder wash which is when with a cold engine the petrol vapour condenses on the cold cylinder walls and washes off the oil. Combined with the comparative lack of combustion by-products it makes your engine last MUCH longer (up to 6-7 times longer). The V8 van's oil still looked new after 10000km and 4 months driving around europe last year. I'm thinking of taking out the petrol tank in my brat and doing LPG only as then you don't have to make do with the LPG/petrol compromise and can raise the compression ratio to 11.5 or 12:1 and do away with the carb alltogether. Alternatively you can stick with original CR and add a supercharger. You can also tailor the advance curve for LPG which likes an advanced idle and faster initial advance curve but with no more full advance. If you do a LPG/petrol conversion it's still great but the compromise will result in slightly less power (unless your carb's shagged) and less MPG.

Careful with suspension lifts (you're talking about putting longer springs and shocks in right?) they destroy subaru diffs.

My mistake, I meant to say it has 175/60/13s on now. Once I get them cleaned up and on the ute I'll put a photo up. I might go for those tyres then as they're well under half the original price.

I know that diffs don't like being driven with different sized wheels but at that speed it shouldn't be a problem...

Hi guys, I just received a set of 14x6" subaru rally rims to put on my '81 brat. I'm going to keep the original steel rims with the mud tyres on them and then put road tyres on the alloys. Does anyone know what width tyres will go on them without rubbing? I've been offered a set of decent dunlop tyres 175/65/14 for a good price with 1 months wear on them, would these suit? I figure they'll be good as the current tyres are 175/60/13 which have pretty much the same circumference. comments/suggestions please.... Cheers, Jeremy.

pair of rubber gloves and a bowl of kerosene/turpentine/petrol etc.

Last week my clutch cable went just as I was leaving a friend's house. Luckily it was midnight on Sunday and I managed the hour-long drive home without stopping. Anyway, it seems that Subaru clutch cables aren't available from parts stores in New Zealand, probably at the Subaru dealership but I haven't been there yet. I went to the junkyards yesterday which were full of ea82 and ea82t cars. I tried pulling out a cable from one of these, but access was difficult around the pedal area and the connection felt different. Does anyone know if an EA82 cable will fit an EA71 chassis with and EA81 engine? Cheers, Jeremy.

Pedal to the metal, it sometimes works wonders.

Do you know any good NZ suppliers of parts? apart from rebuild kit, new bearings, probably new valve springs I might like to try a different cam profile as I'm throwing on a 34/34 Weber from a fiat twincam and I'll do a bit of minor headwork at the same time. The only other engine I've rebuilt was a ford crossflow. I'm not sure why these things are still so popular in England - heavy iron block (1600 can be bored out to 1900 tho), the pushrods weighed about 4x the EA81 ones, deep ridges in bores after 70,00 miles (although the guy at the machine shop said the wear wasn't bad), the list could go on a while. It's just a pity these old sube engines don't have the same supply of performance parts. I doubt the cams designed for aero use will leave me with much torque low-down.

OK so after a stripdown, everything looks .... new. one of the pistons has some dents in it where something small and solid had been bounced around the combustion chamber, but other than that the whole thing is barely worn in. I was prepared to have to buy new pistons, bearings, rebore etc but now looks like I can spend that money on a rollbar or something instead. Or perhaps a supercharger

Just to clarify - There are NO signs of wear on the walls of the bores. The crosshatch looks brand new. Also, the clean piston had a chamber full of carbon also, it just wasn't stuck to the piston. A little mild scraping reveals clean, unburnt alloy under the carbon on the other pistons also. These babies have not seen much action at all.

Hi guys, I'm kinda new around here, but I've been lurking for a while ever since buying an 81 brat at Christmas time. I know that the 81 brat goes in the historic forum but I'm here to talk about the EA81 so thought it would be better off here. I recently purchased a spare engine as a winter project to rebuild and do a little head work on. The guy told me it was low mileage and was running well. Anyway, when I got it home it woul turn, but not through a a full revolution. Don't panic I thought, perhaps it's a hydro lifter one and something's blocked after sitting for seven years in this guy's shed. His story was that he'd bought it to stick in a jetboat but opted for a ford 4 litre instead. Anyway, it's sat in my shed for a couple of weeks but yesterday the curiosity got the better of me so I threw it on the bench (damn I love alloy blocks) and pulled the heads. When they came off, there was a huge amount of carbon in the chambers, enough to stop the engine from turning over. After pulling off both the heads it turns fine. What amazed me the most though is that the engine looks to have been rebuilt but not yet run in. The bores still have a fresh set of cross-hatch honing marks. One of the pistons isn't black, and looks like it's brand new. The valves and seats all look brand new too, except for the carbon. It's obviously a jap engine as the writing on the oil filter's all in kana. It looks as though the engine's been rebuilt (or possibly even new) and someone's filled the petrol tank with sugar. The oil in the sump looks new. I just can't understand how this engine got to be in this state. Anyway, it's good for me, as it means I don't have to pay for a rebore, new pistons etc. What do you guys suggest I do with this engine. Part of me is saying I should just decoke it and throw the heads back on, but a bigger part of me says that's just way too risky for such a good condition engine. I'm still planning to strip it down, check the bearings and the oil galleries and make sure everything is hunky dory, gring the ports a little and maybe shave the heads a little as well. I payed NZ$50 for this engine, and another $5 for a spare seized block, alternator and starter motor. It's looking like the bargain of the year. Can anyone suggest anything in particular that I should look out for when I do the strip down? Jeremy

Is the shape of the headlamps enough to differentiate? round = historic ugly and square = older

Hi there, I'm based in Wellington, NZ and when I was passing through Riwaka on my way to visit my parents for Christmas I saw a sweet ute on the side of the road for sale. A couple of days later I'd secured the purchase and booked it on the ferry back to Wgtn. It's an 81, 1800 d/r with the twin headlights. Currently I'm getting it mechanically sound - 1 new cv, new balljoint and tierod end on the driver's side, and I need to weld in a patch in the tray. Then I'm getting onto making it go a bit quicker. How many gen1s are there around NZ? I haven't seen any around Wellington.... Jeremy