Datsunrides

Dorifto!

I so can't wait to see this done. I'm sure you want to even more! It motivates me to try and get mine finished by spring/summer. Well, at least for JCCS. Are you planning to take yours to the show? Mark

Thanks Paul. Yes, I have been in contact with Danny, but over parts. I don't think I was aware he was restoring one of these also. I could use that gasket if it would survive the trip, along with those side markers you were supposed to be checking on. All ya gotta do is let me know and I'll pull out my paypal pen! Mark

I FINALLY got the cowl repairs done! No more rust! Still need to "finish" it, but the welding is basically done. Next I was going to weld in the rusted out piece for the fresh air inlet and patch in the right front wheel well. Got the air inlet piece trimed and ready to go and started to cut out the wheel well. What I thought would be a 3"x3" patch turned into this, Oh well, I guess it's better to find this now. I hope to have this are treated to fresh metal and finish the fresh air area along with seam sealing the front next week, then I can move onto the rusty trunk areas. The main issue I see is Subaru either did a poor job seam sealing, used a bad product, or a combination of both. I feel if it had been properly sealed, I would not be seeing these issues. Oh, and since I was at it, I removed the battery tray since the plan is to mount a dry cell up where the spare tire used to go. Glad I did as, you guessed it, there was rust (only surface at this point) there. I am also working on rebuilding the side glass holders (centers rusted out) and hope to have that tackled soon. That's it for now. Mark

Sounds like you may have bad motor and or transmission mounts. I would take a look there. Mark

Just built a shroud around wherever you place your intake or simply angle the tube off horizontal. This will deflect the rain and bugs for the most part. Mark

Ummm, I would not waste my hard earned money on those gimmicks. The only thing those do is help the acceleration of cash out of your wallet! I guess you could somehow run a tube from the grille area to the stock air cleaner nozzle. This will net you a cold air intake and a slight "ram air" effect at highway speeds. Sure, it's called an air filter. You may see a couple HP for your trouble Mark

Maybe the wear indicator on the brake pads? They will kinda squeek if the pads are close to worn out and stop making noise when you step on the brakes. Mark

Hey Paul, I'll hold onto it for a bit. Luckily they are small engines and easy to tuck away. If you do decide you want it, I'm sure we can work something out. It can probably ship Fedex or worse case Greyhound. I sent a friend in Vermont a left side front clip from a Colt and it was only like $90 or so via Greyhound. I'd guess the engine would be somewhere around $60-80 Fedex. Mark

The parts coupe I got earlier in the year actually had an EA62 in it. I thought all the GL coupes had EA63's. Anyways, the 62 is a 1300 right? Is there anything special about it, other than the heads, that would be worth saving? Mark

It cost me $150 to have that done. I'm sure he would give me a "group rate", as he has upholstered all my completed cars. Shipping would suck. Check with a local upholstery shop, I'm sure someone back there can do the same quality work. If you did want my guy to do it, He would need the metal structure as he has to pull on the material tightly, and with no support, the pad would probably deform and not fit back correctly. Mark

Ahhh, the joys of owning a vintage car. You probably won't easily find a new core, but if you search around locally, you can probably find an old school radiator shop that will recore both your heater core and radiator (if needed). Maybe both just need a rod out? Mark

Well, I pulled the trigger and bought the 5 speed Subaru3 was selling so I should have some answers on fitament in a while. The olny difference, tranny wise I can see from pics and the service manual is the rear housing, and it does not look that much different from the 4 speed. Now the shifter may pose a problem, but nothing that can't be overcome. I mean, these were offered in Gen 1 cars after all. Mark

Yup. There is a certain vinyl he uses that will stretch and conform without bunching up. This one came out so nice I have another badly cracked dash (for a different car) I will drop off once I patch it up. Mark

The only prep I did was fill in the cracks and sand everything as smooth as I could. Here are the pics of the vinyl covered dash pad. Actually came out pretty good. Does not look all that much different from a hard vinyl. Mark

Did not hold up. Actually the repaired area held up, but the dash cracked in a different area after leaving outside for a couple cooling/heating cycles. Did the fix 3 times and always the same result, a new crack. It's at the upholstery shop being recovered in vinyl. Making progress on body work. Have the fenders, valence, and doors metal worked, filled, and primed. Ready to block and glaze. Still need to finish the cowl repair, but did get the patches cut out of the parts car. Been concentrating on a couple other cars for the last month so I hope to be back on this in a week or so. Mark

If it is only doing this after a high speed run, chances are the radiator may be plugged just enough that it won't affect in town running, but can't flow enough at high speed. You can easily check this by feeling the radiator for cold spots after a freeway run. Should be evenly hot. If you feel cold spots, that is a sign the radiator is plugged in that area. Also may want to replace the rad cap 1st just incase the existing one is not holding pressure. The cooling system needs some pressure in it, otherwise it could possibly create enough of a vacuum at high speed to collapse a hose and cause the overheat. mark

That model would have the 4AC engine. They are a good, reliable engine, if not real powerful. Biggest issue is rotten vacuum hoses (and there are a lot) causing driveability problems. Price does seem a little high, but if the paint and interior are nice and there is no rust, and it runs good, might not be too bad. Those miles, while not bad for a Toyota, are getting up there. I'd at least check the compression and find out when the last time the timing belt was changed. With good compression and recent timing belt, I'd offer $800 and see if they accept. Mark

Updates finally!

I would NOT just replace it with a regular wire. Not a big fan of fusable links either. I would replace it with either a maxi fuse of around 40/50 amps (good) or a circuit breaker (better). The benefit of the curcuit breaker is once it cools down, it will reset and get you back runing again. With a fuse or link, you better have a spare with you. Non blinking turn signals may be as simple as a bad flasher can or a burned out bulb. Mark

That's great news for us old Subaru enthuiasts! I will for sure check back with you in a month! Mark

Well, was planning to finally do some updates to this thread, and then the board goes down! Anyway, glad it's back up now. No groundbreaking news, more parts cleaned up and some progress on the body. Here we go with the pics. Air cleaner blasted and painted and installed on the engine along with the NEW A/C compressor (not easy finding one of these) and brackets. Blasted/painted/rebushed and repaired (clutch cable mount and gas pedal stop needed rewelding) pedal box. Gas tank blasted and repainted on the outside and cleaned and coated on the inside. Had to repair a couple of pinholes. The coating was for extra insurance. Grill reassembled with freshly polished stainless trim. Fresh rechromed front bumper. SHINY! Floorpans completely sandblasted and etch primed. There are small spots that need to be repaired, but as you can see, not bad at all. The rust has been neutralized so I will probably just patch with fiberglass. the one area on the right wheelwell is the worst and wil be cut out and new steel welded in. I have more stuff done, but that will have to wait a little for the next update. I did manage to finish stripping the parts car and it is now cut into pieces. I knew the rust was bad from what I could see, but was surprised by how bad it was in the front frame sections. I bet a couple big potholes would have caused it to buckle! It was almost rusted completely out on 3 of the 4 sides! Not that I would expect a response here, but did these come with EA62's? The parts car has one in it and I thought they came with EA63's? Anything special about the 62's? Mark

I have no real knowledge if it would work, but the easiest swap may be a diesel VW Vanagon motor? I think they made them diesel and if so, don't they swap in Subaru engines into them or something like that? If so, I would think you could "reverse engineer" the swap to put the Vanagon engine in the Brat? Anything else would require a lot of custom work do to being at minimum an inline 4 cylinder, which would be quite a bit longer and taller than the Subie motor. May be easier to just get a diesel Rabbit pickup. Mark

A distributor should easily fit in a medium priority mail flat rate box. International shipping is like $45. Large box, which may fit 2-3 is about $55. Mark

Doubtful you will find any stock replacement pieces anymore. Any good muffler shop should be able to duplicate the stock system, or modify it for somewhat better performance. As for the tip, I don't think I've seen one but I would think this is something than could probably be fabricated fairly easily. Mark