WoodsWagon

Doing a cylinder leakdown test would tell you if the valves were bent and leaking. Slightly bent and leaky valves= burned exhaust valves later. But it doesn't matter much. Run it for a while, don't bother dicking with replaceing T-belt stuff. If it's running rough at idle it's probably got some bent valves. To fix it you'll have to have the heads off. The motor will be out on a stand anyway at that point so it's easy to do all the t-belt stuff. Just drive it and see if it sets misfire codes.

Seeing as you already torqued the heads down I would recommend getting another set of head gaskets. These things have a hard enough time keeping them in when they're done perfectly, twice crushed gaskets wouldn't have a chance I would think.

WOW. I've never seen GD be this cool and helpful to someone with a bad attitude like this before. What's wrong with you man? You having a mellow off-day? Ram engines are built for use in experimental aircraft. Constant RPM, constant load, not idle to redline variable load like you see in a car. So high horsepower/ torque #'s can be made, but the powerband is much smaller. Everything is optimized for a certian RPM, not a wide flat torque band like you need to move a car. That aside, I belive the EA71 still had separate cylinder sleeves with shims at the bottom. The shims would compress and the sleeve would move in the block letting the headgasket blow. EA81's don't have removable sleeves so I don't think that's a problem with them. So there's a reason to upgrade to the newer design. Plus, you can retrofit the SPFI system off of an EA82 onto the EA81, which gives you the power, economy, and reliabilty of fuel injection on the simplicity of a pushrod engine. A 5speed also has a better shift linkage that is less likely to give you problems, and I belive the internals are stronger too. So that's a jump in reliability. The best setup I would recommend is a 5spd EA81 with SPFI. I wouldn't recommend an EJ engine for you, mainly because it has too much torque for the old style FWD suspension to put down. With my loyale wagon, I could easily light up the 30" diameter tires. In fact, you had to be damn careful with it in the rain because it would break loose both front wheels and the front would slide to the right. Which in 2 lane stop and go traffic can run you into the car on your right. In 4wd it was a blast, in 2wd you had to be careful.

Did you run it after that? Did you take the spark plugs out to clear it before it started up? Just do a normal oil and filter change. You're not going to get any extra out by changing the oil twice. You only do that if you're trying to clean sludge out , not coolant.

How did the coolant get into the oil if you pulled the intake? I would think it would have gone into the intake ports and into the cylinders, not the crankcase? What engine are you working on here?

A properly set up tow bar on a car with normal caster won't do this. I've done 5,000 miles of flat towing, and both cars would track behind you no matter what you did. You could do full lock turns in a gas station and they would follow you right around. They will counter-lock if you try to back up, but that's due to the negative caster. You also need to adjust the hitch height so that the towed vehicle doesn't lift the towing vehicles back wheels when you try to brake. Having weight in the bed of the towing vehicle helps, when I pulled my t-wagon back I could brake and I could turn, but not at the same time. This time pulling my 68 VW Fastback I had a 4 wheeler in the bed. Much more stable. I'd say the Brat doesn't have enough caster or the steering response is thrown off due to different wheel offset or something.

I'm using a water injection system on my 2001 toyota tacoma 3.4l. I have a TRD supercharger on it with an undersized pully so it's making 8.5psi. The stock injectors can't keep up with it at higher rpms and the computer won't back down the timing maps far enough to keep it from detonating. I use winter grade washer fluid, which is 30% methanol. The methanol actually helps fuel the engine at the higher rpms, if I run straight water the power drops off as you come up to redline. I use the stock washer fluid tank and pump, it's mounted down in front of the front wheel so it's lower than the intake, a Hobbs adjustable oil pressure switch, a washer nozzle from an 06 civic, and an evap soleniod from a t100. The pressure switch runs off of manifold pressure, when it hits whatever boost pressure you have it set to it opens the evap soleniod and turns on the pump. That sprays washer fluid out of the washer nozzle I have mounted in the intake tube right before the throttle body. It's a misting type washer nozzle, but the volume is kinda high and the spray pattern isn't ideal. It all gets distributed evenly when it hits the supercharger impellers and evaportated by the too-high intake temps on the other side of the supercharger. I put a stock t100 washer fluid tank in the engine bay and use that to run the windshield washer. I did a little rewiring so both pumps are powered when the key is on and the injection system is grounded by the pressure switch. The T100 pump is run by the wiper switch. It pulls way harder and I can't hear it detonate like I could before.

I belive you have to change a ground jumper on the ecu harness to change it from thinking it's an auto to a manual. A search should turn it up. Then you can use the 97 ecu and it won't be looking for egr.

And even then it's really nothing to worry about. My mom's 98 2.5l has been tapping loud, all the time, and has lasted 163k, 50k that we've had it. You can hear it coming, tak tak tak. Never goes away, runs fine and gets mid 20's for gas milage. We got the car with horrendously blown head gaskets, like as much exhaust out the radiator as the tailpipe. You could hear it breath through the radiator as you cranked it. If I had known how bad the pistons were I would have replaced them when I had the heads off. Hasn't seemed to be a problem though, more of an annoyance.

Mabe a cam siezed and the timing belt snapped? How long was it running for? I'd bet you damaged the engine enough that fixing whatever let go isn't worth it. Time to start sourcing a replacement junkyard engine. I always take off the oil cap before draining the oil and filter and put it on the hood latch. It's a good reminder to fill it back up before doing anything else.

Same advise goes for EJ swappers, I didn't really strip my engine harness down as far as it could go, so there was a fair bundle of wiring that I had to fit under the dash. With some good stuffing and a lot of zip tys I got it in and never bothered to go back and finish the job. Two years later the car won't start. I check the usuals, then look under the dash. Apparently the harness had been getting pinched by the gas pedal and it had chewed into it right next to the SMJ. The harness then caught fire, burned the insulation off of the wires at the SMJ and shorted together. Separated all the wires, wrapped them in electrical tape and it fired right up. Shoved it deeper under the dash with more zip ty's and threw in a fire extinguisher. I had smelled something smokey, but I figured it was left over from the welding I had been doing on the body. Nothing like having a harness on fire above your feet and not noticing.

Take a look at the 2nd page of this: http://offroadingsubarus.com/downloads/EA2EJ.pdf That's a picture of my adapter plate (machined out of a scrap piece of aluminum, thats what all the extra holes are from), with my offset welded studs.

It doesn't really simplify the system to remove the cat as the cat case is the merger of the Y pipe. Gutting them doesn't really change anything either, the volume the cat can flow is probably larger than the header pipes can flow so it's not an issue. You won't set any codes with an OBD1 car as there is no oxygen sensor after the cat. I just don't see what you gain by gutting it... It's not hurting anything and the car is louder and smellier when you do gut it. Mabe if you drive in tall dry grass all the time? A proper set of heat shields should protect against most fires though.

One cold night won't usually do it, but if it was a few days... If the coolant temp sensor was damaged, it might be giving the computer a bad reading, which would make it so the computer didn't richen up the fuel mixture for starting. I had a beater legacy that I had to pour some gas on the air filter to get it to take because the CTS was gone. It's like having a carbureted car with no choke. Other potential idea is the water pump may not have been able to turn due to ice in the impellers. The pump is driven by the timing belt, which if it was marginal could have broken or jumped time?

I've always used synthetic brake caliper pin grease... blue stuff in a can with a brush.. no idea if it's the right stuff to use or not but it seems to have good stickyness and I haven't had a problem yet.

You can also deform the knuckle by overtightening the lateral link bolt. All the ones I've done at home I "pressed" the bearings in and out with a hand sledge and sockets. You use the old empty bearing housing to press in the new one. To get the inner race off of the hub, I cut a diagonal in the race with my cutoff wheel, then wrap a rag around it and split the diagonal cut with a chisel. You have to be carefull of shrapnel though, which is why I use a rag as a shield. Main thing in the northeast is the damn lateral link bolt. It's exposed in the middle so the rust gets to work on it from all ends. Usually the two bolts on the rear subframe where the lateral links attach to that are just as bad so I prefer to do my torchwork out at the hub instead of in by the gas tank.

I cut two bolts to length and welded them together as studs, I have a jig that holds the bolts the correct distance apart while you weld them. You thread the short side of the studs into the engine, index them and the plate holds them from turning. The trany slides onto the 4 studs and you put the nuts on top and bottom. They've worked fine for me and lasted for 3 motors and god knows how many trannys.

The problem seems to be corrected by having the rear wheel allignment reset to the new specs. From what I read on the other forum that was linked to the rear toe is adjusted out, because with more weight it toes in further. Most of the people that had realigned the rear suspension reported that the problem was gone.

SPFI is plenty good for fuel economy. It's realatively easy to swap over, and it works great. The part I liked about it was how well subaru had written the limp home tables for it. As long as you had the distributor hooked up it would pretty much run. MAF unplugged, TPS unplugged, CTS unplugged, it would still run and drive. So good for reliability in my book. If you're going to the trouble of MPFI, you might as well do the wiring for an EJ engine. You don't have to go with a 2.2l, there is plenty of 1.8l EJ's for cheap out there in impreza's. They're a more efficient head design than any EA head was on it's best day, so you can expect greater MPG out of one.

Well you're in luck, backwoods bumschmuk USA is only 2 1/2 hours north of you! All I'm saying is to do enough straightening to make it driveable again. Not restore it to it's former glory. Put it through the risks and rust of winter and then move on in the summer. Looks like I did a pretty good job of pissin in people's wheaties. Mabey I shouldn't post on sundays.

I'm not sure I understand the view that a car is either perfect and beautiful or it's damaged and should be thrown away. A car is #1 a form of transportation. This car still fulfills that need, sure it's not as nice as it used to be, sure you used a chain and a sledgehammer to straighten it out, sure it's got wrinkles and the panels don't line up, but it gets you from point a to point b. Picture this: you get the new to you car, swap over the good parts from the sedan, vow to drive much more carefully in the winter, and get hammered a week later by some minivan with bald summer tires hauling around in the snow with the driver talking on the cell phone. Now if you were driving the sedan, you'd say, ah well, it was kinda beat up anyway. Bucky92, I believe I remember you wanting to junk the coupe that Turbone drove out from the west coast due to wiring issues, so I can understand some body damage causing you to advise dumping the sedan, but Moosens, unless you're selling him his next car, what's the big rush on "it's never going to be as good as it was, so dump it quick!" ? Both you and Hatchsub have seen my lifted wagon, so you know I'm no stranger to body damage and missmatched panels, but that car was still pretty functional, no? I've had to retire it due to all the suspension mounting points being rusted out and collapsing, but if I'd been worried about body damage it would have been off the road in 2003 instead of 2008. I learned lots about mig welding and recreating structural parts of the body on that car too. It just seems a shame to kill off a rare and old car (for this area) just because seeing it damaged makes you feel bad because you remember how good it looked before the wreck. Mabe it's a guilt complex thing due to being the driver during the wreck? You want it out of your sight because it reminds you that you once screwed up while driving? Kinda seems like a lame reason to ditch a car, but I think it's an all too common one. You'd be suprised about the availablity of EA81 parts. A guy near me has 7 parts brats hidden in the woods behind his house, and you know there's more like him all over the eastern seaboard. Sorry if I seem like a jerk, it's sunday afternoon and I'm cranky. And junking cars due to repairable body damage is a sore spot with me.

YES! The car is still running, registered, and insured, so use the chain and immovable object tirck and get it back close so the hood can open and shut and the radiator is back out of the fan. You didn't damage anything with the suspension or allignment, and I've seen lots of subies where the framerail kinks right before the strut tower and they've been yanked back out and OK. My biggest justification for doing some redneck bodywork is that it's still winter. Winter is the hardest season on subaru sheetmetal, between the salt and the rocks and trees that jump out of nowhere, it's best to not drive a car you care about in the winter. Use the sedan untill april or may, then switch over the parts onto the new good body.

I've always reused the subaru pins. The axle cup can only go onto the transmission stub one way, so you have to look at whether the hole is going through a spline or a valley and match it to the axle cup before you put it on the splines. One way it's a complete hole the whole way through, the other way it's off half a spline and the roll pin wont go, or if you pound it, will snap off jammed partway in the hole.

Subaru outbacks have lift blocks between the crossmembers and the body to keep the axles flat with the longer outback struts. Experience has shown that running outback struts in cars without the spacer blocks doesn't seem to kill off the axles any faster. So, measure how tall the lift blocks are between the engine crossmember and the body and build some strut top extensions 1/2" taller than the lift blocks and you should be good. Either remove the front outback bumper, replace it with a legacy bumper, or build your own bumper. Building your own bumper that can take a hit is recommended. Same goes for the rear bumper. They really are too low to have a good approach or departure angle and often get torn off on the trail anyhow. Unplug the two front impact sensors for the airbag system if you're really planning on beating the car (which it sounds like you are). Having an airbag go off can be really distracting when you're trying to keep up momentum over an obstacle. Remove the cold air intake bit that goes from above the ABS module (the part with the nest of brake lines) to above the right front headlight. That will make it so you're pulling air from behind the headlight rather than the wave of water coming over the top of the headlight and being funneled into the intake. Better yet, take some flexable hose, like a dryer vent, and build a snorkle. Bigger tires with agressive tread are always recomended. I'd also recomend welding the center differential. If you remove the shifter and rear driveshaft, you can remove the rear endplate off of the transfer assembly and pull out the center differential. Welding the diff up will greatly reduce the chance of getting stuck with one rear wheel in the air. It would make the car drive the same as your older subarus did when put in 4wd rather than Fwd, so binding on tight turns on pavement.

Judging by the sudden stop and the fire I'd say it threw a rod.