Scoobywagon

I'm thinking that my 83 needs another gear, mostly for the highway. I'm thinking about swapping in a 5-speed, but it occurs that I'd have to fab up a custom crossmember. Is this correct? would it be easier to put in an EA82 at the same time (doubt it)?

With that many miles on it, I would probably suspect some fairly haevy carbon deposits inside the cylinders. I'd recommend a good fuel system cleaner. I usually use either a product called Sea Foam (available through NAPA) or a small can of B12 Chemtool. Either one works well, but the Sea Foam is probably the safer choice.

How about fabbing up a whale tail and placing the radiator inside the faux whale tail?

So maybe I SHOULD just stick with trying to stuff a powerstroke into the 81? just kidding, guys

http://www.ramengines.com/_wsn/page2.html Complete engines, ready to rock and roll, and a complete price list, to boot. I was looking at the dyno printout from sub4's website, and some of the numbers in there were just amazing to me. That little engine threw a peak torque of over 270ft-lbs and 125 horsepower. Frankly, I've seen full-size trucks with lower torque peaks than that. Granted they were giant hunks of crap... Then I went to their distributors page and found that place called Ram Performance. They've got an engine based on the Sub4 heads that is advertised at 140hp. How hard would it be to get ~140hp out of stock heads?

http://www.sub4.co.nz/4ports-txt.htm I ran across these 4-port heads while looking for a set of replacement heads for my 81. They look REALLY interesting, but I've not seen anyone here using them. Any thoughts on the matter? I just can't imagine that I'm the first one to run across these and I don't believe for an instant that anybody here would voluntarily pass up a set of heads desigend from the ground up with performance in mind.

Instead of building it back up to stock, why not set your own goals. Why not say "I'm going to build a 1.8L subaru flat 4 that produces <horsepower> and <torque>."?

The problem with a chain-driven setup would be getting it to fit inside a reasonably sized wheel. It simplifies some of hte machine work, yes, but also results in a much larger unit. To get the amount of gear reduction that I'm after, the resulting unit would end up being fairly large and therefore would not likely fit inside a 15" wheel once all the braking hardware is added back in.

Just to be clear, I thought I'd post a sort of concept drawing. Its crude, but I think you'll get the idea. I kinda figured on a steel box with a bearing for the CV shaft to pass through. The CV shaft would either directly drive the larger "inside" gear or it would have another gear matched to the splines on the CV shaft to drive hte larger gear. In this configuration, reverse rotation is not a problem, since both gears are running the same direction. The "inside" gear would have the outer end of a CV shaft pressed through it and the braking hardware all gets relocated to the outside. Fill the case with a 90wt bath and it should be good to go...I think.

I've been looking at installing portals on my 81. Has anyone ever done this before? How did you do it? My design constraints are as follows... 1) Must fit inside a reasonably sized wheel. 2) Must offer some fleximility in gear reduction. 3) Must not tear up spindles or wheel bearings. I'd thought of using a small "outside" gear on the input side and a larger "inside" gear in the output side of the portal. Brakes would either have to be significantly upgraded or moved to the other end of the CV shaft in order to provide better cooling, since you'd effectively be braking for a speed twice whatever your real speed is, so brake fade would be a problem. On the other hand, one could simply remove the rotor and hub to attach the portal directly to the spindle and drive it off of the stock cv shaft. If you relocated the brake rotor and spindle to the output of the portal, one could machine the wheel end of a cv shaft to pass air through it (fittings on each end). Any thoughts?

You can also tal to your local high-school or college theatre department. What you are after is called a gell. Its translucent plastic. Very cool stuff. Since you aren't looking for much, just go to the local HS or College and ask for a small sheet. They're usually happy to get it out of the shop.

I can't directly address a straigh-across swap because I've never done it. Hoxever, I am working on a megasquirt setup at the moment. The car is an 81 GL wagon. that's not overly difficult but it is a LOT of work. I couldn't find an intake that was already plumbed for injection so I had one built out of sheet metal. It has bungs welded in just above each intake valve and two more at the top of the intake just below where the mass-air will sit. That was kinda spendy, but should be worth the money when I get everything put together.

I've had reasonable luck with Peninsula Subaru. Call them at 1-800-458-5808 and ask for the parts dept.