Crazyeights

Agreed, I love my SPFI EA81 swap. Where are you running the timing on yours? I find that mine produces LOTS more power if the timing is pushed from the recommended 20 degrees up to more like 28 degrees or so.

SJRLift has everything you need to lift your '83

Could be the front brakes if all of the rust protectant wasn't washed off of the new rotors before they were installed. It usually goes away fairly quickly though.

You mentioned "I blocked it off and it made no difference" I wonder if you might have an unmetered air leak between the MAF sensor and the throttle body. Is all the rubber intake ducting tight and leak free? Are there any hidden cracks or bad vacuum lines anywhere? Is the EGR valve partially blocked open by a piece of carbon? Just some additional thoughts to consider.

Like GD recently suggested to me, spend the money and buy an accurate temp gauge (or set of gauges) and install them. The ones in my '83 read about a third higher with the dash lights on.

Could you tell by pulling the starter out? The outer edge of the two 4 speed flywheels where the pressure plate bolts up should look different.

It has a 3" SJR Lift with 15" Peugeot 8 spoke alloys on it. Right now the tire size is 215/70/15 which seems about right.

It would be an easy swap but the D/R I pulled out is complete and I didn't want to rob the parts from it. I'm watching P-A-P for a parts D/R for a first gear sychro and the low range aux set. Thanks for all the ideas:banana:

So, I bought a 3.7 LSD from baccaruda and converted it to 3.9 for use in my old EA81 wagon. We were talking about different transmissions and he came up with an idea for a nice combination. I started with a low mileage (53k) RX trans. I pulled the 3.9 ring and pinion set from an old XT6 parts trans I had laying around and set them up in place of the 3.7 gears in the RX box. I had to switch washers under the pinion nut (from the other trans) to keep the clearance on the pinion assembly correct otherwise it was too tight once assembled and the nut torqued. Other than that, the shim stacks on both pinions were nearly the same so no worries about depth. The pattern looked very good right off. I set the backlash at about .008-.010 (only about 1 notch looser that it would have been). Next I went out to Pull-A-Part and found some (EA82 SPFI) 23 spline stubs and put those in so I could use the stock EA81 axles. It went together really easy and it's nice and quiet. I pulled out my 5 speed D/R and installed it almost 2 weeks ago and it's GREAT! Full time 4WD - Center Locking diff and it's still a D/R but not quite as low geared in low range. Just about perfect for the street. 2-5 gears are a little lower than the old D/R and low range on the 3.9 RX box is good for about a 500-600 RPM increase in each gear. I didn't take any pictures of it apart because the threads below show the exactly the same parts. These people and many more I'm sure, did all the hard work of writing the tear-down threads I used for reference or I never would have even tried it. I have a couple cheesy cell phone pics of the trans and the LSD but haven't quite figured out how to put them in a message yet. Thank You baccaruda The Beast I Drive Gloyale Numbchux

XT6 stubs are 25 spline, the same as EA82T stubs. Anything EA82 with SPFI uses 23 spline stubs same as EA81.

Great info, Thanks!

Are there any seats besides stock that will fit in to a Gen 2 EA81 vehicle without serious modifications or welding that end up at the correct height? Thanks