skishop69

Huh. I'll have to look into why some had it and yet there's no listing. It's not important at all, just one of those things that makes you go.... Huh?

Yes, but I didn't know what rig you had til you posted it. Can't find rear XT axles either.

If the drum won't go over the shoes, there are three possibilities. 1) The shoes are adjusted too far out. Use the adjuster screw to bring the shoes closer together. 2) There is a lip on the drum preventing it from going over the shoes which have automatically adjusted to fit the inside of the drum. Turn the drums to remove the lip or adjust the shoes down and wait for them to adjust themselves back up. Braking will be slightly diminished during this time. 3) The shoes are out of alignment up & down on each side. Realign them and carefully walk the drum back on. I thought rear axles had been all but discontinued, so I'm not surprised you got the wrong one.

Kaman Industrial Technologies. You need a bearing, they can find it. Call them direct. Get the size and type and they'll find it. I've used them to source bearings for a lot of weird sh!t over the years. Even bearings for my rotary engine motorcycle. Suzuki RE5.

Weird. My 87 doesn't and still has the factory heat shields and muffler so I know it hasn't been altered. I wanna make sure we're all talking about the same thing here. A small muffler or tube that is behind the cat/Y pipe assembly and in front of the rear axle on a Brat. Everything I dug up and what I've seen says no so what gives? I hate it when something really insignificant burrows it's way into my thoughts and gives me grief with conflicting data. lol

Ok, so this turned out to be one of those little things that wouldn't stop bugging me. lol I went through parts catalogs, looked at pics and made a few calls. The Brat absolutely did not come with a resonator so someone added something to yours. No biggie either way, like I said, it was just nagging at me so I had to be sure.

Have you contacted them to see if they would be willing to drill sets at 4/140? 4/137 is an ATV pattern. I doubt the rims would support a road vehicle and are probably not DOT compliant. Probably need more info from them.

I wonder if the resonator was on California models? It would make sense and I haven't owned or even seen a Ca Brat. Does yours have Ca emissions? It would be on the sticker under the hood and it would also have a mixture solenoid on the carb.

Right. That's what it's supposed to look like. One muffler in the back. No resonator up front.

What year is your Brat? I've had '79, '80 & '83-'87 all with the stock exhaust that still had the tin shield on them and no resonator. I'm very curious now.

I've had 6 Brats total and have never seen one with two mufflers. The one up front at the Y pipe is the cat, The one behind the axle is the muffler. You can replace it and just the tail pipe.

I did not know GL-10 was not necessarily a turbo. Interesting since I've never seen one that wasn't and good to know so I don't assume they all are.

DL was a base model. GL was a step up with more options and GL-10 was the turbo, top of the line power windows, better stereo and more additional optional equipment. There's a little more to it than that, but I don't remember all the specifics though I don't believe the EA82 series cars came with a DL badge. Others will chime in.

The reason you need to cut the tube into sections is that inner tubes are curved. Trying to slide a curved section on to a straight bag will result in 'baggy' spots on the outer curve edge that will bunch up and cause problems. I am hell bent on keeping my XT GL10 the way it came from the factory save for mods that are reversible so I put a lot of thought into the air suspension since there is nothing viable to work with as replacement parts. I can't even find a company willing to even attempt to fix the struts.

DO NOT use fixaflat. First, liquids do not compress. Second, in order for it to seal properly, it has to be circulated regularly. can't do that in an strut bag. Third, it will eat up solenoids and lines and/or plug them. Vulcanizing is a biochemical process by which strength and durability are increased by adding long chain polymers. Tires, inner tubes, strut bags and the likes are all vulcanized rubber. Vulcanizing rubber cement is designed to bond to vulcanized rubber on molecular level. Regular cement won't bond correctly. The issue you are trying to address would best fixed using my first solution. Covering the bag in this way will slow down or halt the bag degredation.

UV shouldn't be an issue as the strut bags are in a 'covered' area. Exposure to the air (polutants) will be the killer, which escaped my plan. lol A good coating of silicone grease will take care of that. We've been using it for years on rubber components to protect them and it does an excellent job. As far as the pressure goes, the bag is contained in the upper sleeve, IIRC, so the pressure of the bag pushing on the sleeve will help reinforce the tube except for the spot where it rolls over itself when moving up and down. At least, that's my hope. If you're just addressing a few spots, I would still use the vulcanizing cement and then just go with smaller radial tire patches.

I have a plan in place for this if I use up all my backup struts. Get vulcanizing patch cement from Napa. Get a motorcycle inner tube that's at least 20" in diameter and just slightly smaller than the circumference of the strut bag. Use a razor blade and cut it into 2" sections. Remove the strut and rig it so you can apply no more than 5psi to give it some rigidity and put it in the full extended position. Slide the inner tube sections on to the strut from the bottom. One for each step. Apply the vulcanizing cement to the top of the strut bag for a length of 2" per it's instructions. When it's 'dry', push the tube section up on to the strut bag when it goes on to the bag, you'll want to roll it so it rolls itself up into an o-ring shape. This will take some finessing to get it to roll up so the bottom edge of the cut comes in contact with the cement at it's edge. I suggest practicing with the strut dry/no cement first. The tube should stick to the cement so you just unroll it up on to the cemented portion of the bag. For the next and following sections, you only want to cement 1 3/4" of the bag and 1/4" of the piece you just installed. Put the next section on just like the first, but make sure you overlap 1/4" of it on to the previously installed section to ensure a good seal. Repeat the process until the bag is covered. Let it cure 24 hours before putting it back into service. I suppose you could get a vulcanized rubber sheet and try to wrap the bag with the vertical edges overlapping 1/4" but that gives a long vertical seam, and if/once a part of it fails, it will compromise the entire length and spread. It has to be vulcanized rubber like an inner tube or it will not bond properly and it will fail.

That is awesome. I have all kinds of uses for that for my RE5 rotary engine motorcycle. Looks like it works great and would work for our stuff too.

It's because of the design of the seal on the piston. Reread my first post describing it. Been doing this for 30+ years. It's possible. Seen it, done it, replaced it... Even with the pressure on the system 'released' (pedal up), there is still a small amount of pressure in the system. Very small, but it's there.

Actually, it would release. I've seen it before on several vehicles.

Since the front brakes share a common circuit before the hill holder and only one is hanging up, it could be the hill holder but not the master cylinder. Stainless lines are still rubber inside and new or not, can still collapse internally. Your description of being able to release the caliper by opening the bleeder leaves only two possibilities. The line is at fault, or the piston is not returning. The seal on a caliper piston is square cut. When you apply pressure to the piston, it moves outward and the seal tips on edge. When you release pressure, the seal is supposed to tip back the other way, this is what causes it to return inward. If the seal is bad or the bore is rusty, even the slightest bit of pressure will cause it to stick in the bore.

Make sure the strut rod bushings aren't junk. Those go bad and you'll never drive smooth. As someone said above, get the front tires off the ground and give everything a good shakedown and closely inspect the tires.

You'll have to remove the speedo, disassemble it and roll it back manually. I might also add this is illegal by federal law. Not that it would be a big deal on an exempt 80 something car, but still not legal whether you ever sell it or not.

True, but I was referring just to everyday driving. The angle limitation is there even without lifting, but they used superior materials so it wasn't a big deal. Aftermarket guys tend to skimp $10 on a part to make another $1. lol

Being beefier in the shaft means nothing to us. There is no situation where you will ever break an EA81/82 axle shaft unless it's defective somehow. The strength in these particular axles comes with a higher angle of flex which reduces the abuse on the bearings and cage in the CV when it's at full flex. IE: All the way down and turning at full lock. The design is far better. All we can hope is they didn't use cheap sh!t bearings and cages or fail to adequately lube them. That'll be the only downfall. Almost every reman axle from a parts store uses cheap sh!t materials, and that's why there are so many issues. To add to our problem, Subaru designed the axles with a minimum degree of flex for some reason and that's a big contribution to failure when using cheap materials.