skishop69

I think he means the cup or the cage. Either way, some clarification or pics would help. You're right as usual though, AM axles just tend to suck.

Yes, you can use an EA82 5spd DR tranny and keep your stock center console. You'll need the tranny, flywheel, clutch, shifter & linkages and the two piece driveline (propshaft) from a donor car. You'll have to weld in mounts for the center support of the two piece driveline or you can skip getting the two piece and have a longer one piece driveline made. You have to grind a notch in the bottom of the engine bell housing for the flywheel to fit. Jerry (Bratsrus), here on the board sells a kit for the rest of the install. If you don't do the kit, you'll have to fab all your mounts, linkages and the shifter mount so they will match up to your holes in the center console.

There are none I have heard of. Electric assist ps requires a torque sensor that is mounted on the steering column to sense driver input to know when and how much to assist. Fitting a universal sensor to hundreds if not thousands of different columns would be near impossible from a financial stand point. Then you need a control module and the appropriate software which is custom tailored to each vehicle. The current required for the early 12v systems as fairly high as well. 50-60 amps, so there's that to contend with. The cheapest assembly I've replaced was about $800. Demand vs cost doesn't make it feasible.

Ultra copper will work as it's high temp, but as Dave said. lose the heat shield altogether.

I would not use an inline ammeter unless you have one capable of measuring 25 amps. Unless specifically rated for high amperage, most meters on the market are rated at 10 amps. Use your clamp on at each actuator like you said above and if one of them is drawing significantly higher then the others, then you've most likely found your culprit.

Is it blowing when you're using the door locks? If so, you could have a bad actuator. Unplug them one at a time for a few days each to see which one. If not, what Dee said. Most likely in the door, or the pass thru as you mentioned.

We call that magic smoke. If you let it out, that unit no worky anymore. lol

It's supposed to stop the front of the driveline from falling down and pole vaulting the car in the event of a front u-joint failure. Another one of those nifty 'what if' safety features.

That's weird. I never had a problem getting one from NAPA for my XT GL10. Did you check with them? Might be a recent development...

Can't say for sure, but I'm guessing no since the Brat is an EA81 and your wagon is an EA82. I'll also throw in my experience with hitting deer as I grew up in Montana. I know from first hand experience that having a brush bar on a lower height vehicle adds to the danger of the deer coming through the windshield at higher speeds. While it will reduce the damage to the front end and possibly save it at lower speeds, it's more rigid (depending on the type) than the front end sheet metal. At highway speeds, it's much less likely to give than the sheet metal so instead of crumpling to absorb some of the impact, it's going to hold it's position clipping the legs of the deer sending it right through the windshield instead of folding into the front end and hood then sliding into the windshield. That being said, I do have one on my Brat but I'm rarely at highway speeds in an area with a lot of deer and I'm super vigilant about watching for them having had more than my fair share of altercations with the critters. I'm not saying don't get one, just saying weigh the pro's and con's.

+1 Just get new hoses for everything and be done. Any coolant leak will be the death of that engine if left unchecked and old hoses are notorious for creating mayhem.

If that tire is sitting farther back, there has to be something wrong with the radius arm, it's mount or possibly the lower control arm. The only way to fix it is find the damage or install the adjustable radius arms. Are you sure the tires are the same size? That could do it too. There is no factory adjustment for the radius arm, that's why there's nothing in the manual.

I know there are places that will make custom assemblies, but they charge a pretty penny to do so. There are hybrid combos mixing different Subie shafts and CVs, but I believe those were made for swapping in EJ running gear. I never paid a lot of attention to it since I've never had any issues with my NAPA axles. Someone who knows more will chime in.

To my recollection, both the 4spd and 5spd DR trannys will take 200hp before failure is eminent. Someone here had some dyno proof, but I don't recall who. The weak point of the 4spd is the third gear blocking ring. It wears out causing the shift to third to grind. The 5spd doesn't do this. There's been tons of EJ swaps with the 5spd DR with no issues so those that did blow must've had a previously unknown tranny issue. If you're off roading, you want the DR, not the EJ trans. You want the low range. As for the EA 82 axles, you're stuck. The weak point is really the stub shaft in the tranny and diff. It will snap well before a CV when put under a hard load.

Sounds to me like you've got blow-by from the rings. Something is pressurizing the case.

So yeah, as iluvdrt pointed out initially, radius arm or bushing issue.

Correct. Is it close to the rear of the fender well or the inside of the fender well?

I've had both in my time (VW's & Subies) and I can tell you the track width is different, axle lengths different and mounting is different. Adapting the trailing arms from VW to Soob would be a massive undertaking requiring a lot of fabbing that would introduce all kinds of new failure points. Torsion bars are splined differently. The axles would most likely end up having to be custom made due to the length differences. Trailing arms would have to be modded for length. You can't just redrill axle cups at the diff to accept a different pattern as the structural integrity would be sorely compromised. If you use an adapter, you are further changing the length of the axle, flex angles and adding another failure point with extra bolts. Yeah, you can fab up the whole VW rear assembly to mount under there, but you're still going to deal with axle issues and the crappy rear diff the Soob has. That stub will fail way before the axle or anything else back there. Like G said, there's plenty of travel to be had with the stock Soob setup by just re-clocking and a couple other tweaks plus the female diff from the Lego. The WRX brakes can be adapted to the Brat in the rear. It's been done. I get where you're coming from, but you're barking up the wrong tree. The problem on the rear is not the CVs, the working angle or the travel, it's the stub shaft in the diff. The cost of converting to the Lego diff, hybridding the rear axles, re-clocking and the fab work to install the WRX brakes will be far less than the (conservative) estimate of $2k you gave and the fabbing work I believe would be less than half. Yeah, It could be done, but going the Soob route will net you the same results you're trying to get including different wheel patterns and aftermarket brake upgrades. It's a viable idea by itself, but when compared to going the Soob route, it doesn't make financial and invested time sense unless you have the money to drop in a 500hp power plant at which point, yes, the axles will be the weak link if you changed the diff.

Yeah, you've got something going on with a radius arm or bushing that's setting it back. Give everything a good look again. The factory arms are not adjustable. There is a company that makes EA81 adjustable radius arms. I have a set on one of my Brats. Just a correction to iluvdirt: The tires won't sit in or out do to radius arms. The will sit fore or aft of the centerline in the wheel well. I know it's just terminology and I know what you meant to say, but it could confuse someone.

The Impreza would be a good starter car for a novice if you are actually wanting to compete but it'll still cost you near the same amount, though you'll have a much more stable platform to build on. You'll also need to take into account HP and engine mods to compete well. You have to start somewhere and like all motorsports, it's not cheap. Start small, spend what you can, learn, and when you can, spend more or step up to a 'better' car.

Don't get me wrong, drifting is a blast but there's a lot that goes into setting up a car and it rarely comes cheap.

I'm with G on this. If you're doing it for fun just to play around, ok, but you're in for a lot of work. If you actually want to make a drift car to compete with, I'm going to point out a few things to consider. 1) Horrible center of gravity for drifting. 2) It's going to be at least 100-200 lbs heavier in the rear than any other comparable drift car you may come up against. 3) You will have to custom fabricate an anti-sway bar for the rear. The stock one is not strong enough to cut the body roll down enough for safe drifting. See item #1. 4) You'll need to fabricate custom rear caliper plates. You'll need some engineering skills or someone with said skills to get the metal thickness correct and the alignment of the calipers to the rotor. Wrong thickness, things grenade. Wrong alignment, you burn up pads and warp rotors in short order. Upgrade to WRX rear brakes. EA82 factory components aren't going to hold up to the abuse. Also in this category is welding. You'll need better than average welding skills or you're back to things grenading. 5) Rear suspension is too soft. You'll have to retrofit some coil overs to the rear to achieve the correct stiffness you'll need. See items #1 & #3. 6) You'll have to fab custom steel brake lines which will need to be properly secured. To do this, you're going to need a tubing bender and a flaring tool that will do both double flaring and ISO flaring then you'll need to practice (a lot) both kinds of flares. Run steel lines from the master back to the calipers and only use rubber brake hoses to connect the calipers using the shortest length possible. You could probably buy bulk steel lines from NAPA and make them work to avoid the flaring fun but you'd want to avoid having to use unions to join pieces. Just another place to fail. 7) You have to figure out where and how to mount the master and lever which will also require fabricating and is likely to be a bit more complicated due to lack of space under the car in the area where ideal mounting would be. All that being said, it'll probably cost you at least a grand if you do it yourself and you're able to pillage parts at PnP or find cheap used parts for sale. I'm including everything I mentioned above plus the obvious parts and misc bits and pieces. Cut corners and things will likely go horribly wrong when the thrashing begins. Edit: What is it about this site that takes my perfectly typed response and moves lines around when I hit the 'Post' button making it look like a drunk monkey typed it!? lol

+1 to both G & Scout. Both ways will net you what you want. G's is easier to install, but Scout's is a more 'direct' replacement four the FPCU. Depends on your needs and skills.

So either one of the high beam lamps has gone bad and is creating feedback or a short, or your high beam switch is going bad.

Ummm.... You picked up the dizzy? As in removed it to reset it to the proper position? How did it get in the wrong position to begin with? Was it removed prior? If it wasn't removed or messed with prior and you had to pull it to set it, I'd say the pin holding the gear to the shaft has sheared and the gear is slipping.