Tom63050

You da man. For all you left coasters who need help with yer Sube, he'll do right by you.

I like to use wheel bearing grease on both sides of a cork gasket. Seeps into the gasket and helps lessen leakage, since it's thicker than any oil. I also use it on oil filter gaskets and drain plug threads. Now I never have any leaks there.

--Dealer thermostat or a Stant? Always use a dealer thermostat. --Maybe the black stuff in the cooling system is disintegrating hose...replace them and keep the old ones as emergency spares. Murphy's Law guarantees the old ones will blow on the trip. --Check the booster and brake lines carefully (or have a professional brake guy do it--yeah, brakes are kinda important). Has a new master cylinder been put on the car before you got it? Maybe the lines weren't tightened enough, onto the master cylinder. Or maybe you have a loose line on the vacuum booster. --Does sound like the wrong radiator for that car, but you can make something work if you really want to; hardware-store brackets for example. --I've also heard that it is a mistake to flush an old transmission that hasn't had it before, because the solvents they use to flush it will cause leaks.

Most speedometers read fast with stock tires, by about 5%. I also have 185/80x13 tires on my lifted 91 Loyale. I verified that these tires only make the odometer read 2.5% slow, and figure the speedo is affected by about the same amount. The stock tires on my car were probably making the speedo read 2-3 MPH fast. The easiest way to check the odometer is to drive on a highway with mile markers for 20-50 miles, and compare the tripmeter reading with the distance you have driven on the highway. You need the tripmeter because it has tenths, for more accuracy. The easiest way to check the speedometer is to drive at an indicated 60 MPH for however long it takes to go from one mile marker to the next. If it takes 60 seconds, your speedo is exactly right; 66 seconds, it's reading 10% high; 54 seconds, 10% low; 57 seconds, 5% low, etc. So to calculate gas mileage I just add 2.5 miles per 100 (since it reads 2.5% slow) to whatever the tripmeter reads, then reset it when I fill up.

Welcome to the Board! Nice car. Now you need... 1. Ozified lift kit. B. Weber 32/36 DGEV carby. Use an EA82 manifold for better flow (the carb-base hole is larger). 3. Taller tires, about 28". Recommend 15" aluminium rims like the Peugeots as the best way to go, to keep rolling weight down.

To which I will add that the weight of each tire/wheel will noticably increase stopping distances, due to the greater amount of rotating mass that must be brought to a halt. I had 28" Wildcats on two subes, an 84 wagon and a 91 Loyale, both lifted 3". Each tire/wheel weighed 52 lbs, vs. about 28-30 lbs for a normal 13" tire/wheel. Even with 185/80-13" Kumhos on the Loyale now, the tire+wheel weighs 32 lbs. (aluminum wheel). There may also be shimmy and vibration issues. On the 84 they were fine, but on the 91 they shimmied at highway speeds, unless I aired them up to the point where they vibrated! A 6" lift on these cars demands 31" tires to look right, but overall function of the vehicle suffers.

I also have 185/80-13s--Kumho 795 Touring A/S. I highly recommend them. Inexpensive, work well, 70K warranty. There is also a dealer locater at the website. The shop I used had to order them, but they came in a couple of days. http://www.kumhousa.com/tires/passenger/broadline-a-s.do

I have had aftermarket coils be bad from the start, or fail intermittently as you are experiencing, so I'm thinking coil too. Do a search on "jegs coil" in the Older Generation forum and go to the thread called "Coil Problems...what's going on" for advice on aftermarket coils.

Where he welded it shouldn't really matter, although the stock location would be a better place to monitor all four cylinders. And if you disconnect the O2 sensor it will still run. Is your coil stock or aftermarket?

http://www.theautoist.com/weber_carb.htm This specifically addresses hesitation of Weber carbs and how to fix it. Good luck.

Excellent info, thanks all. Much clearer now.

Thanks. OK, so it sounds like it is useful for carbed cars. How about FI cars? Same deal, or a whole different animal?

This is the jetting I had. I ordered the Redline kit for a '78 VW bus, 1800cc. Later I switched the Weber to my 84 Sube wagon & it ran fine. ............................. Primary...Secondary Main (fuel)................140..........140 Idle.............................60............55 Air correction............165.........160 The Weber book I had said that the main jets should be reduced by 5 (i.e. from 140 to 135) between 5000 - 6700 feet, and 5 more from 6700 - 10,000 feet. This keeps it from running rich in the thinner air. Reducing the primary seems important to me, but I doubt the secondary matters much, unless you have a heavy right foot. But I think none of this has anything to do with your backfiring problem, just good info to know.

On SPFI/MPFI cars, does it really do any good to advance the distributor timing? Or is timing affected by vacuum advance and the fuel management system? And do they override manually advancing the disty, so that it's pointless to do so? On my 86 GL. I stuck a Weber on it and advanced the disty timing for more power (and used 89 octane gas to prevent detonation). But on that car, there was no computer telling the carb what to do. IIRC there was a vacuum line going to the disty. What function does that vac line have?

It might well be the thermostat. Maybe it's stuck partially open. Make sure you have one from the dealer, not a Stant or something else. If you do replace the rad, that'd be a good time to do the t-stat anyway, along with hoses, especially those little ones people tend to not think about.