el_freddo

This is awesome in the fact that it seems you’ve retained the factory driveshaft too by the looks of things. Does this mean your rear track is now the same as that of the donor liberty/legacy? Cheers Bennie

Wow, good introduction! Welcome to the forum. I hope you got this thing REAL cheap! Have you asked the previous owner about what the engine came from? Otherwise pics might help identify the model the engine may have come from. Cheers Bennie

Awesome sharing mistakes. Both are gold and I’m sure you’ll both look back at them with the same light given enough time. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes but the only ones I can think of were more about learning - like pulling a gearbox down three times (on the bench) to work out why reverse wouldn’t work. Turns out you can’t put phase two gears sets into a phase one case set hand have all gears including reverse work. There was a lot of time wasted there. On the first EA82 rebuild I did - had both cams orientated at 12 o’clock when the cam belt went back on. It took me some time to work that one out. Never got it wrong since. I don’t work in a shop and I’m not professionally trained either, it’s only my own mechanical work that I waste time on, much like Jonathan909. Cheers Bennie

@sparkyboy - and for others - don’t forget that when in a low gear you have to rotate the input shaft MANY times to even see a change of orientation at the output shaft... I should’ve added in my first post about the rotating of the input shaft - don’t just do one, do many so that you’re investigating all of the gear’s teeth in doing so. When the gearbox in neutral, the output shaft may rotate when the input shaft is rotated. And I would expect in a fresh box that this would always be the case due to tight tolerances. Cheers Bennie

Sounds like oil slipping past the rings after shutdown. To mimic the lean to the RHS you could park on that level space then drive up on to a brick that’s placed under each wheel on the LHS. Then leave it over night/a few hours etc. Cheers Bennie

Rust issues? Bugger! Definitely pull the windscreen as I’d bet my right nut there’s rust under there. Also check behind the spare wheel, there’s a seam there that typically rusts out, especially if it’s been sealed over. In Oz some are sealed and some aren’t. I got an unsealed one by chance and don’t have an issue. Cheers Bennie

If you’ve got the whole vehicle you’re winning on that front, especially if it’s running! I’d pull the wiring, cut it down, then hook everything up to the engine and fuel pump to do a test run. If all checks out, move forward with the mechanical side of the build and all the general maintenance stuff that goes with it (read: $$$s). This way you know your wiring cut down will work once it’s in the BRAT. It should make for an easy conversion without the stress of having to get the wiring right to make the EJ run that’s in the BRAT’s engine bay - I hope that makes some sense. Mall the best with it and remember to have fun along the way. When the wiring becomes a bird’s nest to look at, walk away and clear your head before coming back to it again Cheers Bennie

Fair go fellas. Some people may not have been given the opportunity to learn about these sorts of things. Trust me I know - I work in a trauma informed education setting and we have teenagers that read and/or write at a grade 2/3 level of at all.. add in their complex behaviours due to the trauma they’ve experienced (ranges from abuse to lack of food, inattention, being around drunk/drug affected adults, no secure place to live/sleep etc). I’ll wait for a reply to see what ferp comes back with, then we’ll go from there. Cheers Bennie

Welcome to the forum Ivy! Youve got one of the best colours that Subaru ever brought out! I love that blue and would love to have an MY wagon in that colour too. I’ve got an L series in that colour (or slight variation of). Keep the pics coming! Cheers Bennie

Correct dizzy cap? Is the little carbon tip present and making contact with the rotor button? I’m not 100% sure that the dizzy caps are different between the two dizzy models, but it’s highly likely that they are. Cheers Bennie

If doing head gaskets do both. What if you get the wrong one? Or you replace one only to have the other pop a few miles own the road? Another trick for the TOD is to add a small spacer behind the oil pressure relief valve’s spring. 3mm is probably about the most you’d want to go. Even a clean out of this area could help. There may be decades of crud stuck in there stopping the valve ball from closing completely. Cheers Bennie

I had the same issue on the brumby, although it was with my sister for a few weeks up in the “hot interior” of northern Vic in the middle of summer. She kept topping up the water (no use putting coolant in at this stage!), temp didn’t flare but I was suspecting a blown head gasket. Once home I found it to be that pesky coolant line from the block under the intake - it was a steady drip at idle that got worse with revs. How she didn’t run it out of cooling fluid I don’t know. Head gaskets still fine If you get an EA, this is the first hose to swap out! Cheers Bennie

Upgrade the rear springs to Honda units and you’ll be able to load it up as needed without any sag Cheers Bennie

Yeah sorry, I should’ve been more specific about the series of vehicle it came from - basically the L series platform as such in the models mentioned above. Awesome box if you look after them. Mine goes very well off-road and it does what I want it to do onroad. Cheers Bennie

G’day Jared, ”Welcome” to the forum! Cool looking RX you have there. And yes, if it’s got the dual range awd box, this is the only AWD gearbox Subaru produced with a locking centre diff Look after that centre diff, they wear out easy if you don’t run tyres of the same make, model and mileage. As soon as you hit anything that’s a loose surface, lock the diff! You don’t want to be spinning wheels with this box. One trick I’ve heard with maintaining these EA82t engines is to put a small radiator, such as a motorbike radiator, in the turbo coolant return line. The idea behind this is to waste some heat from the returning coolant before it goes back to the engine then to the radiator. I’ve seen this done on two EA82t converted L series over here. Cheers Bennie

I’d like to know where he’s getting a dual range AWD with front LSD. Or is this box built already? Make sure it’s an EJ AWD box. What did the box come out of? Asking as this will determine what low range it has. If it’s the 1.19:1 swap it out for the L series 1.59:1; if it’s the 1.477:1 then leave it. Also what diff ratio is it? All you really need is the AWD box though. You can add the L low range and your desired diff ratio once it’s landed over there. The low range is worth the effort. You should ask your Aussie contact to leave the engine off the box and to send over another two or three boxes - then sell two off and keep a spare for yours. Our EJ engines are really no different to yours. Cheers Bennie

Gloyale, I think he’s building an Impreza going by the title... And I suspect the 3:9 ratio dual range is the part time (selectable) 4wd gearbox from the loyale? If so, your best bet is to use this box. If the diff ratio isn’t low enough, lift it higher and run a divorced T-case aka a “Sammy T-case”. If the 3.9 dual range is full time 4wd then I’d recommend swapping the diff ratio to 4.44 ratio. You may have to shave some meat from the crown wheel to clear the low range gears. Well worth the effort! ^ this can only be done if that dual range box is AWD. If pt4wd there’s no place for the AWD pinion shaft. Cheers Bennie

It shouldn’t make selecting reverse difficult, unless the rear mount is really shot then it *could* make reverse selection difficult. The work pitch stopper road will allow the engine and box to move in a way that it pulls you out of reverse. You might find other mounts that are toast too. Cheers Bennie

It’s easy to keep them working. Just find the dry joint and resolder it. Mine’s not missed a beat since I did this fix. Cheers Bennie

If you’ve got an L series just run the manual MPFI or MPFI turbo drive shafts, they have the correct size inner cups for the diff output stubs on the EJ. If you’ve got a brumby/BRAT/MY model, you could swap the inner DOJ cup from 23 spline to 25 spline. The trick is to make sure the 25 spline cup is for the six ball joint and not the three plastic thingy setup @Al Zhiemer - best of luck mate, I hope the issue is in that adaptor plate! Cheers Bennie

On the front end you should always do things in pairs. Replace the rhs bearing, do the lhs as well etc. Cheers Bennie

AWD with DCCD is basically the same as what mine does, except that mine’s mechanical and parts are NLA ;( Using a standard EJ AWD box with the DCCD makes it easy to get replacement parts, and build it in the first place too. 4.44s would be nice but modifying another pinion shaft for this ratio is asking too much of the wallet so I’ll work with the 4.111:1 that I’ve already got. The L AWD box from factory only has 3.7 or rarer 3.9 diff ratios. Diff ratio and tyre sizes should definitely be taken into account if you’re going to split and build a box. This mod alone will make all the difference over the locking centre diff. The factory centre lsd in the EJ boxes will work fine in mud and sand no worries. You can get updated centre LSDs if you really want one. Everyone with the DCCD swears by them. Cheers Bennie Edit: the r180 will bolt in, an adaptor maybe be needed on the input flange, or a re-drill might work too. The hardest part is adapting the output stubs to fit the diff and the stock drive shaft. Or have a custom drive shaft made up to be the adaptor - then have several made Once you’ve got all that sorted, read up on Rally’s and Dedman’s locker conversions of their r180 install on offroadsubarus. It’s on my wish list. But finding one in 4.111:1 ratio is proving difficult - and I don’t want to fork out for new R&P to get the ratio I want.

No, I’ve got an EJ ECU under the dash running an EJ22 You could make the EJ ECU run the EA82 but you’d be better off using the EJ18 ECU and you’d have to fabricate crank angle sensor tabs and a mount for said sensor. I’m sure there will be more stuff than just that but in my mind they’re the major hurdles. Really though if you’ve gone to this effort with the wiring the rest of the conversion is pretty easy! Cheers Bennie

Or tail/prop shaft Cheers Bennie

Why rebuild a box? If it’s working fine leave it be! Even better would be if you could test drive the vehicle that the box is coming out of. Generally I’ve not had an issue buying second hand high mileage boxes - so far! The age of digi dashboards is making it tricky to work out how far a box has travelled though. An EJ AWD box is a little more work to fit into the brumby but not by much. You can split the box and fit the smaller 23 spline diff output stubs. But that’d require busting open two boxes - and I’m not sure that the stubs in a brumbys 4speed box are compatible. If you do end up splitting a box, throw a front lsd in there. You’ll thank yourself later for the effort Cheers Bennie