tweety

The history of this engine is long guys so can be confusing. Yes the SC12 supercharger went off the engine about 2 years ago after tuning issues with the suck through system. It was either go blow through or try something else. Then I put a SPFI system on it. I beleive the engine internals were damaged from the SC12 set up and hence the SPFI never was successful for that reason. (Had a broken ring, crank was stuffed) The engine was then fully rebuilt including rebore to 1820cc (1mm larger pistons), a 15/55 cam, SPFI manifold, 9.5:1 CR and 38/38 weber carb. The engine is now fully run in and running well. At this stage I'm fiddling with fuel octanes (I know they are different to yours so I wont go into that) for towing and economy reasons. So yeh, I've got a stock set up and near everything is new except for the module which is, a new one is in the mail. I've had this module in the dizzy since the SC12 was on and at that time also had the MSD 2 coil on as well. Hence my questions about symptoms of module wear because if the higher output coil did any damage to the module then....I've been wasting a lot of time since with tuning. So far with this thread I've realised that opening the gap to 0.45 would be the best thing I could do with the addition of installing the new module and using the current one for a spare. And keeping the current stock coil

Good write up. http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/83354-help-identify-my-coil-ea81/

mmm, those replies clarify a lot for me. Yes ihscout54 that is the "under the cap" module same as pictured. Seems to me that changing the coil is simply not worth the potential trouble and that was what I wanted to assess. Possible future issues that are hard to trace. However, it is interesting so many of you (and many on the internet that I've read) suggest opening the spark plug gap to .045-.048"....a huge leap from the stock .032". My engine has done about 3000 miles since total reco so eveything is new. I'll experiment with the plug gap and leave the rest alone. Great to get so many quick replies. If anyone has a counter arguement for using the higher output coil with electrical proof it does not harm to the module or other parts feel free to post. p.s. nice to hear from you Naru. (Doug was nice enough to chase around for some parts for me not available near me)

Have rebuilt ea81. Rebuilt distributer with module. I have the following questions 1/ Will the installation of a higher output coil (I have a master blaster 2 max 45,000 volts up from 32,000) cause any adverse effect on the module in the dizzy? 2/ What spark plug gap would you use with the higher output coil? Currently using .034" I have 9.5:1 CR reasonably high. Using platinum plugs at the moment 3/ What are the obvious signs of a damaged or worn module? Is there a way of testing it? I've ordered a new module and will use my current one as a spare. 4/ What are owners results in using a high output coil re: economy and power improvements Thanks

Today I degreased the ea81 engine. Even used a toothbrush on some spots. Then I polished the chrome valve covers. [/ URL]

yeh guys, all to do with safety, if too much weight at the rear. Imagine if there was no tilt test. A large V8 on the back of a home built trike. snap the throttle and you're on your head. Likely not done in north America. We aussies have a big brother here, several in fact. Having said that the engine protection bar is designed to prevent your trike flipping backwards anyway..

Consider this- No trike nor motorcycle has a spare wheel. We carry blow up pressure can foamy stuff. In 6 years and 55,000kms I've never had a flat tyre. And so the foamy cans are 6 years old now and never used. Just adding another concept.

Hi carfreak Perhaps the answer to that question is- I have no idea. I'm limited to my knowledge of what the dyno operator does and dynoes in general. I've just let it be in his hands and he did the graphs at the end. My "expertise" is in tinkering and design, ideas and testing them. Hence since owning this trike I've designed and had made the roof, installed the ea81 in place of the VW using an adapter plate, made my own manifolds up for the install of a supercharger, installed spfi with reasonable success, designed the exhaust etc. but when it comes to tuning, carbie workings, ECU's, etc I'm at a loss.......oh, and I'm good with the ladies Tony

Sent that pic to my Dyno operator. He said "it looks nasty...must have had water in the fuel a long time ago for it to get that way" !!!! Makes sense.

FUEL FILTERS This week, while my ea81 engine was dynoed the operator "Matt" had changed jets and cleaned the bowl out of the carbie. Then running the engine - on the graph there was a sudden drop of power. Checked the bowl for what appeared a fuel blockage and there was a fine powder at the bottom of the bowl. So we changed the fuel filter from an EJ type to a clear plastic one suitable for carbies. All went well and today I cut open the old EJ filter (this filter had been on the engine about 12 months and 10,000 kms). This is the result. The white substance is like chalk but harder. The fuel tank is alloy. Fuel used has been 95 and 98 RON Electrolysis?

mmmm, dynoes are a science. Been reading up a lot tonight and got a headache now ahha. Some automatic cars compared to manual can lose up to 40% but there is a 25% "rule" being the norm to go by.

Thankyou all. I havent got hp at the crank amount. I told the dyno operator that the stock ea81 is rated at 73hp and so 53 at the wheels "would that mean at the crank this engine is more than 73hp" his response- "way over". But I'm wise enough to know it wouldnt be that much based on my experience with previous mods. eg 4 years ago I had this engine worn and stock with no anti pollution stuff and a 32/36 carb. From standstill the front wheel wouldnt lift off the ground at all. Then there was the supercharged version that produced 100hp + (i.e. on the dyno it hit 100hp then a leak in the custom manifold occured so that was the end of that days work). At standstill the front wheel could rise 18 inches and at 25mph when changing from 1st to 2nd on the auto would rise again about 3-4 inches. The engine however was not tuneable at different rev ranges. = very inefficient with raw fuel exiting at times. By the time SPFI was fitted I believe the supercharger had done internal damage so no running result with the SPFI could be taken seriously. In terms of power from standstill this engine now rebuilt with this carbie and cam (see cam specs below) is somewhere in between the 32/36 and the supercharged version. My guess....maybe 80-85hp at the flywheel. More importantly is torque output. The engine builder was asked to rebuild this engine with highest torque possible with lowest revs. Afew reasons for this. 1/ am an older driver (59) and had my days of high revving Lotus's etc and wanted this trike to be a comfortable quiet cruising machine. 2/ the auto trans dictates performance would be more desirable to have torque at low revs 3/ A long lasting engine is wanted with the least fiddling. The rebuild specs are below Rgardles sof being rebuilt for a torque engine it is free revving more than I thought it would be. The max speed in gears for around 5000 revs are around 25,108 and 80. Max speed restricted by the parachute effect of the roof that begins to take effect around 75mph onwards. On the dyno it freely went to 100mph with no wind lol. There are more informative members here than I to make sense of all these dyno figures. But I suppose the smile on my face tells me of how happy I am. For some of these decisions were a gamble. I've read up on and used the 32/36 carbie. It is a carbie as they correctly claim "is about 3mpg more economical than the 38/38". But I found using the 32/36 in conjunction with the auto trans wasnt a good match as just when the second throat would open the trans would change up. You had to operate the auto as a manual to get best response and that defeats the reason for an auto transmission. My only other comment after all these mods is that I believe a Holley single barrell carbie or similar would do just as good a job as this 38/38 has and maybe easier to tune. My dyno man told me he had all the jets and squirters for the Holley carbies. As previously stated the eJ option might have been worth my effort considering how much power is lost with the auto trans. With a manual gearbox this little ea engine would have been a delight in this trike weighing 660 kgms. With the auto when climbing some hills that loss of power is noticeable when a 3rd manual gear would be ideal when the auto is screaming in 2nd. But I must say that with the increase in power and torque now, climbing the same hills often sees this engine hold its speed in top gears much better than it did. I will stick to the auto trans. Most trikes here in Oz are manuals. I dont like taking my left hand from the bars to change all the time. There is no feeling better than cruising the winding beach roads in the summer with the auto doing its thing. Below is some pics of the trike on the "Great ocean road Victoria". The road was built by post WW2 soldiers upon their return to their country. Its 2 hours of bliss. I once had a Porsche 911 behind me. Road signs before bends often read 35mph (70 kph) just right for the trikes 2nd gear kickdown. These bends were taken at 65mph though with such grip the Porsche was left behind every time. Mind you when the straight road came I saw his tail lights.....Think that guy regretted paying 4 times the price for half the fun.

Yesterday my trike got its final Dyno tune. But a recap first. A few years ago I ditched the then 1916cc VE engine that came supplied on my Oz Panther trike. I ordered it with the VW 3 speed automatic from a 1971 model. After several major issues with the VW engine I replaced it with the EA81. Many people say use the EJ seies engines. In hindsight, due to it being an auto I had good reason to but there were several other reasons for going EA. - tilt test is required in Oz. Means extra weight rear of the standard centre of gravity causes issues with engineering. Tike reached 62 degrees before it tended to tilt. This was within spec. - Room, the ea81 is less width than the VW so fitted easily. The engine bay needed to house the total exhaust system. - Chassis strength. The trike has alloy monocogue frame. It ability to take the extra weight is questionable. Thats the EJ question over and dusted. Originally I had the weber 32/36 carbie. No anti pollution stuff is required on trikes in Oz so off it all came. I noticed the 32/36 was frustrating me combined with the auto. Then we purchased a small trailer. It weighed 1300lbs so I needed extra power. I mounted a SC12 Toyota supercharger with delorto carbie. I got the power....about 100+hp but I had no shares in Australia's vast oil ore deposits to afford to run it. 14 mpg. Then next step was SPFI. I had several issues after install. The MAF was faulty (thankyou Rockauto for supplying a Nissan one instead of an eA82 one) then throttle sensors (thankyou USMB member Naru for chasing those up for me) and the system really needed someone with more knowledge than I. We sold our trailer and had little need for huge HP. We decided to fully recondition the ea81. I retained the SPFI manifold. Purchased a 38/38 weber synchronic carb. I had made a custom adapter. I had the valve covers chromed, painted up the custome exhaust and had seals in the auto renewed. The engine was balanced, 9.5:1 CR, bored to 1820cc (1mm larger pistons) and a ground cam good torque for low revs. Two weeks ago we did our first dyno tune. Dont forget the engine pushes a power draining automatic transmission using up to 23hp. Yesterday with the correct jetting we achieved 53hp at the wheels and a huge 6% more torque as can be seen by the graphs. There was one issue with this size carbie. It is usually more suitable for a engine 2500cc or more. With an engine as small as the ea81 you really need smaller fuel squirters. But the ones on this carb were the smallest available. The result was riding slowly around corners sometimes give a short hiccup. The engine is being flooded. The was compensation with using smaller idle jets that fixed the problem almost entirely. We also got the best timing right. Way back when the engine had an adapter plate bolted up, the timing marks disappeared as they were on the flywheel that was discarded. The dyno tuner ran the engine to its peek performance then the timing was found to be 12 degrees. I made up a marker to point to that point. No more guess work. So, how does it run? Very smoothly with the least amount of flat spots. Cant detect them now. Great pick up. Easily raises the front wheel about 6-8 inches off the ground in a controllable manner on take off. Much much better torque felt. We spent a total of 6 hours on tuning. I would recommend to owners of new rebuilt engines to get this tuning done regardless of cost. Nothing helps more than a dyno with a graph screen. Cheers Tony

You are not going to get one cheaper. see http://nationwideautoparts.com.au/front_end/index.php?view=Search I've had a number of radiators from Nationwide and they offer good service. Unless you can get yours redone.

20W-50 is fine for a half worn engine. oils are debatable though. This topic brings out the theories and they never match lol I wrote to Penrite oils here in Oz when mt EA81 was being fully reconditioned. They recommended running in oil for 300 miles then semi synthetic 15W-50. Full synthetic is was an option too after 2000 miles and I've gone to 15W-60 FS. This is just a guide. Also depends on your local weather conditions. Contact the oil company that you use

The following picture depicts my custom made exhaust for my ea81 powered trike. You can see the crossover pipe. Now the sound of this engine is not like the Brat/Brumby engine. It in fact sounds more like a mormalo 4 cylinder straight in line sort with no throb sound. Hope this is of some use.

thanks for the pics. nice car

Took the SPFI off months ago. Am running a weber 38/38 synchromic carb now. I just took it up a steep hill about 6 times. Kept advancing it and found it was really good at 12 degrees. Above that it rattles...pings. Thanks

Some time ago I transplanted an EA81 into my trike. An adapter plate enabled the mating of it to a VW automatic. But I realised that the timing of the EA was not possible with the flywheel which was discarded in the process. So how was timing possible? Along came a friend with a Brumby (Brat) and we checked the timing for 8 degrees BTDC on his Brumby flywheel. Then we placed the timing light on the crankcase pully. There is a notch on the pulley. That notch was flickering on the block halves. So Subaru in their wisdom placed a notch on the pully set at 8 degrees. And as the pulley has about 360mm as its circumference every degree advance thereafter is one millimeter. Clever eh? Has anyone else realised this? How do other EA81/2 owners to date have timed their engines without the EA flywheel in the traditional manner? There must be a heap of guys out there that have discarded the flywheel like me. In fact any EA owner that adapts the engine to something else. Just wondering how they got by. I'd be interested.

Tuning printouts before and after supercharger. With SC 82hp at the flywheel. Sorry both graphs are the same [/url]

Yes, I swapped my 1916cc VW engine in my trike to an EA81. It is mated to a type 3 (circa 1968-1971) full automatic. The EA81 is actually less weight than the VW, more compact and in Oz doesnt have hydraulic lifters. This engine remained in the Brumby/Brat range till 1992 but never had the SPFI version. I did the conversion for a number of reasons that might interest you because the conversion didnt, in the end give me a huge increase on output over the vW. First and most important is that I can work on it myself and OHV design, ease of access and basic. Then there is lack of complexity, no computer etc and third as it is compact there is a lot of room for an exhaust etc. What I didnt really count on was that the auto zaps 14 hp out of the engine. Effectively this resulted in a few modifications. Anyone will tell you that the EA series of engines are really limited in regards "hotting" them up. So I embarked on adapting a Toyota supercharger to the eA81. The supercharger was a SC12 and below is the before and after supercharger dyno tune printouts. With the supercharger the engine produced over 100hp. But it was unreliable and suck gas faster than the 'spruce goose'. Then i adapted the SPFI system from the USA version EA82. The conversion is well documented on the internet. Once done the ssytem could never get to run really well due to worn out sensors that in Oz were impossible to find as they werent produced here. In the end I wanted simpicity. My engine has now been fully rebored to 1820cc which is 1mm more diameter pistons. Head work raised the compression to 9.5:1. The SPFI manifold was used that is 6mm more in diameter giving better breathing. And the big surprise for many was using a weber 38/38 carbie. This carbie is not "too big" for the engine as is a common theory. It is sequencial (both throats moving together) and is responsible for greater low down take off overcoming the loss from the auto trans. A tune is yet to be done but I believe with my experience now that it produces around 90hp. The trike weighs 660kgms and a camper weighs 300kgms and 26-28mpg (imperial) is obtained which is really good as my trike has a roof and has a little "parachuting" effect. With this end set up the engine start so easily, feels strong, is economical and hassle free. In manual form it would be fabulous. As an auto it is the ultimate cruising trike for us older members. When running really well this engine is good, but eaten up by the later series engines if you want real power. If you are unhappy with its output then you would have wasted your money because the adapter plate and other costs cant be used in the later series engines. And you cannot modify the EA engine to get easy horsepower due to its design. But I love it. Hope that answers your questions. PS I had my engine balanced and with a high torque camshaft.

mmmm, and nothin upsets aussies on Australia Day.....put a banger on for me Jono...

Trouble is, the Nissan MAF had the same part number stamped on it. The housing was slightly larger. So Rockauto had a reason to select the part originally as a Subaru part. Inside the electronic piece was different. The wrongful action was that once aware that the part was not the right one, that Rockauto wouldnt negotiate. Parts cross reference etc wouldnt have helped. Rockauto can have their rules but when an unusual situation occurs like this sticking by their rules is unfair and leaves a $400 part as a useless item. We also here in Oz didnt get the Nissan EFI motor released here. The part is useless. I'm over it now. And Rockauto gets $400 of bad publicity. Admittedly it is an unusual situation so buy away. Just be careful, check the part quickly and return it quickly. Any delay (even genuine reason) and Rockauto is not your friend.

I suppose sending wrong parts back before the warranty period ends is a different story. Likely you will get good service. But if there was a good reason you could not do this (living in Oz, long shipping and other reasons) then the wrong part supplied is a supply issue in the first place. Rockauto dont do themselves many favours by supplying incorrect parts. eg Nissan MAF is not a Subaru SPFI MAF. might look the same.