pressingonward

Why are you bumping this? Have you tested your sensors?

Those numbers indicate it is running very rich. There's two things that come to mind: #1 Bad O2 sensor. Hook up a voltmeter to the O2 sensor wire and a good ground, warm the car up. Voltage should oscillate from ~0.2V to 0.8V several times per second. A bad O2 sensor may only switch once per second, or may switch in a narrower range, or may just stay stuck at one voltage. The fact that your O2 sensor was not tight might be your problem. A bad ground will ruin the signal since it is operating at such low voltages. #2 Bad coolant temp sensor. These go open circuit and make the computer think it's running at -40 Degrees, so it richens the mixture. They can also just read low, which is a little less obvious and can be the sensor or a bad connection due to corrosion. They are easy to test, you can find a chart in the repair manual that will list resistance values for various temperatures

With the car shut off, hold the choke open and pull the throttle cable. You should see the accelerator pump push a jet of fuel into the primary barrel. A nice strong jet of fuel. This is how the carb is supposed to enrich the mixture when you snap the throttle open like in the video. It sounds like it may not be getting a good jet of fuel from the accelerator pump. Your secondaries cannot be tested like in the video. This carb uses vacuum to open the secondary under heavy load, which you cannot achieve by revving the motor in neutral.

That really sounds like a carb problem.

I really doubt it's the cat. You can unbolt the header and try driving it to rule it out if you want. Since the coil's not the problem I would suspect the carburetor. Make sure the fuel is up to the dot in the float level window (rules out fuel supply to carb problem, at least at idle). Try blowing carb cleaner down the main jets (visible when you look down the barrel of the carb) to clean them out. If you put the seafoam in the gas tank it may have knocked a bunch of stuff loose that is now blocking passages in the carb. One trick to easily clean out the carb bowl is to rev the car up to 2500+ rpm then stick the palm of your hand over the top of the carb, sealing it off. This will cause high vacuum in the carb which sometimes sucks out the stuff clogging the jets. Wear a leather glove when you do this! Last time I did it I ended up with blisters where the skin on my hand literally got sucked down into the carb. Did the problems start shortly after getting gas? You might have gotten a tank of bad gas.

I wouldn't bother with an aftermarket "upgrade" coil. An oem-equivalent coil is all you need. Our cars are low-rpm and naturally aspirated (or low boost pressure on turbo models), so the advertised extra spark capability of an aftermarket coil will never be utilized. If you do go with the supercoil you need to find out what feed voltage the coil requires, and then find out what voltage the stock wiring provides to the coil. They need to be the same. Typically coils are fed 5 volts while running, though some run at 7.5V and 12V I think. If the supercoil is a 5V coil and the stock wiring is a higher voltage, you will need to wire in a ballast resistor to drop the voltage to 5V

1) Carburetor - Possible. Dirty, gummy carburetors do funny things 2) Cat - Not likely. A plugged cat will cause the car to bog down when you step on it, especially at higher rpms. You'll hear a deeper noise from the engine as air "stacks up" in the intake manifold. If the cat was plugged it would run bad all the time. 3) PCV - Not likely. Spend the $3 and replace the valve since it's gummed up, but I doubt it's your issue 4) My best guess (I'm an ASE Certified Master Auto Tech) - It sounds like your coil is dying. Coils will tend to get worse as they warm up, and it takes more energy to fire the plugs under load than it does to idle. It could also be a bad ignition wire from the coil to the distributor. You can check resistance on the coil and on the wire, but in my experience resistance tests will only show a bad part maybe half the time. You might be able to catch it in the act by testing resistance both cold and hot. Resistance values should be listed in any repair manual (there's a bunch online if you don't have one). I can look them up if you need me to.

On an EA81 it's right in the middle next to the accelerator pedal. It might be in a slightly different spot on your EA82, but I doubt it. To flush the core you don't do anything inside the car. If you remove your spare tire under the hood you can see two black heater hoses going to the firewall. These connect to the heater core and you just disconnect them to flush it. Make sure the car is cold so you don't get burned by hot coolant, and have a drain pan underneath to catch the coolant. I usually flush a gallon or so of water through the core into the drain pan to get the last of the coolant out of it, then let it flush out onto the ground after that since it's just water with some chunkies.

A lot of times the gunk clogging the core is gooey rather than solid deposits like calcium. In that case the best way to clean the core is to disconnect both heater lines, hook one up to a garden hose, and turn the hose on slightly. The higher volume and pressure from the hose will clean out the gunk deposited by the low volume, low pressure flow from the engine. You don't want to go full blast on the hose if the core is badly clogged because it may burst (they're designed for 13-15 psi operating pressure, your hose is about 40 psi). I would start with the hose at a low flow rate, then turn it up incrementally as the heater core gets flushed out and starts flowing better. At the auto shop I used to work for we'd do this and leave it flushing for 30 minutes to an hour depending on how quickly the flow improves. If it is hard mineral deposits like calcium then the core probably isn't salvageable. Good luck, I need to do this to my new Brat as well...

Ok, I'll keep an eye out

I live in Pullman, 10 minutes from Moscow. Post up a pic of your car and I might be able to spot it around here and flag him down or something

Well, assuming that it's Aspen/Alder/Ash or something similar to that with an approximate length of 18 inches and a diameter of 4 inches, it comes out to 1,047,000 pounds per inch My engineering teachers would be so proud...

Firewood isn't the direction I would have gone for rear shock absorbers

Update: My headlights are fixed. Thanks everyone for your help. Here is what I found: I checked if the aftermarket light housings had any continuity between the bulb terminals and ground (as suggested by GD) and found that they are plastic and had no continuity. Next I unplugged all of the lights and did some testing. I found that the dimly lit highbeam indicator on the dash went out with the lights unplugged. From this I determined that there was no short to ground in the wiring. The H4 bulbs that the new housings take have a different pinout than the stock sealed beam headlights. Once I repinned the headlight connectors everything worked perfect. The current was actually travelling through both filaments, causing the inner lights to light up dimly, the high beam indicator to stay lit, and my "backward" operation of the high/low switch.

Interesting. I'll look into that

With the headlights on and the switch in the lowbeam position the outer lights highbeams are on, the inner lights are very dim, and the highbeam indicator light is on dimly. With the switch in the highbeam position, the outer light lowbeams are on (possibly dimmer than they should be), the inner lights are lit, and the indicator light is on brighter. The previous owner swapped the outer lights for ones with removable bulbs, so I'm wondering if the pin locations on the bulbs are different than for the stock sealed beams (which would explain the backwards operation of the outer lights), but that doesn't explain why the inners are getting weak voltage in the lowbeam position.

Sounds good. Thanks

Does anyone have a factory wiring diagram for the quad headlight setup on an 85 Brat? The crappy Haines manual I found in a junkyard and Alldata don't have a diagram for quad headlights. I have a short between the highbeam and the lowbeam circuit somewhere. The only suggestion I've found on this board was that the high/low switch goes bad, but I just took it apart and verified that there is nothing wrong with the switch. If anyone has a diagram I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

This guide is a big help! I'm just starting in on my SPFI swap. Any idea when you'll be done with the revisions GD?

Freeze plugs are little round metal "plugs" that are pressed into casting holes in the block and heads. They are called freeze plugs because if you run water in your engine and it freezes, the plugs will be pressed out by the water as it expands into ice. This occasionally will allow the motor to freeze without the ice cracking the block, but usually the freeze plugs get pressed out and the block cracks anyways. Freeze plugs can get corroded/rusted and cause coolant leaks, but they don't cause oil to leak into the coolant, so your friend is mistaken.

Try getting ahold of the previous owner and see if the engine rebuild is still under warranty. Most shops won't transfer the warranty to you, but you could see if the previous owner would be willing to take the car into the shop for you. (or just call the shop and tell them that their friend, i.e. you, will be bring the car in)

Do NOT use liquid head gasket sealant. The subaru-approved head gasket sealant is a small bottle you put in the radiator to seal up/prevent VERY SMALL head gasket seeps in the EJ series of engine. Most aftermarket stop leaks are designed for radiator tank seeps , gasket seeps, etc. They DO NOT work for head gasket issues since stuff is leaking INTO the coolant, not the other way around, so the pressure blows the stop leak out of the way. The only "head gasket in a bottle" I know of is called Steel Seal. It may work somewhat for some length of time, but is at best a patch. The biggest problem with it is that it creates large chunks of plastic-like material inside your cooling system. I pulled a defective thermostat out of a Ford Escort and found that it was coated in plastic-like Steel Seal and sealed completely shut. There were also large chunks of it partially blocking the coolant outlet on the head. Not a good thing. Oil in the coolant has a few possible causes: 1. Some idiot poured oil into the radiator (Yes I have seen it happen) 2. If the car is an automatic and has a tranny cooler built into the radiator (not sure if this applies to EA81's), the tranny cooler sometimes will crack and leak tranny oil into the coolant. 3. Blown head gasket/cracked head - Most likely. I'm fairly new to these older Subarus, but what I've read on this board suggests that EA81's don't typically have head cracking issues like the EA82 does (someone chime in and correct me if I'm wrong) In summary you're in a bad position and probably will need new head gaskets and possibly heads, but they are really easy to do on these cars. Fix it the right way and enjoy your new car. Trying to patch it may seem cheaper now, but it will only cause headaches later on.

Is that a home-made bed tarp on that Brat, or can you buy those somewhere?

I had a tail light that would work intermittently and the problem was the connector inside the bed wall behind the light. I removed the access panel and used a small pick and screwdriver to carefully scrape the insides of the female connectors to remove corrosion/dirt, then carefully bent them inward to increase tension on the pins once you plug the lights back in. I also gave them a liberal coating of Dielectric grease to protect them from future corrosion. If you keep having problems that is what I would try.