jj421

So I put a bit of wheel bearing grease on the joints on the wiper transmission a couple days ago. Today it was raining, and they did seem to be a bit faster, especially at first. I'm gonna take it apart and put a metric f*** ton of grease on those joints. Maybe it'll speed them up more.

I might give that a try. Do I connect the wire to the ground wire for the motor, or just attach it directly to the motor? Does it matter? I've never actually taken a good look at the wiper motor in these cars. I just tried adding a wire from the motor to a better ground. Changed nothing. Wipers are still slow.

That'd be awesome if there was a transplant possibility where you could swap a wiper motor from a different car. I'd imagine a Toyota or Honda from the same era would have a similar wiper motor that could be made to work.

The wipers on my Loyale are pretty slow. I'd be looking for a possible fix as well. But on the other side, I have not seen an old gen Subie with fast wipers.

Thanks! I absolutely love the black/red color combo. Still not 100% on the black hood, but I can't get over how good the two-tone looks on the rest of the car. And since all the black is truck bed liner, it's strong against rocks. Yeah, I loved the look of your PandaWagon at WCSS last year. Gave me motivation to two-tone my wagon.

Brought my friend out offroading for her first time. It was nice to stretch my Subie's legs and get some good photos. First shot was mine, then the rest were her's.

Yeah, a lot of the stuff at the junkyard isn't cheap. I wanted to get rear discs last weekend since everything was 50% off, but row52.com lied. It said there was a turbo GL in the yard, but it was N/A. At regular junkyard prices, I can get a whole rear disc setup for $120-$150 I believe (if I pay for everything ). That's still a lot cheaper than buying a rear disc conversion kit from someone on here, as I see rear discs going for $200-$400 for everything. And for someone like me who works near minimum wage, that's a lot of money to spend on one part.

Yeah, it seems like there is a small deadzone in the pedal, as that's just the way the auto adjusters make it I guess. But not nearly as much deadzone as there was before. My brake pedal used to go almost to the floor when the fronts locked up. Now, the fronts lock up when the pedal is just below the gas pedal. When I have to service the rear brakes again, I'll really try for rear discs. It's just yeah, I've been looking for a year. I never see turbos in the junkyard, and when I do, I don't have the money for 'em. Or someone had pulled the rear discs already. And buying rear discs from someone else is hard to find, and they usually ask a much higher selling price than I can afford.

Thanks for the offer, but I'm fine with the auto adjustment. Don't really see a reason to swap it as it's working fine. Yeah, it might be causing the uneven wear, but I can still go a while before doing the rear brakes again. And when I do, I'll probably do a rear disc swap.

I'm 95% sure they're automatic adjusters. I had to manually adjust them to fit the new pads, but once I got the drum on, I just hit the brakes a few times in reverse and the shoes seemed to fit in place. Here's a picture of the drums when before I replaced the shoes: My wagon is a manual transmission, so it's very possible the two previous owners used engine braking more often. I know I do. I use the brakes sparingly as well. Yeah, both the driver's side and passenger's side had the uneven wear. I suppose that's just normal on old Subaru drums, if bendecker had the same thing. I should've replaced the springs too, but I didn't think about it until I was already working on it. When I had the drum off, I wanted to make sure I put everything back together right. So I set up my camera and stepped on the brake a couple times. Looking at the footage, the leading edge shoe extends further out. The wheel cylinder pushes the leading edge shoe more than the trailing edge. Could that mean a new wheel cylinder is needed? The old ones weren't leaking or anything. I guess it's not really a big deal; I should still get 100K out of these (hopefully 150K+), and the next time I service the rear brakes, I'll definitely try to get rear discs. Also, something interesting to note. I think the driver side drum had been replaced from a junkyard unit at some point before I owned the car. I saw orange pen markings on the inside (once I used some brake clean on it); the same markings that Pick-N-Pull uses on items in case you want/need to return them. That drum has been replaced before, probably. I have those markings on the HVAC controls and the handbrake console is a slightly different shade of gray. So a previous owner must've been to the junkyard a few times. I don't know; just interesting to learn about the history of my car. I still find it hard to believe these are the original brakes. I guess it's possible, but I have so many miles on my car that I just don't believe it.

So today I decided to replace the shoes on my rear drum brakes on my Loyale. I've been looking for rear discs for about a year, but not had any luck. Either I don't have the money, there are no junkyard cars, or a list of other reasons. I just spent the $20 and got new drum shoes. Installation went fine (surprising). Wasn't too difficult, even for my first time doing drum brakes. What I have a question about is the old shoes. One thing that caught my eye was the Fuji Heavy Industries logo on two of the shoes. Could these be the original brake shoes that came with car in 1990? The new shoes didn't have the Fuji logo (obviously). The odometer is at 278,300 miles. I doubt these are the original shoes. I'd imagine they've been replaced once before. If they were replaced at the dealership, could they have use Fuji brake shoes? I'm just curious about this. Knowing some of the car's history, I'd say it was probably a 60/40 highway/city driving car. So there's no way the shoes are original, right? They're really worn down, but they still worked. Lift the back of the car, step on the brake, and you can't turn the wheels. Second thing I wanted to ask about is the wear. The leading edge shoe (towards the front of the car) had less material than the trailing edge. Is this normal for EA82s? Both sides were exactly the same, no marks on the drums themselves, and the material on the pads seems pretty normal (no cracks or whatever). I just wanted to ask about this. I kinda have a feeling it's normal, but wanted to check. Thanks for any help. I know a lot of people do rear disc swaps, so not sure how abundant the information on drums is. But all I can say is, the new shoes made a HUGE difference. My brake pedal is a lot stiffer and doesn't have a deadzone in it anymore. I presume the front brakes won't overheat easily anymore. I'll be happy if I can get at least 100K out of these shoes. Thanks!

Wow, that thing looks brand new. Next time I pull my engine, wanna clean it for me?

Post pictures when it's cleaned up. You already have the cleanest engine I've ever seen in person in these cars, and I can't imagine it any cleaner. Also, if you're strong enough, you could probably pick up the engine by yourself. Helps if you take off the intake manifold, P/S pump, etc. I pulled my longblock with the help of some random lady on the sidewalk.

Wow, didn't see this until now. I can get you pictures in the morning if you'd like. Though really all it is are two 2" long self-tapping screws holding each light. Just drilled them in to get 'em tight, then that was that. They're just drilled straight into the bumper. The mounting brackets for the lights I have allow me to do this. My old light setup I had to get a bit creative. I bought a door hinge at ACE Hardware and used that as a bracket, but it drilled directly into the bumper in the same fashion. Just a screw straight into the styrofoam. I have some pictures of my old setup in the following thread (post #13): http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/134769-ea82-alternator-upgrade/?do=findComment&comment=1133181 I'll get some pictures of my new setup in the morning.

My fog lights below my bumper (and my offroad lights on top) are just screwed into the bumper. They don't go all the way through, but yet they're quite securely mounted. They don't vibrate or anything. It's stronger than you'd think.

My wagon was originally purchased in SE Wyoming back in 1990. Then at some point before 2003, it got sold and moved to Montana. Then in 2012, that guy moved to Washington and I bought it. Wyoming is a pretty dry state (compared to the NW), but Montana sees it's fair share of rain and snow. So it spent 10+ years there in that climate. Maybe I just got lucky. My wagon had 253K on it when I bought it, so it was obviously driven and maintained. It wasn't parked on grass for years, allowing rust to form. Now I have got it up to 278K miles, so I'm definitely driving it. It has body rust. In the pictures I posted, you can kinda see a hole under the left taillight. That's the biggest damage from the rust. There were some other small holes that I covered up when I did the paint.

Funny thing. I looked under my wagon the other night, and I have absolutely no rust underneath. Why? Everything, everything, is caked in a layer of dirt. There's a good layer of dirt on top of everything, and I kinda think that's preventing it from rusting. Maybe I'm stupid and know nothing, but this dirt has covered everything and is protecting the actual metal. If you clean off the dirt, the metal is clean and shiny. Maybe frequent offroading is saving my car. The blue would be cool. Make sure to post a picture when/if you do it. I'm slightly color blind, so I can't tell you if those shades will look good together. But if you do it in bed liner, it will be cool! Would you just be doing the bottom half in bed liner, or the whole car? If you did the top as well, that'd be one strong Brat. But it'd probably be unnecessary time and money.

No, I'm saying I did the whole bottom half twice with one can. So even better! The can says to apply 3-4 coats, so I did three. I didn't have to open the second can until I got to the third coat. I seem to recall a thread here not too long ago asking about bed liner on the interior. I didn't really follow it, so I don't know what the result was. But my interior feels as solid as the day it got sold in 1990; I don't have any disintegrating parts, yet. If you wanna get blue in a spray can, you're most likely going to have to contact a company and special order it. Or maybe get it in a paint can and brush it on?

The bed liner that I got was just in an aerosol can at O'Reilly Auto Parts. They are $12 per can (I got it for less, since I work there). I picked up two cans. I was able to do two coats with one spray can, and I did a third coat with the second one. Definitely not the best stuff out there, but it was cheap and as easy as spray paint. If ya want navy blue, you'll probably have to spend quite a bit elsewhere, haha.

Got some black truck bed liner and did the bottom half of my wagon in it. Took care of some of the rust, the bed liner should make it strong for offroading, and the two tone looks pretty good in my opinion. At least with red/black. I've also got two new front axles. So no more clicking/knocking, for now.

That is pretty impressive. Only real one I did was the night I lifted my EA82. I was 40 miles from home, it was 2 am, and it was POURING rain. Well during the lift installation, I forgot to tighten the ball joint nut, so it fell out on the road. Eventually the ball joint popped out (forgot to put the brake caliper on properly, so the wheel was locking up which caused the ball joint to pop out). With the nut gone, I had to do something to fix it. LUCKILY, EA82 lug nuts are the same size as the ball joint nuts. Since I now have Pugs with special lug nuts, I used an old lug nut to hold the ball joint. Drove like that for about 100 miles, until new ball joints came in at O'Reilly. So now I always carry extra lug nuts. Ya never know.

Haven't done much. Just saving up for front axles and rear brakes. Oh, I did do my subframe drop. Did a 1" drop, and wow, it made a difference. Axles aren't as stressed, front wheels don't have as much camber, less understeer (more oversteer), and better acceleration (front end doesn't lift up as much). Had to remove the clutch fan shroud, but that was it. The steering u-joint on the '86 DL manual steering rack was long enough. But that's about it. In the meantime, I'll just continue pulling trucks out of the ditch.

For me, I keep saying that if my EA82 ever dies, I'll consider an EJ swap. In a sense, so many people do EJ swaps that EA82s are kinda becoming rare. Yeah, it's still probably got another 5-10 years before you can comfortably say they're rare, but it's on its way. Everything I do to my car serves a vital function. There is a reason for every modification, besides looks, speed, or what have you. So if I were to do an EJ swap, I better have a good reason for it. And that reason is because I am running 27" tires, so the extra power would be helpful to run them. That being said, the EA82 does a decent job turning these tires. Going uphill is a little slow, but I haven't had many major complaints. For folks running even bigger tires, an EJ swap can definitely come in handy. Otherwise, for me personally, there isn't much more purpose to doing an EJ swap. It costs a lot of money (especially for someone like me who works at minimum wage (or near it)) and the biggest thing you get out of it is more power (which I don't have a need for). My EA82 provides sufficient power, is plenty reliable (though an EJ22 is more reliable), gets decent gas mileage, and is stupid easy to work on. Yeah, if my engine ever catastrophically fails, I might consider doing an EJ swap. It depends on the funds I have and the availability of both an EJ22 and an EA82. Regardless, I plan to maintain my EA82 as much as I can. High quality oil and oil filter, frequent oil changes, clean coolant, not overheating it, etc. I plan to keep the EA82 for a long time.

You're not the only one. They have four lugs, two of the longer style and two "nut" style lugs. I didn't have 16 of either style, so I did two of each on each wheel, in a cross pattern. Both styles have the washers for the Pugs, but one is longer while the other looks just like a regular nut (and ergo sit more flush to the wheel).

Yup. That's my GoPro that I had filming the mud. Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15uJALss2Sc&feature=gp-n-y The aftermath of the mud: