88HatchMonster

Hey man, I live in NY, but I work up in Richmond, VT. Hopefully I will be moving over to Vermont soon. I'm definately a Subie addict, I've got a 98' OBS and an 88' Hatch! Do you know of any good junk yards in VT? Most up here have crushed there 80s Subes... Anyway, nice to "meet" ya! Ryan

Is there any place to get just a replacement rear outer cv joint cup, other than a junkyard? I don't need the cage or anything, just the cup that slides onto the halfshaft. My axles and cvs are good, but I'm going to destroy the outer cups getting them off of the halfshafts. It's an EA81 Hatch. Thanks.

Awesome, thanks guys.

I'm basically done with the 3.9 LSD conversion, but I'm a little curious about why I needed to grind the notches in the inside of the casing. Was it just to get the LSD unit inside? Mine went in fine after I grinded the four notches, but I didn't try without. The grinding isn't to facilitate the normal operation of the diff, is it? I just want to make sure I ground enough. Also, I used the blue loctite and torqued the ring gear bolts to 70 ft. lbs. does that sound adequate? Thanks!

So it's just supposed to be straight all the way across? I've seen some of the reinforcement techniques and they look nice and strong, but I like building things and I want to make one that does away with the need for lifting blocks on the hanger a la "subarubrat" or "hassey" since mine is lifted. Thanks for the advice!

OK, dumb question, is the mustache bar off my hatch supposed to look like this? I'm assuming it's intentionally offset like that on the left side in the picture. I just wanted to make sure because I'm going to make a new one out of square tubing and I'm going to use this one as a template. Thanks

I know this doesn't have anything to do with your question, but did you have to use a shortened EA82 Driveshaft to do the swap in your hatch, or is there another option?

Hi all, I finally got my 3.7 LSD Diff, a Snap-On E10 female torx, and I should be getting side seals, o-rings and spring pins tomorrow. Oh yeah, got the lock-tite too. So I'm getting ready to tear into it tomorrow. I've still gotta take my 3.9 diff off, but that's a peice of cake. Anyway, I figure I'de see if anyone who's done the conversion had any pointers that might keep my out of trouble, ya know just simple stuff that might be obvious to you but not to someone who has never even opened one of these up before (like me.) I'm going by the directions in the USRM, which are great BTW. And it's going in a 4" lifted hatch w/ 6 lugs, 28.5" swampers and rear discs. Thanks, guys!

http://www.subarubrat.com/hasseylift.htm These are the plans I used to build my 4" lift kit years ago. note that the front strut extensions in that kit don't work that great on a 4" lift so that will take some creativity on your part if you are doing a smaller lift like I did. Lifting a sube is really pretty easy once you get you head around the concept of lifting the body from the "chassis" parts on a unibody car!

That's a beautiful thing!

Well this isn't good news, but it might be that either the bolt or the nut welded into the frame is stripped and the bolt is just spinning and not coming out anymore. This happened on the front of my ru with the nut on the end of the strut rod. I just cut the nut in half with a cutoff wheel, but your situation is a little different. If that happened your gonna have to get creative to fix it. In this case I'de rather give no advice than bad advice, so hopefully someone else has a solution for you...good luck. I feel your pain, up here in the north east I find myself using a drill way more than a wrench under my car!

I got longer shocks for my 4" lifted hatch. That was almost 5 years ago though. I just had the guy at advanced auto open some boxes for me, don't remember exactly how we figured it out...I was able to get ones with the stock t-bar at top though.

Is it bad karma to re-use spring pins when changing axles? Those things are like $4 a piece from online parts stores! ...OK I'm cheap! But is there a better place to get them? Hardware store, NAPA? $16 for 4 for my rear end isn't too bad I guess but is there anything wrong with just reusing them?

I've been looking around lately and this site seems to have a good deal onEA-81 fenders. http://www.partstrain.com/ShopByVehicle/SUBARU/WAGON/1982/none/Fender/Front_Fender/FENDER/1/0/1?id=uL5RibNX 1982 is the latest year they have them though so you might get one with an antennae hole on the driver's side, I think that's the way the 80-82s were. I also don't know why they are different prices side to side... I'm probably gonna buy some of these to cut up and fix my rusty rear wheel arches on my hatch as soon as I get a working mig welder again..soon hopefully.

Here is a link to some instructions on making a lift kit: http://www.subarubrat.com/hasseylift.htm the site itself has some great info on it as well. I made a lift from those instructions a long time ago when they were first floating around the internet and mine's held up great! The front strut top extensions in that design don't work out that well for lifts under 6" though. That's probably the trickiest part of making your own lift. Another thing to keep in mind is that you'll need to do some work on your shifter and 4wd lever linkage after you put in a lift, since you're spacing the tranny from the body. Personally I prefer just a body lift with no suspension lifting because of increased wear on your CVs and likely exaggerated + camber with most suspension lifting tricks. Oh yeah, and the last thing is to just go to your auto parts store and have them open a few boxes and find a set of shocks for the back that are exactly the right length you need, with the right t-bar mount up top. that way you don't need to mess with extensions in the back, and you might get a little extra travel out of it as well.

This seems to be the dirty little secret of subie lift kits. I built my own kit for my EA-81 and had similar problems once I got it all together. I know you have an EA-82 but on the EA-81 you can heat and bend the shifter so you can hit all your gears. Also on the EA-81, the 4wd lever linkage ends up pointing at an angle in normal 2wd and will pop the shifter out of reverse when you engage 4wd. I found that fabbing a modified linkage for that was absolutely necessary. That was with a 4" lift in a hatch. Anyway, just know that it's normal and fixable, just take apart your console and boots and everything and have at it. Good Luck! Wish I could be more specific but I just know the EA-81s...

Try this on for size: Not too bad...

I think it actually says in the owner's manual and that it is 3 degrees positive, but unfortunately I'm away from my lovely sube all week so I can't check until the weekend...

Hi All, I'm working on repositioning my strut top mounts on my '88 ea-81 hatch w/ 4" lift and 28.5" Swamper TSLs. I started out with a strut top position that equated to stock which gave (I believe) a 3 degree positive camber. While that isn't terrible, I think that it is a little too much for running my swampers on the pavement and I think they're gonna be bald on the outside edge in no time flat. So I'm making the strut top position adjustable so I can set it to anything from -1 degree to +3 degrees. What I'm wondering is what is everyone's opinion on an optimum camber angle for running offroad tires? What is the angle on most trucks with IFS? That might be something to shoot for... Thanks for any insight in advance!

Great info guys! I definately will throw those discs on next chance I get.

Hi, I just picked up an '89 RX rear end at the jy. I was gonna put the rear discs on my '88 hatch but I'm having second thoughts. I don't really think current my stopping power is that terrible, but I'm usually below 40mph around town and only go 55-60 on the highway. Even slower on the trail. My main concern is the fact that drum brakes are relatively sealed and I do a lot of driving in the mud. Are the plain ol rear drums a more reliable choice if you do a lot of mudding or should this not even be a consideration? any thoughts on this subject would be appreciated, I just figured I'de throw this one out there before I took the plunge and did the new setup. also, the new rear discs seem kinda skinny compared to the fronts, but I suppose that's normal... I have a 4" lift w/ 29" super swamper tsls btw

Wow, thanks for the great advice guys, quick too! Stinky, you put it into good perspective, I think I will get the rear end, but I actually already talked him down from $200! and I really don't think he knew or cared that it was LSD/Rear Discs! He was mostly concerned about the axles, which he said he could sell for $50 a piece. I suppose $150 is a decent price if the parts are good (I do get a 15 day guarantee.) I was just kinda hoping for a steal since chances are the thing would have been scrap by next week if I hadn't come along...

Hi all, seems there's been a lot of LSD related posts lately...here's one more. I just found an 89 RX Turbo 3-dr hatch with 156K at the jy today. It's got an LSD rear diff and rear discs I wanna use for my 88 EA-81 4wd hatch (yes, I know I will have to convert to 3.9 ratio on the new LSD) anyway, the price is $150 for the whole damn rear end, including axles and trailing arms (which I don't need but that's the deal) Is $150 a fair price even at that mileage? this stuff is getting rare in the NE... anyone know if I can reuse the axles? any must have tools to pull the stuff? Thanks in advance for any advice! I'm new to the board, but I've had a lifted hatch since way back in the day (ok more like 1999 ), just now getting back into it!

This IS my NEW Brat! Welcome to my hell: salty New York state! I just picked it up. lots of good parts for my hatchback though at any rate...

I just bought a brat that's so rusted through at the torsion bar mounts that the weight of the body is pushing that adjuster plate down on the U-joint. Maybe your brat's in need of some reinforcing on the unibody rails to straighten everything out again, espescially where the torsion bar mounts up.