iceageg

New valve cover gaskets and cleaned about 1/2" of greasy road grime off of the valve covers. No new drips anywhere I have parked in the last 24 hours AND I see shiny blue in my otherwise filthy engine bay. Time to find a pressure washer. I also figured out why that CD player was in a pile of parts. Once it is powered on for a couple minutes it shuts itself off. That's why we took it out of my wife's pathfinder in the first place. Soooo, off to find a new head unit.

I found an old Pioneer CD player in my pile of parts so I replaced the crappy aftermarket tape deck. A dramatic improvement. On a side note, I do still have the stock radio/tape deck combination. I have no idea if it works. Free to anybody who wants it in the Denver area. Not sure what it would cost to ship.

Battery, terminals and ground cable. All badly needed replaced. Since then, new valve cover gaskets. No new spots since. Very nice.

New battery, terminals and ground cable. Nothing picture worthy but the old battery was shot. Hopefully it was not shot because the alternator is bad. If so it just gives me a reason to pick up a Maxima/Pathfinder alternator to upgrade.

If you are trying to stay under the $2,000 mark you are looking at a Delta cam, Weber carb and an MSD while doing all the work yourself. Then source a solid block and do a slow build for future install as funds present themselves. There is limited support for these engines and I don't know if you will find any direct replacement pistons for a bored out cylinder radius. You would probably be looking at a set of custom pistons at that point which is going to drive your cost up significantly. You would need head work, probably EFI and associated tuning to make 115-130 horsepower. I'm not sure what your end goal is but once you start spending that amount of time and money on an EA81 the EJ22 swap gets you more for less.

I avoid paying others to work on my car unless it is absolutely necessary, but $2,000 to do an engine swap seems like a pretty reasonable deal to me. The only way to reduce that would be to do the work yourself or source the parts yourself and find a mechanic who will use your parts and only charge for the labor. This will likely still be over the $1,000 mark. I don't know what your urgency is or what the issue is with your existing motor but the cheapest way would be to find another EA81 that will bolt directly in to your Brat. My local pull-n-pay hard charges $160 for a long block. They can be difficult to find and are always in questionable condition but you can rebuild it casually while still using your car. When it is time to do the swap you can swap over pieces you want to keep from your existing motor to the new one. Depending on how you want your engine to perform you can accomplish this for well under $1,000 for a casual daily driver or several thousand for a crazy custom setup. You could also try to source a running engine on ebay/CL/here/etc. With a bit of searching you could probably find a solid engine with some life left in it for $300-$600. In a weekend you could swap it in and swap over whatever you want to keep from your existing motor. Just to keep the car running you may be able to do this for $400 with just a few gaskets. The result probably would not have the same long term reliability as a complete rebuild but it could keep you on the road. You have no options for a "cheap" swap to a new engine format. Adapter plates, custom fab, etc. will make it more complex, expensive and time consuming guaranteed. The cost savings is to do it yourself which can be daunting without a well provisioned shop and the experience to use it. Those skills can certainly be learned during the project but re-work and acquiring new tools will drive up cost and you can forget any thoughts of a quick turn around or being able to use your car during the project. Personally I LOVE these types of projects and it is one of the reasons I love older cars so much. Resources like this forum will prove invaluable sources of information and allow you to prepare with a little research that will save you a great deal of heartache and help you through an issues you run into. If you don't have the time and money to finish it though, it would be best to delay the start. Especially if you need the vehicle being worked on. If you do prep, prep, prep before getting started to minimize the inevitable downtime. Cheers

+1 for Super Rupair and Trent in the Boulder area. He may have to put you on a schedule though.

If it is a dedicated trail rig or just a "get around the property" utility rig you could always go with a set of these. https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/13-and-15-inch-tractor-tires_60313563435.html

If your concern is head gasket problems just stay away from the 2.5 liter engines. Bug eye WRX's with the 2.0 did not have those problems, nor did any of the older 2.2 liter impreza's or legacies. I'm not sure if you are dedicated to something newer than those but there are plenty of subarus on the road that contributed to their stellar reliability reputation.

Welcome aboard. You will find a great deal of knowledge and help here. If you do your own maintenance this site will prove invaluable. How about a picture of Daisy?

I used it to download that very document last week. I already have it somewhere but it was easier to find again here than in the dark recesses of my external storage drive.

Definitely find and fix the issue. Getting it passed so you can stay registered is just a stopgap.

The 95 engines were not zero clearance. Is it possible you have your timing off enough that valves are open?

The denatured alcohol trick works pretty well. I've had a couple friends that used it with great results.

New front seats are in. My wife and I went to one of the local yards and simply walked around until we found replacement seats in good condition with the correct dimensions. We were hoping the XT seats would be in good shape (the XT6 seats we used in our 85' hatch worked awesome) but they were trashed. We did luck out finding a late 80s Honda Accord with front seats that looked new and were a brown that is close to the color of the existing interior. So . . . This Got replaced with these For those who have never done it the existing seats come out with four bolts. The rails themselves are bolted to the bottom of the seat with four phillips head M8x1.25 machine screws. It is just a matter of fabricating some brackets to connect whatever seat you want to use to the original seat rails. The XT6 seats we used from on our previous hatch actually sat lower than the stock seats and fit just about perfect. These Honda seats have a thicker cushion and sit significantly higher but there is still enough head room for me at 6'2". The cushions are also longer giving the impression of the seat being farther forward than before. I may pull them out and modify the brackets to be lower and more to the rear but for now it is a DRASTIC improvement as you can see from the pictures above. I also found out that the driver side left seat rail was slightly bent. I'll be on the casual lookout for another one of those.

I sold my 85' hatch 3 years ago when I was transferred from Colorado to Florida. After transferring back much sooner than expected I picked up this gem to fill the obvious need of a car that can survive Denver winters. From the literature in the glove box and the dealer stickers it appears she was originally a New Jersey car. The original dark red paint hides the rust and she has a few dings here and there but for the most part the body and panels are strait and she runs well enough to be a daily driver as I sort out the known issues and upgrade a few things here and there. She also came with a second set of wheels with bald tires. There are a number of issues to sort out but for the price I am happy. A reliable daily driver with good fuel economy that is easy to work on, goes anywhere, and has enough issues that I don't feel bad about altering it from stock. This last bit is important not only from an availability of parts standpoint but also because this will likely become my son's car in a couple years. He is looking forward participating in the build. So let the fun begin! Short term: Wind shield (spider webbed right in front of the driver) Front seats (both are bad, driver's seat is down to the frame/springs) Valve cover gaskets (both leaking) New fluids throughout New front axles (passenger side is clicking, drivers side boot is badly ripped) Pressure wash underbelly and engine bay Exhaust leaks Medium term: 15" wheels and tires Radiator Rear seats (cracking but not in bad shape) Interior clips and fasteners Clutch return spring Stereo replaced "Bowl of oatmeal" shifter slop fix Rear disk conversion (if a donor car appears) Acquire parts for engine/transmission swap Address rust and paint Driver side left seat rail Shifter boot MSD Long term: Engine swap (either rebuilt EA-81 or an EJ-22, not sure if carbed or Megasquirt) DR5MT swap (if EJ-22 then possibly the EJ transmission . . . maybe) Supercharger LSD Dash

As requested. Here she is the night I picked her up. This picture makes her look much cleaner than she is. A solid "10 footer" because the color helps hide her blemishes. She's solid but has some rust to deal with and the sun has taken it's toll on the hood and roof. A solid start for a slow build rolling project. <<Edit>> Replaced the horribly destroyed original front seats. http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/160561-project-ruby-sue-86-hatch/

Start telling the story. I'll go get more popcorn.

Without reading the entire thread it looks like they overcame the static boost feeding a variable throttle problem by only engaging the blower at wide open throttle. A very simple solution to get around a complex problem. The big difference though . . . the FA20 is fuel injected with the computer compensating for the extra air. I'd venture to guess that the sudden change of the blower turning on would present some interesting tuning challenges for a carbureted motor. I still love the innovation though. Good find.

Another option would be one of the small centrifugal units on the market today. Procharger has a few marketed at the motorcycle/ATV market and the C-2 model specifically performs very well for the volumes you are considering. Some of the tuner companies like Greddy have even smaller units that use a planetary gear set (instead of a single gear reduction like the Procharger). You will likely spend quite a bit more on these because they are more difficult to find used but they do offer more mounting options for fitment under the hood. As I mentioned before, do some research on draw-through and blow-through systems and make sure you pick one that is appropriate for your goals. Depending on your desired boost level you could be in for a tuning nightmare with the wrong setup.

For full disclosure a TPS is not only one way and it would probably not be enough by itself. I have used vacuum actuated valves and cam systems attached directly to the throttle to modulate static flow systems based on throttle position. Both of these simple (for a car with no TPS) solutions work exceptionally well but have one fatal flaw that the TPS would also have. When you tune them they are altitude (ambient conditions) specific. If you gain or drop a few thousand feet of altitude you need to re-re-re-re-adjust them every time. This would not be as much of an issue if you lived in Florida, Iowa or Nebraska but in places like California, Colorado or Oregon you will need to find a way to actively adjust where the boost modulation occurs based on ambient pressure and temperature. Trying to stick to my cliff notes theme this is because the change in ambient conditions is not linear. The compressor map of various blowers are different and none of them are linear. Your suction of your engine (essentially a vacuum pump) is not linear either. So if your static boost system is running 3psi on a given day at a given altitude it is fairly easy to tune that to run very well using a mechanical linkage and tear rump roast around your own property or a track most of the day. However, if the weather changes significantly or you trailer it up to your favorite camping spot in the mountains it will run like crap and you will have to adjust the manual linkage. Thus the TPS/MAF solution is the only one that I would consider "daily driver" to the standard of letting my daughter drive away in it. So to skishop69's point if you wanted an electric blower that would be turnkey and go driveable you would need to set up a system that was tied to a TPS and MAF and made adjustments to either the speed of the electric motor or a valve to modulate the boost getting to your carb/throttle body. It can be done without it but in mountainous country you can count on doing some roadside tuning.

We use a 15HP Briggs and Stratton motor to bench test all of the superchargers we sell. Depending on the model and application they must draw no more than 5-8 HP to make 3-4psi to be considered in-spec. If you are going for a mild boost system that is about the draw you are looking for off your crank, via exhaust pressure (for a turbo), or from an electric motor. That is simply the amount of power it takes to compress that volume of air. We did use an electric motor once to do endurance testing where we kept one "over sped" (way under design but over what our application requires) for 48 continuous hours. We used junk parts to put the bench together so it may have been overkill but the electric motor was about the size of a breadbox. I don't remember where it even came from. Good chance it was some sort of commercial HVAC component. Fun fact, on a cold winter day in eastern Oregon, the compressed air from that blower warmed an oversized 3 car garage up to about 85° pretty quickly and kept it there for 2 days. Ahh memories.

The answer to that is yes, it does. Staying with the cliff notes theme, Bernoulli's principle explains to us that high velocity = low pressure, low velocity = high pressure. In addition to that, simply throwing high velocity air at a restriction (in this case a carburator) will simply make the air slow down because only so much air can pas through the restriction . . . unless you have pressure forcing the compressed mass of air through the restriction. This I think is the main point you are missing when talking about the drone rotors. Remember my reference to "positive displacement" when talking about twin screw blowers above? After the air is compressed by the supercharger there is NO path for the air to escape backwards and if the engine was not accepting the compressed air fast enough it would eventually explode due to over pressurization. Put one of those twin screw units on a sealed box and turn it by hand. Eventually it would build up so much pressure that you would not be strong enough to hand crank it anymore. If you put the rotor blade from a drone on the same opening you could spin it forever because it is not moving any air. The restriction simply causes air to "stack" up and eventually the propeller blade starts to cavitate like an over sped boat propeller. It doesn't create velocity or pressure past a point. I hope I explained that adequately. Last, as skishop69 noted above, if the engine normally consumes 170cfm you will need something that flows MORE than that to see any benefit. Anything that flows less air would effectively restrict what the engine was already feeding itself. So as long as your drone rotor moved more air than the engine normally consumed you could get some benefit out of it but because of the shape of the fan blade I doubt it would generate much boost pressure. Please make sure you post your results if you go through with it (I know I have spent more time and money on failed experiments than I care to admit), but based on my experience you will probably be disappointed. You won't find much technical information (mostly geared towards sales and generating phone calls) but you can check us out at http://www.forcedaeromotive.com/ if you want some eye candy and some idea of where I'm coming from.

How to follow that . . . First, it is obvious that you either A) have not decided what your primary objectives are or B ) are looking forward to a multi-phase, long term research project along the lines of a high school science fair entry. If you actually want to be able to drive your brat in the near future you need to sit down with a pad and paper and write down your goals, then cross out the ones that conflict. For instance, going back to your Mad Max post above . . . if the Mad Max look is 100% required you are stuck using a twin screw blower of some kind. There are very few on the market that are designed to work efficiently on a motor our size (MR2, Mini S, etc.) and they are much smaller than you are probably hoping and may not provide the "WOW" factor you are looking for. Larger ones can be made to work but you will trade performance for the big, bad, Mad Max look. In that example you would have to cross out "best performance" in order to keep "Mad Max look". I'm not trying to crush your enthusiasm but you did go full keyboard diarrhea of thought in your last post. If you want to put in the work to compare various options and dedicate your car to being a full time test bench I will shut up and get my popcorn. Second, if you have dedicated your project to carburation then you need to do some reading up on "draw through" and "blow through" systems. Depending on the amount of boost you want to create you will have varying levels of complexity setting up and tuning your carburator. If you are just going with a mild 3-5psi setup you may be fine with a simple blow through setup. Any more than that and you will need to relocate the carb pre-blower or set up a pressurized blow through housing. Either way don't expect to just bolt it on and have a daily driver. Remember that a carburator is nothing more than a calibrated vacuum leak. When you start changing the airflow through it relative to what the engine is asking for you are going to count on some adjustments being needed. Fuel injection makes this process much easier and more flexible. For your item #1, this is a large topic. To large to get into in detail here so I will attempt the cliff notes version. Assuming we are talking about engine driven units, twin screw blowers (like Mad Max) are the absolute best option for low end response. They get into usable torque before any other traditional option and they just look awesome. The downside is you have almost no options for mounting location and extremely limited options for intercooling if you are pushing enough boost to need it. The efficient range for most of these is also designed to operate best on lower RPM engines. Many (possibly most) of these are also positive displacement, meaning if the belt breaks your car stops because no air is getting through. Centrifugal blowers offer very predictable throttle response but their power is not available as soon in the RPM range as a twin screw. They do however give you quite a few more mounting options, are much easier to intercool and there are more units to pick from on the market. Having more options you may have better luck finding one with an efficient range that matches your CFM and RPM needs than twin screw units adapted from other applications. All of this ignoring (by your request) any information or comparisons to the obvious alternative of turbocharging. For your item #2, "blowers, superchargers, etc. are basically about forcing dense (cold?) air into the engine, therefore," . . . No. They compress a volume of cold dense air into a smaller volume of warm/hot air that still provides more total combustible oxygen even though it is warmer. Things like intercoolers are used to cool the warmer air charge back down but without the help of something like a CO2 element freezing the intercooler it will never get back down to it's original ambient temperature. There are some other tricks but I am still trying for cliff notes. Alternate drive sources like electric or chain saw motor (yes, I've seen it done) offer yet more mounting location options but I think you are going to have an extraordinarily difficult time getting them to work with a carburator. For instance a one speed electric motor will always be trying to flow the same amount of air. The carb meters fuel based on how much air is flowing through it. If the engine only wants XXX volume of air at say idle, but the blower is providing YYY you are going to have to do some creative engineering (variable speed electric motor, extra butterfly vavle, etc) to automate your way around it or simply remember never to flip the switch unless you floor the accelerator peddle. These options will convince you that fuel injection is an easier option. Leave blowers have been proven to make a difference but every setup I have ever seen has taken up far more room than it was worth and turned out only to be a gimmicky "because I could" temporary joke. Roadkill even did an episode dedicated to it that is well worth the watch if you want a laugh or just to see what lessons others have learned on the topic. I have never heard of anybody using drone engine/prop. My guess is they won't flow enough CFM and might even prove to restrict flow by being in the way of an already greater flow. Once again for reference, the 110 cubic inches in your EA81 your engine at 6000 RPM will require roughly 170CFM of air to operate normally at full throttle normally aspirated. Any fan you are looking for will need to exceed that. I don't mean any of this to discourage you from trying. Just make sure your attempts align with your end goal. Good luck and I look forward to watching your progress.

You can find an Eaton M60 supercharger for fairly cheap on ebay. That will have the look you want and may be small enough to still work efficiently on your motor. To work and stick out of the hood the way you want you will have to fabricate an application specific intake manifold. You would be better off with one of the newer, smaller centrifugal units on the market but they rule out the mad max look you want. It can be done but I'm pretty sure you will be treading some new water hear so expect to do some trial-and-error fact finding along the way. If you are carburated you may want to consider switching over to fuel injection also. Both can be done but both tuning and fuel economy will be much better injected vs. carburated.