BoostedBalls

Be oh so careful with RTV on the oil pump, one little RTV booger can destroy your engine. Make sure your surfaces are cleaned with brake cleaner before doing it. I personally would never use RTV on a pressurized oil system. I used to be the tear-down guy at an engine shop and I saw too many spun main and rod bearings from the RTV Booger Devil. As far as the coolant system, go for it. You might plug up a passage in the radiator or a steam hole somewhere, whoop-d-doo.

Gotcha, I had to read it again, the title threw me off. I would say to try to find a turbo shortblock. The high compression and lack of knock sensor is a bad combination for the turbo. I have a turbo short block that I'm willing to part with. It's disassembled and all the parts are extremely clean, pistons and cylinders look great. Not sure what shipping would be from 97113 Oregon, but let me know if you are interested. $75 + shipping?

You came HERE to ask if you should buy a Subaru?<img> Hah, yes, buy it!

No no no, if I'm reading this right, he is putting turbo heads on a N/A block, not the other way around! Either way, go for it! The turbo heads are the same compression ratio, the difference is, the turbo heads have a turbo oil feed line, oil return line and I think a coolant supply line for the turbo. Plug them all and drive! Run the N/A cams though.

That's beautiful.

Yes, I know it sounds crazy but this is how we did jetski heads to keep the compression right for racers. I've done this very procedure to a couple of skis that competed in the Skat Trak World Finals in Lake Havasu City. These engines made it through the race too. And I'll tell ya, those engine are pushing REAL hard on the head gaskets. Our little Subie heads are about the same size and material. I guess we'll see soon enough, I just did mine that way on my ea-82t that I just dropped in the RX, I'll be running over 20psi.

Nice polished setup, but I already have a spider intake with a GM Quad-4 throttlebody going on it. Why aren't you running it? I'm gunna be in Dresden, Germany. We are gunna be launching off some serious pyrotechnics from my buddy's rooftop. Germany goes all-out on New Years and they let you do some serious fireworks there, unlike here in the states. Here's some photos of the goods. It looks like a mess but I think it work out. http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/moronmechanic/album?.dir=531bscd let me know if the link doesn't work

Nice polished setup, but I already have a spider intake with a GM Quad-4 throttlebody on it. I'm gunna be in Dresden, Germany. We are gunna be launching off some serious pyrotechnics from my buddy's rooftop. Germany goes all-out on New Years and they let you do some serious fireworks there, unlike here in the states. Here's some photos of the goods. It looks like a mess but I think it work out. http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/moronmechanic/album?.dir=531bscd let me know if the link doesn't work

There's no such thing as too much vacuum. It can only reach an equal force of 14.7 psi, but as an inward force rather than an outward force. The only thing I would be worried about is if your car was a turbo model, in that case, you could probably route the lines to the brake booster past the one-way valve so you'll almost always have vacuum.

Prepping the heads: assuming this is just for a head gasket change? I like to spray them down real good with castrol superclean, then hose them down with the garden hose hooked up to the water heater. This get's rid of most of the muck, then comes the can of carb cleaner. Don't worry too much about drying them out as long as the heads got good and hot, they will dry pretty quick on their own. Compressed air speeds the process. Take a razor-type scraper and take off as much of the head gasket as you can then... I like to take a piece of 180 or 220 sandpaper (or two butted together) and stick it to a piece of glass with spray adhesive. Then move the head on it in a tight figure 8 until the gasket surface is free of all gasket material. This will also tell you if the head is flat or not. This technique can actually get the head flatter than the cutter style head milling machines. The stone machines, on the other hand, get the head the flattest. Combustion chambers with valves installed: I like the synthetic 'wire' wheels that you put on a drill. I prefer the kind that has all the bristles facing down, not the ones that are in a spoke pattern. Once the head is clean and dry, take some water or alcohol, or solvent and fill the ports on one side of the head with the head standing on end. Wait about 30 seconds to see how much leaks past the valves into the combustion chamber. Do this on each side. If the leak is enough to fill a teaspoon in, say, a minute- pull the valve and lap the seat. When the valve is out, check it for buildup on the back side. Then make the call to pull them all out and clean them with a brass wheel brush. Label them so they go back to their original location. Don't use a bead blaster on your heads unless you are going to be tearing them down for a full valve job. That stuff will eat an engine from the inside out. As far as the block: I like to take a riffle cleaning kit with a brass bottle brush and hook it up to a drill. With the engine on the engine stand- tip the engine so that 2 cylinders are facing up and two down. Go to town on the side that is facing down so all of the debris falls onto the floor, then hit it good with compressed air and/or carb cleaner or something to get the rest of the crap out. You don't want anything but clean oil or antiseize compound on your threads when everything goes back together. If you are in doubt, take a bottoming tap and run through the threads. Of course, take the head bolts to the wire wheel and make sure they are perfectly clean. The block threads are like butter, so you don't want to drag anything around in there while you are trying to get the proper torque on them. Good luck!

Ok, so I got the engine in, then back out to put dimes in the HLA bores to accomodate my cam grind. That's a whole different story... Dropped the engine back in and set the distributor up by eye. Used a remote starter switch to check my timing and VROOM! It fired right up and sounded good! I had to hurry over to shut off the engine because I didn't have coolant in the engine, oops. It was a little noisy considering the downpipe wasn't attached. Now I got motivated, so I started hooking things up. I was sad to find out that my home-built water-to-air intercooler was just too big so I went with the stock WRX intercooler for now. I don't want to cut a hole in the hood so the WRX unit is temporary until I get some time to do a front-mount or build another water-to-air intercooler that will fit. I might even put it on the passenger floor board. That way I can build a real big one and the plumbing will be easy- just cut a couple holes in the firewall and make up some 2.25" bulkhead fittings for the inlet and outlet. I'll run antifreeze through it and I can drop in some dry ice for the track. It will also bea really handy to measure the inlet and outlet temps with my handy 2 channel thermocouple meter. It won't measure the temp drop from the water injection system there but I have another meter that I can hook up to the throttlebody. It will be cool to see just how low I can get the temps with dry ice. The WRX intercooler recieved a couple of mods: -Plugged up inlet holes on underside -cut a hole on the passenger side of inlet tank, JB welded 2.25" aluminum pipe to it so it points at the turbocharger. -retapping for Eclipse BOV that is set to 20psi I also built my 2.5" stainless down pipe to hook up to the Garrett T3. I'll try to get a photo of it. This will have an external wastegate attached in place of the internal gate. I'm going with an Audi unit unless I find a good deal on a Tial unit. The wastegate should dump into the downpipe about 8-10" from the turbo flange. I feel like calling in sick tomorrow to get more done to it but I have to save my time off for New Years in Germany!

I used my pressure washer hooked up to my water heater, works like a charm. I always turn up the temp on the water heater to get the most out of it before blasting away. I know it isn't real good for the pump on the pressure washer but oh well.

I have a working ECU, or ECM, from an 86 turbo ea-82. $45 shipped to you in the lower 48? PM me if interested.

Also, if you just clean it out good, not with a regular hose, but a pressure washer, it should help. The garden hose has only enough pressure to force the debris deep into the radiator or condenser so that you don't see it. A good soaking with castrol super clean when the radiator is hot is good for breaking everything up before you pressure wash it all out.

I hope it's intercooled. Water injection really help a lot too. You did flush the coolant system right? I would wire the a/c fan to a toggle switch inside. Or ditsh both stock fans in favor of a dual electric unit. GM put some serious fans on their early 90's cars. I would also run the GM alternator to feed them.

I've had ok luck with the fine thread heli-coils but I've had great results with JB weld. You just gotta make sure that you clean the threads really well with brake cleaner and it's nice to warm up the area to help the JB flow into the threads really well.

Don't be scared to use W40 or even W50 oil if the engine has high miles on it. Worn engine clearances can be "tightened" using a thicker oil. You'll likely have less oil consumption and leaks as well. I have used Seafoam to fix this issue on the ej engines with good results. Haven't needed to on my EA engines yet. The noise might not actually be the lifters (HLS's); maybe it's the Mickey Mouse oil pump gasket. The thicker oil should help both anyway.

That was probably due to excessive buildup on the back of the intake valves. But this problem however, sounds to me like a sticking choke or excessive rich mixture. Possibly from sticking fuel bowl inlet valve. Sounds like time to run a potent mixture of injector cleaner through the whole system on an almost empty tank. A couple cans of B-12, or Lucus Oil, or Seafoam should clean it out. Just put it in when the tank is almost empty and drive around with a heavy right foot. It should run like crap for a while then you should see some improvement. Make sure to change the plugs after this and check them after driving for a day or two to make sure they have a slight brownness on the ceramics. Let us know how it goes!

I'm working on the same thing right now and I hope I don't have the same problems as I have a real short temper when it comes to things not working logically. Anyway, if all else is good, a quick compression test will tell you if the cams are timed properly. You don't even need the disty for the check. If one side is higher than the other, you are off by a tooth or two on one belt. If you have 130psi or so on each side-drop the disty in pointing to #1 when the engine is at TDC, the three lines are only for cams. Also, I didn't rely on the wimpy tensioner springs to hold my belts tight, I gave them a little extra tension while I locked them bolts down. Maybe this will keep them from jumping time just from rotating the engine. If all else fails- blow something up or beat something with a club or just kick back with a rum and coke. There's always tomorrow. And it really sucks to find out that you missed something simple that really screwed the whole process. Hell, NASA even does that! Good luck!

I wouldn't be too concerned about it. If you haven't started the car, I would just siphon as much back out of the reserviour like the previous post. If you have driven the car around, I wouldn't worry about that either. It's gotta be better for the system than air, as I assume it has been leaking anyway??? I've done the same thing in an automatic transmission, about a whole quart! I was in a bind so I didn't drain it out and I have since put about 10k on it that way! I'm no expert on the matter but I would guess that the oil will just not has as much of a firmness to it under pressure, but I doubt you would even notice a difference.<img>

The higher compression should be ok with stock boost and stock timing, just don't get into boost at low rpm. That will kill it for sure. I would actually prefer to have the compression ratio of my turbo engine lowered beyond the stock 7.7:1. The bottom end torque would be nonexistant but it could handle a lot more air and fuel per stroke at the same timing. Also, you are pretty much stuck with the stock 7-8psi boost unless you put a spring on the wastegate lever or modify the wastegate actuator. The spring would be positioned in a fashion that would add a little bit of force to the arm in the opening position. The oposite can be done to increas the boost reliably. Not as good as a pneumatic solenoid, but it's nearly fail safe. -Chuck

Maybe the turbo model starter is weaker due to the lower compression of the engine. I dunno

But now that I hit "submit" it dawns on me that there might be more of a calulation needed to find the right thickness because the rocker has a ratio. Does anyone know the rocker arm ratio of our ea82 engines?

The guy on the phone told me .035" !!! Now I'm a little worried about the cams. I'll check my spec sheet. I have a pair of turbo cams laying around that are stock. I'll measure the base circle of them and compare it to the Delta grind. The difference should be required spacer thickness. I'll post my findings.

Ok, I feel better now. It's been about a year since I was in the engine and I pretty much forgot how everything was configured. This is the first wild cam install I've done on an OHC engine with HLA's so when I hear that you have to slap some shims in there, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. So I guess I had my head up my arse and my foot in my mouth. So I guess I'll shim away! I'll just shim it until it feels like my other ea-82t does. This sounds like an apology doesn't it?