maestro

$40 is awesome! I didn't think to check ebay. Does the new pump come with the valves and all? If so then for that price forget about going through all the trouble to clean it up. Swap it for the new one and test it out. I hope that fixes the prob because tearing the engine down will suck.

This site explains everything about oil pressure, http://www.aa1car.com/library/us1097.htm. That being said you should start with taking the oil pump off, clean the oil bypass valve and pressure relief valve, then measure the oil pump rotor and gear and their clearances. To do that you are going to need feeler gauges and probably a digital caliper. http://www.harborfreight.com/6-digital-caliper-with-metric-and-sae-fractional-readings-68304.html and http://www.harborfreight.com/32-piece-sae-metric-feeler-gauge-32214.html in case you don't have them. Pictures from the manual below show specs and steps to do this. If it were me, I'd clean the valves and make measurements best I could. Even if the measurements were out of spec try replacing the oil pump and see what happens. If the pressure is low and I found the measurements out of spec or not I'd replace the oil pump, http://www.autozone.com/autozone/parts/1978-Subaru-Brat/Oil-Pump/_/N-in7clZ8zn8y?filterByKeyWord=oil+pump&fromString=search, expensive unfortunately. Alternatively you may be able to find an engine locally, either from someone with one running and on the road and see if they will let you try the oil pump before you buy a new one. Or find one in a junkyard and buy it but you don't know for sure if a junkyard one is good or not. If oil pressure is still low with a known good pump you definitely got worn bearings. You can buy new bearings and replace them only or get a complete rebuild kit if you are inclined. I'd go ahead and do a complete rebuild since changing the main bearings requires splitting the case and the engine is already completely disassembled. And... since if you've gone that far why not send the cam off for a grind. Everyone on here says deltacam will do either a torque or hp grind. The torque grind is for if you think you're going to do lots of low revving off roading. he hp grind is for more highway use. Also a port and polish of the heads is advantageous. Possibly look into shaving the heads a bit for higher compression but I am not sure how much is safe for valve clearances. Okay, I'm probably way ahead of myself but I'm just saying. Also, please take pictures or video of the oil pump disassembly and cleaning and post. This can be useful for others with similar issues in the future. Keep me posted on your progress. And that does indeed look like a nice clean gen 1 brat. I wish my bumpers looked that nice. Mine are bent and dented.

I have the same issure. All the ones I find are dented or bent. I finallt found a bumper/brush guard combo in decent shape for the from. Still no luck for a rear bumper. Probably going to make one. Wold love to stay original but not likely seeing the rarity of these parts. Maybe one day we will run accross one.

Yep the chilton and haynes will get you so far and then leave you sucking for air. What I hate is when it says, "This procedure is too complex for the home mechanic. Take it to a pro." Or something like that. BITE ME!!! Sometimes you can get these factory service manuals on ebay or amazon used when they occasionally pop up. You may be able to get it from the dealer. Publication number on mine is SM76TUS. I did find this thread: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/82179-fsm-list-1980-to-present/ and they list several manuals. I am still looking for my oil pressure guage. I keep one around to test pressure on different vehicles. I almost never trust facory sending units especially when it is a light rather than a guage. Do you know where to connect your oil pressure guage? If not, look under the engine bay where the oil filter is. Where the oil filter is screwed onto the housing there will be an allen head. Obviously you will need an allen head wrench to get that out. Oil will get you in the face so look out. This is where the oil guage connects if you have a factory oil guage setup. The oil light sending unit is oposite the oil filter on that same housing. I suppose you coudl remove it and put your guage in there if you dont have an allen wrench. The oil light sending unit will have the wire on it and is easy to find. Let me know if you need a pic. Keep me up on what you find.

On a nother not, if mine sits a while the clutch will get stuck to the flywheel and not disengage. Smptoms of this are after you crank the engine in neatral it will not go into gear. With the engine off and in gear with clutch pressed down the whole vehicle will lurch forward while cranking the engine. Yours doesn't do that does it?

I don't think you have a bad clutch. More than likely it just needs to be adjusted in. If you can't put it in gear while the engine is running from neutral then the clutch is in contact with the flywheel and is turning a bit. Since it shifts when you are driving the clutch is disengaging some. The reason you can shift while on the go is because the gears are turning and the syncronizers allow them to mesh and shift. However if you keep this up you will RUIN you your synchronizers and be taking the trans apart soon. So brother STOP DOING THAT. Go tell your dad to calm down and lets get your clutch setup. Adjusting the clutch is simple. Look at the picture I posted below. This is on the driver side (referred to left side) of the engine/transmission. You will have to take the spare out to get in here. Put a wrench on the adjusting nut and hold it while you loosen the locking nut. Only loosen it enough to break contact with the adjusting nut. Take some pliers and hold on to the brass looking part behind the adjusting nut that looks like a long nut right near that black boot on the cable. Start tightening the adjusting nut. This will push the clucth fork towards the firewall and move the clucth plate away from the flywheel. Books will say leave such and such inches of play in the pedal. I've never been good at telling how much play there is in a pedal. So just tughten the adjusting nut 2 or 3 complete turns. At this point you can leave the locking nut loose as you may need to adjust it more. Get in the Brat, crank it and see if it goes in gear. If not then turn it off and adjust in a couple of more turns. Don't go crazy and start adjusting it 10 turns at a time because a little will go a long way here. If you find you can put it in gear from neutral while running try taking the brat around the block and see how it feels shifting. If it feels like the clutch is slipping while the pedal it all the way out then you've gone a little too far. Loosen the adjusting nut a bit and try again. After it is where everything feels right tighten the locking nut against the adjusting nut and this will hold your adjustment in place. Do not leave the engine running while you are working under the hood. Get a finger caught in the fanbelt and you will know why.

I'm finally home. I'll be hooking up the oil pressure guage in a few but first I broke out my factory service manual. Check out these specs. <p> <P> <P>

Get a reading of that oil pressure while cold and while warm when the light is flickering. It would be interesting to know the difference.

79 brat is righ. Make sure the oil level is correct. Also I am not sure if this would affect it but make sure you have a good oil filter. One that is clogged may or may not affect the oil pressure. Running too thin oil can make the pressure low. 10w30 or 40 should be fine. If the idle is too low it can cause low ppressure. Make sure its idling 800-900RPM's. If you don't have access to a tachometer just make sure its idling fast enough to not be stumbing. Also, the sending unit could be faulty. Try attaching a real oil pressure guage and see what you get. I am not sure what spec pressure is but I will hook one up to mine tomorrow and tell you what I get. If after all of that the pressure is in fact low your next place to look is the oil pump. I am not sure if our ea71's have a screen at the oil pump but if it does it may be dirty. Clean it. If the oil pump has seals they could be seeping, replace them. Or get a new oil pump. If after that you still are have low pressure issues you may be looking at worn mains.

I replaced the waterpump and the brat is a LOT smoother and quieter than before. I pulled the bushings from the gear shifter and while there is a bit of play they do seem intact and not worn. I am still going to attempt to make them tighter as there is still some vibrating going on. Here is video showing the noise and vibration before I found out it was the waterpump. I'll post another video to show the vibrations after the waterpump was replaced. Maybe we can get some more ideas on how to sooth these gen 1's a bit more.

I've seen it asked a couple of times on here abut how to make the later model wheels fit on the gen 1 hubs. Most of the time people use washers around the wheels studs to make the space needed. This is what I have done and I think it is a bit safer than going the washer route. It is also a cheap and easy solution. I bought wheel spacers that fit the 6 lug truck pattern, 6x5.5 inch. I marked the hole that needed to be drilled so they will fit our 4x140mm bolt pattern. Drill the hole in the spacers and you are done. The wheel spacers I use are 1/4" thick. I use one spacer in the front hub to clear the brakes. I use 2 spacers on the rear drum to clear the bump stops. But then there isn't enough wheel stud to safely thread the lug nuts on to hold the wheels. The Subaru Baja wheels studs are almost the same fit where they seat into the hubs and drums but they are quite a bit longer than the original studs that are on our gen 1's. I used a ball joint press to get the new studs in my hubs and drums. Now the later model mag style wheels fit no problem. Here is a video I posted if you are interested.

Well this is a new one for me. I replaced the second cv axle and the brat didn't get smoother. I checked the engine and motor mounts under engine load and those are good. Yes I do have some slop in the gear shifter but the vibration goes through the gas pedal as well. Then I noticed while revving the engine in neutral while stationary everyting still rattles. Smooth when idling. I popped the hood and revved the engine at the carb.When I revved it the engine was loud and my hand was on top of the air cleaner lid. Lots of vibration there when revving as well. On a hunch I took the v-velt off the engine and what do you knowthe engine is quiet and did not vibrate while revving. On a side note the fuel pump won't run without alternator turning. Apparently power is only delivered to the fuel pump from the alternator. So I ran a jumper from the positive post on the battery to the fuel pump. Note to self; keep jumper wire in brat in case v-belt or alternator fails. Back to the ranch; Next I put the belt around the crank pulley and the alternator. I had to remove the bolt that slides on the adjusting bracket from the alternator and hold tension on the alternator with a prybar. I had the wife start the brat and rev the engine. Still quiet and no vibrations. I think from this the bearings must be bad in the water pump. I'll be orering one in the morning and once its installed I'll post the results. This might be useful for someone else with mystery noise and shakes.

These guys sell rebuild kits for the ea71. It looks like they offer rering kits as well. Not too bad considering all the mods to make the ea81 work. With the engine out you could have the heads ported and polished as well as a cam grind to make up for any loss of power from not going to the EA81 swap. I don't need to rebuild mine but I am pulling the engine and trans for a paint job coming up. While the engine is out I'm going to replace all the seals, port and polish the heads and have the cam ground. Also throw away the hitachi carb and go with the weber and you wont be sorry. The electronic distributor from your ea81 would be nice too. Also if you get tire of those skinny rims that come on those, I know I did, I did a write up on how I made the mag wheels from ea82 cars work on this gen brat.

Hey there thanks for the link. I had seen that post but was unsure about the blue and red wires from the distributor. I went ahead and cranked the car with it wired as in the picture and it is running fine after setting the timing. I have posted a video on youtube for anyone who is interested. [video=youtube;1BdpL_EATyc]

This is my first gen 1 Subaru. It is a 78 with 50k original miles. When driving under acceleration or a load such as going uphill the shifter and 4wd selecter vibrates and rattles. It is also a bit loud. This completely smooths out when coasting. Is this normal for a gen 1 brat? If not what has anyone discovered to be a solution. So far I have replaced one cv axle with no change. I plan on changing the other next week. There is some cracking on the boots so its not a complete waste of $$$ changing them.

I have a set of those exact wheels I am using on my 78 brat. This is what I did to make these wheels work; front wheels rubbed the parking brake mechanism, rear tires rubbed the bump stops on the suspension. I bought eight 1/4" spacers made for the 6x5.5" bolt pattern truck wheels. I was able to get away with only drilling one wheel stud hole (1/2" step bit worked great) on each spacer. Doing this now makes the spacers work for the 4x140mm bolt pattern we have on the Subaru's. On the front I am able to get away with one spacer per side and clear the parking brakes. On the rear I needed 3/8" to clear the bump stops. I went with two 1/4" spacers per side as I counldn't find eithe a 3/8" or 1/8" thick spacer. However by using the spacers longer wheel studs are needed. I used wheel studs from a Subaru Baja. The thickness of the studs where they press into the drums and hubs is the same as the brat but the Baja studs are longer than the brat studs. This gives you more threads to grab with the lug nuts that you lose if you use the original wheel studs. Also using the wheel spacers puts a lot less stress on the wheel studs than using washers to space out the wheels.

If you have a voltmeter set it to DC. Place the red probe to the positive on th battery and the black probe to the negative while the engine is idling. Idle should be 800-900 RPM's and you should be seeing about 14 volts at your voltmeter and not fluctuating. If you see less than 14 your alternator is not putting out proper charge and needs to be replaced. With the probes still attached to the battery rev the engine to say 2500 or so RPM's and watch the needle. If it starts to flucuate you probably have a bad regulator. If the needle goes up and doesn't fluctuate then as others said the brushes are probably worn and need replacing. As far as whether to replace brushes of the whole alternator I suggest replace the whole alternator. If you can get a whole one for $40 that's not too bad, probably comes with a warrany and is a much quicker replacement to swap out alternators than replacing brushes. Another alternator test, that I do not endorse as it has been said it can damage the charging circuit on a car, is to remove th positive cable from the positive post on the battery while it is running. If the car dies you have a bad alternator. If it continues to run then you have a good alternator. Like I say do this at your own risk and depending on how brave you feel. They say is can cause damage to the car. I have done it many times and nothing has happened to me but maybe I am just lucky.

I pulled a dizzy from an EA81 in a junkyard the other day. I got the coil and bracket with the transistor mounted to the bracket as well. Dizzy, coil, transistor and bracket are now mounted in the 78 Brat. I've left all wiring from the transistor to the coil as it was and connected the Brat's wiring to the coil, yellow to negative and black/red wires to positive on the coil. There is a blue wire and red wire coming from the new dizzy. There is a blue wire and a red wire from the new coil transistor. I wired those from the dizzy to the transistor matching the blue to blue and red to red. Is this correct? I haven't connected the battery yet as I'd like to see if anyone knows about this before I potentially fry something.

I've had many sub's in my time, including an 87 GL-10. That one was turbo, 5 speed with locking differential, a working air suspension, sunroof. It "died" at 250k miles when the thing started pulling to the left when accelerating and to the right when coasting. I forget what the the mechanic told me was wrong but was quoted an extremely high price to fix. From there I got an 87 GL-10 wagon with a bad engine. I put my good engine in the wagon and it ran well. However it was not the same so I sold it. Before that I had an 84 GL wagon. I drove it forever. Fun was going four wheeling with my buddies who had lifted toyotas and keeping up with them in the mud and woods virtually anywhere they could go. Only thing that ever stopped it was ground clearance. It wouldn't stop until it lifted its own front wheels off the ground. I eventually sold it as rust was becoming too big an issue. I also had an 88 GL-10 sedan auto with turbo for a short while. I've done much friends in keeping there subies alive who have owned among others, an 84 GL sedan two door, 83 GL four door sedan with sunroof and cruise control, several 85-89 GL wagons (I am now a master at dealing with the timing belts). I currently have a 1978 Brat. This was literally a barn find as the original owner never put it on the road. He purchased it new and used it on his farm. In this time it has only accumulated 47k miles. I am starting to restore it. The dash was a mess with cracks. I got lucky last week and while in a junkyard I came across another gen 1 brat. The dash is flawless and so is the chrome trim, somehow. So I snatched it up. While I was there I went ahead and pulled all of the signal and marker lights for spares as well as the split back glass as mine is one piece. I have acquired two camper tops for this beast as well and yes I have the rear seats. Oh and the new dash comes with an original am/fm radio where mine is just am. Welcome to the future!!! I am pretty sure I want to keep this brat original as I feel it is too good condition to make tons of mods. Well I did replace the original carb with a weber as the original was leaking and barely adjustable. I'll be posting pictures and vids via youtube of the process for those interested. Thanks for reading.