GeneralDisorder

No - don't get paid. But the board does bring me business and good deals on used parts, and a community of support. It's worth the little time to help people. I'm on the new-gen side too. I work on mostly EJ's anymore. I just hang out here a lot because I know a lot of the answers people are looking for. On the EJ stuff I'm still doing a lot of learning. Working my way up to newer and newer models all the time. Playing with turbo stuff, etc. Thanks for the appreciation! GD

Yes - the breather/PCV routing looks good now. Should work much better for you. As for the mileage - do you for-sure know the jetting? GD

LoL. At least you admit to it. Why not spend that money on some tools and learn some skills like how to drill a hole? You aren't going to be able to go very far with SPT bolt-on's on an OBW. Or why not get something that *has* a bolt-on aftermarket at least? Maybe something with a turbo instead of that mommy missle you're rockin. It makes no sense to them because of where you live. They don't "get" AWD in the sunshine states. At least not the one's that haven't driven a WRX, etc. AWD only comes into it's own (on dry pavement) when you need to put down REAL HP without just making smoke. On a civic that generally means more than 300 HP and there's not a lot of people making that kind of power with them. Basically useless with 2WD. The problem is that this forum is populated with a bunch of cheap, practical, generally older (than you) members that aren't of that mindset - if it's expensive AND does nothing useful then none of us would really know anything about that. You are asking the wrong people I think. NASIOC probably has members that would know the answers to your questions if, for no other reason, than there is probably someone over there that has lowered an OBW and done all the exhaust research, etc. The new style suspension stuff is not interchangeable AFAIK. You would need a lift kit - and those are availible from a few sources. It's going to be more involved than drilling holes though - you might get scared . GD

Yeah - if the guy is crazy enough to want to give you $350 for an EA81 that runs like crap, has exhaust and wheel bearing issues - take the money and run. I got my hatch for $250 and it needed a new clutch cable. . They are only getting cheaper right now - it's a mid-80's econobox to anyone but a member of this forum - basically worthless. GD

Loctite 518 on the case halves. No special tools needed - you will need a 35mm socket. Make sure to carefully note how stuff goes together and work over a clean surface since some of the little springs and detent balls, etc are small and easily roll away. GD

Well - many people get burned at the used car lots. Just try not to be one of them. And as I said - see about getting an auto loan through a bank or credit union. You may be surprised at what you find. Many of them are wise to the used car lending stuff - even if you don't have stellar credit they recognize that people have to build credit somehow and frankly if they have the title then there is much less risk involved.... and most people aren't going to default on their means of transportation unless they have no choice. Car loans use the title of the car as security for the bank - secured loans are much lower risk than unsecured since the bank can just take the car and sell it to repay as much of the debt as they can recover. Car loans are the classic way to rebuild poor credit. Seriously - talk with some lending institutions - at least they aren't going to rip you off without putting it in fine print. I've got a really nice OBW here - you should come see it . Tranny will be done tonight and it will be rolling till I get the parts for the belt/WP job. It's the same dark green like the one you are looking at and frankly the body/interior is fantastic - 9 out of 10 easily. No dealing with shady car lots if you buy from me . GD

Which one? Good lord - I'm in the shop every day looking at broken parts! This year seems to be EJ 5MT wonderland around my shop - besides buying two cars to flip due to bad 5MT's, I ended up with one of the replacement units being bad (had to replace a second time ), and now I've got a JDM STi 5 speed here with blown bearings on the pinion shaft - very strange failure in my experience. . In general I'm not impressed with the EJ 5MT's at all. When the 6 speed's are more common I can see a lot of 6MT swaps on the horizon. So far I've seen 5 bad 5MT's this year and not a single one looks to have been abused in any way - just plain jane non-turbo daily driver's that have failed bearings or ripped up gears. I've always got something broken around here. The clutch in my turbo is shot - been dead for months and no time to bother with it or "fun money" to buy the parts I really want for the job ($$$$$). Alternators always seem to be giving up around every corner. Brakes too - I think I've done at least a dozen warped rotor jobs in the last 6 months - Nissan's and Honda's besides the Subaru's - seems to be a common issue. Engine swaps, engine builds, crazy siezed-up rusted junk all over the place . It's almost too much to handle. GD

Yes - to the point that it's probably not worth even bothering with it. You would be much better served by mounting some aftermarket gauges to get what you want. Add to that the fact that the stock gauges pretty much suck on the GL's anyway (they are ok to a point, but for a real *reading* you need a better gauge with better divisions and markings) it makes it a pretty worthless endevour to try and swap them. Tons of work for crappy gauges? Not happing in my shop. GD

I think the worst thing that has come into my purview from an "odor" aspect is Ammonia - I used to work on pumps and it was (to some extent) the responsibility of the customer to flush them prior to sending them in - we would have them sign release documents to that effect before we would touch them. Well, as you can imagine, there is often a disconnect between the guy signing our form and the monkey in overalls that's supposed to have done the actual work. I remember on one occasion where a pump of this sort was openened up on the shop floor (mind you - this is a warehouse sized facility with 30' ceilings, exhaust fans, 20' bay doors, etc) and it cleared the building within secconds. The Ammonia was so strong you couldn't breath and we all took to running for the doors. That stuff will straight KILL you dead if you aren't careful with it. I can see now why they don't run ammonia in air conditioners except in the largest, most commercial or industrial settings where it can be carefully controlled and monitored. . Masks that filter it out are expensive too - difficult to work around. Beyond that - as far as straight hazardous stuff - I've had to work on vacuum pumps that provide hospital surgical suction as well as dental office pumps for the same use. Also pumps used to remove the flamable methane from large septic reserviors. I had to do the whole dissasembly, inspection, and cleaning in hazmat gear (somtimes with the ambient temp well into the 90's). Talk about making the process more difficult . Never got sick from and for that I'm thankful for the gear my employer supplied. I know some of the aluminium cleaning chems are really nasty too. Basically acid-based strippers and such. They will burn your skin so I'm assuming from that reaction alone they are fairly high on the scale of nastiness . GD

Drop by sometime and you can checkout the gauges, etc on my lifted wagon. Just PM me. GD

Was that rear slider hard to install? Where did you get it? My '69 could use one of those.... GD

I've worked on them. Reliability seemed alright - we had lots of them in our inventory from the 1960's and 70's. But the military rebuilds stuff occasionally as well so it's no gaurantee they had the original engines. That said - not a single one of them ever let me down. I particularly liked the M35A2's because of the 6 wheel drive, 5 speed D/R and air lockers. They will climb tree's if you know how to drive them . The duals are a pain in the neck off-road though. The multi-fuel 6 cylinder's have a "viscocity compensator" that allows them to run on just about anything except av-gas (too hot for them I think). They will run on Deisel, Kerosene, and Gasoline and any mixture of same. Plus whatever else you might have on hand if it's mixed in. . They prefer Deisel though. I had to change a few starters and such in them from time to time - that was a HUGE pain in the a$$. The starter is under the freakin thing and it weighs just about a ton. Took two or three guys to do it easily. I'm not sure one person could easily do it since holding it in place while starting bolts is nigh impossible with two hands IIRC. But it's been a few years since I did one. I would rock one - the beauty of that plan is that there is tons of surplus parts for them I'm sure. The military pretty much wrote them out of the system about 10 years ago and the only one's left in service are in the Reserve and National Gaurd units and stuff that's been sold to Forestry services and independant contractors, etc. I approve of your plan. Military hardware (especially something like the M35A2 which saw service for 40+ years) is rarely a bad choice. Oh - don't expect it to be fast. Top speed in a duece is like 45 to 55 MPH and they are straining to maintain that. The gearing in the transmission is designed for off-road and low speed use. But at least you probably can't break one. GD

More expensive - and frankly if you wanted that level of quality work - it would be only marginally more expensive to go with MegaSquirt and buy one of the pre-made, printed-wire harnesses for it instead. It would be expensive to source all the sheilded wire for the low-voltage sensors, and the proper deutche style connectors to go with each of the stock sending unit connectors, etc. As well as the tools to crimp those tiny terminals they use, etc. If you were going to produce a large number of harnesses because of high demand it might be worth it but the small numbers that are being done in this community are just not worth that kind of investment. It's actually pretty clean to strip a harness and shorten or lengthen a few wires as neccesary to make it work as a stand alone FI/Ign. harness. You just have to know what you are doing and make the cuts and splices at appropriate points. GD

Most MSDS sheets make it sound like openeing the container might cause a city-wide evactuation to be called for. . Just don't eat it or smear it on any exposed mucus membranes and I think you'll be aright to still have kids . I've used MUCH nastier stuff than some RTV and I'm still standing (most days ). There's an MSDS floating around out there for Water - no kidding. I don't beleive it's officially recognized (by the EPA, etc) but on the commercial side of things lots of companies want one on file just for the sake of being totally anal about having every chemical in the facility in the MSDS drawer. This is very interesting BTW - I have never experienced bad RTV (other than partially or fully cured due to tube fail). I'll have to pay more attention to that stuff from now on. Might I sugest you go with Loctite 518 on the case halves instead - it's an excelent product for flange sealing. GD

^ Flatbill? Hhhmmm - you make no sense kid. You want to waste a bunch of money so you can what? Badge it with a pink "STi"? LAAAAAMMMMMEEE Seriously - if you want to throw away money then you don't need to ask an internet forum how to do that - you ought to be able to do that on your own. I think your questions would be much better suited to the NASIOC board given your disposition for burning cash to no benefit. If you want it louder - ditch the muffler and install a straight-through. It's not that loud with the stock exhaust, cats, and resonators in place. GD

Yes - that is typically how Subaru does it. The AC fan relay and the thermo switch are both able to complete the circuit to ground. This way if one of them fails (internal short to ground) it doesn't blow the fuse - just runs the fan continuously. GD

What's the point? The OBW is not meant for speed and performance. The gearing, suspension, and tire sizes are all wrong to start with. If you want performance, start by replacing the suspension and tires with GT style and then change the transmission to a short ratio, high final drive unit that can actually accelerate. Exhaust is pretty much a lose for the kind of money it would cost. But if you really want to, at least go for one of the Borla knock-off's from ebay - like $130 and they are identical to the Borla headers just without the brand. They probably don't fit because of the oil cooler on the EJ25's - at least that's my assumption. I don't beleive the Borla or knock-off headers are any different. You would have to lose the oil cooler and that involves changing the water pump if you are going to do it right. At least - that's what I think is the biggest holdup to useing them. I know that's the case on the Forester's..... not sure the OBW's got the oil cooler so it could be something else that's causing them not to fit. GD

Here's the unromantic truth my friend: You are 18 and you don't need that kind of power. The stock EJ22 is perfectly fine for most anything you need to do (like commuting or getting to school, etc). You would just get in serious trouble with a Frankenmotor. And if you didn't - then you didn't really need it to begin with . Wait till you are older to get tickets for going over 100 on I-205 (I might be speaking from experience :-\). Seriously - you haven't even driven one yet and you are claiming it's not powerful enough. Trust me it's considerably more powerful than an EA81. And I drive one of those daily and routinely border on driving like a maniac despite having ~80 HP. My turbo sedan is freakin loony by comparison and yes it's gotten me in trouble a number of times. Take it from someone that's driven some pretty stupid-fast machines - you are better off taking it easy on the street with a nice, sane daily and going to a track to try out some big power. Try on something your size first. Don't be the guy at the drug store buying the Magnum sized trojans and a baggie of rubber bands to keep em on with. GD

EJ22 Phase I is 135 HP. EJ25D is 165 HP (same as the stock EJ22T). EJ25D short block + EJ22E heads + Delta cams = (in other words we have no real idea but it sure is fun!). Probably about 180 HP give or take. The torque is outragous though. Somewhere between about 10.8:1 and 11.5:1 depending on the math and head gaskets you use. High compression and big displacment makes the power. Cost is dependant on what you pay for the EJ25 shorty. renob123 bought a late 90's 2.5 RS short block from a NASIOC member for $200 - had 90k on it and was pulled for an STi swap. Add in the cost of the head work (valve grind, resurface, stem seals, etc) at $160, cams for $160, head gaskets and seals for $150, and then you have to figure a t-belt kit + WP for $125.... that's about $800 plus misc. fluids, etc. Depends on what kind of deal you get on the short block really. And assuming you do all your own work of course. It's a monster though and it's the sort of thing that will smoke clutches and smash tranny gears if you aren't careful. It could easily do a number on a used first-gen 5MT if you aren't careful with the power. Strip the gear teeth right off or blow the bearings in short order. It's got gobs of torque with the Delta cams. GD

I'm not even sure *what* you have done - if you swapped the harnesses wholesale then you should have those already taken care of - so I guess my question is why isn't that stuff working? You say you swapped all the wiring over - so what didn't you swap? Or what did you swap? Hell - I can't follow your plot man. GD

Best bang for the buck is replaceing the short block with a 2.5. That's going to up the compression and displacement. Somewhere around 180 to 200 HP. It's basically a head gasket job but substituting the 2.5 short block for the 2.2. They actually don't have many problems - most are due to head gasket failure or a direct result of overheating from same. If you get a good used short block and you use the EJ25D updated MLS gaskets you can be pretty dang sure that the next failure isn't going to be the head gaskets. Otherwise - not much you can do other than replace the cams and port/polish the heads on a 2.2. You could get more torque out of it but not much more HP. The heads don't flow real well and porting doesn't help much. There's just not much room for improvement. The general rule is that NA power is expensive. You are talking about cams/porting, changing displacement or compression. More air and more fuel. Unlike turbo's where you can just increase the pressure at which the engine operates and force more fuel and air in, you have only 14.7 psi to work with at sea level on an NA engine and without changing the displacement or optimizing air flow there's not much you can do. Expect every 10 HP to cost you $500 and you should see where this goes and quick..... You can setup a turbo on it (probably cost around $2k to $3k all said and done) and boost it to about 5 psi safely. You will end up around 200 HP. But the cost is high and the daily driveability goes in the toilet as the mileage is really poor. The extra fuel required to keep it cool under boost will cost you big on MPG. My factory 2.2 turbo gets about 15 to 16 MPG because I can't keep my foot out of it. And besides that an LS is going to be an automatic - yet another strike against it in the performance department. My sugestion - love it for what it is - an economical, safe station wagon. Don't try to make the poor thing into a race car - it's not going to be what you hope and you won't like the price. All said and done you would be easily into the cost of a used WRX. What you need, if you want that body style to be fast, is to sell the LS and get a Turbo Touring Wagon ('92 to '94). That has potential. What you have does not. GD

It shouldn't if it's done with electronics grade solder and flux. If you use acid core solder or acid flux (as many people unknowingly do) it will slowely eat the metal in the wireing eventually leading to a mess where the metal becomes loose and corroded in the solder joint. That stuff is for plumbing. It has to be done right with the correct supplies. The waterproof splices are ok. Most marine supply places will have a good selection of stuff like that. I occasionally will use them. GD

Yeah - you could reappropriate fuses from the existing panel - but invariably you need ignition switched, fuse protected circuits for *something* in a modded car - lights, stereo gear, replacing burnt stock circuits, etc, etc. And it makes a nice clean place for all that "modded" stuff to live and be labeled - I use the water resistant fuse blocks and put them under the hood. I know there are other ways, but I like to have all that stuff that's not "factory" in an accesible location and preferably all in the same location. This goes to my original point of having a clean, easy to follow and troubleshoot install. As I said it's just *my* opinion on how it should be done. I also beleive in build sheets that detail the wireing, modifications, and parts sources (brand/model/year) that replacement parts can be sourced from. I'm just anal like that I guess. As for how many fuses are required - I use the exact same fuses and fuse sizing as the stock wireing. Whatever I find when I strip the harness is how it get's hooked up. I know with the EJ swap I just did there are three fuses and with my SPFI conversions there are also three. I'm sure you could tie some of them together and eliminate fuses - but that's not how I have done it. GD

Duh! My mistake . I'm having a hard time keeping things straight - I have to keep switching from EA81 to EA82 and then EJ land. Yes - just add the D/R shifter and console from the donor car and you'll be good. GD

Now you're getting it! Yes - that is correct. Sounds like you may have a wireing issue between the fan and the fuse. GD