GeneralDisorder

SPFI Loyale's have the clutch switch as well for the newer SPFI computer's that wanted both clutch and neutral. GD

Yeah - I think it may have something to do with the 2.2's ECU not being totally able to handle the 2.5's fueling requirements from it's idle maps. That's the current hypothesis. It throws no codes, and the IAC is working. Something about the change made an existing slight stumble at idle (which I had figured was the IAC/old injectors, etc) into a nasty loping idle.... the cams have more overlap and we are asking for more fuel of course..... could be a bunch of things all rolled into it. The fact that the ECU isn't complaining even a little bit about this is frustrating to say the least. The whole point of a self-diagnostic computer is that you don't have to break out the O-Scope every time you need to look at the sensor data. I think it's finally time to build a select monitor adaptor cable and run the OBD-I realtime monitor software on a laptop. Might tell us something. GD

Hehehe - funny man Gary above me already knows what my response will be..... RUN! The EA82 Turbo is just a mess - if you want to buy it, here's what you need to do: 1. Have it taken to a shop with a sniffer and the oil and coolant checked for exhaust gasses. These engines blow head gaskets frequently if you even look at them cross-eyed without burbing the cooling system and offering some kind of animal sacrifice. 2. Assuming that checks out (maybe - but equal chance that it won't), you are still going to need to replace the head gaskets eventually as all the EA82's "chafe" on the head side of the gasket and end up with big gouges into the heads - usually in a semi-circle at the bottom of the fire rings. This eventually leads to failure. Usually somewhere around 200k to 250k in my experience. 3. The first thing you have to do if you decide to buy it is replace EVERY SINGLE coolant hose in the car and replace the radiator with a dual-core. There's quite a few hoses and some are hard to get to - this is a MUST with this engine as blowing a hose (which is likely with the age and mileage) is likely going to cost you the engine. Figure on spending about $200 at the dealer for the hoses and another $150 or so on a dual-core radiator for it. 4. New or rebuilt injectors and new fuel filter. The biggest source of pre-det on a turbo is a lean injector. This will kill it and quick - drives the EGT's up through the ceiling, burns valves, and will blow holes in pistons. I consider this a must on anything turbo-charged. Injectors should be swapped out at least every 100k to 150k just to be totally safe. I have seen injector problems burn valves on non-turbo engines - on a turbo it's the end of the line if that happens. At the point at which you have replaced the head gaskets (heads resurfaced), all the hoses, the radiator, and of course the timing belt, tensioners and idler, front seals, pan gasket and valve cover gaskets, injectors, filters, etc.... you could be pretty safe to drive it daily (IMO). If all that sounds good to you then by all means - personally I think this engine is a total waste of time given that all that work nets you an extra ~20 HP. You could easily get all that with some cams and a Weber on the non-turbo engines. It's my opinion that EA82T's are a good purchase only if the body is something really nice and exactly what you want AND you plan on doing an EJ22 swap either before the thing blows or when it does. They are time bombs and unless you do a LOT of work to insure everything is top-notch - they will get you in the end. GD

Find out which fuse supplies power to the fan and check that you *have* power on both sides of it. Then find out for sure if it has a relay or not and which one it is. Then you can check for power at the relay, and if the relay is closing or not with the ignition switch. You can easily check the relays with some jumper wires and the battery - just touch the coil terminals to the battery and see that it closes and has continuity between the contact terminals. GD

No - that's the 4WD indicator switch. The neutral switch is on the side of the tranny - driver's side. Where the gear shifter rod enters the back - it pulls in and out to go from the 1,3,5 to the 2,4,R and the switch changes state when a notch in the side of the rod passes the switch body. GD

Measure the timing marks already on the wheel. They are the same size just in the wrong location. GD

85 to 87 have no neutral switch at all. It's on the driver's side rear of the trans, directly inline with the shift rod entering the back of the tranny. GD

You will have to find TDC of the comp. stroke on the #1 cylinder. Pull the plug and use a drinking straw and flashlight. Once you have that you can mark the flywheel and then make measured hash marks for 5, 10, 15, and 20 DBTDC. Then set it at 20 with a timing light and the green check connectors plugged in. GD

It's probably not the motor - it's likely the linkage ball joints, etc under the cowling. The grease dries up and they get stiff. GD

Not a common failure. Easy to access from the bottom of you pull the wheel off and remove the splash gaurd. Or you can pull the fender off. Check the fuses first. GD

Use the EJ's FP Relay - when the harness is stripped that should pretty much be left alone. Just the power wire to the pump has to be run back to the pump. For the temp and oil pressure on a carbed car - I reccomend using the car's existing wireing for that. The oil pressure has to be run from a hose or tube and run to the fenderwall, etc as the EJ's don't have oil pressure - only idiot lamps. The coolant temp will not be correct unless you switch over to the EA sending unit - which takes TIG welding and rethreading the coolant cross-over for it to fit properly. The start signal wire doesn't exist on the carbed harness. You have to add the pin to the harness connector for the ignition switch but the switch does support the start signal. GD

Have you bothered to wire the fan up directly to a 12v source to see if the fan even works? You might be hunting a problem in the wireing that doesn't exist..... Basically - the fan should always have 12v - it's a ground controlled circuit. If you have voltage to the fan then you need to check the ground side and see where the circuit is broken. If you don't have voltage to the fan then you need to find out why..... You can just short across the connector to the thermoswitch and the fan should fire up - it just completes the circuit across it (to ground I beleive) when it hits it's trigger temp. GD

Personally I would use aluminium diamond plate - it's lighter. Yes - anything you want for a bumper, etc is going to have to be custom. There is no aftermarket for these cars. Worth it? Well - depends on what you are doing with it. Personally to me a brush gaurd and winch mount are worth it off-road. Skid plate too - definitely want to protect the exhaust, oil pan, etc. GD

No....well it will look factory anyway if you do it right. You will use the 5 speed gear shifter but you can just use the 4 speed EA81 knob so it looks identical. And the 4WD shifter is easily modified to work with the 5 speed. Just add 1" to the rod and attach it to the 5 speed. '85 to '89 wagon/sedan/coupe non-turbo GL 4WD 5 speed D/R. GD

Hhhmmm - the coil should at least run the engine in the short-term. I wouldn't worry about that just yet but eventually you should get the correct coil for the distributor you are using. On the carb there is an anti-diesling solenoid that cuts off the idle circuit fuel supply. Make sure you have power to that. Other than that - plug in an inline spark tester and see if you are losing spark - if you are, verify that you are getting +12v to the coil when the spark dies and if you are then the distributor module is probably shot. GD

Google shows lots of steel yards in and around your area..... http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-CA&wrapid=tlif12664409935222&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=Albuquerque,+New+Mexico+metal+tubing&fb=1&gl=us&hq=metal+tubing&hnear=Albuquerque,+NM&view=text&ei=nAKATMKXC4S8sAPP6OT0Cg&sa=X&oi=local_group&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CDYQtQMwAA I am quite sure that more than one of those places carries tubing, channel, and sheet goods in a mind boggliing array of sizes and shapes. Just call around. Cutting up old bed frames..... that's ghetto and frankly more trouble than it's worth most days. Steel is CHEAP and you might as well start with straight, flat sections and do what you like with it. As for rims - if you can pickup some cheap Pugs then they aren't a bad way to go - but go for the steel's if you are wheeling. Otherwise the 6 lug conversion makes more sense for a wheeler and is easy. GD

It was a mid-year change so late 83's are vented and early are solid. There's unforutunately no way to tell without measureing them. They pretty much look alike and the difference in size is only about 1/4" so it's hard to tell from pictures. 80 to 83.5 are solid (my '83 hatch with a production date of 05/83 was solid before I switched it over) and 83.5 to 89 are vented. If you need a set of solid rotor caliper brackets I have some - and you can just buy new solid rotors and make it work with the calipers you bought if they were a screaming deal or something.... Otherwise the vented are better as they don't warp as easily. But if you aren't hard on brakes then either is fine. They both stop equally well. Mine were warped and I had a set of vented hardware and calipers laying around so I just rebuilt the calipers and bought a new set of vented rotors for $25 a peice. Works like a champ. GD

You need to specify that you have a Brat when you post here - for ALL intents and purposes of discussion on this board you have an '84 model year. If you say '85 it will just cause confusion and problems. That said, you need to order calipers for an '84. Older are different and will not work. The ONLY year calipers that you can use are '84 or later EA81 models. Which means you have to specify '84 in most parts systems as they don't list much for '85 to '89 EA81's and you are VERY likely to get EA82 parts which will not fit. GD

Yeah - if I knew what I was looking for I would probably surf craigslist for it. But I don't really have the time for that and then not knowing what I'm looking at or brands to search for really hampers that approach for me. Plus opening things that are in brand new boxes is fun . Just to clarify here. So far I'm at: Head Unit: $37 Front Speakers: $16 Rear Speakers: $39 Total: $92 If I go forward with my two potential purchases above: Powered Sub: $94 4 channel Amp: $60 Total: $246 That's for EVERYTHING and I would be done for less than the cost of a good head unit . It's kind of an experiment to see how little I can spend and still have some decent sound. Also - the Hatch originally cost me $250. So I still won't have spent more for the stereo than I spent to buy the car. GD

Cables were used for many years on things MUCH larger than Subaru's. It's all about leverage and if the force required is higher then a different ratio fork is used to change the pedal pressure required. Fundametally, a cable is no different from a solid bar connecting one point to another - it's just flexible is all. The cable itself has nothing whatsoever to do with the feel of the clutch - it's all about the ratio's of the lever's in the system. Hydraulics CAN change the feel depending on the ratio of the sizes of the master and slave cylinder pistons. Personally I feel that in the specific case of Subaru's many of the earlier cable clutches were more reliable than the hydro's and personally I don't have any problems with the way they feel. Many cars use Hydro because of the location of the transmission and how bad the cable routing would have to be - if even possible - for the location of the fork. You see this on Nissan's, etc where the slave cylinder is actually under the car.... Subaru originally went with the Hydro's on the turbo's - this was an obvious choice for the pull-type clutch they use as the slave could be mounted on the transmission side instead of trying to route a cable looped around under the manifold in order to pull on the fork from the engine side. Why they went with the pull-type clutch on the turbo's is beyond me but given that they did, the hydro clutch was the obvious answer to the cable routing problems they created with this choice. Eventually someone realised that they could save a lot of money by only building the hydro pedal assemblies and just putting the slave on the engine side of the fork. At least I'm assuming that's what happened - also the deal with the pedal pressure and the higher clamp force clutches comes into play with the larger, more powerful engines Subaru is using since the switch. It made sense to go hydro instead of having really large ratio forks to ease the pedal pressure for the ladies GD

First of all - do you have these tools? Welder Torch/Bandsaw/plasma cutter Drill/Drill press Tubing bender etc.... If not - the biggest question you need to ask is "How can I gain access to or aquire at least the basics for metal-working." Once you have done that - the rest should fall into place pretty readily. The act of aquireing, borrowing, and learning to use these things will neccesarily put you into contact with the people and places that can answer those trivial questions about material types and sources. Besides - how can we tell you where to get metal if we don't know where you are? GD

I know what you mean about "clean" audio. Unfortunately most of my vehicles don't really benefit from this - either due to excessive road noise or due to excessive exhaust tone. My '91 Legacy SS has a 3" turbo-back, straight-through exhaust system and while it's not terribly loud due to the glass-pack style muffler and the resonator, it's still loud enough that it can be heard. If I were building a totally mundane commuter that was quiet inside (can't see myself doing this ) I would be all over the cleanest sound I could get - and would be making sure the body didn't vibrate from the bass, etc. But as it stands there's nothing I'm going to be able to do about the road noise (let's be reasonable here - the idea is that I can HOSE out the interior) so the difference between a $1000 stereo and my $250 stereo is going to be lost in the translation I'm afraid. I need loud, clean enough to not distort the speakers to death, and some bass to cover for the low-pass filter that keeps the speakers from being overdriven. But I can see where some of your are comming from and I have some friends who do such systems - just usually in Audi's and other semi-luxury vehicles that have really quiet cabins. GD

I have always just used some 1/2" drive sockets that are close to the same height as the rocker assembly for torqueing the rocker bolts. Then remove and replace with the rockers. Never had an issue. GD

Find a used tank (any EA81 tank from a 4WD non-hatchback) or remove your's and have it repaired. It's a pretty standard type of deal - take it to a radiator/tank repair shop and see what they can do. There are sealers, etc that can seal pin-holes and stop rust, etc - tank still has to be removed and cleaned to use them so it's got to come out of the car either way. First step is to pull it and assess from there. GD

25psi hot idle is good. That's what I like to see - no less than 20 IMO. I keep two spare OEM oil pumps on the shelf for my EA81's. Just because I'm paranoid about them. GD