GeneralDisorder

You may need to go to the dealer with proof of ownership. GD

From everything I've seen of the t-case equipped rigs and my own measurements it takes a minimum of 10" of lift to make the t-case work without floorpan modifications and to clear the front diff under the transmission. 12" is easier to work with. Either way a complete subframe has to tbe part of the job. I don't think 6" would be enough and 4" definitely wouldn't cut it at all. GD

No way to tell really. It's all about maintenance although with an '86 there is a higher incidence of cam tower o-ring failure simply because they didn't come out with the updated reinforced o-ring till late '87 or '88. But I had an '86 with over 240k on it when I did the head gaskets - it still had it's original rubber cam tower o-rings (cracked, hard and sucked in) but still didn't ever tick. Good maintenance goes a long way and I know that with that particular engine the owner was an older gentleman that took excelent mechanical care of it for most of it's earlier life. There are too many variables to say what will happen. If it's had poor or just average maintenance then you can expect the rubber o-rings to cause problems. If it's had excelent maintenance then they might not be enough of a problem to worry about. They are *one* of the potential leaks that will cause a loss of pressure to the lifters. On their own it doesn't seem they are quite enough to cause ticking but in conjunction with other engine wear they become one peice of the solution puzzle. GD

The 98's have the DOHC phase 1 and these did suffer from HG problems as well as piston slap and bottom end failure. Often the overheating is a repeat problem because it comes and goes and occurs sometimes only after miles of driving..... so rod bearing failure isn't uncommon as oil breakdown is caused by the high temperature's. There's no way to know with a used engine - it could last a long time or it could blow up in a month. Personally I stay away from that engine and it's sad that the first year Forester's had to get them. The 99's have the phase-II engine. I own one of those and it has 237k on the original engine. Axle boots are common on all Subaru's. Frankly they are a common failure on most cars. What is more of a problem on the Foresters is the rear wheel bearings - they eat those like candy. Mine is on the third set that I know of from the records I have and at least one of those is bad. GD

If you *actually* had it turned then I would question the machine shop as flywheels are not resurfaced in that way. Proper resurfacing of a flywheel is done on a blanchard grinder - usually one made specifically for the purpose of resurfacing flywheels. Brake rotors are often turned but flywheels are usually not as there are setup considerations involved that make it an undesireable method from a labor standpoint amd it is a lot more difficult to obtain a proper surface finish by turning. If it was resurfaced on a proper flywheel grinder then it will probably be fine as Gary mentioned - any good machinist will check the thickness to see if it's within spec. 1/16" should be fine. That gives you about 1/8" total disc wear which should be plenty of clutch life. I probably wouldn't use that flywheel again though. If you are concerned about it you could always have the bolt ring ground or turned a bit to compensate. It's not going to hurt anything to take 1/16" off the bolt circle and that operation could easily be done on a lathe as it's not nearly as bothersome from an accuracy standpoint. GD

Do you have an EA81 or an EA71 with the top-mount starter? If you have the EA71 you will probably need to order a clutch for a '79. GD

I'm assuming that's a typo? It sounds like you are saying you never solved TOD on some XT's? Mileage and maintenance are both related. This one has about 175k on it. I had another that was around 125k and ticked a lot. And on the other hand I have had one with 245k that never ticked even after I did head gaskets on it. It seems to have more to do with maintenance. I should clarify a bit. I have quite of a bit of experience with precision measureing and a little experience with machine work as well - I can say that between what I observed and what I measured there was no indicationg of ANY wear to the pump components. It's not that it's just "within spec" - I'm saying that it has no wear and was manufactured to the measurements which I took. All the measurements were smack in the center of the range - which is typical of how parts are machined when a tollerance is given and the manufacturing machinery is capable of enough precision to do so. For example - the OD of the outer rotor is spec'd to be 49.95mm to 50.00mm. It mic'd to 49.975mm - in conjunction with it's smooth, ground appearance it is clear to me that there is no wear present - thus changing the pump was uneccesary. Had I found any evidence of wear I probably would have replaced it even if it still technically met the spec. But the pump might as well have been new - perhaps it had already been replaced. Certainly it had been removed for the seal replacement so I am unable to tell if it's original or not. But it is a "B" spec pump and does fit the block correctly. From what I have seen there are some differences with the XT6 pump..... I know of the "sucking in" of the o-ring that you describe. The same thing happens with the non-reinforced cam-tower o-rings. I must say I do not know what causes this but I am not convinced that it is sucking in air - rather I think there is some other cause for the defomation but that once it is deformed it causes a pressure loss which is why replacing the deformed o-ring can help/cure a ticking problem. The clue here is that while the o-ring deformation on the oil pump might be caused by suction from the pump - the o-rings in the cam towers are under no such stress - only pressure from the oil supply gallery and yet they similarly deform and "suck in" with a V shaped protrusion. Certainly the primarly difference with the XT6 is going to the size of the oil pump - which will have to be of greater volume to supply the longer, larger oil galleries. This in conjunction with possible ID differences of oil passages in the larger engine may act to eliminate most of these problems with the 6. That would be my first guess though I have no real experience with that engine. GD

The true cause of the malfunctioning lifters (TOD) still troubles me. I've been thinking about it for a while and in talking with a friend of mine.... this is the best scenario we can come up with. 1. Rislone/MMO/ATF are classically used for cleaning and in the case of older american engines the problem with ticking lifters were often because the lifters themselves were "sticky" from oil varnish. They would compress but not bounce back as intended and thus additional clearance and ticking was generated. 2. In the case of the EA82 lifters, the lifters are *not* sticky and varnished - rather they are most often simply not able to "pump up" due to the oil pressure being fed to them. They NEED good oil pressure consistently. Their tendancy is to deflate under normal operation as the oil is sqeezed past the piston in the lifter from the action of the rocker arm. Constant oil pressure high enough to fill the chamber in the lifter at a rate (volume) that is higher than it is being expelled via the action of the rocker. 3. The commonly touted hypothesis that there is somehow air bubbles in the oil supply to the lifters is absolutely hogwash. The lifters are at the end of a LONG list of other components and any air in the sysem would first HAVE to come from the pump, and from the inlet side of the pump at that - air cannot enter an oil supply system that is pressurized unless it is introduced before the pump or at the pump. There are also many other chances for bubbles to escape before reaching the lifters if such a thing was happeneing. 4. The main reason that MMO/ATF/Rislone work to quiet EA82 lifters temporarily is due to nothing more than a reduction in the viscosity of the oil. These products are light oils that are heavy in detergents. They have about an SAE 10 rating for viscosity. Coupled with the tendancy for engine oil to increase it's viscosity with age - 3 brand new quarts of SAE 30 oil and 1 quart of detergent-heavy SAE 10 makes for a big reduction in viscosity immediately following an oil change. 5. This "trick" though is a double-edged-sword so to speak. The detergent heavy crankcase contents are now working to free up all the varnish and deposits inside the engine - causeing the viscosity to increase rapidly as the oil dissolves and suspends these contaminants. Which causes the lifters to begin ticking again as the oil pressure at the end of the long chain of small diameter oil delivery galleries drops in response to the thicker oil. So it's really all about oil pressure. Thicker oil is harder to push through small diameter oil passages and as the engine ages - seals start to fail, oil pumps get worn, clearances on the main and rod bearings open up, the lifters themselves wear and require a higher volume oil delivery, etc - the pressure drops till it hits a critical point where even though the pressure is good enough for the rest of the engine - by the time it reaches the lifters it is too thick and under too little pressure to effectively pass through the small passages needed to fill the lifters with the volume they require. Instead of the piston chamber filling with oil it is filled with air bubbles drawn in through the space around the lifter's plunger as the oil is expelled with each push from the cam lobe. Changing the oil naturally thins it out - adding any of the common additives further thins it. This "fixes" the ticking by simply increaseing the pressure to the lifters for a short time. But generally causes quicker fouling of the oil due to the heavy detergent content and requires more frequent changes to stop the ticking. The more the lifters are allowed to tick - the more wear they incur and a higher volume of oil will be required for them to remain inflated. So - if you want to solve the problem for more than a few hundred miles - additves are not the solution. You are doing more harm than good typically as the thinner oil lubricates less effectively and it will often result in very frequent oil changes in order to keep the ticking under control. The *real* solution is usually a whole bunch of little solutions - oil pump, seals (pump and cam towers), less worn/reman lifters, etc. Unfortunately there is no magic bullet for the TOD. GD

EJ 5 speed's are known for this - the rear main shaft bearing is toast. I've seen it a number of times now. Time to start looking for a replacement transmission or tear it down and replace all the bearings if you are skilled. I'm surprised (well - ok I'm actually not) that the dealer didn't mention a bunch of metal in the gear oil. One of the problems with lube tech's and car lifts is that they usually drain fluids into those rolling drain bucket/funnel things and you can't see the old oil. Big mistake in my opinion. A clean, white pan (cut off bottom of a 5 gal paint bucket) is a much more effective recepticle. GD

There is no "spec" for flatness of the pump. The design pretty much insures that the bolts will torque it down to the block's mounting surface.... if the pump body were warped it would cause the rotor to bind while turning since the clearances between the rotor's themselves and between the rotors and the block is very small.....the outer rotor has .003" clearance between the rotor and the block..... in any case the oil pump gasket on this one had been replaced with the last timing belt and so had about 15,000 miles on it and didn't show any signs of being sucked in or being hardened (I still replaced it of course). GD

In this case I checked every aspect of the oil pump with a metric micrometer and feeler gauges. It was dead nuts in the middle of every spec listed. There was no scoring or other damage either. I can state difinitively that changing the pump would have accomplished nothing on this engine. None of the lifters were seized. The only problems I found were the cam tower o-rings (non-reinforced early versions and hard/cracked) the lifters themselves, and the releif valve springs. GD

You all are aware of how much I dislike the EA82. Mostly I've taken to simply not owning them..... due in some part to the lifter design . My girl likes the EA82 sedan body style - she likes the 4WD D/R..... and in part because I had an old '86 beater sedan that I picked up for $100 when we met years ago. It seems that the 5 speed D/R sedans were mostly made in '85/'86 or something because most of the one's I've seen have been carbed, early models. So I found her one about a year ago - swapped in a Weber. Figured I would do an EJ22 swap on it at some point. But I don't have the time or space or another vehicle ready for her to drive right now to do that. The last few months it's developed a nasty lifter tick - so loud she got pulled over and the cop commented that it sounded very "bad" and was smoking (axle grease on the cat ) and told her he would write her a ticket if he saw her again. She pretty much demanded that I do something about it. Not wanting to spend a bunch of time and money I changed the oil and dumped in a bottle of Rislone and the ticking went away...... for about 500 miles. I repeated the proceedure with the same results - 500 miles it came back. This went on half a dozen times before I decided something more was going to be required..... hated to do it since the timing belts were done not long ago according the documentation so I didn't want to open it up..... but I didn't have much choice. First thing I checked was the oil pump mickey seal - it was at that point that I realized that this had probably been an issue before I bought the car since the seal was new . Carefully checked all the oil pump tollerances - inner/outer rotor diameter and thickness, outer rotor clearance with the block, etc. All perfectly within spec. No problems there and I already knew the pressure reading was excelent. So in utter disgust I figured I was going to have to go deeper. I pulled the cam towers and found the expected (for '86) rubber only tower o-rings that were hard, collapsed, and cracked. Picked up a new set of those. I pulled the lifters (which came right out due to the use of Rislone ), and started checking them. 3 of them were pretty mushy. I tried the sugestion in the book of immersing them in light oil and pumping them - that didn't do anything useful. At that point I figured there was no point in putting the mushy lifters back in since they weren't pumping up for me and the book says to replace them if that's the case.... I went to the junk yard and tore down an EA82 I found there with 112k on it - had a massive water pump failure. Pulled it's lifters and from the lot I got 3 that were pretty good and a couple more that were borderline (book says no more than 0.5mm of play). From the 16 lifters I had on hand I picked the best 4 (all with pretty much no play) to go in the drivers side (because it's the hardest to get back apart) and the next best 4 to go in the passenger side. 3 of the passenger side units have about 1mm of play - but it's what I had and I needed the car on the road. I ordered a new set of pressure relief valve springs from the dealer but they aren't in yet - the two for the banjo bolts in the cam towers and the one in the pump itself. For now I used the ones from the JY engine as they were about 0.5mm longer than the ones from my car. Put it all back together - best set of lifters I could assemble, new cam tower o-rings, new oil pump mickey, ditched the belt covers, and sealed everything up good. And as I hoped the ticking is gone from the driver's side and there is only a very soft tapping from the passenger side. Now I have an extra set of lifters to send to Mizpah for rebuilding. Note that I did dissasemble one and they are NOT dirty inside. They just won't pump up. While we have been telling people for a long time to throw in some MMO or Rislone - I feel that in the majority of cases that I've seen this is really not going to solve the problem for more than a few hundred or a few thousand miles at most. I think ultimately that the seals play only a minor role in the equation and that it's wear in the lifters themselves that cause most of the problems. Replacing the lifters (along with new seals of course) seems to be the only long-term solution that really works. GD

Any 90 to 94 ECU that comes from a car with the same transmission type (auto/manual) will work just fine. The SPFI system is very simple. Even an ECU from an '87 to '89 with the same tranny type should work fine though there there are some slight differences between 87-89 and 90-94. But an ECU failure is basically unheard of. I would quesion their diagnosis. I have heard of maybe one or two failures in all my years here and those were due to people hooking up the battery backwards and blowing the power supply circuits in them. GD

The puller required is nothing special. All it is needed for is to remove the old cone from the hub. I used an old Craftsman 2 jaw puller. Autozone tools are junk though so that doesn't surprise me. GD

Quite a bit. I have a pair of jacks that were my grandfather's - they are screw jacks - designed to jack houses up for post/peer construction type work. Most small bottle jacks have a height adjustment screw on the pad - the threads therefore must hold the full force of the jack. That's what Square and ACME type threads are designed to do - power transfer. Another example - My lathe sits on height adjustable feet. The screw that does the heigh adjustment on each one is a single 1/2"x20 machine thread. Each adjustable foot is rated at 7,000 Lbs . And that's not even a special power transfer thread - just an off the shelf machine thread. GD

Then you won't be doing any swapping because your engine was the last carbed Subaru engine made in the US. GD

Most are adjustable with a whole bunch of variations on how they act - you would have to check the specs and see if there is a setting that will allow it to do both - otherwise you would need two of them - one to provide a timed signal at power-on and another to provide one at power-off. Timer relays are very adjustable - they are typically used to run equipment or control systems for a specified interval before or after some event is to take place. GD

Excelent - thanks for the part number. At least now I know they are like $1.00 each so I might as well get new ones. I'll measure the new ones for giggles though. GD

I'm carefully working through the process of eliminating the TOD on an EA82 right now . I've got an '85 FSM with specs in it that isn't clear on *which* relief valve spring it's talking about. There is one in the pump, and two more on each of the banjo bolt's for the cam tower spray bars. Free length, according to the '85 FSM I have, should be 47.1mm or so but I am pretty sure it's talking about the oil pump relief valve spring and not the cam tower one's...... So does anyone have the spec (such as from a later FSM that differentiate's) or have a parts list they can check out to see if they list the spec there? The banjo spring I have here is measureing 37.8mm. The one in the pump measures 46.3mm so it's slightly out of spec by a little less than 1mm. Thanks, GD

Yeah - you could use a big freakin cap to do it like that as well. That's a bit of a pain not to mention large for what you need to do . A timer relay isn't that expensive - probably not much more than all that relay and cap junk. GD

You need a timer relay. Pretty common in control systems. There is nothing like that stock on a Legacy though. Just go through your favorite electronics supply and pickup a 12v DC adjustable/programmable timer relay. GD

Sounds like axle(s) to me. But it's difficult to tell over the internet. Inspect them and check for loose axle nuts, etc which would indicate a problem between the axle and hub. GD

I know it's hard to swallow, but you aren't going to easily find pictures of an EA82 Hitachi that will help you out here. There isn't enough people left that both have such a thing (not to mention have it in a state where a picture could easily be taken without dissasembly) and also own a digital camera and know how to use it effectively. That's a tall order around this forum - from experience I'll tell you that your request will probably go unfilled. That being said - you are dealing with a situation I have dealt with myself on a few occasions - the last one being a '69 GMC truck with a Q-Jet that (near as I could tell) was from an early '80's Dodge of some kind and had been apart and back together half a dozen times by folks that shouldn't have been touching carbs at all. So I had quite a situation - not knowing how it should go together having never seen but this one example that I knew was already wrong..... My $25 solution was to hit the junk yard and find an unmolested copy of the same carb (from an '83 Dodge Ram ), and then carefully dissasemble it and find out what the proper technique and process was. I also bought a book on Q-Jet's and read it cover to cover. I was then able to reassemble the original carb using a few choice parts from the junk yard unit and..... it runs like a dream. A proper rebuild kit for your Hitachi will contain all the right gaskets and save you a bunch of time - plus it will have a sheet with a detailed parts breakdown that might help you in the reassembly process. But if I were you I would hit the yard for another carb that hadn't been dissasembled yet and start the process over with a more careful eye for detail. Or just get a Weber and have better performance and like-new functionality without all the headache of that silly excuse for a carb that your car came with. GD

It should be flush - there are often drain holes behind the seals that you don't want to block by fully seating the seal against them. If the shaft has a groove in the seal lip location then it should be rectified with a speedi-sleeve, etc prior to installation of the seal. GD

If it's a true "pin hole" then even water would have a hard time doing anything but drip slightly - surface tension will keep it from passing through the hole easily..... now if it's a "nail hole"...... well you are gonna have a real time with that. Probably have to dam up the hole with something first - maybe duct tape, etc? GD