Ross

Machine smooth.... well, sort of..... smooth.... NOOO!!! If you've ever seen a freshly machined head/block you will notice that it is relatively rough to touch. Cleaning the surfaces down to a near mirror surface will almost certainly result in a HG with a short life.

Clean the mating surfaces of the head/block well, but dont sand it down to a smooth surface.... HGs hold a bit better with a rough(ish!!) surface...

The worst thing i found about the gravel (i have a concrete garage now!) was moving my trolley jack around..... especially once its got a gearbox on it... I think another essential peice of equipment for gravel work would have to be a trolley jack with a body lift and pneumatic tires!!

Check the connector - the crimpy bits in them can get pryed apart so they dont grip the pins on the sensor properly... they are quite fussy with dirt/corrosion too.

Read the codes while driving - tricky but possible. Even if the light just flickers, it will give you the code a couple of times if I remember correctly.

I was talking about surface finish - this is also a very important factor to keep in mind when replacing HGs. Graphite gaskets dont work well on very smooth surfaces - like you often end up with after removing an old head gasket. The chances of the HG working, and continuing to work, are much higher with a freshly machined surface for it to grip to.

That would be brilliant, thanks!

Just looking at the FSM now, it gives specs for the oil pump (ie pressure at set discharge rates and shaft speeds) but not for the oil pump on the engine. All these specs tell me, is that if the flow rate is limited to 4l/min, with the pump rotating at 500rpm (engine 1000rpm) then the output pressure should be 50psi when the oil is between 75-85deg C. Also gives a similar spec at 21l/min and 2500rpm pump speed..... 57psi. Very handy info.... if i wanted to design a new pump, or bench test the existing one! Not so handy if i want to know "is my oil pressure ok?" On another note, how common are the oil coolers for the ea81t over there? They don't seem to exist at all over here. If anyone has a spare one, or knows where one is, i would be very keen to get my hands on it.....

Most likely its just a wee resistor bank thingee which sticks in the side of the heater box. Not sure about the exact location on ea82 cars, but its a small square bit about 20mm square if I remember correctly. It has wires plugged into it, and when you pull it out its got open resistive wire coils sticking out of it. So yeah, its a square thig with wires coming out of it, does tha narrow it down?

Only way they'll have a good chance of working is if you re-surface both the heads and the tops of the block halves. Don't let anyone tell you to just re-surface the heads - theres very little point. Of course, that means you have to strip the entire engine down..... gaskets like the fel pro ones they speak of are a little less sensitive to less than perfect surfaces. Oh and a tip - even though they say mono torque or whatever, its good practice to at least leave the heads over night after torquing and re torque the next day. Strictly speaking, the same should be done with any fastener. If the bolts dont move when you try to re torque, back them off 10 degrees or so then torque them.

Go with Subaru ones.

i hope not, im using ones from the auto in mine which i have converted....! Seems fine.

Just wondering, since my newly rebuilt one sits at around 10psi hot idle, a bit lower than a standard ea81 and wondering if its because of the turbo oil supply coming straight off the pump. Or maybe the fact that it hasn;t got the factory oil cooler and the oil is getitng too hot. Anyway, would be good to have some values to compare mine to....... 10psi hot idle 80ish psi cold at 1500 about 30-35 at 2000rpm hot

yeah already cleaned it, not sure its still playing up but figure i may as well replace it anyway..... it does seem a ridiculous price.....for a pipe with a ball in it....... but i seem to remember others saying aftermarket ones were nothing but trouble?

Is this the case? i've heard it mentioned a few times, although i cant quite see how it would..... it could explain my condensation problems though. Also, has anyone tried aftermarket pcv valves? Subaru wants NZ$60 for one and its going to take 3 weeks to get here, but i'm reluctant to bother with an aftermarket one unless someone has had good luck with them....

My 83 has them just in front of the battery..... i have also seen them in front of the radiator.....

Ha, you guys have to do everything different don't you!!

A harmonic balancer is a seperate shaft driven off the crank to balance dynamic loading caused by the motion of the crank/rod/piston assembly. It can also be incorporated in the cam shaft on OHV engines. Many enignes have more than one harmonic balancing shaft, suck as the buik (sp?) 3.8l V6 used in our Holdens.... They have the same effect as the balancing weights on your crank shaft, which balance the first mode reaction forces, which oscillate at crank speed. The Harmonic balancers rotate at multiples of crank speed to balance other reaction modes.

I'm from New Zealand, and have never heard of either of them.... I'm talking bearing manufacturers. SKF is an international company and i'd say there'd be one near you.... Saeco is another one.... maybe Timken, *********g... Edit: errr.. that is the name of a popular bearing manufacturer not a profanity!

If you're stingey like me, go to a bearing manufacturer/supplier (SKF does wheel bearing kits for soobs)- you'll get them quite a bit cheaper.

What, ea81 hydro ones? Still, that would end up being fairly expensive with shipping to NZ, not to mention having to wait around 3 months for them to turn up! If mine had hydros in it when i pulled it apart i'd probably have stuck with them, but someone had already converted it, so i'd have had to get a new cam too.....

You would want to do that because of the excessive price that subaru charges for new lifters - it was gonna be about NZ$500 for a set of hydro lifters for my ea81. Interestingly enough, im using hyro push rods and rockers..... The push rods differ in length slightly, but seem the same otherwise... as for the rocker arms, i still cant work out what the difference is.... maybe the only difference is the part number...! This set up seems to work fine.....

Cheers guys... This is on my reconditioned ea81t, which has only done around 5000km since the rebuild, so it hasn't been doing any long drives.... And its been sitting for about 5 months now... That said, it does seem to use a minute amount of water, like maybe 400ml over that 5000km, although one of the turbo coolant lines is a bit suspect, and does drip now and then... So yeah, ill clean her up and see how it goes, should be going on a few long drives soon so that should help clarify whats going on....

oh yeah.... The gaskets are from subaru, but maybe i need to flatten the mating surfaces some more.... Cheers

Hey, I took off the rocker covers of my ea81t toady, just to ckeck the valve clearences.... and found this. White water/oil goo, concentrated mainly around where the PCV hose connects to the cover. The goo only goes about 2cm up the pcv hose, then its clean. As you can see, most of the rocker and valves are clean... just some milky stuff splashed on #1intake... I've never seen any sign of water on the dipstick.... but it does get small amounts of condensation at teh top of the oil filler tube.... Any thoughts?