Dania02525

Also, In our 107 degree heat in texas, I found the crap aftermarket thermostats to be, well, crap. If you look closely at them, they do not open up to as much flow as the subaru one when exposed to heat- I would say 30% less flow. After I switched to the relatively inexpensive subaru one, the car never went above about 3/5 on the guage- and 220 a the hottest point on the lower right corner of the radiator. No AC yet, but thats sitting in austin traffic not moving at all, with only the main fan running- (the left one).

Well I went for it- this car which was pulled from a field and not really running, just carried me from Austin Texas to Poughkeepsie, NY. This after only running about a half tank of gas through it around austin! The car ran great, even climbed the mountains with no issue, never warmed up at all. It runs terrible when its cool outside because of my single barrel carter carb with totally siezed up idle/mix feedback circuitry, but once on the highway it was fine. I did have a wheel shake between 60-70mph, which is still a mystery to me considering everything is new, but I'm changing the last non-new parts up here to fix it- struts, and ordered an EMPI axle to test if its perhaps a defective oreilly axle. I also ordered sway bar bushings and strut rod bushings as well as new strut bearing kits- that makes the front end of this car newer than my 2013 fiat. The brat has earned my trust, with help from usmb members! Camping at walmart:

I changed mine with advice from someone on here to a nice red poly one from a vw bug. I think it was $8 on Amazon :-)

Is that 1.29 Euro per liter? Ouch! lol Nice looking car though, the older ones seem to be in such great shape in Northern Europe.

Broke a clutch cable in an old prelude, and drove it home no clutch. Continued to drive it without a clutch cable by pop starting it and pushing it to roll it when starting out in first. I had to be going about 3mph with the engine near stalled, and I could get it into first and take off. Probably helped that the clutch was really spongy and wasted. I even turned the idle down so I could get it near stall to facilitate this lol

Mine had only a place for one speaker behind the glovebox. Got the idea from the later brats that there was a speaker behind the coin holder just to the left of the steering wheel. I made an H frame from some slotted metal I picked up at lowes in the nuts and bolts section, and squeezed a 4" speaker in there ;-)

I just had to change several of my solid lifters in my 82 brat. As I understand it, the alloy allows a matched rate of expansion as the aluminum engine warms, minimizing heat expansion changing the valve adjustment. Of course, with the hydraulic lifters, the expansion is absorbed by the hydraulic automatic adjustment.

THANK YOU! I did just what you said, and sure enough it was dry-rotted. I also ended up putting a rack and two outer tie rods in it as well. it steers great now :-) I ended up taking care of the rust in the gas tank too- it was pretty bad. Here's what I did that seemed to work fairly well: Cleaned with simple green + water + 100 nuts shaken around in there Rinsed Full strength Muriatic Acid (Behr etch and clean from home depot- this appears to have changed formula to muriatic acid) -took about 5 min to remove all rust and leave etched surface on metal for adhesion neutralized with baking soda and lots of water Rinsed with 1/2 strength Zinc oxide + Phosphuric acid solution- phosphuric acid availble as 'prep and etch' product at home depot, ZnO available as power on Amazon. (I added ZnO to Phosphuric acid until no more would dissolve in it) disturbed continuously for 20-30 min, slowly adding water to increase Ph. This precipitates the Zinc Phosphate coating onto the etched metal. Rinsed with high pressure water at car wash, then low pressure 'spot free rinse' water. Rinsed twice with denatured alcohol to remove water. rinsed with 1 qt of marvel mystery oil to prevent any flash rust on thin spots of the phosphate coating Full tank of gas once in the car. Gas tank is spotless with layer of sacrificial zinc/iron phosphate :-) If you are going to try this: safety safety safety. Both of these acids will burn you, you must use forearm length nitrile gloves, FULL protective safety glasses- the ones that cover all around your eyes and touch your face. Do it all in a well ventalated area, and mix all chemicals slowly. Pour acid INTO water, and never the other way around. In fact, I don't recommend that anyone try it unless you know how to handle chemicals. In total it was about $50 and I did not clog up my in tank filter with any kind of sealer or use any sealer at all. Running nice now- just have to put my guages in :-)

We picked up this rust free brat locally in Austin, Texas and are fixing it up for a nice summer beach cruiser! It seems to need just about everything, but luckily the parts are cheap (when available)! I'm pretty happy with it because the only spot of any rust on the car is under the battery tray :-) So far: undercoated interior floor pans, new carpet roll on bedliner replaced several bent pushrods (solid lifter engine) both CV axles right inner tie rod super cleaning inside and out rerouted clutch cable Front brake pads still need to do: radiator (preventative- noticed some corrosion and don't want to get stuck in the desert!) water pump/thermostat (same reason) oil pump housing gasket/o-ring rear shoes weber carb kit remove and coat inside of rusty fuel tank We were driving it around and the steering seems pretty loose still. Like scary if over ~50mph, and with the loosness vibration and automatic lane changes when crossing the paint on the road lol. checked and rechecked the inner and outer tie rods, the ball joints, even strut bearings, but it looked like the manual steering rack might be loose. With the right inner disconnected, I was still getting a clunk when moving the steering wheel. Is there an allowed amount of free play in the steering shaft inside the rack? I can see that there has been water in there, since the teeth are rust-stained. Looks like its going to be hard to get a reman rack, so I was hoping to see if anyone could tell me if this was normal.. The rack has a bit of movement (not in and out, but the shaft can move up and down in the housing) when out on the floor. Heres some pics!