lumpycam

The rear quarter panels mostly, some 10 pounds of sand fell out when I was removing rearend. The rockers are going and the innner bed sides have big holes. The car came from the oregon coast and must have seen lots to beach duty. The rest of the car was pretty good shape except were the frontend had been crudely repaired from a collision. It will make good parts for my next gen II brat when ever I find another.

This is the '85 Brat that I was building until I found too much rust to continue.I was setting it up with 295/50/15 tires on the rear, too bad would've been cool!

Here's Day two progress ! Got rained out or would've had whole car sanded.Installed the 6 lug hubs and wheels.removed all trim and bad sheetmetal. Not too bad for one day into the build. Before : AFTER :

Hey , I would try putting a starter before you get too involved with this swap.I have mocked up chevy v8 in subaru's several times and couldn't get around the starter to crossmember interference. The rack mount is were the starter needs to be. You could overcome this with engine setback but that sucks for leg room. I'm not saying this is impossible just not likely to do with normal starter location. Trust me , I wanted It to work in my brat . Good luck with your project and keep us updated!

Here a bigger pic!

Hi all, I finally found a good gen1 brat to have as my newest project. I bought a gen2 last fall and found it to be too rusted.So i've been looking for another body to use with my frankenmotor (2.5 w/2.2 heads). My freind who owns the local wrecking yard saved it for me.It's a 1978 and has ea81 and d/r4spd partially installed.Someone seen fit to paint the body wth bedliner,thats gonna be fun to remove for new paint. My plan is too build it into a rwd street brat. I have a ej25 high comp motor with delta 230 cams and ported heads joined w/ 5spd ej trans converted to rwd.The rear end will be 4.44 lsd with 225/50/15 on six lug wheels. Should be able to do all three D's with this one (drivin,draggin and driftin)

I did it,you can too! I ordered my ej22 230 cams on monday morning and received them tuesday afternoon. WOW! talk about speedy ,I am very pleased with Delta cams service. Thanks technician guy !

Thanks all for your help! I'm off to find a pump and brackets , I'll keep you posted on progress.

I'm using an early solid lifter ea81, there are only two bosses on top of block for alternator bracket.Also when you flip the AIC valve it puts it right were the pump would normally be on an ea82.Do the ea81t blocks and the hyd lifter blocks have bosses for the pwr steering bracket? I looked at maybe using ea81 a/c bracket to mount pwr steering pump, not much room between alt and battery though. It looks to me the best shot is to use n/a ea81 pump and brackets, but I don't have any to try.

I did a LSD swap (See LSD swap in repair manual) in the 4.44 case wich includes using the stub axles . With the LSD carrier the internal are different from open diff ,only bolt in axle work.

Thanks for info. O.k. that helps a little , gotta make it work. Can't imagine giving the car back to the ex-girlfriend and telling her "Hey, it runs great but...no AC or pwr str!"

The internal axle is all one piece with a spring clip that inserts into side gears of diff. The stub axle is seperate from the rest of the axxle assembly and bolts to side gears.I have never tried to swap just the side gears on the newer style to the older for stub axles.This may be possible if diff centers are the same in the area were side gears and spider gears rotate(hope that I explained correctly).

I just finished swapping an ea81 into a ea82 spfi wagon, It is complete and running except for power steering pump.I've heard that the ea81 pump and brackets will work with some modifications.My question is , has anyone done this successfully? If you have , what's involved to make it work?

I will share some information about using 4.44 in older models. You can install a LSD and stub axles.It's the same as swapping from 3.70 to 3.90 except you need to drill the carrier to size of 4.44 ring gear bolts. The ring gear bolts are almost to short for the thicker LSD carrier , I researched for new longer bolts but found that none were available. I would think the bolt length would be better with an open diff carrier as they are thinner at the surface mating to ring gear.You will also have to change the pinion flange , the earlier gen's have a smaller bolt pattern. Not too much more work than a normal LSD swap! I built two at the same time and ran them in my hatch, one lived and one exploded! I always suspected the ring gear bolts were too short.Although it may have been that I was in low/low, had chains on all four tires and was pushing snow with the blade when the front diff blew. However the rear diff still lives and has seen lots of abuse , even posi burnouts in rwd when drag racing. Hope this sheds some light on 4.44 gears.

How would this make a 4x4 ? Maybe a drag car of drifter . wouldn't want to wire that combination. Oh I see, One engine in the front and one in the back. I have dual engines on the brain except I'm thinking married together.

I would love that with an ej and awd for a street car!! My budget won't cover that car right now, but thanks. I couldn't chop up such a cool sedan for an offroad basher.

Guilty! Yah , that's me in my Hatch(Unhatched a.k.a. the mule). It was the best of show winner for wcss5 and the original t-case conversion.

I thought about this too, top speed of 35 @ 5000rpm's kinda kills it for streetable but the crawl ratio is awesome!

I have to make a correction to my last statement. The motor in the back would require reversing of some sort.I said the t/c would be facing backwards as the motor.This would make the car go the wrong way!Dah! could just flip diffs over or ........?

I'm moving this discussion over to the offroad section so please reply there! I thought someone in this forum would have some cool pics of the seldom seen lifted gen 1's.Perhaps there more rare than I thought!

To answer your question, the transfer case is facing backwards too and makes it proper rotation. The cool part is in 2wd its front wheeldrive like stock suby. And Yes that would be a cool justy! I would do like this ,ea81 suspension ,ej22 and 5 spd d/r , no t case and 6 inches lift,stuff motor up front with bfh and some vaseline! either way a big justy would be cool, maybe some day.

Hey Zap, His brat looks like it got a small lift. maybe 3" or 4".I don't know if I want to go as big on this one as I did on the big blue brat. I have a early wagon and located some brats close by, leaning towards another brat. Here's an idea I had back a few years ago. Gen 1 brat ej22 and trans (d/r ?) mounted in the bed backwards. tcase mounted were trans was move front axle forward about 4" leave rad up front ,battery and full size spare 31" tires and ea81 suspension should make weight more balanced ,exuast and air stacks could run up behind the cab. The Big blue brat started out as this and ended up: 12" lift ea82 suspension from an '88 loyale wagon d/r 5spd mated to chevy 2.8 v6 nissan t/c w/3.90 lsd in rear open front 31" superswampers tsl on steel 15x7 white spokes front axle moved forward 4 inches and back axle centered in wheelwell worked well in mud races and suspension was soft on the jumps but it acted big and cumbersum when on the trails.

Hey all, I am looking for some ideas and inspiration for my next offroader. Let's have some crazy ideas or pics of your lifted vintage subs.I'm open to all suggestions at this point. I would like to keep it somewhat streetable, just enough to drive it to the local trails. what's the hot tricks now and what's not? been gone for awhile (3 yrs or so) almost feel like a newbie!

I was !! Haven't been around much since wcss6. It feels good to be back! I have been planning a tube build with motor mid engine sideways and lots of flex, But for know I want a trail rig I can drive on the roads. My neighbor has a hatch and a few others around have subs , So we are planning to hit some trails . T-case ... who thought up that crazy idea ? I like the look of gen 1 stuff lifted, plus I like being different than most.I also like this new trend of chopping the body up and altering wheelbase. Wait that's not new (unhatched)(big blue)!

I like it ! makes me wanna break out the sawzall. One question , what did the wheelbase end up being?