andrsn

The plate in my engine bay with the color code is missing and the plate in the door sill doesn't have it listed, does anyone know what the color code is for my BRAT? I just call it baby blue but can't tell what Subaru would have called it... I've got a few little light rust spots on the body I wanna get taken care of the next time it stops raining.

Sorry, but I can't figure out where there should be an o-ring. Do the ea81's have came towers? Every time I search for cam tower all I get are ea82 videos and diagrams. Between the engine block and heads I have just the head gasket. Between the head and the rocker assembly (with the 2 head bolts running through them) I put a small amount of gasket sealer on the mating surface but I don't see anywhere for an o-ring. Maybe I'm just totally off track...

Got both the heads flat and surfaced, lapped my valves and all the studs/nuts were as clean as I could get them before reinstalling. During the removal of the heads I didn't see a single o-ring, so I'm not sure where the 'obvious location' is. Can you explain or maybe there is a handy diagram somewhere that I can't seem to locate. thanks

I got one side completed yesterday fairly smoothly. I did take off the 2nd head last night before calling it a day and there was a ton of carbon build up in one of the lifter passage ways. Is that indicative of any issue?

Thanks for all the advice, this is my first car engine rebuild. I've done a few motorcycle engines and things have always turned out mostly correct. Appears like that seal is just a really squished O-ring, I'll figure something out for a replacement. I'm gonna check the head flatness and toss them in the milling machine if they need it. I'll also resurface the intake manifold mating surfaces. I've also gotta extract a broken bolt that the previous owner snapped off in the right head where the intake manifold bolts on, that's been fun so far... Is Loctite the preferred substance for preventing oil seepage though the fly wheel mounting bolts? There was some tacky/goopy gray stuff in there when I removed the bolts.

I've started freshening up my old engine, mostly to address oil leaking out of the head gasket. It took me almost all weekend but this filthy beast is starting to finally look clean.. I've come up with my first 2 questions. 1. I replaced the rear main seal but what is the smaller diameter seal inside the main seal called? Seems like I should replace that too. When I was cleaning it, the outside face fell off and I can't figure out what part it is in the parts manuals online or what its called. Its the reddish seal in this photo: 2. I bought Fel-Pro head gaskets through RockAuto, should I use any sealant on them? I've only read not to but the cardboard packaging they came in says to use it, maybe that is in reference to some of the other gaskets in the kit. I'm going to move forward sealant free unless someone says otherwise.

I've started freshening up my old engine. Took all weekend but its starting to finally look clean. I've come up with my first 2 questions. 1. I replaced the rear main seal but what is the smaller diameter seal inside the main seal called? Should I replace that? the cover of mine fell off when I pushed on it. Its the reddish seal in this photo: 2. I bought Fel-Pro head gaskets, should I use any sealant on them? I've read not to but the cardboard packaging they came in says to use it.

I popped the covers off the heads tonight, just a slight amount of oil in there. I only saw 1 freeze plug per side but I could barely see in there because of the angle. I'm guessing that if the freeze plugs had popped out, there would have been a large amount of liquid in there.

Is there any chance a broken or popped out 'freeze plug' could cause the issue? Are all of those accessible/visible once the valve covers are removed? I'll check that first but unless anyone else chimes in, I guess its time to slap some head gaskets on my old engine! Any recommendations on gaskets?

I guess I'll just start from the beginning... really starting to hate this car -Bought an 83' brat w/224k miles last summer. Seemed to run decent enough and I put a bunch of work into the front brakes, cv's, wheel bearings, and rebuilt the hitachi carb. to fix its plethora of issues. Engine still leaked some oil out of either the head gasket, oil pan or oil pump and would not pass DEQ for unburnt hydrocarbons. -Parts car down the street from me came up for sale with a clean looking ea81 engine and a weber. Couldn't give a thorough test drive because of a twisted control arm, but I got it home and the engine started up quicker and seemed to run stronger than mine (maybe just because of the weber carb). I really just bought it for the carb and intake manifold (mine is trashed) but since it seemed to run so well and mine was leaking oil and dirty as hell I decided to swap them. -Pulled both engines out on a Saturday afternoon. Cleaned up the engine from the parts car, put a new oil pan gasket on it (tilted engine onto clutch side of engine to do so), new oil filter, cleaned it up, added oil and put a new clutch on. Oil that I took out of it had 0 water in it that I could see, antifreeze was also clean. -Put the parts car engine in my brat a week later, got it all hooked up. Filled the radiator up with coolant. Fired up 1st try! Gave it a ride around the neighborhood, seemed to go fine. -Gave it a ride on the freeway on my way to DEQ, idle seemed high after warm up. Stopped the car once to trouble shoot the high idle and it had a lot of trouble getting started again. Would only start with gas pedal fully pressed down. Realized DEQ was closed on Monday and just drove home. -Following weekend, fire it up no problem. After it warmed up it started blasting white smoke and would only return to idle if I was really careful letting off the gas pedal. Failed DEQ for CO (carbon emissions). -Now the car just blasts white smoke and there is oil/water dripping out the tail pipe like crazy! Definitely looks to have water in the oil when I take the dipstick out. This all seems like blown head gasket territory, but is there anything else it could be? It starts up just fine every time and seems to rev. fine (I have since stopped starting it due to fear of damage). From tilting the engine on its clutch to do the oil pan gasket? Some hose somewhere that I just missed? I've still got my old engine sitting in my garage and doing a head gasket doesn't seem too bad but I don't wanna do it if I don't have to... I wanna love this car but its really making my life hard.

Checked out the throttle cable/carb linkages and what not last night. The throttle cable was rubbing on one of the linkages a bit so I used a washer to space the bracket out but what's really causing the problem is the linkage piece behind the choke mechanism where the electric wire plugs onto. There is a little screw you can turn behind the elec. choke and as i was poking around with my screwdriver it popped onto whatever it is supposed to be seated on and the idle screw moved into its correct position. I'll have to take the air filter off to fully see what's going on back there and fix it, but I'm pretty sure that's the issue.

Gotcha, I hope that's all it is... When I drove the parts car home it seemed to be running really well. Maybe something just got a little bent as I was jockeying engines around.

Yeah, I had to make some changes to the bracket but its adjusted correctly. Even if i detach the cable completely the linkage won't go all the way back to the screw so something must be stopping it. Maybe a piece of the linkage is hooked up wrong... I'll give it another look tonight or later this week.

I'll have to check the power when i get home, I think its just the Weber spring. I did notice that the idle speed screw (not the mixture screw) is not contacting the throttle bracket that the throttle cable mounts too... even when i try and push it toward the idle speed screw it won't rotate that enough to come in contact with the screw. All the linkages on the carb seem to be in order, maybe something is just mechanically binding it up and preventing it from returning far enough?

I've got the Brat running and driving, but it doesn't seem to be running right. I realized there are only 2 wires coming from the engine that need to be hooked up aside from the coil wires, the wire from the carb (currently plugged into one of the terminals on the pink terminal block which seems wrong) and the oil pressure gauge which I must have done right because its working fine (I soldered and added connectors to the 83' harnesses wire of the same color). I also hooked the reddish vacuum hose up to the vacuum hose with a #4 marked on it above near the coil.

Checked the timing last night when i got home, someone has marked 2 white lines on the flywheel at about 10deg. and then in the advanced position. The engine fires right at the first white mark and then smoothly progressed and hovered right near the second white mark as I applied throttle. Its was too dark by the time I got home to be able to see the factory marks but I'll try again this evening.

I think I've got a timing gun somewhere, I'll check that this week. The engine I swapped in already had the Weber installed and running but It wouldn't hurt to check it anyway. thanks

I got my weber and new engine in my brat but its having some weird running/idling issues. I left the carb settings alone assuming they were set right from the previous car (haven't done lean best tuning) but it wants to idle around 1500rpms once it gets warmed up. I also had it not want to start today, waited a few minutes and then with the gas pedal all the way down it finally roared back to life... maybe just air in the fuel line(i had been driving for about 20min up to that point)? How does the weber carb know when to deactivate the choke? My thermostat isn't working, could the reading of no temperature there be cause the choke to always stay on or something seeing as its the electric choke carb? I also have 2 vacum tube mysteries. Is there anyone in the inner Portland area with a ea81 weber car that would be willing to come let me take a peak and make some notes? thanks, Anderson

So I swapped my 1983 ea81 engine out for a weberized 1984 2wd dr. ea81 and the electrical connectors don't match up between the 84' engine and my 83' brat. I did a poor job labeling my photo, but tried to illustrate all items in question. A couple of the marks on the tape i used rubbed off too... 1. There are 3 terminal blocks from the 84' that aren't plugged in on the engine side, it looks like the only wire hooked up is the wire going to the weber carb. Can I just remove all the extra stuff from the equation? Where does that single wire need to go on my 1983 harness? There are about 12wires in that piece of the loom but maybe they're just totally un-needed? seems odd... 2. The 1983 harness has a single wire coming from the pink terminal block but the marking i put on the piece of tape rubbed off and now I don't know where it goes. Anyone? 3. I have 3 black wires going to the positive and 2 yellow wires going to the negative on my coil, I thought there should only be 2 black wires.. not too sure. 4. I have 2 hoses from the 84' engine that also had the mark I made rub off and now I don't know where they go. There is one place to hook a hose up in my engine bay but which one goes there and where does the other hose go? the hoses are coming from the intake manifold and the other from a valve mounted on the manifold 1. The car i took the engine from didn't have a charcoal canister at all, every hose that connected to it aside from one came from the air hose mess that connected to my hold Hitachi carb. 2. The one hose reaminig that used to go to the charcoal canister is a hose coming through the fire wall that is just hooked up to some type of air filter, should i route it to the charcoal canister or just leave it how the 84' had it hooked up? Not pictured: I took the catalytic converter from the 84' and it has an oxygen sensor and wire but my 83' doesn't have anywhere to plug it in. I didn't think it needed it but do I need to hook it up somehow? Thanks a ton!!!!

Well, the Weber carb. didn't work out. I'm gonna clean the pvc tomorrow and give it a longer drive before deq this weekend, I'll also try leaning out the carb by turning the screw in the correct direction this time... Can anyone tell me what emissions stuff I can remove and still theoretically pass DEQ? If that stuff is causing more harm than good when trying to pass I'd like to get it out of the equation.

That's definitely a possibility, I was pretty careful when rebuilding the carb. and when I put new spark plugs in, the old ones looked nice and tan without any signs of running rich.

Got home and cleaned my pcv valve, it only has about 3/8" movement I'm hoping that seems about right. A small amount of oil also came out of the spigot at the top of the valve, maybe someone put in too much oil at some point in time (that happened to one of my motorcycles once)? My EGR valve was incredibly dirty inside. When gently pushing air in/out of the top spigot on this noting was moving anywhere, not sure if that seems right.. I could hear the diaphragm inhaling/exhaling as i used a bicycle pump to push air in/out of it. I glanced at my carb while i was out there, the fuel level is actually right in the center but it hasn't been driven in a day. Also here is a shot of my carb from my rebuild but i can't tell if i got the jets in the correct spots as Skishop69 was mentioning

Now I'm slightly confused, as far as i've seen there are 2 adjustment screws on the exterior of the carb. The idle mixture screw is the screw at the front base of the carb (this is what i have been starting with at 2-2.5 turns out from bottomed, but i seem to need to go further than that to get it to start and doesn't seem to have any effect on things between 3ish turns out until its completely removed)? The the air/fuel mixture screw is the one attached to the throttle cable bracket (I've always referred to that as the idle adj. screw and it definitely changes things)? Where is the fast idle screw? Either way, i'm gonna remove the carb, adjust fuel float level, blow out he passage ways and re-install as well as clean or replace the pcv and egr stuff. I'm going to buy the weber from down the street too, maybe i should just focus on installing that...

Are the EGR/PCV parts the same for my ea81 engine as they are for an ea82? There's a parts car down the street from me and I'm planning on buying what appears to be the weber carb from the owner, I'll grab that stuff too if its compatible. thanks.

I've got an ea81 engine and have a line on a possibly really cheap good condition weber carb. from an ea82, is the only difference between the weber carb for an ea81 and ea82 the mounting blocks? If so I can easily machine one and would love to upgrade. thanks