kayakertom

I'm parting out an '87 gl wagon in the Portland area, the right front passenger door/mirror and right front fender are in excellent shape. Color is sky blue.

To keep using a heavier weight oil and to minimize piston slap during warm-up during winter months the best thing to do is add an engine block heater for those cold nights. I lived in Fairbanks for 5 years and those winters were harsh. Did you know that: For air temperatures of -20 to -35 F, the air is so dense that it is like having a tubo on your engine. For temperatures below -40 F, it is dumb to drive your car - all the rubber parts lose their flexibility and shocks and suspension parts wear out quickly. When you drive in the morning after a car has sat overnight during a Fairbanks winter night, the tires go thump, thump, thump until they warm up enough to allow the rubber to flex. I would never buy a used car out of Fairbanks. PS: Referring to non-synthetic oil as Dino oil is bad. Our earth oil deposits are the result of millions of years of deposits of dead micro-organism life in the oceans.

I can now recommend Larry @ 503-984-7743, who advertises on PortlandCL. He has both a dolly and flatbed truck, best if you can be flexible with his schedule. Nice guy and reasonable. Tell him subaru Tom provided the contact info.

I've just taken an ea82 radiator apart and am in the process of cleaning it - lots of whitish crud around each row; need a long thin & narrow piece of metal to push through each row to get all the crud out. I don't think a water hose would do the job. The right chemicals would likely dissolve the crud. Seems the radiator was designed to be taken apart easily.

Grinding - have you placed a jack under the motor and possibly bent the sheet metal cover under the flywheel viewing area?

I'm picking up a gl parts wagon tomorrow morning (blown head gasket + high miles). Have used up my free AAA towing and need a recommendation for which company to deal with or who to avoid. Also, does it need to be put on a flatbed truck (manual d/r 4wd)? Tow is from SE Hawthorne to SW L.O.. Thanks, Tom

I have a '87 dl 4wd and also have had similar problems. If things are working right, you would depress the gas pedal once to set the choke and then after about 2 minutes tap it again to kick down the idle. The problems that mine had were vacuum leaks - I have replaced all of the vacuum lines that had hardened ends. Misrouted/disconnected vacuum lines - having another car to help route correctly. That carb is a mess of hoses. Poorly adjusted air/fuel mixture screw - I had a local subaru shop adjust mine. Another possibility is the O2 sensor needing replacement. I assume you have good ngk spark plugs installed and that it is properly timed. I have found the Haynes manual helpful

If you have coolant steaming out your exhaust, then it's either a head gasket or a cracked head. When you pulled the plugs to do the compression test, did you notice one plug looking different than the others? A head gasket problem only gets worse.

On my '87 dl wagon with a Hitachi, it helped a lot when I put new vacuum hoses on; the hoses with heat hardened ends can be a source of vacuum leak. It is very easy also to miss a connection or to have one or more small hoses get disconnected when working on the carb - what a mess of hoses.

Don't know the general answer, but I've got a project '90 Loyale wagon that is maroon with grey rocker panel factory paint - looks sharp.

There is a green pair of connectors near the brake master cylinder that gets plugged together when you do the timing @ 20 degrees. This is an electronic advance disconnect that is equivalent to pulling off/plugging a vacuum advance. Disconnect the green connectors after you have set the timing and tightened the 2 10mm distributor bolts.

It's easy to pop off the caps on the lifters, disassemble and clean them. The spring inside is not very stiff, so squishy is good. If there is debris/dirt they do get hard to compress or pump-up under oil pressure. If the lifters are not acting properly, then it will definitely affect emissions and power. Reassemble the lifter cap using a socket and a light hammar tap. I rotate each piston to top of stroke before removing carbon and never get anal about removing all of it.

I've done it 3 times on different vehicles in the past year without the special tool. Just tighten the bolts enough to support the pressure plate, maneuver it with a rod/screwdriver so that it is centered by eyeball, torque the bolts to the correct value. When you lower the engine in place have the car in gear and e-brake off, so you can bump the car an align the shaft gear in through the pp.

I've also had that problem in my '89 XT. My diagnosis was a clogging injector and now I add injector cleaner to my fuel tank about every time I do an oil change.

If you have the 3 speed automatic, this is the 3at transmission and one of the typical problems is the easily fixed "governor gear assembly" - do a search. Have you checked the transmission fluid level? (Driver's side dipstick.) Check for level and color/smell. The alternative 4wd auto trans is the 4 speed 4eat trans that came in the XT and RX models. This would mechanically fit, but would also require some linkage and electrical changeover. You would also have to match the rear differentials.

Is that a squirrel or skunk hanging from the rearview mirror? Roadkill?

You have a running turbo '89 RX, but want to pull the trans and differential to put into another vehicle? What trans does it have - d/r or 4eat? 3.7 or 3.9? What vehicle are they going into?

Why not offer a trade for the parts that you want and save some labor and time?

The cotter pin in the wheel bearing kit is used to keep the castle nut (36mm) from loosening after it has been properly torqued.

The adjusting threaded rod for the e-brake is located under the plastic tray that is below the handbrake. Those pistons are sometimes hard to turn without the proper tool. I've sometimes used a hammer and metal rod to tap rotate them back enough to allow new pads to fit. You can get by for a short time without the dust boot, but it sounds like its time for the brake calipers to be rebuilt. How are the rotors?

I also ordered and quickly received the kit. If you call to pay rather than doing Paypal, then they also ask if you want a special on a water pump. The costs were: $64.95 for the timing belts, idler and tensioners. The water pump was $29.95 and shipping was $14.95. Total: $109.85

Nope, my '87 dl has a Hitachi carb with all of the confusing hoses.

Last year when I got my project '87 dl wagon, I expected that I would have to replace the engine so I bidded on an Ebay motor from Mokato_autoparts and was the high bidder. It turned out that I was able to rebuild the existing motor in the dl, so the Ebay motor just sat unused until I got another project recently. Project 2 is a '90 Loyale and had serious motor problems but a very straight, rust free, nice two-tone paint body. So for the past 6 weeks, I've been wrenching on it. Got the Ebay motor installed, running and took a short trip around the block. Then I noticed that the radiator wanted more coolant and I added some, but then shut it down when it seemed to want too much. Checked the oil dipstick and discovered foam. Drained the oilpan and saw a foul milkshake - coolant in the oil that had been churned. Decided to pull the motor (out in 2 hours) to see what I did wrong. Found that one side of the intake manifold wasn't torqued enough. Have taken one head off so far and also discovered that Mokato didn't use the reinforced o-ring under the camshaft housing. Cleaned up that side of the motor and replaced the head gasket and installed the proper o-ring. Will finish the other side tomorrow. Moral of the story: Should have double-checked for the proper o-ring before installing the motor and taken my time installing the intake manifold.

I've done it several times now without any problems. The longblock weight is around 250 lbs (110kg), so you really aren't stressing anything. It makes it so much easier to do the transferring pf parts. If you have any worries about your engine stand, use a bench with some wooden blocks under the oil pan until you are comfortable with the engine stand.

I picked up an '87 gl coupe here in Portland on Jan 1. It has the 3 speed auto / push-button 4wd with the 3.9 rear differential, spfi. This is my next project vehicle - the auto trans has the governor problem and possibly something more serious; and it has two bad sparkplug holes (helicoiled, with one failure = ballistic sparkplug). The body and interior are exceptional for an '87, no rust and the wheel wheels have been nicely coated for additional rust proofing. My plan is to try to get it running as is and to gather the necessary parts to dump the auto trans and put in a d/r manual and to totally rebuild the motor. Will be doing some research to see if I should try to make it into an rx.