firehawk618

Hollowed out 1st cat. Discovered 2nd cat was already gutted. Threw all heat shield in trash and welded in o2 sensor. While I had it up in the air pulled both those exhaust air tube things, cut them down to a nub and welded them shut. Man this thing leaks oil like crazy. It's so messy under the car. Perhaps I'll pull the engine soon and put all new seals / gaskets in it.

That's what I was trying to figure out. If this solenoid could be had off something else for a fraction of the price.

Without finding a Justy service manual and finding that part what exactly does it go to and do?

Holy smokes. Looked at some of the Subaru stuff on your website. I am VERY glad I live in a region which has no rust issues! These cars sure seem to rot right out.

I agree that the should and will report more than one code at a time however it appears "as was mentioned somewhere on here" that certain codes will cause the ECU to stop testing any farther. On my car the EGR solenoid code caused it to ignore the neutral switch. Once that was fixed the speedometer was ignored because the neutral switch wasn't hooked up etc etc. In all my years working on various electronics and stuff this is the first reed switch I have seen that was completely dead.

Even a mint condition one wouldn't fetch anywhere near that much. Nada = garbage whether new or old IMO

Yeah I gathered the fact they're a very high failure item on these forums! I was initially going to leave all the smog crap in tact and give it a chance but when all the solenoids I had are bad right from the get go that made it very easy for me to just tear it all off. Sure frees up some more room! I like the light bulbs to pacify the ECU and let it continue checking everything else. I found a speedometer head at the local pick and pull. Brought the head home and put my VOM on it and crap, it's stuck open also. Hmm maybe I'm doing this wrong. Since the book says look for 2v pulses as the speedometer turns I decided to just put a 1.5v battery on one end. Sure enough when I put a battery in line and set my meter to volts it does open and close as the cable rotates! Back to my original one. Tested it this same way and nothing. Stuck open. Phew, not a wasted trip to pocket and pull. Slapped the new speedometer head in. As soon as I started driving the CEL shut right off! Now if I can get through 1-2 days without another code I will feel like all is working as it should! Sure strikes me odd that this ECU will get hung up on one code and just stop testing everything else. First it was EGR solenoid. It would only throw that code. Nothing else. Fix that then it proceeded to the neutral switch code. Ok hook one up. Next thing was the speed sensor code......

Welp got an EGR code immediately upon starting the car up. Of course the solenoid was bad. I had two more laying around and when testing the resistance on them they're all bad lol. All have opened coils. Totally shot. I also have a total of 3 Evap solenoids. Wouldn't ya know all 3 of those are also shot. They also test as open when checking resistance. I initially just snipped off two random relays from my old dash harness and spliced them in place of the EGR + EVAP and the codes went away. I didn't like that so I pulled those off and installed little dashboard light bulbs in place of the relays. LOL works perfectly. ECU sees some resistance and keeps it happy! So after those codes were taken care of after a couple miles I got the neutral switch code. I had installed a switch on the clutch and plugged it into what I thought was the correct connector as it was right by the clutch pedal. BZZT wrong answer. For some reason I was thinking this neutral switch was a clutch switch. It's not. After a little research I figured out it's a wire that goes to the transmission. I simply pulled an ECU pin off my spare harness and rigged it to a connector to the clutch switch. ECU happy now. No more neutral code. Now I can go 10 miles and it throws a new code. Speed sensor code. Sooooo I pulled the cluster, verified I have continuity from the right pin on the cluster to the correct pin on the ECU. I then pulled my speedometer head. I found the reed switch but it's encapsulated in plastic on the speed head unit. Damn. I tested it with my meter and it's just stuck open. No amount of spinning the speedometer input changes that. Waving a magnet near it does nothing either. Oh well, tomorrow my O2 bung + sensor will be here and i'll be installing that. This weekend will be a trip to the bone yard to salvage a speedometer head. I can't remember ever having a failed reed switch on anything...ever. Anyhow once I get the speed sensor code fixed I have to wonder what code will be next! LOL oh yeah. My car runs great. Idles fine and accelerates good when past 1/2 throttle however when cruising or under light acceleration it kind of chug a lugs. It feels like it's going lean. I can roll into the throttle more and it clears up * I assume it goes open loop when it clears up. I thoroughly tested and set the TPS according to the book using a feeler gauge. I then cleaned my MAF sensor and it made no difference. I swapped in a spare MAF I have, no change. I picked up a throttle body gasket and pulled the TB. Took the IAC off it, cleaned it thoroughly *totally unrelated to my drive ability issue* and in the process of removing the IAC it dawned on me. I had never noticed the two vacuum ports on it. One goes to the EGR system which is still all in place *although the solenoid is bypassed* so it shouldn't be leaking in un metered air on that circuit. The EVAP however is missing the charcoal canister. I checked the 3 lines after installing the SPFI and only one had vacuum when sitting at idle so I capped it. What I didn't realize is the other hose gets vacuum when at part throttle! There was my source of un metered air and explained my drive ability issue. I went ahead and yanked off all the vacuum lines / solenoids. The only vacuum hose I have now goes to the HVAC system in the car. The other ports are all capped off. Went on a test drive. The problem is 99% better! I am happy. I'm hoping that installing the O2 sensor tomorrow will smooth out the rest!

Funny how a $20 dollar sensor can cause all kinds of issues on a fuel injected rig.

My vote is determine that it's a bad valve. If so either just put a new valve in that head and go or slap on a used head and go. Do it as cheap as possible.

Not on op's car.

You found it leaking at the control unit, what more is there to troubleshoot? To pull the whole bezel there are 2 screws on the bottom, 2 screws above the cluster, 2 screws on the defroster panel to get it out of the way and 2 screws on the heater control itself. You have to pop off the top right and bottom left covers on the defroster side. You have to pop off the off button and defrost button on the HVAC side.

Done, done and DONE! Had a CEL immediately and it was the EGR solenoid. Imagine that. I had a spare one and tested it. It's bad also. I just took one of my spare relays from the 86 dash harness and spliced it to the EGR solenoid connector. Reset codes and the ECU is happy now! The only things I have left to do are get a hold of a clutch switch to prevent the neutral code and install an O2 sensor which is on order. I plan on straight piping the car at the same time as welding in the O2 bung. For anyone who stumbles across this. Do not do this conversion. It's about as far from plug in and go as you can get. If you swap over the dash harness then it will fire up and all BUT then you won't have blinkers, headlights, heater, 4wd indicator, 4lo indicator etc etc. It would likely be easier to just strip the ECU parts off the 88 harness and make it run that way. If you can get the whole steering column out of the 88 along with all dash switches THEN this may be a plug and play deal but I couldn't get those parts for free/cheap so I was determined to make mine work. Some substantial differences are: Turn signals. Besides the switches / connectors being completely different the whole way it works is different. The 86 has the turn signal relay built into the switch and the 88 does not. The 88 has a stand alone relay. Headlights. The connectors are totally different because the 86 has the headlight switch on the dash and the 88 has it integrated with the turn signal switch. It can be made to work if you are REAL good with schematics / wiring. Heater. The fan wiring is different. This was a pretty easy fix. It just took swapping some pins around at the connector. Indicators on cluster. This dash harness had the 4low pin at the cluster but this wire / pin was missing at the body connector on the passenger side. Where is this wire? Beats me. Probably taped up in the dash harness somewhere. I just farmed this wire from my old harness and slapped it in. 4wd light can be made to work by cutting the plug at the transmission and connecting the appropriate wires to the 86 switch on the trans. Same with the reverse lights. The 88 connector is totally different again. There were other things I had to work around but all in all it's done and it runs so much better than it did before.

HVAC blower motor done. Re-configuring the pins on the plug did the trick on that one. Wipers done. This was far more complex than the blower motor was. The 86 has the delay brain built into the switch. The 88 has a stand alone brain for this. It took some creative re-configuration of the pins along with strapping a couple wires together. They work as they should now with the 86 switch. Turn signals, looking for a GOOD diagram for the 86 on this one. Headlights / parking lights / dash lights up next.

Grounding the gauge temporarily will do absolutely no damage to the gauges in these cars. Simply have someone sit in the car. Ground the wire. You should see the oil gauge start to slowly climb. If you left it grounded permanently then after a great amount of time it could burn out the heated element on the gauge itself. This isn't going to happen in 10 seconds for a simple test. If you want to get all technical then yes one would either figure out the mid range resistance the sending unit puts out and simulate it with a resistor or rig up a potentiometer but I wanted to give the OP a quick and easy test.

Fueling all done. Fires right up and settles into a nice idle on the first try! All that's left for now is to iron out headlights, blinkers and HVAC fan. My forte!

Greed Dave. I got the dash harness. I have it installed. The car fired right up. Now to just work out the switch and cluster lamp differences. I'll let you know later this weekend whether or not I'll still need those diagrams. I have a feeling i'll have most of it ironed out by the weekend. The way the switches attach to this column is totally different than how they attach to the newer column. I'm probably just going to splice my existing plugs into the new harness to make it all work. I still have a bunch of dash wiring work to do but the dash is back in and the car did run with some ether in the throttle body! Now to finish adapting my fuel lines near the tank / under hood and see if she runs.

Ugh a thought I just had. Since the wiper / blinker switches changed from 86 to 88 that means that I will not be plugging directly into my existing wiring / switches. Besides the wiper / blinker / hazzard switches moving around what else is different on the dash board between the two years? I really got no issues with cutting / adapting those switches to make them work. I think over all this will be the cleanest / easiest way to finish my conversion considering I already have the whole engine side harness installed. Thanks!

For the record the two are most definitely NOT plug and play. Yes all the connectors *except one* are there and plug directly into each other but after thorough examination the pinouts are changed a whole bunch. To be truly plug and go you will have to have the dash harness out of the SPFI car. I am heading back to get the dash harness now and that should do the trick. The one connector that is missing on the body side of the carbureted 86 is connector F98. It's simply not there and carries several critical wires for running the SPFI. Just one difference for example. The oil pressure gauge wire goes through this connector in the 88 but NOT in the 86. This isn't critical to make it run but I'm just trying to express there are major differences. At this point I have to wonder if I should have just built a harness out of the one I already have. Meh what fun is that! I guess I now get to pull two dashboards! The bright side is the first dash I'll be pulling is the scrap car so I will get to learn off of that one and hopefully that will prevent breaking my dash!

1986 GL Wagon 4x4, d/r 5 speed. 1988 ?? Sedan. FWD 5 speed Thanks for anything you can offer. I am probably going to swing by my local library and see if they still have old manuals. It's been a decade since I have gone there for auto manuals but back then they had GIANT shop manuals that had extremely good diagrams for a bunch of old cars.

FWIW both mine on my 86 are the same way. The wiring harness I pulled off an 88 the other day is the same way. It seems that plastic is brittle and falls apart.

DaveT submitted his reply :10 seconds before I did lol. Yes what he said however you indicated you can hear the hissing inside the car so that leads me to believe a disconnected or broken line inside the car.

Basically if you pull off the bezel surrounding the controls and both lower dash panels you can see where they all go and do simple tests on them. If it were me I would un plug each hose at the controls one at a time. Either use a vacuum pump on them to see if they hold vacuum or just suck on them with your mouth. There's only 4 or 5 of them behind the controls. All but one have numbers on them that correspond with where the plug in. The one without a number plugs into the port without a number. Not very difficult. The hardest part of the whole deal is getting the bezel back on properly and centering the heater controls up.

I've heard some Webers also have the fuel cut off solenoid but I have no idea which ones do. I haven't come across a 32/36 that does.

Dave I forgot to ask. Do those manuals show the complete schematic on one page? If so is there any way you could scan that page and email it to me? It would help a ton if I could see each and what exactly pinouts are different at those connectors. There's definitely difference between the two pinouts but I suspect the differences are things like CEL and other optional items. I am hoping the critical ones are all in the right place.