Twisty147

Yea, I’m realizing the long travel buggy idea is far fetched for this. After driving the Legacy for a while, I’m seeing that the motor wouldn’t be the best for this. So I think I’ll just end up swapping the motor and transmission over, swap over the stuff for 5 lug, and drive it like that. My goal wasn’t to build it into a buggy in one sitting, i was gonna start out with just the motor and tranny, and then later on build a cage and tubular A-arms with coil overs. Wasn’t expecting it to be fast, just able to mob in the dunes or desert in something different. I’ve built prerunners, drag cars, and rockcrawlers in the past, but I don’t know anything about Subarus. (Which is why I was excited to dip my toes in something new) so for now, I’ll tinker with these until I get a better understanding and maybe build something crazy later in life

Thank you Bennie! I’ve now got the donor car, 1990 Subaru Legacy. I didn’t know just how much bigger the Legacy is compared to the gl wagon. However, my girl is now partial to the Legacy, and wants me to keep it instead. So if I can get the title and everything figured out (prior owner went through a nasty divorce, so the titles all tied up) I’ll be keeping the Legacy. If I can’t get the title, I’ll be doing the swap. Now if I could get this EA81 figured out in the meantime.... I’m hating the hitachi carb and all the emissions crap and vacuum lines running everywhere.... think I may have swapped some of the vacuum lines around when I rebuilt the motor, and a carb rebuild wouldn’t hurt.

Yea, I’ve seen a couple of threads on here that go over the wiring harness, and some have schematics and such too, so that will be a big help. First thing I will be doing is getting the wiring figured out. Once that’s done I’ll pull the motors and start working on putting the puzzle pieces where they need to fall. I understand this won’t be a weekend project, but hope I can get motor and tranny swapped over in a month (not including wiring.) but I will keep scouring these forums, collecting as much info as I can, and try to prepare myself as much as possible for this endeavor.

Hello, I’ve got questions about doing a swap. I’ve found a bunch of info but I’m wanting to go a little further, and being new to Subarus, I feel like I’m missing a bunch of information do to my inexperience. The plan: I’ve got an 82 gl wagon 4x4 ea81 4sp manual, tomorrow I’m picking up a 1990 Legacy LS wagon ej22 5sp manual. I’d like to modernize the drivetrain, swap engine, tranny, rear diff, axles front/rear, and brakes front/rear. And I’d like to be able to get this swap done relatively quickly. So if there’s anything you would do different, please don’t be afraid to tell me. from what I’ve read, I need to modify the crossmember for the motor/tranny to mount up (read that the EJ member just wouldn’t work.... but power steering would be great) may need to transplant trans tunnel, need to shorten drive shaft, I’m assuming rear diff is simple swap since most Subarus use a 160 diff. I’m not worried about track width, eventually I want to build a tube chassis, and long arms, build it into a cool AWD buggy (I’m sorry to all the purist, but I’m at least breathing new life into an old disheveled Subaru that was already abused by prior owner, and was about to go to crusher) I’d like to Frankenstein as much as I can between the two cars, instead of sourcing more stuff. if I could cut the body of the 82 and drop it on the 90 pan I’d do that. Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance! Also, more of this will make sense once I have both cars side by side as well