azdave

Opportunity for someone with a 3D printer?

I love these adventures and the off-road repair success stories. Thanks for tanking the time to post them up.

I was encouraged to do a swap when I first got my 87 DL with a bad engine. I've had 6 engine swapped cars in my life and still working on the 7th. The fun of doing a swap dies a little each time so I'm happy to not take on a 8th as long as I can reasonably keep the EA82 running. After putting a 7.5L engine in the back seat of a 2200# car, swapping more power into my DL wagon would not be anything as exciting by comparison. I'm still working on swapping a WRX engine into a 58-year old classic that on its best day had 100 HP at the wheels. That might be the last engine swap I have in me.

Welcome! I had a similar thought of doing head work while in the car but choose to pull the engine and do a major clean-up and reseal as much as I reasonably could. I bought my 87 DL wagon SPFI 5-speed in running condition but with a bad head gasket on #3 at 250,000 miles. I didn't spilt the engine case because I had good oil pressure and no oil leaks that required going any deeper. In the end, I was glad I took the time to pull the engine and fix lot of other details. The previous owner was driving it with a bad head gasket and constantly refilling the radiator with plain water. he left it parked that way for weeks so it had some corrosion on the #3 cylinder wall of course but I wasn't interested in fixing that at the time. It's not perfect but only I would notice. In a leak-down test, I measured 3% leakdown on all the cylinder except #3 which reads 8%. I don't notice that performance-wise unless the idle is set a little low and then I feel a slight shake. At normal idle settings, it smooths out. I still have to pass emissions tests where I live so all those hard baked vacuum hoses had to be replaced and remain functional. I'm at around 5000 miles and 1 year later since the engine work and so far, no issues. I'm really careful to not let it overheat, which I think is what happened with the previous owner.

Thanks for the lead!

In a similar situation, I have installed a new evaporator temp sensor by simply cutting a small access hole in the case, placing the device between the fins and then patching the hole. I did not risk separating the often brittle plastic case in fear of doing more harm than good. I also left the old thermistor in place and just clipped the leads. I've done all of my own A/C work for the better part of 30 years and for more than 20 years, I ran propane/butane gas in all my R12 vehicles. About 5 years ago, I began changing everything over to R152a (Dust Off cans propellant) as the need arose. I run 152 in my 1965 Corvair, an 87 B2000 and my 87 DL wagon. Soon, my 2003 WRX will change from 143 to 152 after a hose failure last Saturday. There are plenty of tutorials online about using 152 but it is a DIY solution. Don't expect a professional shop to mess with that.

A used heater core or is someone selling remanufactured cores that drop in? I have found nothing new in the US and don't want to install a used one with a plastic end tank to fail again. I'm waiting until summer heat is over to tear into my dash to replace mine. I plan to mod one of several all-metal core candidates I have scavenged from junk yards.

Be careful with aftermarket radiators (is there anything else these days). On the one I bought for my 87 DL, I found the inner filler neck sealing surface was not at the correct depth for the caps we use. It was too shallow but the radiator cap fit and I didn't even notice the issue at first. The over-pressure relief spring was being compressed too tight so no fluid could expand into the overflow tank. This was not a problem while there was still some excess air in the system from the refill but once the air was burped the trouble started. Coolant would properly be sucked from the overflow bottle when the car cooled off at night, but no fluid could expand out when I drove. This worked for almost a week with no overheating or leaks. Eventually, all of the air is burped from the system which is a good thing up until the antifreeze needs to expand ever so slightly but has no place to go. I started seeing antifreeze leaks in several places, all while the engine was running well within normal temps. To prove I was right that the shallow filler neck depth was the issue, I installed a pressure gauge on a section of the heater hose and before the engine was anywhere near operating temps I was already seeing pressures well above 25 PSI. Sadly, I did not catch this soon enough and it cracked the plastic heater core case and also swelled up several hoses and caused the new radiator to leak at the tanks seals. Moral of the story is to be sure you have the correct radiator cap and test it. I bought at least 5 caps and also tried every cap they had at both NAPA and Autozone. Not one of them fit correctly. I have a lathe and ended up making my own adapter. I could not send the radiator back because I picked it up long ago but did not install it until much later. This repair was done in April and now that we are hitting 110F here in Phoenix and I'm running the A/C full time, I have no leaks. The flow in and out of the overflow bottle is as expected and I rarely see anything close to 13 PSI on that temporary pressure gauge. Highest coolant temps I've hit are 205-208F. No issues at all now.

I had a similar issue on my 87 DL 4WD wagon last summer and it was one bad left front strut that must have had some internal valving issue. Since it compressed and extended at a different rate than the right side, it provided some weird driving situations when hitting large bumps. Right before I changed them out, the left one would sometimes remain stuck in the compressed position which made it feel like I had a flat tire on that corner. I could get out and give a hard jounce to the fender and it would suddenly pop back to normal ride height. I replaced the struts but re-used the springs and all has been fine since. I purchased the wagon from the original owner and as far as I know, it still has the original springs at 244K miles. Not long after that was fixed, my eBay saved searches came across another Monroe NORS left strut and then a right one a month later so I've now got a set stored away for future needs. I'm sure some of the Nitrogen has leaked out after 15-20 years sitting in a box but all that does is reduce foaming during severe use and I don't drive like that.

Appears to be a defect in the molding process in the radiator neck and I can't really see how that would be an issue as it has probably been there from day one. If you haven't been losing anti-freeze constantly then that defect is nothing to worry about. It is below the port to the overflow tank so that would not affect the expansion and contraction of the coolant either. I've seen several cases of people here concerned with their temp gauges reading higher than normal and I was one of them. In my case, the needle was at the red line but never boiled over or showed any other signs of running hot. When measuring the radiator hoses or the thermostat housing with an IR temp gun, things were normal. I had a bad temperature sensor where moisture had wicked inside and internal corrosion was raising the resistance of the circuit and causing the gauge to read high when all was actually normal. Are you noticing any other signs of a hot engine? Do you have a way to measure the coolant temps with another device? I used a cheap Bluetooth remote BBQ thermometer to confirm the temps while driving. I temporarily attached the temp sensor to a coolant line under the hood and then watched the readings on the base unit inside the car while driving for a few days.

It's been my luck lately. I've been looking for some replacement door panels and a guy on one of the FB Subaru groups has them listed for sale but he is in Washington state and won't ship to Arizona. I offered to pay his asking price and any shipping fees but no deal. I have a family member who lives 30-minutes away who he agreed to meet halfway but now the seller is not replying when I'm trying to arrange the sale. His ad is still up and it's been almost a month since I've heard from him. I'm trying one more time to reach him before I just go out and find some brown cloth and learn how to do the job myself.

Thanks for the swap tips but the opportunity is gone. It's a 2-hour drive to the junk yard from my home and $100 in gas so I called to be sure of the business hours today. They told me they crushed the car 3 days ago on Tuesday. I offered to buy the entire car for $1000 last Friday but told them I could not get there until today as I was over 1700 miles away from work. They refused to sell the car as a whole (probably salvage title or none maybe) so I told them I would be there in less than a week to buy a bunch of parts off it.

I have an opportunity to buy and remove myself a dual-range 5-speed tranny from an 89 GL wagon that I want for my 87 DL 5-speed wagon. The donor car appears to still have all of the center console parts that I would need to make it complete and look like the wagon came that way. From what I understand, it appears this swap should be fairly straight forward but my DL vs GL knowledge when it comes to drive trains is nil. My DL is stock and has the SPFI EA82 and has rear drums if that matters. I wonder if the e-brake hardware has a different arrangement or if the 4WD push-button shifter is different for any reason. Little details I sometimes miss. Is the rear axle ratio a possible issue? Neither vehicle is a turbo. Thanks for any tips provided.

If the schematic you provided is correct, one of the three wires you have joined together is sometimes a ground connection depending on the ECU cooling commands activating those 5 relays. An on/off connection through the "GND" relay is what allows the cooling fans to have a choice of three speeds due to selectable windings inside the fam motors. At a minimum, you have to eliminate that connection to have any hope of the fans operating when any of the other 4 relays are commanded into action by the ECU. In one cooling fan situation for me (due to the ECU cooling fan transistors being dead) it wasn't ideal but I bypassed the ECU and OEM relays entirely and installed my own fused power feed directly from the battery through a separate heavy-duty Bosch fan relay. I then tapped into an "engine run" wire to activate the relay whenever the engine was running. It was not ideal but worked fine until I could swap the ECU and return to the OEM fan setup.

I've never had issues myself with aftermarket T-stats but I have found have crappy water pumps where the impeller falls apart or slips on the shaft. If you are 100% certain about the integrity of all the other work you did and that the engine condition was fine before the repair, how can it be anything other than the replacement pump? With that in question, how are you actually determining that you have "good circulation"?

You guys are building a nice list of all the reasons I would absolutely never buy any new car. Never have, never will. I encourage my friends to do the same. "New" for me is 10-12 years old with 80-150K miles already on the clock. Because of this, I've never paid more than $10K for any ride and usually much less. Fortunately for me, there are lots of people buying new cars that are willing to take the major depreciation hit and work out all the warranty/recall/dealer hassles for me. There are plenty of cheap, proven rides to choose from when I go looking. The last time I had a car loan was well over 20 years ago. Registration, plates and insurance are all far cheaper too. I'll take a hard pass on these modern cars that collect data and invade my privacy.

I haven't driven Subies nearly as much as most of you here but I'm 4th owner of a 205,000 mile 03 WRX wagon and I'm sure the kid owner before me was not nice to it. He ran some Cobb bolt-on mods and tuning maps before he put it back to stock when I bought it. When I went to test drive, it was over a quart low on oil and black as tar. Today, it still has the original engine, turbo and accessories. I've not even had to charge the A/C system. It did need a radiator at 175k and the center diff at 199K both of which I found easy to change myself. Otherwise, I have few complaints other than typical vacuum hoses and such getting old and cracking.

This may be useful reading. https://www.possumbournemotorsport.com/blog/subaru-air-pump-delete/#:~:text=A secondary air pump system,work to reduce engine emissions.

I don't bother with those NOIDs myself. Injectors are supplied with 12VDC full time whenever the ignition is on and the negative side is what is switched (connected) by the ECU whenever it is time to deliver a burst of fuel. I simply use any 12V test lamp that will probe the two connector socket pins and then watch for the pulsing light when cranking the engine. Forgive that this demo uses a Honda engine but this guy explains injector powering and several ways of testing quite well.

You have little to lose trying to save those bad bushings but I've not had much luck with that Sika product. I found that after a few years in use, the material became gooey and broke apart. I've had better luck with 3M Window Weld. I have also used that same SIka self-leveling to fill driveway cracks and the UV exposure and heat pretty much destroyed it after about 5 years of exposure. Now I'm digging out the broken, sticky bits and having to seal all the driveway seams once again with a better product (I hope).

Right or wrong of what? As long as you aren't a danger to others on the road then enjoy your car and do as you wish with it. It's nothing for anyone else to judge. I stopped fussing about how perfect my classics should be and enjoy them more than ever.

I don't use specially formulated "break-in" oils. Just the conventional version of what I'll run normally after break-in. 500-1000 miles before changing to anything synthetic should be sufficient. Sometimes I drain the oil at 250 miles or so just to have a look at it and if nothing scary is seen, I'll pour it back in the engine (filtering through a very fine mesh screen) and run another 500 miles on it before the first drain and refill with the oil I plan to use long-term.

That doesn't mean they might not find the error and cancel it later. I had a similar situation where I went to DMV in-person for a used car purchase and was given a clear tile, registration and tags. 3 months later, DMV sent me a notice that the car actually had a salvage title, tags were revoked and I had 14 days to surrender the vehicle to a state police inspection or never drive it again.

Winter lows around here rarely make it to freezing so it is not a big deal to be without cabin heat. I have 3 other classic cars I drive during the winter that haven't had heat for years. When the time comes that I feel like ripping the whole dash out, I'll do a solid repair that will last even the next owner. I'll find an all metal core and make it work. I'll bet that even a small aftermarket oil cooler would be a good candidate to modify. I have several of those around already with different tank configurations.

I can't image those parts or repairs would be within my stingy budget but thanks for the links. I have the skills to adapt another heater core if I need to and it looks like that might be what will happen once I get it apart.