Lurker saying hi

[Ibreakstuff]

Hello friends,

 

Ive lurked and searched long enough without saying hi... so well... ummm. Hi!

 

My journey on this site (raping it with google search) began shortly before buying a fwd 1990 3door loyale with only 100k on it, about year or so ago. She was in about a million pieces when I got her and was parked for 3-4 years without running. It seemed that a few people worked on it before and gave up, never got an answer from the original owner as to what the initial problem was. The engine was taken apart down to the bare longblock and a lot of the wiring was pulled out.

 

Anyways, daunting task but I got her back together and running after a couple months of reading, bleeding, and cussing. Found out later that the ecu was probably fried, would not give a CEL light on turn key and no codes from the led at all. It had some very strange issues at idle as well, which I suspect is what the initial problem was (not sure)....

 

I was able to pass CA smog by flipping the circuit board for the idiot lights around... parking brake light with the CEL light.. score.. in the parking lot no less. Smog tech helped me fix about 10 vac leaks as well. +1 smog tech dude.

 

When I got home I only had to take the dash apart about 100 times to fix the stupid heater/ac controls. Just had to mention this because I wouldn't wish this pain on my worst enemy.

 

Leap forward about 5000 miles of boiling hate for the 3AT... I swapped in a junkyard 5MT fwd, pulled the ecu from the donor car as well (kicking myself for not getting the full harness). All has been well after about 10k miles, other than blowing both of the front axles within a week of the 5MT going in lol. The donor ecu worked too, fixed most of the issues. I now get to look at an idiot light everyday to remind me how lazy I am for not wiring up the neutral switch yet.

 

Well that turned into a wall of text, sorry about that lol. Forgive me if I ask some stupid wiring questions in the future.

 

Thanks for the awesome reference for rednecks trying to do the impossible.

Edited April 6, 2012 by Ibreakstuff

[Loyale 2.7 Turbo]

Welcome!

And Nothing is impossible... in the Subaru World.

We Love Pics here and a 3 Door is not Common... Do you have some pics to Post?

I'm Curious about how the FWD 5MT worked in your Subie... you had to Remove all the Trans Stuff that originally went to the Rear Diff, isn't it?

Kind Regards.

[Ibreakstuff]

Welcome!

And Nothing is impossible... in the Subaru World.

We Love Pics here and a 3 Door is not Common... Do you have some pics to Post?

I'm Curious about how the FWD 5MT worked in your Subie... you had to Remove all the Trans Stuff that originally went to the Rear Diff, isn't it?

Kind Regards.

 

Turbo'd 2.7 eh, that sounds like a fantastic idea. Did you rear mount the radiator?

 

My loyale was always FWD, so I only had to mess with the front half of the car (thank goodness). FWD3AT -> FWD5MT. Im trying to pretend the rear end of the car isn't there, for now. Atleast until I figure out what is in the loyale's future... The idea was to build some sort of rally/rallycross car and run a fwd stock class, but i've enjoyed DD'n it in the city and might just keep it as the DD.

 

I'm really wanting to EJ swap and go AWD, but I have one other project in the garage that has to get done first. Id love to be the first to massage the strut towers from a junkyard impreza into a 3door EA chassis, but not sure if I have it in me.

 

Its too bad the FWD MT box uses the smaller front diff carrier/bearings.. Id love to plop a cheap OBX in this thing. Spinning one the one leg when its foggy out is no fun at all. I guess welding up the front diff could work too. This is a similar problem with the early FWD EJ 5MT's, no lsd for the fwd's until the second gen EJ 5MT.

 

Incomming crappy cellphone picture, I'll try to get some better shots. She's got different rims now and sits a little bit higher now with wagon springs/struts.

 

[grotto]

You're much braver than me taking on a project like that. By now you must know that car like the back of your hand. Congrats on the results, now I know who to contact if I need to remove my dash.