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Ellie the old 86 RX L Series decided to throw a wobbly this afternoon and cut out just before the traffic peak . Luckily I was able to "poosh d car" across three lanes and in to a secondary road so that I could go fault finding in peace . All the wiring/fuses/fusible links/relays appeared to be working ok , nothing hot or smelling like burnt insulation .
Someone left the mobile phone on the charger at home so ET wasn't available . After shaking everything that looked sus it cranked and started so I hops in to drive the couple of suburbs home and it cut out at least in a more convenient location at least in my district . More poking about and it roars to life long enough to get it finally home . Spits the dummy one more time but hey parked outside your door is at least on home ground .
I rang Coxy and he says check the filter for water but none in there .
When all else fails grab a long time mechanic and he swings round on his way home from work . Off with the coil lead and not surprisingly no sparkee . The coil poles were checked and while the positive side had ignition on power there was no switching going on at the negative side . 'Gotta be the distributors module he said so yours truly famous for having every interesting to a bower bird spare part produces another 3 ECU plug dizzy swiped from a Vortex at pick and Payless about 2-3 years ago .
He jury rigs the spare dizy up to the coil and power and says ignition on and spins the dizzy gear by hand with the coil lead near enough to an earthing point to show a respectable spark . The rebuilt vac can goes on the spare dizz and the original ones wiring loom is changed over because you don't want to know about chasing wires under a Spider manifold let alone try to get the plug off the knock sensor .

Timed by ear and we're up and running again after about an hours work by torchlight .

A big thanks to my mate Steve and my "just in case collection" (mountain) of old Subie spares .
Always good to have a few spares of old and sometimes unique parts if you keep cars that were not too plentiful even in their hey day .

Ellie's an angel and a bitch but at least its never marooned me in the middle of nowhere and I have to be thankful of that .

For those of you with 85/86 MPFI EA82s I suggest you keep an eye out for spare distributors - particularly the turbo ones with the extra knock retard wiring attached . These would not be that easy to find now because of the age of the things but one could get you out of trouble like mine did .

Cheers A .

Thanks for that write up mate i used it to get my Vortex running.
I had replaced the module but didnt set the timing right.
So now its a rebuild the car time so i can re licence it as the daily drive.
Cheers Pete

Thanks to Pete I have seen this post for the first time today - missed it somehow (must have been written while I was signed in and not come up on next sign in. Was only looking at a spare module today - wondering if it even worked.

If you could not get one used , Subaru still have a listing for it - not much change from a gorilla though

Have also found not to hook up the knock box car still runs just lacks the knock function.

Hook up the two correct wires to a standard EA81 EA82 module should also get you out of trouble - future reference

Funny how these babies are ever so faithful. This time last year was when my FL died and killed everything electrical and left me limpable at least to my old's for a three week investigation. Only luck that I decided not to head into the mountains to play in the dirt on my own that day

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