free wagon

cockroach · Post by **cockroach** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 2:32 pm

hey guys, i have been a forum stalker for a while but thought i would post up my EA81 wagon that i got for free. at the end of last year a friend of a friend needed to get his girlfriends car back on the road, so i went and checked it out. got it going again and he gave me his wagon as payment. its a 5/1984 subaru station wagon with an EA81 motor, 4speed trans and 4 wheel drive. but it was not registered, so i had to get 5 new tyres, a windscreen and an immobliser for it.

cockroach · Post by **cockroach** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 2:36 pm

[img=http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/8066/2 ... ium.th.jpg]

Post by **TOONGA** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 6:41 pm

nice score what are your plans

Lift kit? etc

TOONGA

AlpineRaven · Post by **AlpineRaven** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 9:19 pm

Welcome... nice gift for free! what are your plans for it?
Cheers
AP

YouTube · Post by **El_Freddo** » Wed Dec 16, 2009 3:17 pm

Yeah wicked score! Hope its not like the free dog we were given - it was the most expensive dog we've ever had, mainly through chewing stuff and pound fees when he got out by jumping the fence...

I'll be keen to see what you end up doing with the beast!

Cheers

Bennie

cockroach · Post by **cockroach** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 12:47 am

well it is starting to cost me a little, just small stuff that goes wrong. like carby rebuild, spark plugs and leads, dizzy cap and rotor button, new front driveshafts with CV joints, battery and the rear CV joints just got rebuilt yesterday. now its sounding like the rear wheel bearings are about to fall apart.
but i was out at the wreckers a few weeks ago and managed to pick up another subaru wagon for $250. i only got it cause it has a dual range box in it, but its only a 4speed. does this sound right?
i have the box out of it and im going to rebuild it, can anyone tell me what normally wears out in these boxes? i never got to drive it so im not sure how good the gearbox will be.

Post by **TOONGA** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 8:18 am

yes thats right the box is 4 speed dual range as I understand it the 5 speed box was introduced in the "L series"

the biggest problem these boxes have are the syncro and the seals have you thought about putting a 5 speed from an "L" into your wagon

look here for info

showthread.php?t=11821&highlight=gearbox+swap

TOONGA

cockroach · Post by **cockroach** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 5:43 pm

i would love to have a 5 speed box for highway driving, but i live 1,600km north of perth in a town that only has 2 very small wrecking yards full of common cars (commonwhores, excels, falcons ect.) i think was pretty lucky to find a subaru the same as the one i have and to get things trucked up here costs an arm and a leg. the other day i pulled out the front CV joints and locked it into 4WD, man this thing hammers with only the back wheels driving. i managed to get it smoking both rear wheels on the local burnout pad (without cheating with water or oil)

i have been looking at lift kits around the 2-3 inch mark with bigger rims and tyres. but when i got the new tyres to get it registered, i got some good 13inch BFgoodrich ones that i want to get the most out of. so it will prolly be a while before i go out getting new tyres and rims.

anyway, here are some pics of the other subi getting pulled apart

and one of my mates, making the car look small hahaha

little_red_L · Post by **little_red_L** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 6:13 pm

careful you dont break something in RWD... the rear drivetrain isn't designed for 100% power. but if all else fails post some burnout pics! :P

AlpineRaven · Post by **AlpineRaven** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 7:45 pm

looking good there.
Cheers
AP

cockroach · Post by **cockroach** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 2:01 am

well my front/rear wheel bearings showed up today, so tomorrow should be a fun day of pressing out bearings and seals to put new ones in... yay

was thinking about pulling the single range gearbox out of my car to put in the D/R box, does the D/R box have a good low ratio for sand driving? also wondering why my car only has single range (5/1984) and the other car i got is older (2/1984) but it has D/R. is it just a simple case of my car having the gearbox swapped out due to a failure of the original box or was D/R an option back then?

will try and get a movie uploaded of my car on the pad the other night, it was raining (i haven't seen rain in a looong time) so i thought it would be a good time to slide around without too much tyre wear

wrxer · Post by **wrxer** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 12:02 pm

scared of spiders? i see the can of mortein there. are you at karratha or headland?

cockroach · Post by **cockroach** » Sat Dec 26, 2009 12:34 pm

there were a few redbacks hiding around the car, so we went a little bit wild with the bug spray. im in karratha, was hoping for that cyclone to come down the coast a bit more so we would get some rain. the only rain we really got was monday night and it lasted about 10min:(
her is a little movie of the wagon on the pad at night, there isnt really much to see cause its dark. but that was the only time it rained

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy8mCe0Z2JU

Post by **TOONGA** » Tue Jan 12, 2010 3:17 pm

anymore news on the wagon

nice circle work by the way sounds like fun looks like a firefly

TOONGA

cockroach · Post by **cockroach** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 3:49 am

well the other day i started cleaning up the gearbox i got out of the wrecked car.

and got under my car to fix the shifter, i could move the gear stick around 150mm when it was in gear. it made fast shifting bloody hard lol

the idea was to tap a thread in the selector shaft and stick a bolt in there with a nut on top and a lot of loctite to keep it all there. but that idea went down hill fast when the thread chaser broke. i know i should use a tap, but i didnt have one with the right pitch thread.

i could not get my vise grips to get a good hold on it, so i had to drill it and eazy-out it. the best drill bits and eazy-outs i have ever used

and this is how it ended up looking

cockroach · Post by **cockroach** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 4:33 am

and today i was looking for something to do, so i decided to make an "over the radiator" air intake. i know water will be forced in there when i go through water crossings, and i need to cut it a bit shorter and put some rubber between the air filter housing and intake plate. that way the engine can move around without causing fatigue to the intake plate. but this is just a test to see what would happen. i took it for a spin at around 9pm and was surprised at the difference it made. at first i thought it was a placebo effect, it felt like the engine was pulling heaps harder in first and second. but then i did a standing start and i was surprised when the front wheels started to lose traction in first and second gear, with my girlfriend and myself in the car. it would only ever smoke the pasenger wheel when i was the only person in the car.

i need to do some cutting and bending to make some ducts to direct more air from infront of the radiator.

Post by **TOONGA** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 2:31 pm

thats not bad at all but if you go mad and drive through a creek isn't it just going to shovel water into the engine?

yes I know that it is ultra dry up there at the moment but that can change in the blink of an eye

TOONGA

wrxer · Post by **wrxer** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 6:09 pm

poor mans ram air, i love it

cockroach · Post by **cockroach** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 7:59 pm

TOONGA wrote:thats not bad at all but if you go mad and drive through a creek isn't it just going to shovel water into the engine?

yes I know that it is ultra dry up there at the moment but that can change in the blink of an eye

TOONGA

yeah i thought about that, thats why im doing it to the air filter housing that was on the wrecked car. i still have my good one sitting under the work bench if i ever go and play in the water/mud. if it does rain while im out driving around and i have to go through a creek crossing, i can just turn the filter housing backwards and put the spare tyre in the back of the car and if the water is high enough to get in the rocker cover breathers i would have other things to worry about (like the car floating away lol). i really wanted to make a cowl induction by moving the spare tyre to the back, cutting oval shaped holes in the cowl area and running two x 3inch flexible hoses from the filter housing back to the cowl so i could suck in all the cool air from the bottom of the windscreen. but i dont wanna have my spare tyre floating around the back of my car. i have already had one occasion where the spare tyre ended up wedged between the front seats of my old VC commodore wagon after some off roading

. this is just an idea im playing with after seeing a heap of commonwhores with over the radiator air intakes.

cockroach · Post by **cockroach** » Thu Apr 18, 2013 1:14 am

Well, after 4+ years of driving this old girl around and clocking up more Km's of off road driving than most 4 wheel drives (including my own 4x4 hilux), I sold her today. Pretty sad to see it go, but the new owner has another one in his yard that he is going to use for parts, and he seemed happy to be buying it. So I know its going to someone that is going to have as much fun with it, as I did, and not someone that is going to trash it.

So that's the end of my chapter with this car

, but not the end of her story, hopefully she has a lot more life left in her and lives on for many more years to come