Older cars can be great fun while everything is running properly, a reminder of a time when vehicles were generally much lighter and operated on simple mechanical principles. When something is not working right, they can sometimes be downright maddening if there are no obvious clues and the problem appears to come and go without a distinct cause.
You’re probably looking back up at the headline of this story, thinking I ‘fixed’ an old Subaru by giving it both barrels and sending it to the scrappers. I assure you this is not the case.
My mum, who has had infinite patience for my predilection for filling driveways and yards with vehicles, decided during Covid that she would like an affordable classic car for occasional use.
We started scouring all the usual websites here in Australia: CarSales, GumTree, Ebay and JustCars. Initially mum was interested in either a classic Mini or Beetle, having been vehicles she had driven in her youth. A VW Beetle is the reason I exist to be able to write the occasional story for you, Autopians, it being the vehicle that enabled my parents to meet when dad worked at a local garage in the mid-’70s in northern Sydney.
With most of Australia’s population of 25 million being crammed onto the East Coast of the continent, most listings for what we were after were in either Brisbane, Sydney, or Melbourne. After looking at many dozens of listings, and even sending one of my best mates to go and inspect what looked like a really nice Mini 1275 LS, we gave up on the idea for a while as the ‘Covid Tax’ was still in full swing which was flooding the market with a good number of dubious ‘restorations’.
It was tricky to confirm authenticity via online classifieds and I had no familiarity with Minis and only a small amount of air-cooled VW knowledge thanks to a rusted-out ‘65 Beetle which was our paddock-basher growing up.
Those who followed our building of Project Cactus may know that I work by day as a farm insurance agent. Other than the fact that I get to be out of the office at least half the week compared to my prior career, which was completely office-bound, another perk of the job is finding old cars on farms, to the detriment of my savings account.
About an hour east of Dubbo is the small town of Dunedoo (pronounced ‘dunny-doo’). It’s primarily a farming community with a population just over 1,000 and a damned fine bakery.
I have quite a few clients in the surrounding area, and about three years ago on one of these farms I spotted a 1990 Subaru Brumby with around 136,000 miles.
As an added bonus it was an AgQuip edition, which was a dealer special from the late ’80s to early ’90s to promote what is billed as Australia’s largest agricultural field day. The package included some sweet stripes that changed each year, an alloy bullbar, sump guard and a full-width steel rear bumper with an integrated towing hitch.
I won’t go too deep into the history of the Brumby/BRAT as we have touched on the main highlights here at The Autopian a few times already. Available in Australia from 1978 all the way to 1994, we didn’t have the mad jump-seats in the tray (bed) as we didn’t have protectionism quite as severe as the still-going US Chicken Tax.
The farmer said the last time he drove the Brumby, he thought he may have overheated it as it conked out not far from the house and then drove badly afterward, consequently, he was willing to sell it for a very tempting price.
I checked it over and there was no milkshake in the oil or coolant, and when it started up the engine was idling smoothly with no unusual noises. Our family has had a good history with Subarus, with most people in my immediate and extended family having owned a Subie at least once.
I gave mum a call on the drive home, to see if this was something she would be interested in as I already had my 1970 Valiant Wayfarer Ute for doing ute things.
Having put Minis and Beetles on the back burner, this seemed like a good lower-cost entry into something that is becoming a classic. Mum decided this seemed like a good idea, with her moving into town in the near future a small ute would also be handy for things such as taking the dog to the vet or buying appliances.
I rang the farmer and a deal was struck, in January 2022 we went and picked up the Brumby.
Over the summer break, we gave the little red machine a good cleanup, removing layers of caked-on grime in the engine bay and blasting out years of Dunedoo dirt from the interior and exterior.
I also replaced most of the cooling system including a new radiator, water pump and hoses in an act of caution. We had the suspension replaced by a local mechanic as I ran out of time and the carburetor was sent off to be reconditioned by a specialist to ensure all was right with the vehicle and mum could drive it with confidence for a small fraction of the cost of the classics we were looking at online previously.
All seemed to be going well, we even managed to get the Brumby to one of the last screenings at the Dubbo Drive-In before it was torn down:
After a bit of use, an unusual issue would seem to come and go where the engine would fall flat and appear to run on much, much less than the factory’s rated 80-odd hp. With mum’s confidence in her little red ute failing, I had to step in and sort it out.
With some testing, I determined that the issue didn’t happen when the engine was started up from cold. Where the issue would happen was if the engine had reached operating temperature and then been driven for a decent distance, at least 16 km (10 mi) and had been turned off and then restarted. The problem was at its worst when trying to take off at an intersection, right when you need power. You could rev the engine harder in lower gears to sort of drive through it and the issue seemed to go away after a few minutes.
I went through my usual diagnostic checklist, honed from my years of experience with carbureted engines, mainly Hemi Sixes and the odd Holden ‘Red’ or ‘Blue’ Six as well as our 1300cc air cooled VW and applied it to the Subaru’s EA 81 engine.
The timing was right on where it needed to be, the cap, plugs and wires were all new. I then went to the carburetor. I initially tried disabling the choke, and this made a minor difference but ultimately was not the solution to the problem.
It would be an understatement to say that engines in the final quarter of the 20th Century struggled with meeting mandated emissions regulations whilst also retaining good driveability and power.
Look in the engine bay of anything made after early ‘70s in the US, or early ‘80s here in Australia, and the rat’s nest of vacuum hoses, smog pumps and other random baubles put fear into the hearts of many a backyard mechanic.
Later Subaru Brumbies such as ours are no exception in regard to this, with Australia having mandated all new petrol-burning passenger cars sold must run on unleaded fuel for 1986 along with a mandatory catalytic converter and tighter emissions (reaching 1975 US emission standards!).
I checked the vacuum hoses, and a few were on their way out. Replacing these hoses and the rear fuel filter by the tank seemed to again alleviate the symptoms somewhat, but it was not a cure. The carburetor didn’t appear to be boiling fuel or getting heat-soaked and the fuel system was all as per factory from what I could ascertain.
Stumped as to a solution, I went to speak to the local carburetor wizard. He goes by many names, but you can call him Tim as that is his legal name. You may remember we visited his shop while Project Cactus was being inspected so that we could head to Deni Ute Muster.
Tim is the only person I trust to tune my triple 45mm Weber DCOEs on my Charger. He can take a little while to get a job finished, but his attention to detail is second to none.
I described what was happening with the Brumby, and Tim mentioned that he has seen many Brumbies with weird issues. The factory Hitachi is what is known as a ‘feedback’ carburetor, which was common in the ‘Malaise Era’ in order to get carbureted vehicles to meet the government emissions testing. This resulted in a complicated series of solenoids and thermostats to try and keep the fuel mixture as lean as possible so that the Brumby could meet the applicable exhaust gas testing of the time.
Tim grabbed a spare Hitachi from one of his many piles of carburetors and pointed out where the two main vacuum ports were so that the solenoids could control the fuel mixture. He explained that by blocking one or both ports, the fuel mixture would stay the same as it was when cold and this may solve the issues we were having. The engine would run a little on the rich side when warm as a result, but not enough to cause any harm.
To test this, I went to the nearest tool store and bought a few needle-nose vice grips. By a process of elimination, I came to find that it was indeed these solenoids causing all the hot-start grief. With these vacuum hoses spreading like cobwebs all over the engine bay, I decided that the easiest way to fix the issue permanently was to leave the hoses in place and plug them internally.
Based on their internal diameter, I realized that a 00-size buckshot pellet could squeeze down to fit inside of the vacuum hoses.
Opening up a 12-gauge shell, I extracted a couple of pellets and used the bench vise to turn them from .33 in (8.38 mm) down to a rectangular lozenge shape of around .25 in (6.35 mm) wide.
Installed into the vacuum line just upstream of the carburetor port, this makes for a great block-off and retains the factory look.
With this complete, the Brumby is back to running at full power!
I do have access to a few Brumby parts cars and will see if I can test some solenoids to replace this fix as new parts seem to be unobtainable, but for now it means the little Subie remains a fun weekend rig and handy utility for mum.
Now that it’s had some more kilometres under the tires, we’ve noticed it uses a bit of coolant. This bypass pipe seems to be the culprit, so now I need to make a plan to fabricate a new piece.
If you’ve repaired one of your vehicles with an unusual product or item, let us know in the comments!
Top graphic inset image: Warner Bros.
In my mechanic days in the 90s we had a old car overheating ….in winter. Quick and dirty diagnosis is that the cooling system is full of sludge and there is likely a lack of coolant flowing, also the colour of it suggested it had not been changed in a loooong time.
We had never seen the car before so were wary of what had been done to it previously and that the owner was scared of costs.
To get rid of the sludge one of the techs had a brainwave and we pulled the fire hose off the wall and ran the hose out the back to the car park and shoved in the top of the radiator, pulled off the bottom radiator hose and opened up the fire hose tap.
We must have pushed 100s of litres of water under pressure through the radiator leaving a lovely orange stain on the ground and also a surprising amount of rusty sludge as well. We did the same the radiator core and got another load of rusty sludge. Thermostat out, and ran the same high pressure water blast through the block for more rusty sludge until the water was running clear.
Put it back together with fresh pretty coolant and tested it and couldn’t get the sucker to overheat anymore.
Owner was warned that it is likely that the sludge was his cooling system beginning to rot from the inside and that some large repair bills were likely to come in the near future consisting of a new radiator, water pump, heater core etc ….but not today. I hope they traded it in….but year fire hoses make great radiator core cleaner outerers
I saw the polished aluminium ladder rack on a ute last night with the top of the rack bars protected by a dirt bike tyre cut open and wrapped around the bar so the blocks of tyre tread where sticking upwards. It must have been glued because I could not see any cable ties holding the tyre to the bar.
It looked neat and would protect the polished aluminium and grip whatever ladder or other things strapped down the rack. I should have taken a photo of it.
I tried to use draino once to unclog the water jacket in my old mini. It didn’t work. I also ran that mini for a while by connecting the positive terminal of the battery directly to the two wires that were energised by the ignition key. This worked because the battery was just behind the driver’s seat (it was a minivan model) and was an early one where the key energised the system but the starter motor was operated by a button on the floor. Worked pretty good except I had heavy jumper leads and it’d fall off the little wires.
Currently I have a ’75 Merc 280E with a failed idle air valve, which is stuck open and leads to a high idle. Replacements are unobtanium, so I bypassed that and replaced it with a heater tap that I can operate from inside with a choke cable. It’s not the greatest as it’s not a solid wire core cable, so I had to put a return spring on it that tends to close the tap when I let go of the knob, but it works for now.
Dad installed some small sections of garden hose in place of the rubber where the hood closes onto the fenders and front grill area. Still there decades later.
Thanks for sharing this problem and fix. I wonder if my AMC Concord is suffering from a similar issue? It too has some sort of feedback carb and seems to run fine until it gets up to temp, at which point it often bogs down and dies when asked to accelerate.
Certainly worth a try, see if there’s a diagram for the vacuum lines and experiment with crimping off some hoses!
Not sure if it would be my oddest fix, but when I bought my 67 Galaxie, the 3 on the tree would move from roughly the 5 o’clock position to about the 11 o’clock position to make a shift. The grommets in the linkage were completely gone. We had scrapped out some high pressure hydraulic hose at work and the pack rat that I am I had stuck it in the garage as it surely must come in handy some day. The ID fit the pins on the linkage and the OD was slightly larger that the holes for the grommets. Being a high pressure hose there was tons of steel braiding on the inside, so I cut lengths at about 1/2″ for all the grommets I would need, and shaved a groove in the rubber on the OD. Popped those suckers in (not easy) and I ended up with a linkage that felt almost solid but had just enough rubber that the vibrations weren’t bad.
Well done, I bet that stuff would last almost forever in that application!
I have 5/16″ fuel hose doing similar duty in Project Cactus.
It’s now 31 years since I did that and it’s still operational.
Just did something similar to my daughter’s 2007 Ford Focus shifter…was getting a bit too floppy and hard to get in reverse. A couple pcs of clear tubing hanging in garage fit nice and tight over a guide pin with bad plastic bushing and now shifts like new!
Necktie used to hold up the exhaust.
IIRC from over a quarter-century, the carb might have had a small coolant line running to it to keep it from freezing and I wonder if a line like that could be leaking, but I might just be thinking that because my EJ22 had it (MPFI throttle body, of course). That said, the radiators on mine were overflow loss systems that dumped overflow on the road rather than a syphon tank, so if the AUS version is the same, could that also be it? I didn’t go through a lot of coolant, but it was a regular top up thing in hot weather. I don’t recall the solenoids, but maybe because I never had trouble with them or because US emissions were different. Subaru also used a Carter-Weber carburetor on the GL/Leone (at least in the US). My ’84 auto wagon had Hitachi, but my ’83 5MT sedan had the C-W and I think the transmission might have been the determiner. Anyway, that might be another option (if you can find one, which will at least probably be cheap if you do) though I’m sure there are plenty of Weber conversions that happened (with siamesed port heads and OHV, there’s only so much performance to be gained by changing the carb, but if they’re simpler, then that’s definitely an upgrade).
I know I’ve cobbled together fixes for stuff to get a car to a home/garage a few times, but I can’t recall the specifics off hand as it would have been a number of years ago and it most likely applied to other peoples’ cars.
So many descriptions here seem a lot like Colbert’s intros to Meanwhile.
Tangential, but the top shot made me notice something I’d never noticed before: that the Mad Max movie poster art…seems to depict Goose, not Max.
One of the charms of movie poster art from those days is the loose, often fanciful connections with the actual movie, but it is funny how the character shown much more closely resembles the unique look eventually sported only by Officer Gosling.
Lol, my 2013 Outback had the exact same problem. It also burned excess oil and got a free short block replacement as part of the settlement. I’ll never own another one.
So glad you shared this – seriously looking at an early 80’s Subaru as my next project.
Thanks Sid!
When they’re running well the old Subies are a lot of fun and you can definitely tell that Subaru were all about engineering at the time by how they put things together.
My oddest fix was a Chevy transmission cable issue, fixed with a rubber band. Later took the truck to the shop, failed to mention the creative fix, and gave the mechanic quite a shock.
I got this second hand from a club magazine but in the late 90s someone field repaired a series Landrover with a house key which replaced the brass insert in his distributor rotor long enough to get home.
I haven’t done any weird car fixes but I did use a computer mouse pad as a vibration damper for our hot tub pump.
And here I was, hoping to read that you’d added a Coffman starter…
Still, Mr. Rogers’ collection of “driveway filler” is probably the best in the Neighborhood.
A friend of mine was helping me install an SVT dual exhaust into my 98 Ford Contour V6 5-speed. It was pretty much bolt-on except we needed an exhaust hangar for the side that the regular Contour didn’t normally have exhaust pipe on. My friend happened to be a law enforcement officer in addition to a mechanic, and he had a lot of odd parts in bins to pull from. What wound up working was a rubber fingerprint roller, we drilled holes in that and it made a fine hangar.
At least it’s not the head gasket 😛
In Australia they refer to it as the ass gasket.
I spent time in the land of carbureted Volvos, where the cheap/easy solution to failing SU or Stromberg carburetors was “slap a Weber on it”. For better or worse (and a Weber is actually worse on Volvo engines than a pair of properly built SUs) lots of folks did it anyhow.
But a Weber 32/36 might just be a good solution here, assuming you don’t have emissions testing on 1990 cars. Pierce Manifolds in California USA sells a Hitachi to Weber adapter for USD40. But it looks simple enough to make locally.
https://www.piercemanifolds.com/ADAPTOR_SUBARU_EA82_TO_DGV_99004_731_p/99004.731.htm
Edit: Lynx Performance Products of Victoria, Australia also shows a similar adapter for AUD60, but it lists as “out of stock”, but you might try contacting them.
https://www.lynxauto.com.au/weber-dgv-subaru-80mm-x-43mm-m6.html
Driving away from a traffic light one day, I got a big surprise when the shift lever in my ‘88 Volvo suddenly came free in my hand. It was still linked to the transmission but no longer anchored in place. Through sheer determination , I managed to find third gear and limp home. After removing the shifter boot, I could see that the shifter mount, basically a metal cup, welded to the back of the transmission housing had cracked completely through at the weld, leaving the shifter assembly hanging by the linkage. I detached the shift linkage and removed the shifter. Didn’t have the bucks to have a mechanic work on it and I don’t know how to weld, so I fashioned a bracket out of aluminum strip to go around the back of the shift mount and extend to transmission housing. Then I used two hose clamps to hold the bracket in place. I slathered the new bracket and broken end of the mount with JB Weld before settling the shifter back into the mount cup. I snugged up the bracket to the mount and ratcheted down the hose clamps as tight as possible. Then I reattached the shift linkage, covered the hose clamps with more JB Weld and let the epoxy set for two days. Eight years later, it’s still holding strong.
Wasn’t there some TV series a ways back with a protagonist that solved all sorts of crisis with JB Weld? /s
If he didn’t he should’ve. There’s stuff all over my car and house held together with JB Weld including a bird cage, bicycle frame and a spatula.
A few decades ago (late 1980’s), my buddy and I were doing a camping road trip up Hwy 395 through the Owens Valley, east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We were in an early 60’s Dodge Dart with the slant six engine. We started to notice a bit of gasoline smell, so stopped to investigate. We found a fuel line was leaking, spilling gas onto the ground (fortunately not onto something hot). We realized cutting out the part that was perished would make the line too short to reach wherever it was going, so my friend took out a Bic pen, removed the cap and the innards, and slid it into each end of the cut fuel line. The intent was to drive it to the next town with an autoparts store and fix it correctly once we got there. Yep, didn’t happen. In fact, I don’t ever remember going back and fixing that, and we used that Dart for many more trips around the western US over the coming years.
I’m just so glad you didn’t wedge that shot shell in there in place of a fuse.
Now I’m trying to remember exactly what it was supposed to be in that classic…was it a .22 bullet?
That’s just silly. A penny is a far better solution – way better than those dumb fuses that keep blowing. /s
Caption: “driveway filler”
Pictured: R34 Skyline
The bolt attaching the shifter linkage to the transmission fell out roughly 100 miles from home in my 85 Honda Accord. I didn’t have any tools with me, but I did manage to drive the front wheels onto a curb in a bank parking lot, found a nice strong branch, and then filed it down on the curb and rocks I found into something approaching a bolt shape, and was able to re-attach the linkage and drive the remaining 100 miles home. By the looks of things when I went to replace it with a real bolt, this very well could have been a permanent fix.
As my 99 Subaru is dead and still sitting in my driveway I was hoping for destruction.
I imagine pouring gas all over and using a road flare as the final ending.
You have access to a better base of knowledge than I did in my carburetored Subaru days. I had a last-year before FI 87 GL that had major issues even the local guru couldn’t solve. I ended up putting a Weber on it and removing 2 milk crates worth of vacuum hoses & switches. That gave it at least another 10 years of life.