daddydongo Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 so first off i should just say im new to both this forum and the subie world. ive only had the constellation on my grill for a few frustrating weeks and im already drooling over rallying videos and gold rims. of course my vehicle, a 1989 subaru RX, is from before all that and that is ok by me. anyways on to the real talk. i dont really know too much about working with cars or specifically with electronics. ive done some work on motorcycles and enjoyed it so im trying to do all the work i can by myself on my new subie. now there have been several mistakes made that have brought me to the point im at now, the first of which being i bought it out of an impound lot for $500. it was running fine and had had a recent engine rebuild and i only planned on having it for a month or two to learn stick and tool around in during the winter. i drove it back the first day and it did great until the battery died at a gas station. alternator was working fine and the battery was very old so i bought a new one and asked my brother to put it in while i went to work. this was my second mistake. he put it in backwards and four hours later i came home to a gallon of gas under my car. turns out the fuel pump relay was stuck open and the running fuel pump flooded the crankcase spilling onto the ground. i got a new relay changed the oil and, still not realizing the battery was backwards, tried to start the car. obviously nothing happened so i took the battery out to be charged. when i got it back i realized my brothers mistake and put it in the right way only to have the same thing happen to me when i turned the key. nothing. no lights or dash or starter. nada. so i swept through the fuses, finding nothing and eventually wound my way down to the fusible links. sure enough the black one was toast so one trip down to the junk yard later and i had a new black fusible link and lights on in my car. i apologize for the massive block of text but i just want to give as much background as possible because this is where my current problems start. even when i had lights all i got from the starter was one click. so i checked the battery. full charge. pulled the starter thinking it might be the solenoid, it passed all of the tests at o'reillys. the terminals are fine and everythings plugged in and i just dont know what to check next. thanks for reading through my whole life story. any advice will be greatly appreciated. -jack Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apintonut Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 Rotate the engine by hand (braker bar and socket) hydro locked from gas & oil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WoodsWagon Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 (edited) Pull all the sparkplugs and crank it over to clear the gas out of the cylinders. If your lucky it may start after that, but you may have cooked important electrical parts. If you junk the car, save the rear differential. Its worth $300 if it has LSD written on its sticker. Edited February 18, 2014 by WoodsWagon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djellum Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 like said above pull the plugs and clean out the fluid. if that doesn't change you might try hooking up a remote starter. you don't have to use a remote start, you can manually jump the starter and see if it spins but its rough on parts and pretty dangerous so I recommend the remote starter. its only $20 or so and its a very useful tool anyways. anyways jumping or remote starting will bypass the ignition and electrical system and let you run the starter on its own. I think you will find that draining the fluid from the cylinder will help though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivans imports Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 +1 hydro locked pull plugs and rotate { carful should unplug coil do not want sparks when doing this } Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daddydongo Posted February 18, 2014 Author Share Posted February 18, 2014 thanks for all the great advice guys. id never heard of hydro-lock before. ill definitely get out and try and to clear the engine once this shitty weather clears up. no use getting the gas out of the engine if it just gets replaced with water. just making sure, you guys think that its gas from when the engine flooded that's hydrolocking the engine? it would make sense giving the engines history but im just curious, cant gasoline be compressed? if so wouldn't it just compress to the point of ignition and cause knock but then go back to normal after the excess gas was used? or is it just that the starter cant compress it to that level all by itself? not really crucial questions im just interested. thanks again guys Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
81EA81 Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 Is this your car by any chance? I think it was recently impounded. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daddydongo Posted February 19, 2014 Author Share Posted February 19, 2014 yeah man that actually is my car. how do you know it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
81EA81 Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 I just put 2 and 2 together from what has been posted here in the past. The car was owned by a fellow member johnw. He is from the Portland area and had an add up needing to sell it to pay lot fees. I wouldn't have guessed it If you didnt say you bought it off an impound lot,Its not the most common car to be hanging out in an impound Good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daddydongo Posted February 19, 2014 Author Share Posted February 19, 2014 thanks man i appreciate it. weird how small this large community can sometimes be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turbosubarubrat Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 The guy who owned this lives in Sandy and traded his 86 rx sedan for it from a teen not knowing how to get it running. So a long story short on how it got impounded he got pulled over for a loud exhaust and he didn't have insurance on it. Hopefully he pays me back when he has a chance for the rear part of the drive line on this and a grill but that's another story. Hope you get this going again it ran really good and strong when it was at my house about a month and a half ago. This does have the LSD under it along with the dual range awd trans. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivans imports Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 gas dose not compress as fast as the con rods do make sure you change oil will be full of gas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gloyale Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 Also if the pump pushed gas out the injectors into the cylinder that means that at least one injector is leaking. And the other thing that deosn't make sense. IF the battery was backwards, how would the fuel pump run the correct way and pump gas? Or was it running in reverse and pushing gas back into the tank sucking from the return? Could have filled the charcoal canister and leaked gas from there? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daddydongo Posted February 19, 2014 Author Share Posted February 19, 2014 yeah this is definitely the same subaru! thanks again for the sentiments guys! anyways i watched some videos of people dealing with hydrolock and they all just pulled the plugs and turned the key. i just pulled the plugs and tried to do the same but my starter still wouldn't budge. just one click per turn of the key coming from the solenoid. is there something im doing wrong? shouldnt the starter be able to turn over the motor if the plugs are out? wouldnt it just push out the gas as it turned over? and gloyale i dont think it was leaking from the charcoal canister although i could be wrong as i dont know exactly where its located. the gas was dripping off the oil pan coming somewhere from the engine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruparts Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 (edited) hi, since you have the plugs out, put a socket /W ratchet ( 21-22 mm i think) on the crankshaft pulley center bolt and turn it by hand, at least see if it will turn, this will determine if the motor is truly locked up, or if you now have a starter problem as well as the fuel issue to deal with. if the battery has been hooked up a while since all this, it may be drained , because there is no way yet to tell if electrical problems were caused by the battery backwards episode. it might have toasted something that now causes the battery to draw down , bad diodes in the alternator come to mind after something like this. Edited February 19, 2014 by ruparts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apintonut Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 U can pull the starter leaving the wires hooked up and hook the battery back up and hit the key (make sure to cover the wires the starter will jump around if it works Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daddydongo Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 so i finally found a half inch driver to fit into my 22mm socket and the engine spun over freely. i also tried jump starting it to see if it was the battery and it made no difference in the starter movement. still just one click. any more ideas guys? thanks for all your help so far! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruparts Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 hi, should be a smaller wire 12ga to the starter that is a slip on terminal, is that one plugged on, there is big positive , big neg and this third one has a 1/4' spade terminal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daddydongo Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 yeah thats the one going to the ignition right? its plugged in but the spade part on the starter is a little bent. could that have something to do with this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naru Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 Try jump starting it w/a screwdriver at the starter. Short the solenoid to the big positive w/the screwdriver. If it starts now,problem is too much resistance in the solenoid circuit. Since the starter solenoid has such low resistance,a small amount of extra resistance will drop the available voltage excessively.(you can measure it at the solenoid) Usual culprits are bad ignition switch contacts,melted ignition switch connectors neutral safety switches and bad harness connections. (you can measure the voltage drop across any of them while operating the starter to find the trouble spot(s)) A common work around is to install a relay to bypass the heavy current around the ignition switch etc. If it did not start w/the screwdriver and battery and connections are good,then it is bad contacts inside the solenoid. They can be replaced for about $5. Bad contacts may be an aggravating factor in the first scenario as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivans imports Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 starter contacts tap it with hammer while someone holds key in start pos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daddydongo Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 so earlier today i found a good deal on another starter and bought it and put it in. a new starter didn't change anything so i tried chopping off the old melted connector and put a new one on. no luck. im almost positive it isnt anything in the starter now as the chances of two starters having the same problem are slim. could it still be the starter contacts? i havent had a chance to have someone bang on it yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naru Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 Not w/a NEW starter. Measure the voltage at the solenoid terminal w/trying to start.Big terminal too. Cheaper than buying starters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apintonut Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Battery connection or bad ground To check use a set of jumper cables ground battery to engine the positive battery to starter then turn the key if it work then un hook one the then the other Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivans imports Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Dose the engine turn by hand ? if so try a small wire from + to small terminal on starter see if and thing happens this will bypass car make sure trans is in neutral Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.