Leaderboard

I took the rear bumper off of my 92' Loyale and then removed the plastic covering. After cleaning it up and spraying painting it black I think it will make a pretty good steel bumper!

Fan shouldn't run with key on. I'd unplug that fan for now and figure out why it's on constant. As for the light on dash, that is normal is normal, as long as it goes out when engine starts. For cold temp starting, press gas pedal 2 or 3 times to the floor, then release, and keep your foot off the gas until it starts. This primes the intake with fuel from the accelerator pump, and sets the choke open. It may sputter out after catching, just repeat procedure until it catches well enough to begin the high idle. Let it warm up 5 mins before you drive in cold weather.

Run from that mechanic. He's either dumb or full of crap or both

1988 was a good year: I’m not sold on the drugs being good fun! But I do agree about the collecting of cars and parent’s lectures... I just wish I lived closer to m&d’s place where most of my cars are stashed! It’s pretty awesome of you to collect, fix and “re-home” these awesome Subarus! Gotta keep them alive so the aftermarket parts industry keeps making bits! Cheers Bennie

The rear O2 sensor is more likely to be the problem. If the front is bad you would have poor fuel mileage/soot/power loss as well as the P0420. I agree that the aftermarket cats aren't worth it - federal regulations only require them to have half the life of OEM; stick with Subaru. It's good to have the cat on hand - the O2 sensors are difficult to get out and it's easy to tear off the bung; use a backing wrench to improve the odds. IIRC the bungs don't have flats, so you'll need a monkey wrench or very big vise grips.

Buy a header and catless J pipe. Install a 90 degree O2 spacer between the pipe and the secondary O2. That will handle the code. Aftermarket cats are not going to work. They never do. Either delete the cats and use a cheater, or put on OEM cats from Subaru. Nothing less is worth doing. GD

Good point. 85/86 RX were Sedans, and here got a PT4wd, D/R 3.7 final drive with 1.19 low range and 25 spline stubs.........Close ratio 2nd-5th gears. The 87+ RX were I think all or at least mostly Coupes, and here got the Fulltime w/difflock box with all the same ratios.

Replaced the faulty sensor with a Rock Auto special $1.50 ; so far so good.

Awesome! Another old school Subaru saved from the scrapper, at least for a little while

Mine was a custom job. The 4.111:1 ring and pinion came from a forester box or a dead wrx single range box. I don’t know what this would cost as I purchased my initial 4.111:1 modified L awd pinion shaft with its matching ring (crown) gear. That wasn’t the best work, and a few years later I sheared off the weld - turned out it only had 2mm of penetration. I was visiting mates 3500km from home, so wasn’t exactly a convenient time for this to happen (better than the middle of the Nullarbor though!!). Through the Subi mate’s network someone knew someone else that owed them a favour - and we got a new shaft made up from the broken one, and the job was done properly this time! The shaft was beveled, had a male stub on one piece and a female section on the other to help mate and centre the two parts together, these were pressed together. Then a specific welding process was used to fill the beveled section with layers etc. it was a very deep weld and a slow one to complete. Then a “cap weld” was done to finish the welding off. This cap weld was then machined flat to the height of the rest of the shaft. Bloody artwork!! It had a slight bend in it - about .1 thou - but then we worked out that the lathe has .04 of free play in the clutch so it was probably a lot closer to dead straight A’s humanly possible. No vibrations so all is good! The most astonishing bit was that the floor manager of the workshop allowed the work pro bono! So a couple of slabs of beer were promptly arranged! To work the cost out though I had a welder and a machinist working on the shaft for close to five hours. It didn’t seem to take that much time while we were there! But it was a bit of involved process - and having the two experts there collaborating with each other sped up the time that it may have taken if I were doing this at home at a local shop. It is well worth the effort, but consider going the 4.44 R180’s are much easier to find in 4.44 and air or elockers are available for this diff - of course mods must be done to make either fit though! That’s my next project!! Cheers Bennie

Well I don't know about any of that NASIOC stuff, but I can tell you from building engines, breaking engines, and running them on my dyno - plus hundreds of hours of research, discussion with respected engine builders, Amsoil's technical department, etc that oil viscosity isn't going to make any serious differences in the way the engine will run - you use light oil for light loads and MPG. You use heavy oil for heavy loads and take the MPG hit. Anything between an SAE 20 and an SAE 60 is going to run more or less the same - it will have some mild effects on oil pressure and temperature but for daily driving under light loads anything in that range will adequately lubricate the engine. Anyone that is obsessed with oil viscosity in their ho-hum daily driver factory engine is only doing so because of a lack of fundamental understanding. If they understood oil and engine clearances the way an engine builder does they wouldn't be concerned in the least. It just doesn't matter. I run all my engines hard - factory or not. So I don't run anything less than a 40 in my cars. Ever. Regardless of "manufacturer recommendations" GD