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I have an 84 Brat that I picked up from a guy locally a couple months back that is in good to very good condition. One problem I am having though is with the speedometer. Sometimes it works fine, but most of the time the needle just goes all the way around and buries itself on the bottom when I start moving. Anyone had this problem or know what might be causing it?

Sold 3 CATs yesterday to a recycler for $125 each. They even picked them up. They wanted the Part Number off the CAT. There is a # under the heatsheild on a metal tab that comes off the seam. You have to cut the heatsheild back a bit and then wire brush or sand the tab to see the #.

Friend had a 98 Legacy Outback sedan. She had a shop do a bunch of front end work, bearings, rotors... Turned out to be the rear disk brakes. I had them turned and installed new pads. I made sure the pins were free and greased. Vibration went away!

at the very least, get the tires rebalanced... you can try rotating them as well, see if the shaking changes location dont mess with wheel bearings unless you are sure you need to.. doing it "just because" is a waste of time and money.

There are two likely causes in my experience. #1 is a short in the speaker wire, usually in the dash behind the head unit from previous owner messing with wires, or in the door jam where the wires move around every time the door is opened, or at the speaker because a previous owner messed with that. The one thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is a partially blown driver/speaker. Sometimes when the voice coil in the speaker gets partially fried, it will still sometimes work if you get the coil to move within the magnet. Then if it rubs on the magnet it stops working again. Usually due to a short where the coating on the coil wires is melted and then contacts with the permanent magnet. Really the only way to test that is to swap both the front speakers with each other and see if the issue changes sides. It's very common with stock speakers, people just crank the volume and the distortion from driving them so hard with a low power amp melts things.

cool!, ordered! I have no problem putting on an easy upgrade like that, thanx GD

Toss it and install a blanket instead: https://www.rallysportdirect.com/part/heat-isolation-heat-wrap/fpro35-009-07-ptp-turbo-blankets-turbo-blanket-lava The heat shields crack. But you do need *something* or you heat soak the crap out of the intercooler and that does lead to unnecessary pulling of timing, detonation, and poor performance. GD

1. You’re probably driving around town mostly? 2. What check engine codes exist? 3. Have you read the ECU codes in memory? Post all the codes here 4. Swap another ECU. They fail with age or overcharging alternators and nearly every one isn’t on the original alternator by now. The smell of fuel and poor mileage with most addressable fueling parts replaced is suggestive of ECU issues. 5. Since you smell it this probably isn’t the case but Check caliper slide pins and front ebrake cable to ensure it’s not sticking - clean and grease with high quality grease so they’re effectively stay off the rotors at all times. Are you ever cruising 60mph for 30 minutes or hours straight? That’s the best comparison. If you’re DDing around a town you’re going to get bad mileage particularly in a 6 cylinder. This has been a very common misperception amongst people for the last 10 years as more people drifted to urban settings. I see people all the time who think they aren’t city driving because they work in a town but make escapades here and there to visit family or go to parks. But by and large their commute daily or buying food multiple times a week involves what amounts to city driving. Even in rural areas this holds - people moving to small towns rather than the family farm. Etc.

@Twigg101What problems is it giving now? If it is as superficial as the blinker problem then the car is worth hanging onto... cheap reliable transportation can be difficult to replace for what little you will get when you sell.

Give Jason in Parts (Dealer in Auburn, WA) a call. He's quite familiar with the earlier models. Does online sales with a pretty good discount off list. I know he's not local to you but that shouldn't matter. The other rub is he would need to special order seal to get it to you. Toll free number: 8 six six 5 two eight five 2 eight two. Have your VIN # ready if you call.

I have had this problem with my 86 XT DL. I have pulled the speedo head and am working on a replacement, but I was wondering if anyone could tell me the Subaru part number for the oil seal. My local dealer has only been a Subaru dealer for 3 years and didn't even know what an XT was, and the seal that he order isn't even close to fitting. Any help would be appreciated.

The US Ski Team comercial

The point of cleaning the cable and replacing the seal on the transmission is to keep the replacement speedometer from having the same problem again. In any event, replacing the speedo will be a necessity unless you're very lucky in cleaning out all the grease that got into the head.

I had that problem, and cleaning the cable really didn't work. Even the new cable I put in didn't work. I suspect in my case the actual speedo unit got damaged from the cable spinning too much for too long and, unexpectedly, the needle shot off with a loud pop after more than a year of no movement. I had to replace the whole gauge cluster and now no problems. If you can't fix it with the easy methods, you may want to yank out the cluster and look to see if the speedo is damaged.

Very common problem. Oil from the transmission has migrated up the speedometer cable and into the speedo head and is dragging the needle around. Only fix I know of is to replace the seal at the transmission to prevent this in the future and replace the speedometer unit and cable. Do a search on this; it's been written up before. Edit: Cleaning the speedo head might be possible; I never tried it. Also, cleaning the speedo cable and re-greasing it might also be possible.