winelegacy

The beast is now wiggling on a Tomcat Glue Trap at the bottom of my empty garbage can. Yes last night placed the trap on the floor next to the gas pedal,then adding a small piece of cheddar cheese next to the trap and a large piece at the center of the mouse sized rectangular sticky trap. And this morning went out to the Forester and shined a flashlight down there that showed it to be a struggling wiggling mouse. Then grabbing the corner of the trap with a pair of long pliers carried it all with the scared beast struggling mightily. But no little squeaker, I have no intention of eating you, in fact don't want to touch you, and won't put you out of your scared misery, but rather bad naughty mouse, you will have a nice few days to think about your sin of entering into a Subaru Forester in a nice dark cat safe environment until the garbage truck comes Tuesday morning. And won't it be nice to go to mouse heaven while smelling all manner of garbage.

Mouse in the house er Forester roof After a leaving my 2007 Forester at a resort trailhead while I backpacked into the wilderness, I spent a last night sleeping in the vehicle as I very much like to do. All night heard what is likely a hyperactive mouse running around in between the interior plastic roof molding and the metal car body roof. Don't even know what is up there between the two, maybe some insulation? No clue how the critter got into that space. Any ideas how? Maybe crawled up through the air ducts for the heating cooling system? Did see a little black turd on a seat so expect it can get into the dash area and then into the vehicle interior. Did not have the doors or windows open except for a short half hour or so when leaving or returning. And that was during the day when mice sleep. So must have gotten in somehow at night while I was away entering through the engine compartment? Think will put one of those sticky glue pad traps inside tonight then if nothing, leave car out in the sun all day hoping the heat drives the critter out. It is most definitely NOT going with me on my eclipse road trip to Oregon next week.

Just installed a Unelko Pedal Jack anti-theft bar on my 2007 Forester. Web cost $35 plus shipping so not too expensive. The unit is about 16 inches long and prevents depressing of the brake pedal thus making drive away theft difficult due to the transmission brake interlock. http://www.amazon.com/Unelko-Pedal-Jack-Automatic-Transmission/dp/B006CVZN6C The web description: --------------------------------------------- Pedal Jack attaches to your brake pedal to give you unbeatable security. The patented locking system's tempered steel plate makes it drill-proof, while the highly-visible yellow handle keeps thieves from even attempting to steal your vehicle. It's constructed of heavy duty, electrically heat-treated tempered steel so it's saw-proof and cannot be fractured by freon gas. Pedal Jack is fully adjustable and fits vehicles with automatic trasmissions. --------------------------------------------- The more familiar The Club steering wheel bar can be defeated rather easily by hacksawing through plastic steering wheels then slipping it off. The brake pedal steel is obviously hard steel and more awkward to get at. I'm not familiar with how hard it is to saw through various steels. So my question here on this board is: How difficult would it be for someone to saw through a brake pedal bar? Doing so would allow Pedal Jack to slip off. On the Forester the bar is a robust rectangular bar. Of course if a Repo Man was after one's car, this kind of thing would hardly deter them. My interest is making the notion of driving off my vehicle a difficult task for the opportunist low life. oh yeah, the ol 1994 Legacy with 303k be still taking me to work.

Over the years it has consistently passed Cal smog well except when the above mentioned CEL was on. Over a decade ago, over about 3 years, 3 spark plugs blew out of the engine apparently due to earlier someone's damaging tune up work. So have had 3 helicoils put in the plug cavities but that seems to be quiet since. Then six years ago had the water pump and thermostat go out. I was worried a few years ago that the end was near. Brought it down to a local dealer and they seemed to think the engine might belly up anytime but were not very specific as to why except they wanted to perform about $2k in fixing oil leaks or even better sell me another vehicle. Showed front and rear cam seal oil leaks and other leakage around the left valves. Had it steam cleaned then determined the valve cover gasket was the only serious leak with the cam seal leaks minor. So had that fixed elsewhere and have lived with the other two issues just adding a pint of oil every few weeks. A couple years ago the radiator blew a big hole at the bottom and that was replaced. I'll keep using it to commute to work and tend to drive on city streets instead of freeways in order to keep stress down. Otherwise I use my 2007 Forester especially on weekends.

Yep little piece of duct tape cured that bright light that was turned on for a few months several years ago. Being next to the speedometer we all look at compulsively, that got old quickly. I finally had to get it fixed to pass California smog for annual registration but left it on in case it ever decided to come on again. And it did maybe three years ago for something I figured out the code for then after repair used the method posted on this board to clear it off. Now if I could just duct tape those torn CV joint boots instead of replacing the shaft and joint for the Nth time !!!

one more mile 299999 rolling going 300000 Paid cash when new fall 1994. Lots of mountain road trips all times of year. A beater inside and out, running a bit stiff like an ol man. With a few days to go gave the engine a $100 steam clean. Now what am I going to do with the two long torn constant velocity joint boots? Something cheap it has to be. Only using this Subu for my daily 46 mile roundtrip work commute in order to not pile up mileage on my 2007 Forester that has 70k.

grossgary, yeah I bought an oring a few months ago but haven't bothered to put it in yet since the leak is trivial. Gloyale, thanks for that useful advice. On my page 19 schematic the single contact green connectors called Read Memory are (B54) BR black with small red stripe and (B55) RB red with small black stripe. B54 goes through some bulkheads into page 21 where indeed it shows a ground. B55 just goes to C12 on the Multipoint Fuel Injection Control Unit that is nearby under the dash with a mob of yellow connectors going into it. The single contact black connectors called Test Mode are B53 also BR that routes directly to B55 plus B52 Or orange that routes to C13 on the MPFI CU and elsewhere. Besides verifying the wire colors on those connectors matched the shematic including their routing to the correct MPFI CU pins, I also ohmed out that B53 connects to B55. However did not consider directly grounding B54 as you suggest but will do so today since indeed an open in that wire network to the ultimate grounding point would cause such a fault. If the light remains off, it could mean the MPFI CU input circuit for the grounding has been fried.

For the last month, the Check Engine light on my 94 Legacy 4wd AT sedan has been illuminating most times that I drive. The light is never on for the first minute after starting the engine cold but rather usually comes on before I have driven a mile or two and then will latch on solidly until I turn off the ignition. If after the light comes on, I turn off the engine within the next 10 to 20 miles, it will usually turn back on within a minute of restarting the engine. However at least some days after running beyond that mileage, it stays off. I am certain it is not due to a mechanically intermittent connector or wire nor does it seem to be heat or cold related. Unfortunately I cannot read out any engine fault codes via the flashing CE light process as the light never turns on at all although I did perform both actions described with either the two black or two green connectors at: http://www.surrealmirage.com/subaru/engine.html That includes the test with the two green connectors mated that should have turned on the light but did not. And have disconnected the battery to bleed off any old codes or weirdness in that system. I also have the Engine and Electrical sections of the original shop manual that includes the schemtaic. Thus verify the wire jacket colors on the noted connector were correct to positively id what I was doing. I have been working on complex hardware electronic repair and testing for three decades so am confident I performed the reading functions correctly as the process is rather simple. Of note test codes used to be readable as recently as 18 months ago as a Subaru dealer did so and then a few months later a smaller repair shop complained that they could not read out my codes but at that time I suspected that was due to their method. So lacking ability to read codes, this is why I'm hoping someone might recognize the above symptoms and narrow what I might focus at. My old sedan has 274k miles and does have some other problems. A right rear cam seal is leaking minor oil and the front left cam seal is leaking a slight amount so I need to add a pint of oil about every 1000 miles. Two of the spark plugs holes stripped a few years ago and helicoils were installed by some pros. At the time the dealer worked on the car, a thermostat and water pump had gone bad. Sometimes after driving down a steep mountain slope, upon leveling out, oil seems to briefly move into a cylinder and then smoke comes out of the exhaust for a short time. Otherwise it has been relatively healthy and in fact I always pass the smog tests here in California easily. If I don't receive any pointers, will probably bring it down to someone with experience, maybe a dealer, and have a general tuneup to eliminate obvious problems. The car is however beyond the end of its expected life so I am not willing to put much into repair or mainenance.

Thanks much. Given the name "camshaft support" I was afraid that end piece might actually support the shaft in a way that if it was removed without some special support considerations, the shaft might shift in a way that I might get in trouble. So I just need to buy a new o-ring, remove the two bolts, inspect and notice how the old o-ring is seated, clean the cs piece, carefully install the o-ring into the camshaft support, and bolt it back up?

Thanks for for the inputs, especially Imdew. Note when I bought the car I also got the Subaru section 2 (engine) and 6 shop manuals so am using its diagrams to make sense of what I am looking at. As mentioned, I went ahead and got the engine steam clean ($80) done and that was most worthwhile. Immediately it was evident some of the oil was coming out of the old valve cover gaskets on both sides. So had those replaced, and the spark plug seals replaced along with an oil and filter change for about $150. Since then have driven about 400 miles and now I have a fair idea of where it is seaping from 4 cam locations. The seapage is so minor that none drips down below my vehicle but rather gravity seaps over various parts, and dries to a heavier grease. From below, I can only see the front engine areas because of the blocking rear crossmember. From above for the rear engine areas, I can easily see the right side areas, however the left are mostly obscured by hoses and pipes. The most leakage of the 4 seems to be coming out from the bottom bolt of the RH camshaft support that is in the rear. Some drips down onto the rear crossmember where it dries. Some is coming out of the rear left cam area too though much less. Because of the difficult view, I need to do some more work to identify that. On the left, that is driver's side, looking up from beneath, I see signs of some seepage coming out of the seam where the cam housing enters the plastic rear left timing belt cover. And likewise on the right cam side see a tiny amount came out the seam of the right passenger side rear timing belt cover. So yeah as the dealer said both my front cam seals need replacing and now I have a better idea of how little oil. In spring of 2008 after a long desert road trip while my engine was quite grimy and dirty, a Subaru dealer while replacing my water pump that froze up, thermostat, and timing belt, seemed to think I had an internal head gasket leak and my engine might overheat. Think they had done a compression check so recommended a cylinder head job too along with replacing a list of seals and gaskets that cost way more than the vehicle was worth. Except for the above external seal and gasket leaks the engine seems to run well. Easily starts, idles smoothly at 600 rpm, and is fine on highways. No oil in the coolant, coolant overflow, and clean invisible exhaust. In fact my smog tests have always shown exceptionally low values. So my plan is along Rooster2's advice as I'll let it slowly leak as is for a year or two while I save some money to be able to buy something near new. For $6, I bought a gallon of Purple Power, engine degreaser and with a brush on a long stick then water wash off will monthly clean off areas where the oil and grime builds up. And will keep a couple pints of oil in my trunk to occasionally add. What can I do about the right rear RH camshaft support leak? That small end piece has two large mounting bolts and then an o-ring just inside. Any other good advice would you folks have? Dave

My old 94 Legacy 4WD 2.2L sedan with 250k miles has had an external head gasket oil leak for the last 8 months. If any is leaking into the water jacket it would have to be slight as my oil color seems ok Until I recently managed to get a job, I didn't have funds to get that fixed. I've been local to from work driving about 45 miles a day, none on freeways, keeping my speed under 55mph. Occasionally some oil manages to drip onto the muffler that then smokes and that is a fire concern until I can degrease it, washing it off. Although the car is certainly near the end of its lifetime, I'd prefer to put as much as $2k into it if that could add another year of two of life and allow me to save enough to buy a reasonable late model used car. I've been the sole owner and the engine has been well serviced and relatively healthy. As a poor American peon another choice would be to gamble doing nothing, hoping the problem will not get worse or catastrophically fail in the year it will take to save enough for a reliable newer used car. Or a third scary choice that leaves me immediately exposed in these tough economic times of junking it and gambling my meager limited savings iimmediately spending $5k on some questionable used high mileage vehicle. Note I don't have the expertise to adequately evaluate less obvious engine problems on old cars. I've done some homework on what needs to be removed just to get at the head gasket and parts that would be replaced in the process, so have some idea how serious that work is. One thing I may do in the next few days is get the engine steam cleaned so I can more clearly see exactly where the leak is showing and also to make it more palatable to working on when I take it in if so. My automotive engine knowledge is modest. I'm wondering if this repair is a foolish waste of my money and if the wiser path would be one of my above two options? Dave