skibumm100

I jumped to a conclusion before getting the facts......first time for me. Before I went to the dealer to pick up the long list of parts that are required to do the job right, I pulled the passenger side cover off to witness the flacid, dead belt. To my surprise I was greeted by a taut, timing belt that was still on the sprockets. I had my wife bump it over and everything looked like it was turning. I wonder if the fuel pump died? My wife was driving the car when it died and she said it made a ticking sound before it stopped running. I plan on checking for fuel first and then the compression. Not sure why it won't start. I still plan on buying the belt, water pump, etc. but may wait until spring to change the belt.

1998 Legacy GT 2.5L ......Um ..... the timing belt lasts exactly 146,538 miles. Bought it used at around 80,000 miles. I don't know if it had the belt was changed before I owned it. Towed it home last night. I'll assess the carnage this weekend. The timing belt has been on the "to do" list for quite some time but had too much going on. Had to fix the torque bind first. Now I have something else to add to the list: 1.) Rebuild bottom end of pick-up truck engine, GM 5.7L...lost oil pressure last August...no time to work on it. 2.) Pull heads off of Legacy and see how many valves and pistons are wrecked. Inspect cylinder walls. Repair and reassemble. Guess I need to pull a car out of the backyard and put it back on the road, whatdya think....the '89 Bronco or the '90 Saab 9KT??

Same problem with my car. Here's what I do: 1.) wiggle the steering wheel and try to remove key if that doesn't work..... 2.) while sitting in the driver's seat, rock back and forth while wiggling the automatic shifter lever....I'm serious...... 3.) remove key. My car has a lot of quirks but they sound like very common quirks. I'm gonna look under the dash and fix my shift lock problem permanently....Thanks NuclearBacon!

I've got a 98 GT. I was thinking of storing my spare head gaskets in there. I've also been thinking of put a toaster oven door on the front of it so I can cook while I drive. J/K With a N/A car an intercooler doesn't make sense as stated above. The temp difference while driving down the road probably wouldn't be that much different. If you want to try an experiment, buy or borrow a digital temp meter and stick a thermocouple on the bottom of the hood and one in the cowl area and see what the difference is. Or just use a regular thermometer.

Hmmmmm......one of the smart one's. I believe the current popular thought is to change the ATF every other Wednesday. Seriously though, change it once, run it around the block and change it again, then report back. You won't get all of the bad fluid out of the tranny pan. Still more inside.

He works at AutoZone. He's just guessing. If you go back and say it didn't work, his next suggestion might be to stand on one leg, rub your tummy and hum the Star Spangled Banner.....then try it again.

Dehumidifier water is fine for radiators if your dehumidifier has an air filter on it, as most do. Their are no minerals in it. You won't get minerals off copper tubing. Maybe a trace amount of copper, but I doubt it. Don't waste your money on demin water. You don't need RO quality water for a radiator.

Mercedes? I know on the Saab boards Mercedes is thought of as the best. I've never used it so it's second hand information. It's supposed to be friendly to aluminum. It's pH adjusted and not horribly expensive considering it's for Mercedes. I personally run the cheap stuff with RMI-25 added every year. BTW, my dehumidifier in the basement supplies me with more coolant water than I'll ever use.

Find someone with a R134 cantap with a hose and guage that you can borrow. I think they're less than $15 at the parts store if you feel like buying one. Follow the safety instructions. It's possible that your system has discharged itself (leaked out). Especially if you've been moving the hoses around much. If it's discharged, just carefully unhook it. If it's got pressure, then you have a decision to make. BTW, if you leave it charged, it will eventually leak out to the atmosphere anyhow. It's the old "pay me now or pay me later" deal. The only difference is one's illegal, one's not. IMHO, Mother Nature get's the dose either way. Good luck with the swap! Anybody see the TV show "Dirty Jobs" on Discovery when he worked in the wrecking yard where the shred and crush cars? The employee who worked at the yard reaches over with bolt cutters and cuts the pressurized A/C line and blows refrigerant all over the place. What an idiot. I wonder what the authorities thought of that? Caught on camera on a national TV show. They even show it regularly on the teasers for the show. Check it out.

Guys, thanks for the replies. I'm gonna replace the 2nd O2 since it would be the one setting the code and I haven't replaced it since I've owned it. Sounds like I need to find a replacement cat also. Are there any troublesome parts in the vapor recovery system that commonly fail? That could also lead to a fuel smell on start-up. Any good afternarket cats out there? If carbon is a problem I will probably run some Seafoam or GM Top Engine Cleaner through it......before I replace the cat.

My 98 Legacy GT w/AT was binding up bad and I thought I had fried the clutches. It felt like the tranny was going to fall out when you made a tight, low-speed turn. When I put a fuse in the FWD socket under the hood the binding disappeared. All I needed to do to fix the problem was change the AT fluid a couple of times. I also Seafoamed the AT and ran it for a couple days, drained and filled again and added some LubeGard. It's been running a couple months now without any binding....lesson learned, change the ATF regularly. Hope your problem is as easy to fix as mine was.

I found the info for my OBD II scanning software. It's made by Alex Peper. Here's a link to the site for the software. http://www.obd-2.com/

Nipper, I replaced the front O2 sensor with a Denso "OE replacement" 3-wire sensor. Do you know who manufactures the OEM sensor? When I said they are active I meant that they respond fairly quickly and bounce from rich to lean. They aren't slow to act. The front one is more "active" than the second one, as it should be. I still have the original one, assuming it's an OEM sensor. I didn't see a huge difference in the way it acted with the new one so the old one might be fine. I will put the laptop on it and check the mV readings, I don't remember the numbers right now. I need to check who I got the software and cable from, also. It's been a few years since I got it. The desktop icon says "Car Code OBD II". The ECU temp sender read around ambient temp if the car sits over night and then rises gradually to around 190 deg F when it's warmed up. It sounds about right to me. I was hoping it was the ECU sensor that was bad. It doesn't look like it's the culprit. Gregg

Thanks for the reply. I didn't want to jump into changing the cat because a lot of times codes like that can be a symptom, not a cause. I just want to make sure I cover all the bases before I change it out. I've never owned a car that had to have a cat replaced and most cars I drive well over 150K. Might not be the case with this one. I don't smell gas once it's in closed loop.

Does anybody have any suggestions? Sorry to bump but I need to get this fixed.

Hi guys, I've got a 98 Legacy GT, 2.5L w/auto. I bought it used a couple years ago with about 125K on it and started having a CEL light after about 2 months of ownership. I'm getting a CEL saying bad catylytic converter. I've changed the front O2 sensor (put in a Denso unit) and run Chevron techron fuel injector cleaner through it. New air filter, etc. I have OBDII scanning software on a laptop and don't see anything out of place. Both O2 sensors seem active. I reset the CEL periodically and it comes back, sometimes less than an hour later, sometimes days later. I think the code P420. I do remember it's for the front cat. When the car is first started, it runs really rich for a few minutes. Raw fuel smell. I know it should run somewhat rich when cold, but it seems REALLY rich. This is the first Subie I've owned so I don't know if it's "normal" to smell raw fuel when cold. I can watch the ECT as the car warms up and it seems to be reading correctly. The thermostat also looks to be working right. Are there any secrets to making this beast run right? I guess it's possible the front converter could be plugged up. I just don't want to throw a bunch of parts at it unless I know I'm headed down the right path. That's why I came here to seek out expert advice. BTW, as far as Subie message boards go, this one seems head and shoulders above the rest if you drive a Leggy. You guys rock....in advance.

In general, I agree with your dad regarding plastic vs. elastic deformation of the bolt. Once you go past the elastic portion of the load curve, the bolt will permanently lengthen. How does this pertain to the re-use of the bolts? Rule of thumb on torque to yield headbolts is to use new ones everytime. It doesn't mean they will fail if you do re-use them. Each time you make the bolt yield, it will get a little longer. The thing you have to be careful about is that once you make them start yielding (stretching), it takes less force each subsequent time to start to make them yield, which means less clamping force on the head which could lead to premature failure of the head gasket. The force curve drops off after the yield point until failure. The yield point is at the top of the force curve. Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about re-using them once, maybe twice if money is really tight. Depends on who is doing the work and how many cars I have running and licensed at the time.