kudd

Thanks! Yeah, somebody just told my son that their 2005 owners manual said to use "coolant conditioner" ( sounds like stop leak to me...) sheesh...

Thanks again. If anybody else has any thoughts I'd love to hear from you. Too bad they didn't just stop improving things around 1990......

Thank you. Do you have any thoughts on the rest of that year..as in tranny issues or anything else worthy of note? Thank you- kudd

Hi- I run Subies with 2.2L engines. My son is considering a 2005 with a 2.5i engine. I know the older 2.5 had lots of head gasket trouble. Has that improved with the 2005 model year? Any other issues we should look out for? Any insight woill be greatly appreciated. Thx- kudd

Just a thought and probably not related, but..... we changed the dash out on a '98 and the battery/alt light didn't get plugged back in. That is enough to keep a perfectly good alternator from sending charge to a perfectly good battery, thus draining said battery in less time than it takes to get to work with lights, wipers and defrost on. So, if anyone else has a bad alternator after dash work, check the idiot light connection. There ya have it from the peanut gallery.

I've had pulleys come loose from poor tightening after t-belt job...too many times before I realized what was going on. The key has gotten trashed, but not the key way luckily. Unless I'm more confused than I think I am, the key way would be the crank shaft and a rather major deal to replace. If it's just the key you can get a new one and insert with the new pulley. Then tighten with a pin tool or chain wrench or something. Be careful if you use thread locker because too much can goob up the pulley and make it hard to get off next time. Yeah.... I make a whole lot of mistakes, and I'm living proof that education costs money!

I'm sure this has nothing to do with your situation, but..... We recently swapped a dash in a '95 LS and the charge system stopped working. I also noticed that the gas gauge wasn't working, but wasn't sure it had been working before the swap. Anyhow, long->short of it is that there was a loose connection to that side (left) of the dash, which includes the charge system idiot light. When that idiot light is disconnected the alternator cannot put the charge to the battery. Of course, I'd already swapped in an another alternator ( we had one in inventory) before it occurred to me to check the dash connection.

Air box sealed tightly? We have some broken clips on a '98 and it hums where it doesn't seal tightly around the filter...well, before the screws it did.

That helped wake me up!

Good idea. Thanks!

sheeesh....twist the wires. Why didn't I ever think of that? Amazing what ya can learn by reading!

My '90 w/214k 2.2 5MT misfires when wet until warmed up. Has me thinking coil pack maybe as I recently did plugs and wires (tho not subie wires....)

Whenever my car sits for awhile the brakes suck at first, but then come back into it. It's like they glaze over a tad with lack of use. Not what you have I guess but is a common subie thing from my experience.

Yeah...I'm jealous! It'd be a pile of rust with gas spewing from the rotted tank here in VT........ Nice!

I don't know much... but we had a similar starting problem turned out had to do with an old remote start set up that had been mostly removed. Any chance you suffer that? Ours (was a 95 Legacy) had a rats nest of wires under the steering column. Got rid of that mess and it worked fine after that.