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.

Thanks for the advice and info. We'll see what happens this afternoon.

Sounds like a good procedure to me. Thanks. I'll go that route next time. Do you know which way the coolant flows in the 2.2... in the top and out the bottom or vice verse? thx- kudd

The "proper burping" is an interesting term. We filled top radiator hose, then put on radiator, filled radiator from both sides ( cap and vent hole) ran to temp ( 10 minutes idle, then 5 mile ride) and then topped off with maybe 1/2 a cup. Next day, drove 20 miles at 60 in 3rd gear (3800rpm =/-)... temp guage started to rise after 20 miles, air in cabin started blowing cold, pulled off road and gauge went back down, air blew hot. I continued 10 more miles to work. Checked lower radiator hose and it was cold, after 30 miles. Once cooled, radiator took less than 1/4 cup. Expansion tank was at it's full line level. Drove home the 30 miles that afternoon, put it in 3rd for last 12 miles to bhring rpm up, plus detour up a steep hill just for grins and sure enough, guage started climbing when I pulled into my driveway. Bottom hose was cold again, but cabin air stayed hot this time. Expansion tank was 2" from overflowing. Later when cool, expansion tank is back down to full line, and radiator took maybe a tablespoon. Anyhow, would all of that constitute a "proper burping"? Or is there some technique I'm not aware of? T-stat is a new OEM. I have heard that the little air vent in the flange should be near the heater hose connection on the water pump. I didn't pay attention to that when I installed, not thinking that it mattered. I plan to check that when swapping radiator this afternoon and rotate it if I can. Cap did not occur to me. It does hold pressure I know. Of course if I swap radiators, adjust t-stat position, and swap caps....and it stops overheating I won't know which one did it...but I won't care! And yeah...we did the head gaskets on Sunday.... For my curiosity, which way does the coolant flow? Into top of radiator and out the bottom? Or in the bottom and out the top? Thx gang. I'll keep you posted, and I am curiuos about what more can be done to get the air out of the system.

So, you say I can rule out heater core as a cause of engine overheating which is as I was suspecting. That brings me to radiator, as it's the only thing left that didn't get swapped when the 2.5L came out and the 2.2L went in. Everything else connected to cooling that I can think of was exchanged with the engines. I rinsed and flushed the radiator and it seemed to pass water quite nicely..... but still she overheats so it gets swapped tomorrow and we see if that stops the hot flashes. Thx folks!

Yep...she's hot to trot. Question is, will an impeded heater core cause an overheat situation, or will it just cause cold air to blow into the cabin?:-\ You don't wanna know the rest, but if anyone has any thoughts on this part of the story I'd be grateful. Thx tons- kudd

Around here we lost a lot of old parts cars to the scrap yard last fall when scrap metal was so high. So now, is real hard to find parts for GL/Loyale types. "Tis a crime and a pity! We loved our 1st Subie...88' GL wagon w/hi-low, but it got the Vermont cancer and rotted away.

sheeesh! Gotta wonder about engineers..... take a perfectly good design and muck it up! But, thanks... now I know what to stay away from!

Your EJ22 is interference? I always thought only the EJ25 had that problem.:-\

This link gives a lot of info about size swaps, including speedometer variance. http://www.1010tires.com/tiresizecalculator.asp

Soooo.... ethanol is gas with alcohol in it, and dry gas is just alcohol. So this must mean we people in the northeast burning 10% ethanol don't need to worry about our gas lines freezing up anymore and we can forget about adding Heet ever again. One good thing about the stuff I guess.