daeron

do you have one of those "wife" things? Because a good parts car is a wonderful thing to keep around, if the stars align in your favor for doing so.. I know that location and marital status are the two most common reason why "'I' can't have a parts car" one of those things I don't have to worry about, myself.. I have had a lovely driveway decoration for the last three years now and nobody nags me about it. my landlord chuckles about it once in a while (in disbelief, but eventually he will see. He's the one who killed it anyhow.) Anyhow, THAT one is a knife that cuts both ways, and I think I will leave it at that.

don't worry about it, the holes in your cylinder heads that let the air into the combustion chambers are smaller. The car needs the MAF it came with.

It sounds to me like you have a blown head gasket, now at the very least. It may or may not have been blown when you picked it up, but something caused an initial overheat, and if you got the temperature gauge up to the red zone at all chances are at least 98% in favor of a blown headgasket. Probably much higher, given that you overheated it repeatedly. I would try to get your money back. An older turbo car is not a wise choice for a "cheap first car," too many things to go wrong. Find a non turbo 80's soob, SPFI, and you will be far better off. Fivespeed, if you can drive a clutch. If not, learn, heh.

if it runs, you have applied too much total "paint". By "paint" I mean, whatever your mixture, theres too much liquid on the metal. It is a fine line to walk between an even, uniform coat and running. Also, when it comes to dilution, there is a window so to speak; if you dilute slightly more than "optimum" it will be easier to lay thin coats on quickly, or diluting slightly less than "optimum" would give you a slightly thicker coat before running.. BUT, this "window" is, as I said, fairly narrow and to stray outside of it will cause negative results. Again, I am repeating what others have said to me. I always feel guilty talking about something I have read alot about, but never done, so I try to include the disclaimer

My understanding (not having done this personally yet, but I have read about it in like sixteen bajillion different forums) was that you gradually went finer and finer on the grit of sandpaper, until after your 5-7th coat (depending on how aggresively you sand your coats) you wind up wet sanding with like a 1200-1600 grit.. and thus, get a mirror shine... ..But seriously, if you can find the link I posted to hybridZ.org about this earlier in this thread, and click on it, EVERY POSSIBLE QUESTION is covered there seventeen ways to sunday, and THAT thread (on hybridZ) has a link to the moparts.com thread that "started it all" as the saying goes.. the Moparts thread has even more than the Z-car thread, so.. its all in there. Collected epxeriences of dozens of people using every different kind of method, and also people of every different skill level; this job can come out SERIOSULY good looking (those are the pics that drive the popularity of this idea) and it can also look crummy, if you don't do your prep work well or mix the paint and mineral spirits wrong. As far as ratio or thickness of paint; it varies depending on atmospheric conditions and location.. BUT, the rule of thumb is that you want the paint, once it is applied to the surface with the brush, to all slick into a single smooth bead, and when you take the brush away it should look not unlike the top of a *slightly* overfilled glass of water. In other words, you are using the mineral spirits to adjust the surface tension of your paint so that it just holds one contiguous bead across the entire surface being painted.

I cry Faugh! on the owner for such a crummy looking engine bay on such a BEAUTIFUL CAR!!! I hate to say it like that, because its a BEAUTY OF A BEAST, but man.. couldn't you (yah, i know, not YOU, heh) spend some time cleaning the engine bay once in a while? maybe re paint the intake snorkus? Rub a little tire dressing on the hoses and rubber bits? It isn't that much more difficult to keep a clean engine bay than it is to keep a clean exterior.. We have oil leaks and dry rot to fight under the hood, rust and paint fading to deal with on the outside. Whatever, about that, though.. STILL a knockout car. Thanks for the pics mang!

..well, for the time being, you could just stick a vise grip on there..... *dodges wrench thrown at head* More seriously, uhm, can you say Junkyard? (I just put things like window cranks in my pocket, if im buying something else or the yard charges admission)

Thanks for the input, and I will certainly keep that in mind. I have had jobs rebuilding and repairing various stuffs in the past, most notably a tool repair shop where I was working on hydraulics, air tools, and welders/battery chargers... The simplest of the workbenches in the shop, yes, but every job has its tricky bits. Anyhow, I know I am not working on my Huffy here... and I certainly do not imagine any mind boggling long-life out of my homebrew "reman" axle, but my plan is to take my axle apart, examine it, regrease it and put it back together if possible, go out to boneyard, and find the bits I need. If, in the end, I "need" to replace the entire axle with the JY axle, I shall; if I can get away without it I would rather go that route. My big motivation is this: when I had to do the rear brakes at 110K, the bearings slowly wound up dying one at a time, at a BAD time for me. Right now is also a bad time for me; and I don't feel like doing bearings on the front even if I COULD afford them. (A "new" axle is similarly out of my league; i just cant find a gainful job down here and its getting old, but thats a whole nother, "dont wanna leave my hometown even though the inflation has destroyed it" story.) SO, if I can avoid taking the bearing assemble apart, SO much the better.

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=78563

Rob, Many thanks for the correction; I made that post shortly before I finally admitted to myself that I was giving that whole "sleep" thing a miss for this diurnal cycle. My points were well conveyed, and the disclaimer regarding the terms, I felt was adequate apology for the way I simplified things. Will edit original post.

sounds like you probably have a bad common ground wire or ground point, (maybe painted over something?) and maybe have a plug or two wrong? The rear lighting circuit on a car is typically grounded all in one common location; I can only speak from general knowledge, not subaru specific. Wish I could help more, but thats what the dimming and probably the non functioning lights are all about. The mixed up lights coming on when they shouldn't, is probably a plug plugged in backwards or something absurd like that.

I tried to just edit my first post in this thread, so it wouldn't bump it.. but I couldn't for some reason? Anyhow, since I submitted this re write up to the USRM, and I have now run into an axle problem of my own, and GLoyale helpfully supplied me with this scan, I figured it would be wise to make sure it ended up here for posterity.

posted a link to that post for submission as an appendix to ed rach's axle guide thread, and went and made sure it was in ed rach's axle guide thread as well, for posterity. Thanks for indulging my lazy, morning off, half fast efforts.

good answer. Danke.

first off, real quick (ive looked on one side but not the other, im running driveway to PC and back heh) I noticed no pads on the shaft of the PS axle, but by cooling grooves on DOJ housing are you referring to the "crown" shaped affair right at the trans output, above the cylindrical housing of the DOJ? If so then "pads" or no, this is the one I have.. and secondly, are you telling me that I need to get matching parts for the joint that I have, or that it would be best to get the beefier joint, as long as it will fit between my trans and my axle shaft? Reveen: is that a safe bet that these are NOT OEM axles then? that was more or less my meaning by "no idea what that means," I was unsure if that was liable to be an OEM selection or if that was probably an aftermarket boot, or more.... EDIT I ran back and looked at the driver side axle shaft, and the only thing on either of them that resembles a pad is a single raised ring about an inch up from the outer CV joint boot. is that the "pad" you're talking about? The more I think about it the more I think I have read this before.

Huzzah! thanks for the heads up. I was planning on disassembling and trying to see if I could just hit the JY up for a few replacement parts and not have to yank the axle out on the wheel side at all... I haven't looked at it on the jack long enough to see how I plan on taking it apart, but someone on another axle thread told me it was easy enough to do by simply unbolting the LCA and pivoting the hub assembly outwards after removing the pin. I can't find this thread; but I have been around a chassis before; I don't anticipate difficulty in figuring out how to do the DOJ reman without undoing the wheel side.. I figured if I can use "new" seemingly OEM parts to re-manufacture my seemingly OEM shaft, and get a new boot, I should be about as good as a remanufactured shaft.. in any case I need to buy some time before I buy an axle; I am sure the pieces I need will be cheap enough at the boneyard. The devilish counted splines (the dreaded, "do i have 23 or 25? why cant I figure out the search function? HELP ME!" of newbie post fame) ARE at the other end of the axle, correct? wheelside?

Allright.. I determined a few weeks ago that a minor front end shimmy that surfaced was caused by a bad DOJ passenger side.. the boot has been blown out since before I got the car, and I have had it for three years and 40K miles. Anyhow, I slopped some grease and the shimmy more or less went away.. I am now feeling a different sort of twitch, and also hearing a "cv joint creak" when I make sharp turns, but the creak sounds more like its coming from the wheelside CV joint on the driver side?? I can't be certain of this, and the other boots on the car are all in good shape. Car has 140K on it, and the outer boot on driver said said "rockford," no idea what that means. No real reason to suspect they are anything but OEM axles, but cant tell. So what are the odds that the CV on the driver axle decided to go at the same time as the DOJ with busted boot on the passenger side, versus.. what are the odds that the passenger DOJ is making a creaky-clack noise during sharp turns that could be mistaken by the driver to sound like they're coming from the driver side wheel? The CV in question feels OK with the car jacked up, no excessive play in any axial direction, and zero play radially compared to the wheel... Basically all my drivetrain experience thus far has been limited to drivetrain PROBLEMS I have had, and the only ones I had to fix were on cars with U-joints, not CVs, and also RWD. I just dont *really* know things until they break, heh. I don't know if I am being overly optimistic when I hope that the noises I am hearing are actually from the passenger axle which has a problem that I know needs to be addressed.

crap, i didnt think about that, safety kill switch. Rats.

you said pull your sisters crank, huhuhuhuh....

Awww, C'mon.... No one in VEGAS is out to rip you off!!!!!!

hope you did good

FTW bikes taught me how to wrench.

whatever you try to do, you should be looking for the source of the problem with the key on, in a "stall" situation. In other words, next time you find that the pump isnt working, instead of turning it off and tweaking things, leave the key on. Then, pinch and massage the wires along the length; wiggle every connector. Knock the relay. Find something that YOU do, that makes the fuel pump cut on. With the key on, as soon as you do something that cuts the fuel pump on, then you know you have found the source of your problem.

We *do* kinda need to throw this around a bit more.. not to needle the OP in this particular thread, im just sayin...

7K was the number that I have read thrown about mostly, too.. but I have ZERO personal experience with 6K+ RPM; my car is an auto and I refuse to use anything other than Drive, so it never gets above 6K. it DOES see 6K damn near every time I have to get up to speed tho.. 35mph shifting out of first is a strange thing in a fourbanger.