daeron

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=40203&highlight=flasher http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=11307&highlight=flasher i dont know if youve read those threads, but they seemed like they might help you a little?? i feel bad that i cant recall how to describe it more, because the more i think about it the more i recall getting more frustrated than I have ever been at a car when trying this myself. and believe me, i can get frustrated.... don't forget that even in broad daylight, you WILL need a good bright (but small) light up there, and a stubby philips head screwdriver. I can be repetitive, but i can be repetitive also.

Having the old locks re keyed really is not that expensive. I would at least get an estimate before bothering to change all the locks. However, I feel your pain, at the moment as it were. Switching the cylinders should work, but I cant say that with any subaru-specific knowledge in this particular arena. 99% of the cars I've ever seen could be done that way, though. Pull the door panel off and take a look for yourself. The answer should be obvious enough.. and if there are any pitfalls like a vital 20 year old plastic piece likely to break, hopefully someone on the board will post here before you break it I highly doubt it, though. As long as you are reasonably gentle with any old plastic hardware (software?) involved you should be kosher.

sounds like maybe you should wait until you hear the rational numbers on the other diffys (diffies?) expressed, so you too can calculate to the third decimal place.

matt: thank you. I hold some of those people in pretty high regard.. I have often had the impulse to make a post like that. for some reason, I chose yours. When you think about it, a LOT of people off-road in these things, and they don't really talk too much about steering racks.. at all.. I hit a curb and ed a tie rod end a few months back and was asking the same questions about the durability of the steering rack.. its pretty rugged. But easy work to replace. That is nice, because finishing it makes you feel less dumb for having (hit a curb, spun around and hit something, insert reason you feel dumb for having broken this here)

okay, okay, okay. Like I said, I didn't THINK I was confused... :-p That's why I just went ahead and posted it, even though I totally lost track of what I was trying to say. Sorry, I kept getting interrupted. Good to know I wasn't as far off-base as you thought. Thanks for the explanation, though.. I knew all of it, but i didn't really "understand" in that kind of detail. I had a math teacher once who was fond of the analogy of a toilet.. everyone knows how to flush a toilet, but do you know how/why the toilet flushes? I now know how this toilet flushes. The awesome part about that metaphor is the odd context you find yourself using that phrase in sometimes.

I'll take a nice porterhouse off of #27.... Oh wait, youre only offering parts of the CAR....

I get roll pins at my local mom and pop chain of auto parts stores. Don't forget, it is a motor you did ALOT of that work to.. and alot of it could be swapped onto another vehicle by changing the suspension components over.. or you could always 4WD your car.. Playing with transmissions and gearboxes is no big deal AT ALL... Actually cracking them OPEN is something different entirely. All those gears.. until I actually tear into one myself and turn the shafts, and see how they work, it all gives me the willies, and until that day, I will remain convinced that "transmission guys" must have strange dreams at night. Oh, and BTW.. best bet for getting the grain of your palms clean?? hot water, Dawn, and a good old fashioned terrycloth rag. Dont forget to flew your fingers while brushing the backs of them, to get the grease out of the creases that fold up when the finger is extended. LOL, I just said, "when the finger is extended"

people helping people

Not yet. I haven't given up on reading it through and trying to grok.. but in my mind a timing belt is a chain. All my conception of chains and gearing in a chain-based (not straight gear) system goes back to bicycles. I understand totally why the sprockets do not line up.. but what I am trying to grasp is how the length of the belt can alter the gear ratio of a system.. each cam sprocket has X teeth, and each crank sprocket has Y teeth. Correct? (I presume so for the purposes of this post) So, it shouldnt matter if one side has to go through sixteen tensioners and idler pulleys, both pairs of sprockets (cam/crank = "pair) have the same gear ratio. As for relative POSITIONING, i never had a problem with that, that bit makes perfect sense and did as soon as I saw the front of my first multiple cam engine. Obviously, if the sprockets are each supposed to have a given attitude relative to the crankshaft, and they are different, swapping them would cause improper cam timing. (ignoring the camshaft driven disty) Essentially the point of this thread is to ensure that everyone puts the right one in the right place. Rib counting only comes into play to make sure that your 1/2 rib is on the correct side, then.. right? May as well mention that I am perfectly clear on the fact that you are counting ribs only on the "tense" side of the belt... i don't know better terminology for it, though. I no longer even know if I am confused. I never THOUGHT that I was.. On a side note, im working at a BBQ place now, and all this talking about ribs makes me feel like im at work. I may, or may not, have covered the point i initially wanted to cover when i started typing this post. I don't even really remember my point on my last post. I am gonna go eat, and unwind from work. Mods, if this post was gibberish, feel free to delete it, just send me a copy so I can try to re-gain the train of thought that has now so thoroughly derailed.

Youre the BOMB!! why replace what you can rebuild? I am ecstatic to have finally found a good auto electrical place right down the street from my house. the ONLY guy left in town who still sells all that crap, is less than 2 miles from my house. a bike ride away

changing my flasher drew my first blood on my soob, and that was months after a timing belt change, brakes all around, rear bearings... the works. It is up there. Underneath the steering column, just to the driver's side of the car from the steering column, and above it. I had to turn my hazards on, and listen AND FEEL for the tick of the relay... since they are side by side that made it easy. I remember I had to unscrew a philips head that was holding the bracket in place, and i remember i did NOT bother screwing it back in. close your eyes, and feel your new relay. Now look up there with your hands and try to find two of those, side by side. If you think you have it, try unplugging and see if your lights still all come on. With the relay unplugged, they will NOT, so if you pull a plug and your lights no longer come on at ALL, then youve found it. get a stubby philips head and drop that thing down. As I recall, i had to unplug a few components just to get wires out of the way. This flasher is the ONE THING that Fuji Heavy Industries decided to screw us on. EVERYTHING else is easy, but this is a PITA to replace. Good luck. EDIT I *thought* this had come up recently.. heheh. Seriously, though, it is up there. try unplugging things one at a time, and trying your signals. If you unplug and they still light up, that was the wrong one. Plug back in, try again. there are only so many relays down there. By the way, the only way i have EVER been able to do ANY work under a dash is to move the seat ALL the way back, recline fully, and climb in headfirst. This is not fun, but its what has to be done. I did it in a day, but it took me all day, several "cooling off" breaks, and copious amounts of attitude adjustment. Good luck, again.

did anyone else realize that this thread, which has seen 23 posts today, is TWO YEARS OLD?!????? 14 posts in december of 2004, and 23 today. what do you MEAN, hotly debated?!??!?!? Personally, I use canola oil. TOD has utterly vanished, i have more power, its eco-friendly, renewable resources and all that jazz.. AND its lowered my soob's cholesterol levels by 30%!!!!!

I always look for the OEM screwdrivers. Those double sided screwdrivers fit a remarkable range of phillips head screws... One time I found a NIB aftermarket disty cap, rotor, and spark plug wires.. all in boxes, in a bag, in the trunk. paid $3 for all, Score! :banana:

Couldn't have said it better myself. 'specially that first part.

yah, i wouldnt fret about the cost if youve already paid it. Like you said, now you know what you have. Besides, when are you planning on selling this car? not the predictable future, i assume. Plus, now you have been up to your armpits in your subaru. what COULD come up now that you cannot deal with, outside of major engine/trans issues? congrats, now go take a shower. I bet you're greasy

you may wanna try more than 200 miles. most of the recommendations ive read have said 500.. but what do i know, MY soobie has the 3 speed crapomatic tranny in it.

the turn signal will cause it to flicker regardless of the output of the alternator (unless its like 200 amps) Don't forget that the output of the alternator is utterly dependant on the speed at which it is turning.. a 90 amp alt and a 50 amp alt are both rated thusly with the engine RPMs at around 2000-3000, and dont go higher than that. At idle, there isnt as much of a difference between the two as there is at speed. You may have some sort of short somewhere in your rear defrost circuit, that does seem like a pretty significant drop... However, my soob has no voltage meter, and my old Zcar, which did have an ammeter, did not have a functioning rear defrost, so maybe i just dont know nothin about how much those things actually draw.... If you think about the turn signal though, it does make sense to see a pulse in your voltage when they blink. Watch what the meter does when you hit the brake light, or turn on your headlights, start using the AC fan, or even honk your horn. hope this helps! something tells me you probably don't have a problem at all, just some (very very slightly) unrealistic expectations. Happened to me, too, when I installed my 90 amp maxima alternator. Life goes on

the difference between the two water pumps is one of pulley location; if you get the "wrong" one the pulley will not line up properly with the others. Since you are going to have the old one in hand when you go to the store anyway, just check it in one of two ways.. First, you could just set them down on the counter, side by side, with the mating surface down, and eyeball the height of the pulley. Theres like a half inch difference, its not minimal. Alternately, one style has bolts to secure the fan and pulley onto the nose of the waterpump... so the pump nose has threaded holes. The other style uses studs on the water pump nose. I can remember all that, but i cant remember which one (taller or shorter) is the most common, or any other detail to tell you. at least now i can say that i helped (a teeny tiny bit) build a trike :- )

why does that make you sad?

the best trick i have heard is by far the "rope" trick that i learned from general disorder, here on the forum. Take a spark plug out. get some cheap nylon rope. stuff it in, until you cant stuff anymore in. then just turn. Eventually the piston will run into all that rope WAY before it bottoms out and can start moving down. this works on any motor, anywhere, no matter how much is or is not still attached to it, and it is NO harm to the engine whatsoever. Using your starter to bump it free works, sometimes.. but if you have enough leverage, the rope trick works no matter HOW stuck it is.

i hate to nitpick, but how much were the timing belt cover gaskets? since the covers themselves seem to be optional by consensus, i found the inclusion of those gaskets a little humorous... above and beyond that, though.. now THATS what i call a TUNE-UP!! nice job, kinda doing the 100K mile spa treatment.

how many teeth do the crankshaft sprockets have??? Because it would seem to me, if the sprockets had say, 23 teeth (or any other odd number) than NATURALLY, when you looked at the two on the nose of the crankshaft, one sprocket would have the teeth where the other sprocket has grooves, and vice versa.. take two five pointed stars, and rotate one 180 degrees from the other. One will have a point at the top, and two points at the bottom.. the other will have two points at the top (with a V at the 12 o clock position) and one point at the bottom (at the 6 o clock position.) A question that others have asked in this thread and I will re state plainly.. if both crank sprockets have X teeth, and both Cam sprockets have Y teeth, then the relative length of each timing belt should make NO difference in the cam timing.. That makes sense to me, and to others, but we are trying to see if what makes sense to us is misconceived somehow. Can the timing belt length alter the relative "gear ratio" from one side to the other? that seems wrong, to me... sometimes thinking about timing belts for too long on end gives me a migraine. im gonna stop reading this thread now thanks for the info though, guys. Nothin like Data!!

Yuk. I still have to turn on my window AC when I go to sleep at night, :-p I hate winter.

My understanding is, seafoam in the oil should be drained and replaced shortly. along with a new filter. Adding it is to clean your crankcase, but you arent cleaning anything until you drain all that crud out. there are people who are rabidly opposed to adding any detergents to their motor oil, but what are you gonna do, cant make EVERYone happy. I would suggest doing your top end with a sea-foam treatment as well. That is how the stuff has always worked best, for me. Remove a vacuum line (typically the one going from intake manifold to brake booster, but any vacuum line connected to the intake manifold will do) and have an assistant start the car while you hold your finger over the line. Have your assistant keep the RPMs up while you put the open end of the vacuum line into a cup with seafoam in it, and once it sucks up the prescribed amount, plug the line off. Shut the engine off, and let it sit for about ten minutes, then crank her back up. be ready for lots O smoke, as this is all the carbon deposits that had built up on your cylinder head burning off.. this method soaks the entire cylinder head with the solution, rather than simply adding it to the fuel system and only cleaning that part. as for fixing the problems that have arisen, fuel filter would be highly recommended. If you have no idea how old IT is, you may well have fuggered it up by pouring the solvent thru there.. old paper filter material can sometimes just give up, yanno? Chances are it is something like that, that got "shaken loose" by your fuel treatment.

height control, lumbar support, and is the headrest adjustable front-to-back on the passenger's side? i cant recall, I havent ridden shotgun in my car that often :-p good luck straightening yours out. My initial point was, yah, these seats are sweet.. hope you get to keep yours. Honestly, its somewhat amazing how one can usually take a seat out of a car and literally rebuild it, springs, foam, upholstery and all.. IF you are willing to spend the cash. more thought went into making them than into say, a La-Z-Boy....