Tech1967

How about the halfshafts as torsion bars upon which the "weight" of the engines power rests. Maybe take in all the posible areas of play in this setup. Play in brakes, tires, joints, mounts. Maybe look at the torque converter, and the effect of misfire. Yes there is a certain percentage of misfire in all engines no matter what state of tune they are in. Yes component weight could play a part in this, maybe a change in harmonics or something. I have some trouble believing that a couple grams difference in all of this could be the sole cause though it may accentuate an existing condition.

We have to remember not to think of this in a simple one cause kinda way. I am sure there is more than one cause all by itself that results in this failure. I'm sure some movement plays a part. Some chemical cause too. I did find out something interesting when I looked over my cooling system and will post pics and explanations tonight. Walker has a point about the walls getting thinner with each increase in displacement and that will have effects on both movement and cooling.

Try the local dealerships. They quite often have stuff that's not worth it for them to fix and sell. It might be worth it for you to fix if you do your own work.

Looks like they used a die grinder and a coarse cookie. Fast but NONO. Keep it coming, this is good stuff.

Forgive me if I seem rude but Nipper are you teasing him?

Filter is just a sock (or mesh disk?) that fits below the electric pump on the fuel pump unit. Floor trim behind the rear seats comes up and the pump unit should be on the passenger side. Don't force anything cause I think you need a special tool to release the fuel line. We don't touch them till the 96000km service so I haven't opened one up.

There is a difference between what you get at the counter and what happens in the back. You want the guys name and you want to know that he's working on your vehicle. You don't want another guy that runs to THE GUY for help, or a shop helper/apprentice (do you have an apprentice program down there?) working under his supervision. Don't assume that because you asked for him that he's doing the job. You might want to buy him a beer and discuss your car. You might find out that due to the condition of your car that it's kind of an open ended job that he has no way of knowing how long it might take or how much it may cost. The counter will rarely pass on this kind of opinion on as it tends to scare away the customer.

Ask around town for a tech that's good with electrical/electronics. I was scared to put the ecu in the first few nasty electrical problems I did cause if you can't be sure you found what killed the first computer then there is no guarantee the second one won't go. They don't sound sure.

These guys seem to have some beefy stuff. http://www.cgperformance.com/index.htm Found one of these performance builders that included reworked coolant flow as part of their mods but it was limited to the transfer pipe/upper rad connection. Damned if I can find the link now. It also may have been just for custom engine/rad mounting. Here's the link to Cometic gaskets http://www.cometic.com/ I figured if the performance builders get good endurance under harsher conditions it MAY help us get more bang for the buck under normal conditions.

Bump...plus something I ran across while looking to see where the performance guys beef things up. The prices are insane and beware of the pictures. The semi-closed and closed block pics are identical and there are a few sohc heads with dohc labels on them. I'm trying to find the gasket makers site. There are stud kits and t-sleeves. I don't know if the botched info is due to them or their web guy so I would want to know a lot more about them before buying. http://www.xcceleration.com/index.htm I suppose I can take the time to peel off my water pump and make a detailed description on coolant flow ...the engines on a stand waiting for some love anyway. Interesting or waste of time? One response and that's how I'll spend my next couple coffee breaks. Ooops...link above is their home, link below is the page the search engine gave me. The home page is more impressive. http://www.xcceleration.com/engine-packages-raceengines.html

Bump.

Some kind of good (ie not oil) lubricant between the head of the HG bolts and the washers will allow the washers to seat on the head and the bolt to spin smoothly during the torque process. How many people ignore the pop and jerk and how much does this effect the accuracy of their torque? I've got to admit to doing it a time or two because everything else was looked after (tap & die, cleaning etc.) without it going away. I was never happy enough to stop looking for a solution though. PS No Soobees were harmed during the gathering of data, just Chryslers and they took it well.

Maybe the driver rear is the hottest part of the engine and causes that HG bolt to lost tensionson? Maybe a proper job requires complete teardown and block machine? I see more oil leaks on the drivers rear than anything. The block has a lot of real thin surfaces and maybe little local variations in deck flatness won't be caught with the straight edge and feeler guages. Maybe Subaru only pays 6 point something hours to do both gaskets and the repair gets done too fast. I'm willing to suck up lost time for the best job I can do but is everybody else..? Chrysler had some stuff to spray on their mls gaskets that was supposed to work like a hot damn. On the topic of Chrysler I know that their warranty time for head gaskets was dropped because somebody discovered that they could disassemble a whole lot less, lift the head and dump a gasket in there to make time. They didn't want to pay a whole lot more for these jobs than the guys were taking.

Original installation instructions direct you to install the button in the left lower dash trim below the diagnostic connector. D. System Power-Up and Programming The system will not operate until the following steps are completed. Re-connect the negative battery cable. Turn the ignition key to the "ON" position (do not start the engine). Insert the 10-amp fuses into the module WHITE/BLACK and PINK wires. Open the driver's door before proceeding any further. Press and hold the programming button. In fifteen (15) seconds the door locks will cycle three (3) times to indicate that the system is in the transmitter programming mode. DO NOT release the programming button. Press the LOCK button two (2) times on one of the transmitters. The door locks will cycle each time a button is pressed to confirm programming. Repeat step 6 for the second transmitter. Release the programming button and turn the ignition key to the "OFF" position. E. Installation Testing Note: If an incorrect response to test procedure is observed, refer to the corresponding installation step and verify installation. Close all vehicle doors (with dome switch set to "doors" - middle position). Press the LOCK button on one of the remote transmitters. All vehicle doors will lock. The parking lights will flash once. Press the UNLOCK button on one of the remote transmitters. The driver's door will unlock. The vehicle courtesy light and DOOR AJAR indicator will turn on. The parking lights will flash once. Press and hold UNLOCK on the same transmitter. All doors will unlock. Repeat steps 3 and 4 with the second remote transmitter.

The tensioner style you describe can be a pain to adjust if you've never seen one. I'm a dealer tech and since I've only seen one of them come through here and I'm picky I had the damn thing apart 3 times before I was happy (just the timing gear, not the whole job). I found it best to adjust the tension first then get the cams where I wanted them. Get the cams in roughly the right spot and snug up the adjuster till you can just get the bottom left (looking from front of car) idler and the toothed idler off and on with the pin in the tensioner. Take those two idlers off and set the final cam position (if they are out a tooth) then reinstall the idlers and pull the pin. Spin the whole deal around once and make sure your marks still line up. I would have known that but only entered the dealership enviroment 4-5 years ago. Found the warning too. If the drivers side intake cam spins counterclockwise while the exhaust cam (bottom) spins clockwise then you probably have a disaster on your hands.

When you're set up to do the timing belt though and the cams get away on you they aren't going to hit the pistons because they're all halfway down. The valves can hit each other if the cams go the wrong way when they spin. The timing marks were all lined up properly right? Single line up on the intake cams and mark on t-belt crank pulley straight up to the mark on the crank sensor mount.

Part of the procedure for diagnosing piston slap as per the bulletin is to pull the #4 (drivers rear) injector connector and see if the noise goes away. And in answer to the question I think you might be asking - when you are all lined up to change the belt all 4 pistons are halfway down the bore.

With the DOHC there is a warning in the factory manuals not to let the cams rotate a certain direction in relation to each other or the valves will hit each other. I've had them slip a few times but as luck would have it they always seem to go the right direction. #2/timing cover area tapping noise is possibly your tensioner. Almost all the tensioners that come through my dealership are the one piece units. If that's what you have then they are horrible for the tensioner body knocking on the block* (in the interest of simplicity). Inspect the tensioner where the shaft comes through the seal. You are looking for leakage past the seal and contact on the back edge of the bore. check this pic: http://www.vanbran.com/bug/images/conversion1/tb-tensioner1_l.jpg The black mark at the back is where it's been hitting and that will knock! Subaru asks dealer techs to rule this out before doing repairs for piston slap. A little side note here. There have been one or two that I forgot to put the pin in before disassembly. I pushed the pin back slowly in the vise as per destructions and reinstalled them since they seemed ok when they came in and passed physical inspection. They knocked after leading me to suspect that they don't appreciate being fully extended in their middle age. Good luck.

I think if the cat was bad, you'd notice. The rotten egg smell would be...overwhelming. That used to be true but obd 2 requires 90% catalyst efficiency I think. Now they can fail without rattleing, stinking, or reducing performance. Nipper makes a certain amount of sense though because there are certain upstream requirements for proper catalyst functioning. You can run into a garbage in garbage out situation which is why I make sure everything is going right in front before condemning them. A quick fix to make the light go out may be fine in some places but during the years I spent doing Aircare repairs it would have made a lot of people mad. No pass, no drive.

9 out of 10 times code 420 means something different here in British Columbia but since you seem to be talking about your car... I check both o2s waveforms and the gas analyser when it was available to see if one was trying to tell a lie. I'd check the flow at the tailpipe to see if it was low at 2500-3000 rpm, gotta be bad for that though and you'd probably hear the difference. Final step if I had a temp gun would be to look for a substantially higher temp at the rear of the cat compared to the front. Sadly as a dealer shop I'm still missing two of these tools so I understand the difficulty of duplicating this in the driveway. Good luck.

I'm pretty sure I saw a thread in this forum where somebody switched their struts for ones off a Forrester. If it was for an Impreza then I don't know if it will help you with the Outback. If it wasn't this forum then try this one .. http://www.subaruoutback.org/forums/index.php? Good luck.

Realistically the problem with this is the amount of lift you want. If you look at the allied lift kit they stop at 4-6 inches. Most Subaru lift kits use blocks to lift the body off the entire suspension/drivetrain. That's a lot of machined blocks and it becomes impractical after a certain point. Keeping the Subaru suspension/drivetrain will limit the amount of lift and power that you can put through it. The only other way to get lift is to put in longer struts from another model (it's in this forum somewhere). Lifting an IFS correctly is so expensive and complicated that you see the serious off road guys cutting it out of their domestic trucks and installing solid front axles. I've seen all sorts of bodies put on to 4X4 pickup/suv chassis but then it's no longer the Subaru you want is it? I gotta admit though I've had dreams of a tube buggy with mounting points for a Subaru drivetrain and portal axles. That would leave all the room you want for tires (no body to speak off) and would keep big tire stress away from the drivetrain with gear reduction at the axles. Wouldn't be the Subaru you wanted anymore either. I did spend a long time wishing Honda would make a pickup and look what happened. So maybe if we all get together and wish??

So you're gonna drop your Subie on top of an S10 frame/drivetrain with a Buick turbo six cyl? Why stop there cause there are guys that build those engines up with 600 horse or more. http://www.hotrod.com/techarticles/engine/buick_v6_turbo_block/ You'll still need to do some cutting to make the tires fit.

dealers do "belt only" jobs as well, so make sure you're getting what you want no matter where the service is getting done. do not assume dealers will do the best in your situation with what you want. Too true. A lot depends on the man at the counter and the tech in the back. Some guys will check the flat rate book and say t-belt 2.2 hrs. ... t-belt tensioner 2.2 hrs. ... that will be 4.4 hrs at $80 an hour please. To be fair about the idlers years ago I wouldn't have had the experience to check them as thoroughly as I do now. You learn the weak points of what you see the most of. Are you a dealer guy or an independant Subie guy Gary?

Injector cleaner for retail sales are generally weaker due to liability concerns. Wynns 88 in a silver metal bottle works really well but is hard to find ( where I am anyway). Don't put it in with any less than half a tank and don't use it regularly. With the car running on a gas analyser you can watch the emissions drop quite a bit over 15-20 min. If you're lucky it can even fix problem engines that seem to need a lot more work. Wynns also makes a tranny fluid flusher that does an excellent job (expensive machine). It drains fluid from one tranny cooler line and puts the new stuff in at the other side of the connection so you get 100% fluid change. My old chevette was the guinea pig to see if the machine was worth it and the difference in fuel milage could be noticed on my 1/2 hour commute. Wal-mart here has one but I wouldn't let them do the job. No place that runs ads that say techs required experience not necesary should do that kind of work.