CNY_Dave

No pressure holds them together, but yeah, they are still touching. If you went slow enough I bet you could drag it 1000 miles- I wonder how slow you'd need to go?

I have used the permatex ultra-grey to good effect on my H6 oil pan. On that car the pan is a little cover that goes on at the bottom of the pan, it actually has to hold in the oil. At the time it was stated to be effectively the same as the fuji-bond. The ultra-gray isn't really like silicone at all.

I've heard some had luck dpoing the drain/fill thing, maybe adding an additive, then doing a bunch of slow figure-8's. My torque bind is progrtessing, I gotta go look that up. Have already donme the drain/fills.

I have a 2005 forester non-turbo, 2.5, 205,000 miles. I have several oil leaks, one being from the head gaskets. It looks pretty bad but the leak is worth living with, doesn't leave any drips when I park although the crossmember is coated. The 1st head gaskets were replaced under warranty at just under 60,000 miles, and the 2nd set are no better. My other oil leak was through rust on the oil pan itself. This happened to my '03 H6 outback as well! I may have leaking valve cover gaskets, but unless I get to needing 2 quarts per 5000 miles I will live with it. This car has an oil cooler, there is a simple O-ring under the cooler that can be replaced fairly easily. Mine may be leaking, the head gaskets leak too much to tell. The dealers are being driven very hard by corporate to increase revenue in the service department, my dealer is pretty good but would still try to sell a 3500 job to fix every little leak that could be reasonably managed by a few hundred in repairs, leaving a few small leaks.

Swaying is also influenced by CG on the trailer relative to its wheels (which of course affects tongue weight). Complicated issue, many 'sweet spots' where things work out, more where they don't and there's only one way to find out. And, things may work really great until that one tire gets a bit soft... It's like everything else out there where things can get complicated, general rules keep everything safe with huge margins for other parts of the causality chain to fail and it's still safe, cut those margins down a bit and it's still safe but much less robust when one or two things go wrong. Cut margins a bit further and it seems just as fine until a weird quartering wind hits you and then a semi goes by. So use your judgement but remember, you can do everything right, a truck could sideswipe you and cause a crash with tongue weight having nothing to do with it, but every insurance company out there is looking for the excuse to not pay up.

The 40-50 buck mightyvac looks pretty good, and I'm happy with my green liquivac from amazon/tractor store.

Sounds like vacuum cleaner used to pull vacuum in an airtight container of some sort, then a small hose from that container sent down the dipstick tube (or fill usable on some cars). Fine as long as the oil isn't full of gas!

Did you check all the suspension bits, especially control arm bushings and strut tower bearings? I'm losing track...

I had a really bad inner, didn't clunk at low speed but sometimes did shake like a unbalanced wheel at speed.

I got one of the hand-pumped vacuum-tank units and it makes this process so much easier...

Don't know myself. You can put a voltmeter on the leads and check.

Just make sure they aren't spongy because they are pumped up just a little all the time, if the pedal doesn't travel back far enough to uncover the piston passage in the master cyl the brakes will drag when they warm up. Spongy could be unwanted mechanical motion (something flexing or moving).

I see a filter and I want to paint it black...

I'm not that discerning on what I put on, just interested in the science/theory of these things.

Great way to keep the outer rust ridge from developing... until the pads meet!

Particle size can be too big or too small to matter- if it can't touch 2 metal surfaces sliding past each other at the same time, too small to matter. If it gets jammed in the gap between 2 sliding surfaces and one of them is soft enough to embed the particle (plain bearing), it's too big to matter. I'm actually interested in the bypass condition, as a matter of academic interest- could debris be dislodged and sent past the filter?

I have a repairable H6 4EAT, only $50, but buyer pays shipping

3 ft long 1/2 inch drill bit up the tailpipe and thru all the muffler baffles?

Something about the bypass always bugged me- is there any possible 'backflush' when it opens, sending trapped particles past the filter?

I nursed a bad front diff bearing for a while with some Lucas additive- the thicker stuff slung up off the ring gear right up onto the bottom of the dipstick, pushed it right out!

These computers are set up right on the edge, the cat can be good, no vacuum leaks, AF mixture in spec, and it'll still trip an 0420. After an actual problem is ruled out, nothing wrong with the anti-fouler method, since there's no actual problem.

Where the driveshaft goes into the transmission there is a sleeve bushing in the trans. The nose of the driveshaft turns in this bushing, if the bushing or the nose of the driveshaft are worn it could get a bit out of alignment and vibrate, might only do it sometimes. Can probably be checked simply by attempting to angle the front driveshaft piece that goes into the trans. If this is a problem, the vibrations would to a degree be sent down the driveshaft and into the rear diff, and would be more noticeable with stiffer diff bushings. Putting in the FWD fuse make any difference? (Long thread, did we ask that yet ) Here's an idea- put a hose clamp on the driveshaft, this will throw it out of balance. Does the 'cadence' of that vibration, and how it changes with vehicle speed (at about 4x driving speed) seem similar to the vibe you are chasing?

Retired mine up around 275,000 because at the same time it had a head gasket leak pressurizing the cooling system (would have lasted quite a bit longer I think), and a hatfull of things to fix for inspection, every rubber suspension bushing was shot, needed 4 struts and springs, and every steel brake line that wasn't already replaced due to rust was just waiting to rust thru. And it was really rusty.

Was vibe at idle in drive a good indicator of that condition?

If the wheels have very hard corrosion built up where they meet the disks, it can give a vibe that is impossible to wheel-balance away. I literally had to take a flat-ended round punch and put it on the corrosion and tap the punch with a hammer to get rid of it. If there is a lot of crud on the disk, on the side facing the wheel or the side facing the hub, can do same thing. With that type of vibe, it can be very subtle until 2 or more wheels 'sync up'.