Fairtax4me

The 6 bangers have them. And you still have to service them every 100k miles IIRC.

We used to have a tech at work who had the largest assortment of hammers of any tech in the company. His mentality was... It won't come off, get a bigger hammer.

Where are the pics? LoL, just kiddin. That's a heck of a project. I decided when I had my manual apart that if any of the bearings on the pinion shaft ever go bad I would just ditch the trans. One of them cost more than a used trans, the rest were much cheaper but the labor involved to get to them is just simply not worth it. I suppose if a new (used) trans were $1200 it might be a different story.

Oh ok. I must have missed the "minuscule" part in the first post. Been working 12 and 13 hours days this week. Not used to it at ALL. When I get off work I feel like... You should be good to go. But if you feel like it remove the oil pump and make sure there isn't any sealer plugged up in the feed galleries for the cylinder heads.

You need to drive that poor thing more often. I hope you change the oil every three months. You'll have bigger problems than a low battery if you don't let the car stretch it's legs once a week at least.

Then we need to start chasing a no idle problem rather than a no start. The first thing I always tell people, check for vacuum leaks. What maintenance have you done in the last 6 months?

Do a compression check and leak down test.

The brown sludgy stuff is just that. Brown sludgy stuff. It's dropout. There's really no way to prevent it, it just happens with age. It's caused by a reaction with air. Only the coolant in the reservoir is exposed to air. A small amount is purged as the engine warms and gets sucked back into the engine as it cools. So eventually it will build up in the engine and radiator, but it will generally be only a small amount.

What do you mean by "wont start"? Does it crank but not fire? Or does it just click when the key is turned?

It depends on how much. It should be hardly noticeable except in direct bright light or sunlight. If it looks like metallic paint then you got a problem.

Don't flush it with anything. Remove the rod caps and visually check the bearings for damage. If you want to go the extra mile tear down the entire block and check the mains for damage, but if the rods check out OK it's probably not necessary. Silver in the oil is not a good sign, but it may not be indicative of an imminent failure. It's probably from the bearing that was working on grenading itself. Again, DO NOT FLUSH the engine. Thinning out the oil with solvents will do more harm than good. Put fresh oil in it, and a fresh good quality filter. Run the engine for about 15 - 30 minutes at varying RPMs, with no prolonged idling, then change the oil and filter again. The cam may have seized for any number of reasons, but probably oil starvation due to some form of blockage in the oil gallery. There are a lot of threads here on the boards dealing with seized camshafts.

You'll have to cut a hole to get access to the nut. That's about all there is to it. Whether you go in from the side or from the top is up to you, but either way will be fine.

It could be. Could also be a tire balance issue. Can you tell if there is any grease left inside the boot? If there is grease and it doesn't look like it's full of sand then the axle may be fine. A thorough cleaning and a new boot and grease will suffice. If there is no grease, replace the axle. Lots of people have trouble with after market cv axles. There are a few brands though that people have had good luck with. I believe one of them was something like MWE. Do some searching here and you should get some good info on that.

If you can't feel it on the mating surface I wouldn't worry about it. What I mean by "feel" is, slide a straight edge over it, and if it snags then get a file and knock it down. Be sure to carve towards the chamber if it needs smoothing out.

No reason it can't be done but the car will be a complete slug without the turbo. Turbo engines are generally lower compression than their naturally aspirated counter parts. Power would suffer quite a bit compared to an N/A engine, and I suspect fuel economy would as well. The turbo actually increases the efficiency of the engine. When driven correctly turbo engines are entirely capable of higher mpg with slightly more power than a comparably sized non-turbo engine. But that hardly ever happens because its so much more fun to drive it like you stole it.

I did something dumb Friday night. Out at a friends place about 20 minutes out of town, and I'm driving back in around 12:30 am to go home. I get stuck behind this SUV doing like 40, and decided to take a short cut. It's a road that cuts off of the main road we're on, it runs over about 200 yards to another main road which intersects with the first road so it makes a little triangle in the woods there. And people quite often use this little offshoot road to pass slow pokes. So I get to this road, drop into 4th gear and hang hard right to make the turn, except I misjudge where the edge of the road is. See where this is going? Right wheels drop off into the ditch, and I mean literally DROP. It's about a 2 foot straight drop into a drain that runs under the road at this corner. It's only about 45° corner, which is normally easily doable at 40 mph. Unless you miss the road. So anyway, the right side of the car just plain drops. BAM! It hits the road, tire bounces back up out of the ditch (more of a hole), car heads on two wheels for the ditch on the opposite side of the road. Wheels drop back onto the road, pull hard right on the steering wheel to keep out of the other ditch, car straightens out and the excitements over. I coast for about 50 feet and don't feel anything significantly wrong, so I gun it and keep going. So I get past slowpoke at a price. Car feels OK and I don't see any plumes of smoke billowing out behind me from some possible massive oil leaks so I just drive on into town like nothing happened. Put it up on the lift at work the next morning and I find... scrape marks on the tow hook (given, they scrape on everything) Scrapes on the control arm in several places, scrapes on the sway bar, a nice huge flat spot on the passenger side exhaust Y pipe heat shield, and about 2 oz of asphalt jammed into the sway bar end link bracket. The only thing noticeably out of whack is the rear control arm bushing got shoved back about 1/8th inch, apparent from the nice shiny rings around the bolt heads. Loosen the bolts and the bushing pops right back into place all on its own. As far as I can tell it still drives just exactly the same as it did before. So great job to Subaru. For as flimsy as the body of this car feels, they sure built the chassis right. It held up great to a good lick, that for sure would have taken the control arm clean off any other "cheap" car.

For an old car that's kinda to be expected. Maybe it could use a valve job and a re-ring, but honestly it's probably not worth the effort. Is that causing your trouble with the loss of power? Probably not unless the compression is significantly low on all 4.

There are a couple O rings on the older 2.2 heads. The rear of the drivers head has a big rubber plug seal. All can be seen here as numbers 3 and 6 http://opposedforces.com/parts/legacy/us_b11/type_5/engine/camshaft_and_timing_belt/illustration_1/ The 2.5 as far as I understand you just use sealer like Qman said. The gurus here like Anaerobic sealer. Really weird stuff, it won't dry if left to open air. Any that gets squeezed out into the engine won't dry up and become a potential blockage. But what is on the mating surface of the cam plug will dry to bond in about an hour.

Oughtta say on the bulb somewhere. GE has a bulb application guide on their website somewhere you can look the car up and see what it says.

Don't have to drive it anywhere to check codes, its OBD1. Just connect the little plugs and read away. Which also makes sense why there might not be a code yet, OBD1 was so slow you practically had to set it on fire before it would realize something was wrong.

How far have you driven since the fluid was changed?

Just get a decent clutch kit and have the flywheel turned by a machine shop. Might cost $50 or $60 but it's better than paying $250 for a new OE part.

Maybe there's something wrong with second gear? Have you tried third? No CEL? If not, does it illuminate during the bulb test when the key is turned to run? Also wondering why the engine was pulled to change VCGs? Seems like a lot of work for something relatively simple. durrr... brain fart

Clutch life depends on a lot of factors. Break in, driving style, flywheel condition, clutch quality, rear main seal or oil separator plate leaks, transmision input shaft leaks... thats about all I can think atm of but there are more. Diakin/Exedy makes the OE clutches for Subaru, as well as Valeo. Either of those can be bought on Ebay or other online sources and will be comparable to a dealer bought clutch kit at less than half the cost. Sachs makes a "heavy duty" clutch kit for Subaru which should hold up to more abuse than a stock repalcement. They also have a less expensive OE replacement alternative. Both can be found at Rockauto.com. Sachs builds OE clutches for many European makes including Volvo, Saab, BMW, and Puegot, among others. The AWD models pretty much have to slip, because the wheels sure aren't going to.

Obviously too much fuel/ not enough air. We know that it will idle with a vacuum hose disconnected but how does it drive with it like that?