Fairtax4me

In my experience most TPS codes are because of a dead spot in the sensor. This can cause the engine to surge or not respond at all. Its not hard to replace it, but you should post the actual code here for some further information before you go buying one.

What do you mean by "lost 5th"? Will it not go into 5th? Does it go in but then pops right back out? Does it stay in but when you give it gas the engine just revs but you get no go? Yes and no. Technically its a Transaxle. But either way ,automatic or manual, transmission or transaxle, it's what transmits the rotary motion of the engine to the rest of the drive system (transfer case, differentials, axles, etc.) .

Some good useful info about antifreeze. http://www.sancarlosradiator.com/antifreeze_coolant.htm And a link to an Endwrench article about Subaru cooling systems. They explain the difference about subaru antifreeze http://endwrench.com/images/pdfs/CoolMay05EW.pdf

Cleaning the MAF is easy and costs $5. Might as well start there. Does it do the same thing if you accelerate hard (put it on the floor) on flat ground?

Do you ever hear any pinging (spark knock) when this happens?

Sink a couple 3/4" long self tapping sheet metal screws into it at either end and that should cure it.

This "rocking" sounds like it might be a misfire. My Lincoln does exactly what you're describing when there is a coil going bad. But it usually sets a code for a misfire after a few times. Have you replaced the fuel filter recently?

Doesn't really matter as long as you sand completely through the marks left by the previous paper. At the end the marks will be so fine that they will polish right out. I wouldn't go any lower than 300 grit. I would have probably started mine with 500, except I didn't have any. 400 was the next closest thing I had. Usually the grains used on course paper are less uniform. Meaning that the grains may be drastically different sizes. That's going to leave some scratches deeper than others, which makes it more difficult to sand through them. You may think it will save some time to use a courser paper at the start, but in the end it will just take longer to remove the scratches left by the course paper. It is very easy to go wrong with a dremel. Some of the chips you may just have to leave. Trying to cut them out with a grinding or sanding wheel you run the risk of making the hole deeper, and that will be even harder to sand through, and it could end up looking worse than just leaving the chip there.

Those are the only two belts I will buy, unless I'm in a pinch. Rockauto should carry the Gates. Autozone usually has the Gatorback available for order online. Locally You can probably find Gates at a Federated Auto parts store, or Napa.

The dual range shouldn't affect the transmission going into gear. The clutch shouldn't have anything to do with it if it still won't go into gear with the engine off. Not ruling it out altogether, but it seems pretty unlikely. The reverse crunch... I've heard many a car do this, from as far back as I can remember. A little trick is to bump the synchro on first gear before you throw it into reverse. I'm not sure if they're the same ratio in the Subaru, but on most cars first and reverse are close enough that it gets the gears spinning close enough to the same speed to let them slide right together without grinding.

Have the wheels balanced first. Do you feel any shuddering or shaking on hard acceleration from a stop? ( I know acceleration and corolla don't really belong in the same sentence )

All you need is a door lock actuator. Make a junkyard run and grab one out of practically any car. Or you could find a car (look in GMs) that has an electric release and grab that one.

All you really have to do is put some wax on them whenever you wax the car. It will do the same thing for headlights as it does for the paint, protect them from UV damage, acid rain/hard water, bird droppings, bugs, road grime, all that good stuff.

The fans are supposed to cycle. If you mean that they are running continuously, even though it appears that the engine temp is normal, then it might be a bad temp sensor. The PCM controls when the fan(s) come on usually with a separate sensor than what the temp gauge in the dash uses. I can't imagine that Subaru would make it any different than any other OBD2 car I've ever worked on.

Could be a lot of things. My legacy feels about like the Titanic when I take any kind of curve at speed. But it has worn trailing arm bushings, worn sway bar bushings, worn shocks, springs. Just about everything in the rear suspension is worn out come to think of it. Did you have any extra weight in the back of the car for this trip?

The pictures don't do any justice to just how much of a difference there really is. There is a very clear pattern to the beam now that can be seen when I'm driving. Before it was just a bunch of light scattered all around out in front of the car. The lows could still use some improvement though. I have no idea how long these bulbs have been in the car. I'll probably end up buying some Silverstar bulbs for it. This plastic headlight problem has been around for about two decades now. Only recently have I heard of State governments cracking down on this with safety inspections. I think here in VA they started failing cars for oxidation on the headlights in 2006 or 2007. If it was REALLY bad before it was kind of left to the inspectors discretion. I kinda doubt well ever see any type of legislation concerning plastic headlights though. Even though if you look around you'll see about half the cars on the road today have this problem.

Here are the before/after shots. Pics of the light output... There is nothing special about the way these pics were taken. I just set the camera on auto and let it snap the shot. So they are a bit darker than actual, but you can still see a clear difference in light output. I'll try to get some better shots of how it actually looks now a little later. Low beams before Low beams after High beams before High beams after All in all, including the time taken to round up all this stuff from the shed and drag it all out to the driveway. This took me about an hour start to finish. I already had everything so my cost = 0. PlastX is about $8 for a bottle at most parts stores. An assortment of 3M sand paper will run you about 5 bucks. Comes with 5 sheets or so ranging from 300 or something like that to about 1500 IIRC. A pack of 2000 grit will be like $3. So for under $20 You get nice clean headlights, you can see (for the most part) at night when you drive, and the best part is they make the car look so much nicer. I'm sure I'll edit this a few times, but for now, Questions? I'm not the best writer, so if you see something that needs clarification, let me know.

A couple people asked for this in my last thread. So here it is, my guide to sanding and polishing your yellowed or faded plastic headlights. What you'll need... Headlights :-p Wet/dry sand paper in varying from about 400 to 2000 grit. A bottle of plastic polish A small bucket of water or a spray bottle with water A buffer with a medium or fine cutting pad, and a high speed polishing pad. Masking tape. A hand full of clean, dry, cotton cloths So your headlights look something like this... First off, not only does it look bad, but it also cuts the light output of your headlights which can make it hard to see, and even downright dangerous to drive at night. And in several states, lights in this condition will fail safety inspection. There are several fixes for this. You can replace the headlight assemblies, which can cost hundreds of dollars. You can use toothpaste to clean them up. Or you can use a slightly more permanent solution which is to sand away the oxidation and polish the surface back to a like new shine. Follow this up with an application of a Clear coat safe for use on polycarbonate (plastic), and you get a layer of protection that will last for years without needing any further attention. Most automotive grade clear coats will work for this, but its best to find a knowledgeable supplier in your area to make sure you get the correct type of product. There are some hobby/model grade clear coat sprays that I've used and seem to work well, but how long they last I can't say since the vehicles they were used on were not around for very long afterwards. I'm mostly going to cover the sanding and polishing in this writeup. To start, you want to clean the headlights. Bugs, dust, road grime, stuff like that should be removed so that that you don't contaminate your sand paper. Next mask off the area around the light with masking tape. Any kind of painters tape will work, I used purple because it was the first thing I grabbed out of my shed. You want to mask everything up to about 3 inches away from the edges of the lens. You may want to double up the tape in the areas immediately surrounding the lens. I have the grille removed here, because the bolts holding the headlight housings in all needed to be tightened. I started out with 400 grit 3M paper. Dunk the paper into your bucket of water or soak it with a spray bottle and get it good and wet. Spray some water on the surface of the lens and start sanding. Wet sanding keeps the sanding scratches uniform across the surface, it also washes away the dust that comes off when sanding so your paper doesn't get "clogged". You can't really sand with dust. Keeping plenty of water on the lens will make it easier to sand and keep the paper clean. You'll see the water almost immediately start to turn a milky yellowish color. That is the oxidation being removed from the surface. Eventually this will start to turn white. The white is clean plastic. You want to work your way around the light and continue to sand until you get rid of all of the yellow. When you've finally made it down to clean plastic wipe the lens off with one of the rags and move on to the next (finer) grit of sand paper. You'll have something about like this on your lens... These next few pics didn't turn out very well. I couldn't get the camera to focus on the scratches well enough to show a lot of detail. Your second paper should be in the 800 - 1000 grit range. I used 3M 1000 grit wet/dry. The idea here is to completely remove all of the scratches made by the course paper used before. Same basic procedure, sand around the light until the surface is uniformly covered in the marks of the finer paper. The surface will start to feel smooth under the paper when you start to get through the scratches. Wipe the lens clean from time to time to check your progress, and see if you've made it all the way through the scratches from the previous paper. Again once you've made it through switch to the next finer paper. You can make a pass with 1500 grit if you'd like. I jumped right to 2000 to finish off the sanding. Remember to keep the paper and lens wet. You should end up with a very fine scratch pattern. With no evidence of the previous scratches showing through. I used the tape to give the camera something to focus on. If you look closely you can see on the left side of the pic where there are some slight marks left over from the previous paper. It started to rain on me so I had to kinda hurry up. Wipe it dry and put a bead of polish across the front of the lens. I used Meguiars PlastX. There are plenty of other plastic polishes out there. This is a product that I' have a lot of experience with and I know it works well. Its also often less expensive than other polishes and has a few conditioners added to it to help keep the plastic clean for longer after use. Now time to break out the buffer. I used the cutting pad first on fairly low speed to spread the polish around on the lens. Once the lens is evenly coated you can increase your speed to medium speed. Continuously move across the light from side to side and top to bottom. Don't rest in one place too long or you risk melting the surface of the lens. Buff until the polish has dried away. Switch to your fine polishing pad and repeat the process, only jump up to a higher speed with the buffer. (about 2500 rpm should be plenty. Don't want too much heat here.) This will be your end result. The surface will be shiny and free of any deep scratch marks. This should only take two passes with a buffer. If the surface comes out hazy looking, use a finer polishing pad. If you can still see scratch marks from the sanding, re-sand using at least 2000 grit paper and re-polish. Now you can take this whole thing a step further like I mentioned before and spray the lights with a clear coat. There are also some kits out there that have a wipe on sealer included that should work fairly well. If you want to do the clear coat, I'd recommend removing the light assembly from the car. Clean it with wax remover or alcohol. And spray it somewhere that dust wont get all over the lens. Be very careful not to get runs, because they will distort the light output and may cause the beam to reflect somewhere that its not supposed to. (such as into other drivers eyes) Do two to three coats, and allow about 48 hours for the clear to fully cure. You want the surface to be as smooth as possible. If you can see an orange peel like look on the surface, wet sand the lens with 2000 grit paper and polish with a finishing compound. (3M Finesse It works awesome for this).

463 Fuel Level Sensor "A" Circuit High 170 Fuel Trim 440 Evaporative Emission System 400 Exhaust Gas Recirculation Flow 325 Knock Sensor 1 Circuit 301-304 ( all four cylinders ) These are misfire codes for each cylinder 1-4 respectively. All these could be related to a vacuum leak. But all of this stuff needs to be check out individually as well. The Fuel level sensor can be pushed off for a while, its not gonna make the car run bad. Remove the EGR valve and clean the ports. It could be stuck open and causing trouble. The knock sensor might be bad, or the wiring might be pinched or cut somewhere. The Evap code could be because of a loose fuel cap. Or it might be a split in the lines for the vapor canister. The Fuel Trim could be any number of things. But once you get the rest of this stuff straightened out I'm betting that will just go away.

You could just pull the engine with the TC attached. But you have to make absolutely sure that the pump drive is lined up correctly and that the converter seats all the way back into the transmission before you install the new engine.

H grade steel is nothing special. It usually means it is an alloy designed for use in hot environments, such as on an engine. And because of that it is usually more susceptible to breaking when cold. It depends on the type of steel used in the crank, but I've seen it done. Use thread lock, and torque to manufacturers specs, then you're guaranteed not to have a problem.

Seafoam can very well cause a misfire. I'm surprised that it didn't set it sooner. All the carbon crap being burned off may have fouled the plugs. Reset the code, if it comes back pull the plugs and have a look at them.

I was gonna do the headlights this weekend, but the forecast is for 97° and heat index in the mid 100s. If it's cool enough in the morning I'll knock it out real quick, but I kinda doubt it'll happen. I'll be sure to take some pics if I do. I've seen the toothpaste thing done and it looks good, but it doesn't ever come out quite as clear as a good sand and polish. We have a guy at work who comes around once a week and does paint an interior repairs on our used cars. He does a "good 'nuff" job, and said he'd only charge me $100 to fix the dent and repaint the whole thing. It really looks bad up close because there are a lot of scrapes and spots where the paint is just gone all over the bumper.

Those things are usually hooked into the courtesy lamp circuit some way or another so they come on when the door is opened and stay on for a little while. It might be that the module that makes that light turn on has gone tango uniform and is just constantly on now. Something that small I wouldn't worry too much about unless your battery is old.

It's possible that the shift forks inside the transmission are getting jammed up on something. This was a pretty common problem in the transmissions Ford used in the Escort back in the mid 90's. Little filings of metal from the gears would collect in the area where the shift lever sticks through the case of the transmission and it would cause it to stick. Usually a fluid change would cure the problem, but in bad cases the trans would have to be taken apart and thoroughly cleaned. Try changing the fluid a few times. It might be all it needs.