slo5oh

In 95 there were not any real any options on coolant just different "brands" AC delco, prestone, and all the other brands. Somewhere around 96 or 97 one of the first "environment friendly" coolants came out and I was told it was garbage. Open your radiator, stick your finger in and if the stuff in side looks like lime coolaid you're fine, just top it off with either water, standard coolant (any brand will do), or a 50/50 mix. If it's got a brown color to it FLUSH IT. Replace it (again, any brand will do) with new clean standard everyday coolant. As for a good mix... the thing to keep in mind is that "coolant" does not cool anything it's actually Anti-freeze with a compound that raises the boiling temp of water it's mixed with. Here in cali we rarely get temps below 30 so a 10/90 coolant to water mix has always worked great for me. I run 100% water with 1 bottle of redline water wetter in my supercharged mustang. My temp is always pegged exactly at the level of the t-stat (180 wiht a 180 tstat 195 when it had a 195 tstat), even on the rare 110* days stuck in bay area traffic. just my $.02 spend the extra $6 or $7 and drop in a bottle redline water wetter no matter what you do. The stuff is great.

If your O2 sensor has been failing for sometime you could have burned out the cat. Too rich or too lean for an extended period of time will cause your cat to fail. You'll know real quick if you try to smog it. Too lean will burn it out and your HC (hydrocarbons) will be way high. Too rich and you will "plug" the cat and you'll lose power. My father has a Dodge truck with a 360 that he bought with a bad cat. Those trucks run rich so it plugged it. Luckily it was under the 7 or 8 years manufacturers are forced to give on cats so the dealer put a new one on. I was there when my father drove home with a huge grin on his face and ripped the tires loose in the driveway... like a kid in a candy store. He said it was making gobs more HP after the new cat.

I love fixing problems and installing NEW "go-fast" parts. Live and learn... that's my motto. My last rebuild as it came out. I've always had Alum heads b4 so I didn't know to paint the new-to-me iron Dart Jr. heads I put on this one... so they turned to rust on the car. I still need to pull it back apart and clean then paint the heads.

Anyone ever try to rebuild your own starter? I did the one in a toyota 4x4 when I was about 16 with about as much mechanical knowlege as a newt. Link to pics. All I did was replace one of the contacts and the starter lasted another 150k. Subaru starters can't be that much different...

If you're tearing it down anyhow you might as well take the block to a machine shop and have it hot tanked... or at the very least take it to a "do-it-yourself" carwash and pressure wash the block. I've done a few junkyard rebuilds in my life

Great post xt6quebec! I started working on my own cars at 16. I started with simple things like spark plugs (splitfires suck!) and changing the battery. Luckily I have a vast network of friends. One is probably the smartest car guy (IMHO) in the world. When the starter went out in my toyota he showed me how to rebuild it for free instead of spending $180 on a new or new-referb. A couple years later I ended up taking my mustang (heavily modified) to a indie shop where the owner (this is a one man shop) was a racer. He had my car for 2 weeks and I spent about 1500 dollars for him to "fix" it. He didn't even discover the problem (I know now it was because the timing was off about 30 degrees), he had to send it out to a mustang specific shop. For that 1500 I also had him put a new clutch in and I think he put a 2.5" H-pipe on. I still felt ripped off. I spent over $1000 for him to scratch his balls and know less than I did. That day I vowed I would never take any of my cars to a shop again. The only times I've gone against that are for simple things like oil changes and tires, although I still take it to a friend. I've recently become involved in trying to repair a newer saturn that had serious problems. After a few failed attempts at discovering the poblem I had the owner take it to Saturn for a "diagnostic". $85 told us that it had a bad MAF (a $200 repair) and a bad Transmission Pressure Solonoid ($800 to $1000 repair). It seems to be a common problem and I think saturn did a recall for specific years, but not this year. I did some research and found a great saturn website that eventually convinced me the whole problem is from the bad MAF. I replaced the MAF reset the ECU and saved the owner well over $1000. It's been 2 weeks now and the car is running like new. I've been thinking about taking that "diagnosis" back down the dealer and asking them why the retards at the Saturn service department don't know as much about their own cars as a bunch of bassackwards "shade tree" mechanics do!!! my $.02... save your money, do it yourself, even if you %U#K it up the first time you still end up ahead.

water wetter is the bomb. There used to be something called a "rad cap" that would replace your existing radiator cap with a new cap that had about a 6 to 8 inch spring dangling down from the center holding some strange device. The device is supposed to all but eliminate corrosion. I haven't seen these devices in a few years. Water wetter is great stuff though. I usually run around 90% water 10% antifreeze and 1 bottle of water wetter.

Bought my car between 50k and 60k and I didn't have to replace the tires until after 100k. 50k out of a set of tires is great in my book. I never rotated either, and I'm sure the tires would have laster longer if I had. Ya know... I did have my car in the tire shop to do the brakes and I know they rotate for you when you do a brake job... So they may have been rotated 1 or 2 times. I bought a set of LINK Yokohama Avid V4s from tirerack. Great tires... Now I have a set of new wheels and tires off an '04 wrx that I picked up for less than I paid for these tires... If only I had found these new wheels 6 months ago. .

Yes. Removing the big plastic "tube" that goes in the fender is the only "mod" I have done to my 98 and it makes the nasty (I'm one that doesn't like it) drone noise at idle. When you nail the gas pedal it makes a much deeper exhaust noise though.

I used to do one HG on a supercharged 5.0 all the time. It had the wrong cam and created way too much cylinder pressure. At $50 a pop I would only replace the HG that failed, not the one that didn't. I was in it every 3 to 6 months though until I finally changed the cam. If the car has only 44k on it I'd do just the side that failed.

So I have to replace them . I put the very first Kenwood MP3 deck in when I first bought the car so I it should be pushing about 22 watts RMS, 50 peak. This is in my 98 WR Blue (is that what it's called? the sky blue) 2.5RS. I'm leaning towards these, partly because they match the color of the car: http://www.crutchfield.com/S-FRpmGAL2xiJ/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?g=400&I=130TSG1340 but it's saying I need to use some "speaker adapter bracket". Is the mounting too deep, too shallow, too wide? who knows?

Yep, 04 wrx. I don't think the wheels are any wider... the tires were the same size (I think?), guess I'll have to double check now. No semi, it was an 80s pontiac. He sideswiped me and his tire ran up my car... would have taken my arm off if I had it out the window. I guess It's a good thing I had my window down too. Would have probably shattered in on me. I honestly thought it was road rage until I pulled over and the guy was soo sorry and shook up. I think he fell asleep. QUOTE=91Loyale]A previous thread dealt with the wind noise. Just squeeze the little triangle panels up where the mirror attaches together with the window rolled down, and the noise will go away. I'll look that up, but I think I'm going to get the insurance to fix it. There's a noticable difference between the gap at the front bottom of the door and front top of the door, I think that's the problem. The day I picked it up they had to "realign" the door because it was not lined up quite right. I think they have to take all the bolts loose at the hing instead of just move the latch like I'm sure they did.

I went with the "recommended" shop from my insurance so it's a lifetime warrany on the repairs. I was going to call them today, but lost track of time. I think I'll drop by tomorrow for a little 5 minute "this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong" biznatch session. I can't imagine it's going to be easy to convince them that the passenger window leaking air is from the drivers side accident.

Like I said.. it's already fixed... Today is day #2 with the car and I already have a door ding in my (new) drivers door. I need to take it back because my drivers mirror vibrates with high wind or bumpy roads and the drivers door is not lined up quite right. I know I used to hear mild wind noise (on windy days) but it's much worse now. I can hear wind through both the drivers and passengers windows right up at the front near the mirrors. And the drivers side leaks in from at the rear of the window toward the bottom. They had to replace the rear wheel and i'm worried about the suspension. It drives nice, but I swear i hear a thud in the rear when I hit a speed bump a little harder than normal. Today I could swear I was hearing the notorious thump-thump-thump of a bad wheel bearing (or tires out of balance) at about 2 to 3 mph in a parking lot. Worst part... I had just got a set of wheels and tires from a '04 that I didn't get to put on because it rained every day I planned on doing it.

Next engine leave off the Nitrous kit.

That sucks. I've used those "do it yourself car wash" pressure washers for years to clean the engine on: Toyota 4X4 22RE, Ford Mustang 5.0, Jeep Wrangler 4.2, and I've used my new home pressure washer to clean my 2.5 RS engine several times. The only times I had a problem were in my mustang and my jeep when I cleaned the spark plug wires and spent lots of time with the high pressure directly on the distributer cap. The water got inside the distributer cap and the cars would not start for about 20 minutes. I once also got a big gob of mud inside the Jeep dist cap that (thanks Dan) only stopped me for about 2 or 3 minutes. While pressure washing an engine from the top down is a little higher pressure and reverse angle it's not that much different from doing 80 on the freeway in the rain. EVERY sensor mounted under your hood is a sealed sensor that can take getting wet very often. They have to be designed this way or no one would be able to drive in the rain. Even direct pressure washing on your failing valve covers may cause some water to get inside your engine is harmless. Once your car gets up to operating temp (180 to 220, depending on car) the (small amount of) water inside the oil will boil and evaporate.

I've been saying this for years. It seems like everything gets a tires up change every 5 years though. Ford made the 351, chevy made the 350. Both were stout engines with their pros and cons. The cons have been all but eliminated through technology, but they both had a good 30 year run. The 350 (different design) still exists today, but the 351 is not in any new Fords. For imports I don't know a whole lot but toyota had the 22R (and 22RE) motor that ran just about forever. My father had one that made it to 180k before the timing chain started making serious noise. With only spark plugs (thanks to me) and a rebuilt starter (a free rebuild I did myself) it was a great truck. It started using oil around 250k and my brother put some kind of rebuilt engine in it. He eventually sold it. I think he was near 300k and it still had the same trans, rear end, etc. The only things that were changed were brakes, shocks, tires and batteries.

Not a bad deal, but this one for $100 only reads one of the 3 types (ISO, PWM, VPW). The other one lised by Frag for $147 will do all 3. For those of us with several different cars I think that would be a better deal. I bought the cheapo OBDII code reader from Harbor Freight and it's a waste of $40. For my money I think the Harrison is the one I'll buy next.

This is crazy... I posted a message here a week or 2 ago... here: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=33808 I know my '98 2.5 is a different beast, but I've found that my piston slap gets worse with thicker oil and goes away with mobil 1 5-30 wt (also gone with 0-30wt)

Thanks, I guess I'm looking for real world experience with different oil weights in these cars. It seems to me that when I run a higher temp (thicker? maybe, maybe not) oil like redline or the mobil 1 10-30 in my car right now I've experienced the piston slap. It does sound exactly like valve train noise... I know the sound quite well from roller rockers on my mustang that were not on tight enough. But even this noise should not come and go with the difference of 5-30 or 10-30 wt oil... I'm just grasping at straws here I guess. As soon as I get my car back I'm going to change back to the 5-30 and I'll bet $$ my noise goes away.

So you're not losing any coolant? (unless it overheats of course?) I would pick up a bottle of redline water wetter and dump it in your radiator. Should cost you about $6 at any good autoparts store. That stuff dropped my mustang operating temp about 10 degrees all the time, and on a car that used to overheat from time to time it stays rock solid at 180* even when caught in traffic in 110* heat. 180* is the exact operating temp of the t-stat.

One of my friends coined the term Boob-a-roo for his beater $500 subie several years back... I've always liked that... <sigh> not PC though.

You should be able to get a head gasket done for less than that. There should be NO MACHINE WORK done on a head gasket repair. If they have to "machine the head" that means they are shaving the bottom surface and it will increase your compression on that side causing you other problems down the road. Call around, there are bound to be some honest mechanics around that will give you a price up front, otherwise pick up a diablo dealer and look through the ads. There are a couple places that sell low mileage japanese engines very inexpensive. I had a friend several years back that put one of these engines in his suzuki swift for something like $180... I swear the name of the company was something like shinwa motors or some japanese name like that... google found nothing on shinwa (maybe spelled wrong?) If I were you I'd start a new thread and title it something like "looking for a good inexpensive mechanic in the (east?, west?, n?, s?) bay area.

Your piston slap is there even at idle? I only get it when the car is cold and I drive. It only happens for me at about 2k to 2500 rpm mostly when I let off the gas pedal as the RPMs are dropping back down (my car's an auto).

I used to get a hair over 20mpg in my supercharged 5.0 mustang.... only on long trips with mostly freeway cruising when it had stock gears and I could float around 80mph at 1800rpm. It got about 15 around town... but I drove it like a jerk. I had a Jeep that got about 18 around town and 15 on the freeway (big tires, stock gears). My parents have a 99 4cyl Accord that gets about 30 around town and 35 on trips. I even have a friend that sold his Ford F-150 5.4 ltr 4 door short bed 2x4 that got 25 on trips (no idea what his around town was). I think it's because of the tall gears and the fact it was a 2x4, not to mention this friend drives like he's a 90 year old woman.