upDUHcreek

I knew I created a thread about this when it happened, but I thought I made it here. I guess that was wrong. Looks like I only did it on NASIOC. Here's a link with the info I found out when this went down. http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2537233

Just thought you guys might like to know that EMPI sold out that part of their company last year. I bought a set thinking I was getting the good old EMPI shaft, but the box it came in wasn't the same, and had a similar name, but not EMPI on it. Rock Auto was, and aparantly is still selling them as EMPI parts.

Don't forget to bring us back a video, or it didn't happen.

I'm really into RC. I never got into crawling, but I really dig RC racing. I've got offroad racers from 10th scale to 5th scale. I've also got a 4' gas powered deep-V, and an indoor electric heli. We've got a killer racetrack here in the metro, and I can't wait for the racing season to start up.

While I'll be the first one to admit I'm cheep, I'd much rather pay someone else $75 to rebuild it, than to have to mess with it myself. What really messed me up was the fact that the local stealership wanted over $400 for the half shaft. I guess they figured since they're located on the hiway, they could get away with hiway robbery. Oops, I almost forgot, Thanks for all the speedy replies guys.

I don't think they'll have to grind my old one any. It's only got a small leak on the inner boot, and it's still throwing that stinky grease all over the cat, so I'm guessing it still hasn't done any actual damage to joint. New shaft will be here today, and I'll be swapping them out tomorrow. Then it's off to Colorado with my old one to have it as a spair. I do a lot of offroading, and you never know when a 150k+ mile half shaft will break. The one in there now looks like the descriptions of an OEM shaft, with the green inner piece.

The info on Rock Auto says it's only 1 year. For $61 delivered, it just sounds too good to be true. I'm really worried that I've messed up, but I did find SEVERAL people both here, and on NASIOC who said the EMPI shafts were great. I must have spent two days, reading over 100 threads on the subject.

Ok, I had to search Marshall Wolf to find out he's the same as FW Enterprises. That's who I plan to have rebuild the axle I'm taking out.

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. I split a boot offroading, and now I'm waiting on my new half shaft to get here from Rock Auto. After using the search function, I saw that the EMPI half shafts work well. I went ahead and orderd one, but the more I think about it, the more I worry. It was only $50 (+ shipping) for a NEW EMPI half shaft? That sounds mighty cheep to me, but that was the only EMPI shaft they had for my car(99 Forester L). Do I have a good reason to worry, or am I just being too paranoid to enjoy an awsome deal? Also, I had planned to have my old one rebuilt, but the rebuild costs more ($75) than buying another new EMPI shaft. Should I get the old (Subaru) shaft rebuilt, or just buy another new EMPI one to have as a spare, just in case this happens again? Thank you for the help Charlie

I tried to remove and inspect the knock sensor, but it was so tight I decided I didn't want to break my cheep tools. It wouldn't come off, even though I used at least 50ft/lbs of torque worth of force trying to remove it. From what I've read, that's WAY too much torque on the sensor, and probablly broke it when they (last owner) torqued it down that tight. I'm going to use some penetrating oil on it in an effort to make removal easier. I'll get a new one, and run by my buddy's house so I can use his high quality tools. I should take some time to brouse sears website for some decent tools. They're having a tool sale right now.

Ok, thanks again for the help guys, I have a little knowlage about how engines work, but I'm not a mechanic, so I have no practical experience. I don't think it's a timing issue, because the other night when the light wasn't on, and it ran perfectly, I let it idle for 30 to 45 seconds to warm up, before I put it into gear to leave. Any timing issue should have shown up then. Is this correct? I don't think it's a burnt valve, because that would be consistant, and it wouldn't have passed the "dollar bill over the tail pipe" test. Is that correct? I'll keep the valve guide thing in mind, and I'll check that if I don't see obvious issues when I check the knock sensor, and swap injectors. Those sound much easier to deal with than pulling the header, so I'll check them first. I had hoped to check the knock sensor earlier today/yesterday aka Monday, but I had some stuff that came up. By the time I got everything taken care of, it was dark, and I had a wild hair crawling up my ***, so I decided to go to the bar. Hopefully I won't sleep off my buzz all day, and I'll check it tomorrow/today aka Tuesday. I've never messed with any fuel injectors, are there any tricks I need to know, threads I should read, and should I have extra O-rings on hand when I do this? Sorry for all the questions. I am just smart enough to know how stupid I am when it comes to working on cars. That's why I usually take my cars to a shop. Unfortunantly, there aren't any shops here that specialize in Subaru repairs. Even the Subaru dealerships here sell multiple brands, so even their mechanics spend most of their time working on non-subaru cars. Thanks a bunch guys. I am truely gratfull for all the help. Charlie.

And now the plot thickens. After driving it like I stole it to monitor the O2 levels, and the fuel sys 1 readings at WOT, I decided to clear the codes while I had the scantool connected. CELight stayed out for about a quarter mile at 25 mph before it started flashing, and the misfire #2 code returned. I continued to my friends house to hang out for the evening, and that's where I was when I made my last post. When I drove home, just a few minutes ago, it happend again, but this time it's NOT raining. No CEL at all, and no shaking from any misfire. Drove 6 or 7 miles down the hiway, still no CEL at all. Pulled off the hiway, and I could feel it missing a little at the light. Pulled up to the next light on the other side of the hiway, and the CEL starts flashing again. It's still missing, but no where near as bad as before we changed the plugs, fuel filter, and the PCV valve 2 weeks ago. Is it possible that I just need to run some seafoam through it? Could it be that simple? This really has me all messed up. Every car I've ever owned has had a problem at one point or another that disapeared when I took it to the shop to have it looked at. Life can really be strange sometimes. Thanks for any input guys. Charlie

I was wrong. The live feed says OL-drive as soon as I let completely off the gas, then it switches back to CL when the car's slowed down almost to a stop. Also, it switches to OL-drive when the throttle position reads over 30%. Voltages on the front O2 sensor ranged from 0.0(coasting), to 9.25(WOT), that's the highest I saw on the front one. Front sensor seemed to vary much more than the rear one under steady throttle input. The live feed shows many more sensors than the snapshot saves. If there are any questions about other sensor values, I'll will be happy to make another run and get the values for the other sensors too. Thank you for your help Charlie

Sorry, but I don't do ebay. I don't even have a paypal account. I'm really not quite old enough to be this paranoid, or pesamistic, but I think of it as being cautious. As cheep as I am, you think I'd never buy stuff from any place other than ebay, just because you can find stuff there so cheep. I just don't feel I can trust people I don't know, or companies I've never heard of with my money. Then again, I've been known to spend $100 when I only needed a $7 item, just to get the free shipping. I'm one messed up cookie, but thanks for trying to help. I'll probablly just order it from Rock Auto, or the local parts store, if I decide I don't want to wait on it. Charlie PS I think I'm going to go play with the live feed on my scanner again. I want to make shure that I remembered that bit correctly about it going into Open loop when the car was stopped and in gear.

Not yet. The knock sensor is next on my list of things to change. I started with the cheepest stuff first, and I'm working my way up to the more expencive items since I still have no clue. It's been months since the gas pedal's been incontact with the floor. Generally I try to use as little throttle as possible to save gas. Then again, I could be remembering it wrong, it's been quite a while since I've looked at the live data stream.

Sorry it took so long to reply. Unibrook I'm pretty shure it misfires from the start. You can't really feel it untill the car's been running for about 15 seconds, and the idle's droppd down to about 1K RPMs. The CEL only takes about 5 seconds to start flashing. OK guys, you want info, this is all of it that I can remember. I'll wait for some more input from you guys before I order more parts. I just don't know what I'm doing, and I apriciate any input from people with more knowlage than I have. I bought this 99 Forester with 2.5 sohc engine almost 14 months ago. It had a misfire then, but no CEL at the time. After about a month, I got the dredded 420 code for catalitic converter inefficiency, CEL was intermittent, but always 420 code. At that time, I changed plugs and wires, with E3 plugs and crappy wires; no change. After that I started to spend time researching here. Next weekend I swapped the plugs and wires for all NGK since some people reported the ngk wires also work well, and they were $20 cheeper than oem. No immediate change, but a couple weeks later I got my first misfire on #1 code, no noticable difference in how the car ran. Then the weather turned colder, and I noticed some smoke from the exaust on cold startup that went away once the engine got halfway up the gauge to operating temp. It only smoked when temp was below 50, and when it was the first startup of the day. There was no noticable difference in how the car ran. Next problem, head gasket failure due to me racing a vette in the rain. Sorry, I just couldn't resist seeing the look on his face when I dusted him good. Decided to flush the system, I put 2 cans of Subie "coolant conditioner" in, and changed the oil, just to make shure there wasn't any water in it. Since then(9 months), I've only had to add about half a gallon of antifreeze, but I keep a close eye on the level, just in case. It only took 2 days for me to take care of this, so I'm pretty shure I got to it before serious bottom end damage happened. I kept antifreeze in it, and it never overheated. Weather warmed up, morning smoking issue went away and we went back to work on it. I tried changing NGK wires for OEM, no change. Performed the "spray bottle" test on the coil, no sparks. Tried the dollar bill over the exaust test, it didn't try to suck the bill back into the tailpipe. At this point, I decided to purchase my own OBD2 reader, mostly because I was getting embarrased from my frequent trips to have the parts store guys read the code for me. That was probablly a mistake, the code reader gave me too much info that I just didn't understand, which only confused me more. I thought my car had a MAF sensor, but it says MAP on the data stream. Here's the numbers from the snapshot from the live data stream. fuel sys 1 CL fuel sys 2 NA Calc Load(%) 21.2 ECT(F) 194 STFT B1(%) 7.8 LTFT B1 (%) -3.1 MAP (inHg) 18.6 Eng RPM 2125 Veh Speed(mph) 20 I just thought I'd add that fuel sys 1 changes to open loop when stopped at lights or stop signs. Just to see what happend, I cleared the codes, and the CEL was back on and flashing right at about the 2 mile mark. Then I really got confused, because intead of misfire #1, it was #2, with no misfire code for #1, but no 420 yet. I decided to give it a rest, to keep myself from pulling out what's left of my hair. Summer got here, and it got hot. After about a week of running the AC, misfire got worse. Hooked up the scanner, and it says 420 with misfires on #2 & #3, but still no code for #1. Car had very little power with AC on. It did OK on city streets, but almost no acceleration above 50mph, unless I turned off the AC untill I got up to speed, or floor it. Now at this point, it's been weeks since the last time I worked on the car, and I'm leaving a friend's house to head home in the rain. No CEL at all, and the car's even running smooth at idle. After a short drive to the hiway(slightly over 1/2 mile with 3 stoplights) car's got much more power, and pulls on the hiway like nothing's wrong at all (65mph at the end of the onramp without hitting 4k rpms). That's NOT the first time it's rained, but it's the first time the CEL has ever gone completely out. Once or twice before(always in the rain), it did stop flashing, but only for a few seconds at a time. That's also the first time it's had that much power. 3 miles down the hiway, and the CEL's flashing again, and things are back like they were. Two weeks ago today, we replaced PCV vlave, fuel filter, and plugs. The #2 plug (front driver's side) was covered with black oily residue. Car's got more power, but is still missing, also power sometimes seems to come and go. It's similar to the surges in power when the AC is cycling on and off, but my AC's not on. On the hiway, the CEL will frequently quit flashing for a few miles, but is still always on. I also bought some MAF cleaner, but we didn't have the special allen tool needed to remove the MAF to clean or replace it, so I put it off for now. Anyone know where to get that tool? Last time I went to the auto parts store, Lucas fuel treatment was on sale, so I picked up 3 bottles for $14. One bottle is in the tank right now, and I intend to use the other two in my next two tanks of fuel. The more I think about this, and the more I read here, the less I think it might be my O2 sensor, mostly because the misfire doesn't wait till the car's up to temp to start. As I stated before I'm hoping to get much better info before I start throwing more $$$ at parts trying to fix it. I'm hoping someone will see something in the snapshot from my code reader that will pinpoint the problem. I know what most the parameters are, but I have no idea if the values are in line, or way off base. Thank you all for any help. Charlie

Never had any luck with those. I tried them on two different cars, and they never lasted a month before they started to misfire. I've been a fan of NGK's for about 20 years now, I even use them on my remote controled 5th scale pictured below.

I'm almost convinced the O2 sensor, is my problem, but I'll probablly wind up changing all the cheep stuff first in an effort to avoid spendint the $200 the stealership wants for an O2 sensor. At least I know my cat's aren't backed up yet. One of the good things about having a buddy who owns a muffler shop is that he's so happy to see you he'll do minor stuff like that just to have someone to talk to about fishing while he's working. Look guys, there's no need for EVERYONE to say plugs and wires. After a couple guys say it, the repetition starts to sound like everyone thinks you're dumber than dirt. I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings, I just thought you might want an honest opinion about how you're making others feel. I have to go buy some tools now, so I'm out of here. I know you were all just trying to help, so I'm not upset, and I hope my comment didn't upset any of you. The guys I'm really pissed at are the guys on the local forum here. They hooked me up with a mechanic, who has NEVER returned any of my phone calls. After 4 months of trying to reach him, I gave up. Now I'm feeling more than a little abandoned. I have cash, but I could use some serious help with this car. It needs some repairs I'm too inexperianced to even diagnose, much less attempt to fix. Luckily I've learned a lot by spending an hour or two minimum each day on here, or NASIOC, or other subie sites over the last couple months. My major problem is that I'm handicapped, so there's some stuff I just can't do. It's hard to admit that, but you have to know your limitations, or you'll just wind up making things worse. My original post was about twice as long as this one, but I edited it down, and wound up leaving out some stuff I should have included. I tend to ramble on. I guess that means I'm getting old. I must be getting towards my midlife crisis now, because I'm starting to wish I'd gotten a Fozzy with a turbo, instead of this normally aspirated one.

ocei77 Thank you for being the only one who was considerate enough to even try to answer my question. To everyone else. Of course the first thing I did was install OEM wires, and NGK plugs. I left that out in an effort to save you all some time reading, and save myself some time typing.

Ok, that's good to know. I've got one other thing I'm going to try first, then if that doesn't work, the knock sensor will be next. Oh, and where are my manners? Thanks for your help, and such a speedy reply. Charlie

Ok, I have a 99 Forester with the SOHC 2.5 engine. I've had a misfire, and been using oil, so I replaced the PCV valve, but there was no change. While I had the hose to the pcv valve off, I noticed the plastic part on the other end of the hose, where it and another hose connect to the block was so dirty that it's probablly clogged. I'd like to replace that part, but I have no idea what it's called. Can someone please tell me what that part's called so I can get a new one installed ASAP? Also, it looks like it's going to be a fun job, are there any tips that can make this easier? Thanks for any, and all help. Sorry I don't have a camera to take a pic of the part I'm asking about. Charlie.

I'm at 170k miles in a 99 forester with the SOHC 2.5. I plan on replacing my knock sensor, but wanted to check here to see if any brand sensor will work, or is this like an o2 sensor where I'd be well advised to buy it from a Subaru dealership?

I offroad, but I've never been sad while doing it. It's too much fun to have anything but a smile on your face. You must be doing something wrong.lol I bought a Forester because of the higher stock ground clearance, and it's big enough to carry all my fishing, and camping stuff at the same time. I'm running totally stock, except for some Geolander AT-S tires in the stock size. I'm not going crazy and doing things that are bound to damage my daily driver, I'm just driving to my favorite fishing holes. I have permission to fish on several different farms, and ranches. I can tell you from experience, cow pastures get pretty soft as soon as it starts to rain. It might look like mud, but it's not. You can tell by the smell when it's time to wash the Soobie.

Wow, and I thought some of you guys were mechanics. You forgot the most important equipment for any home shop, a refrigerator to keep your beverages nice and cold. It's also nice to have something to do for fun, I like darts because the dart board doesn't take up a bunch of room like a pool table.

Just another idiot with more money than brains. I found it funny that he's put all this money into that buggy, yet he doesn't have 2 minutes to tighten up his belts so they'll quit squeeking. I hate to see people who are so self centered that they think it's alright to risk other people's health, and lives, just so he can get his jollies. He's driving down rocky trails entirely too fast. All it would take is one wrong bounce and he's off the trail, and into the crowd. If you don't think that's possible, I would recomend you pay more attention around the 3:35 mark. He bounced off the trail, and only missed the people standing there by a foot or two.