NorthWet

As far as I know, most all computer controlled fuel systems go "open-loop" (ignore feedback from O2 sensor) and default to "safe" rich maps under high-/full-power. The basic idea is to prevent the mixture from going lean under power, and I would agree that the turbos probably go even richer for a little charge cooling. (They also use default maps while cold and other conditions.) Please remember that if you're using the standard O2 sensor that they are non-linear, implying that you cannot tell much other than the mixture is where it is supposed to be or it is leaner or richer. You can't tell quantitatively how far lean/rich you are. And, if I remember right (always in doubt!), the point of accuracy for the O2 sensor is not stoichiometric mixture anyway. (Was that more than $.02 worth??? If so, keep the change.)

Is the opening that much bigger than the original cut? Do you have to bend/roll the edges or somehing? What is the approx. difference between cut and finish size?

Finally got back to this... yeah, the metal tube that is around the bushing looks to be same length and diameter, and pretty much same thickness, as tube welded to control arm. I REALLY can't imagine cutting out old tube and welding new in place. (kind of the implication???)

Worked just like you knew it would! Thanks again for sharing your wisdom/experience. Pat

Hey, 1979BO (oohh, that didn't sound right to shorten...), I have family in Phoenix. Maybe you should contact those folks in WA and maybe I can drive the Brat down... have to be cool months as I melt above 80 Deg.F!!! All_talk, got your PM, will respond soon. But I will admit you talked tech WAY above my head! As regards E-burg, I have been there several times over the last few years. My wife goes to conventions at CWU, and my oldest has been to at least one State Math Competition there, with me as driver/chaperone. Nice town, except for the buildup of strip malls like elsewhere. I like the Campus, as I grew up around places like UC Berkeley and Standford. Much friendlier and cozier than UCB or 'furd. We did stop at the Thorp Fruit Stand ("and antique mall") on the way back, thinking $7.50 for a box of peaches sounded OK. Expecting a "Farmer's Market" type place with lug-boxes of fruit propped up on simple tables... Our first sign that wasn't so was watching the people walking back to their cars sans large boxes of lucious fruit. Well, our $7.50 box of peaches cost $11.50. Oh well, live and learn. We were driving our '90 Furd Aerostar (wishing we could have fit daughter's stuff into one of our Twagons), which runs like doggy-doo once it warms up: Lots of misfiring and lack of power and stuff. Some sensor seems to have gone south (and I don't mean towards Phoenix) 'bout 2 years ago. I was driving with the trucks.... well, the ones not passing me at great rate of speed. I guess having trucks pass me was OK, since everything else was, too. I don't drive the Cascades that often, but once upon a century (pre-SUV!) drove the Sierra Nevadas near Tahoe. You could pretty much bet that every vehicle in ditch or rolled-over or otherwise and object of ridicule was a "4x4" truck. (A line from recent anime, "We're not lost... we have 4 wheel drive!") Yo gotsta know yo limitations!!! Anyway, even after we got home we were surrounded by Subarus... 6 now, and I saw 2 more Loyale-type for under $200 each. And as far as me counting soobs, it was sort of like, "Honey, if I count more Subarus than you, do I get to have my way?" Married a long time... need some angle nowadays.

Thanks, I was beginning to think that it must be something like that. I'll give that a try in a bit.

On a recent trip across the Cascades here in the Great NorthWet, my wife decided to annoy me by pointing out every Subaru she saw. Well, in the little college town of Ellensburg (where we had just left our oldest at her dorm... Go Wildcats!), my wife would chirp every few minutes, "Look at that! A Subaru!". Then we got out on I-90 heading Seattle-ish, and the chirping got more and more frequent. I decided to get back at her, and called everyone I saw. I do not think that a minute went by (over a 3 hour drive) that we didn't see at least 1 soob. Often there were 4 or 5 per minute. I was finally told to shut-up. (Cascades were mostly Outbacks and Legacies with a sprinkling of Loyales; nearer Microsoft-land it was more WRXs...) So, all of you folks who don't see soobs that often, or wonder where to get a 4WD soob, all I can say is... Location. Location. Location. TTFN!

Hey, If you are REALLY careful cutting the hole, can you reuse the cutout piece as a hardtop? Trim it up nice, matching paint.... My wife would FREAK if I took the sawzall to a car roof. Especially if it was HERS!!!!

Does anybody know how to remove the sensor wiring from the rear air-strut on an '87 GL-10 TWagon? There is no connector between the fender well grommet and the gland-nut on the strut. I removed the gland-nut and gentle-to-moderate tugging on the wires does not make anything budge. I have an '86 FSM that makes no comment about wiring at the strut (but does discuss the air line/solenoid). And, yes, I do know that general recommendation is to just cut everything off and replace with coil-overs, but this is my wife's car and I am trying to keep the air struts. Thanks in advance! Pat

Jaws Dawg, I haven't heard of Subarus snapping head bolts, but then again it doesn't mean they don't or aren't near the limit of doing so. Stripped threads in the block do seem to be pretty common. The only real experience that I have had with head studs in cars was my old Triumph, which had studs thick as my finger and reaching down near the mains. Engine was cast-iron/cast-iron so differential expansion wasn't such a big deal. Head-torquedown was like 120Ft/Lbs. (came from a diesel design...). Anyway, unlike the aircooled flat-4/-6, the Subaru headbolt (or potential stud) just thread into the cylinder deck; much shorter, perhaps less diff. expansion issues. Were the a-c engined studs snapping from expansion problems axially or radially (i.e along length or across diameter)? I would say that studs thicker on the threaded ends would probably be a good idea (and look cool!) but I don't know how available they are. Just my 2 cents (US; Can about 3 cents?)

I'll second that it is more likely a loose hose than a blown pump. If it is a pump and you can't find one at the JY (should be plenty), send me a PM as I have one or two spares. (Turbo owners seem to have spares of everything... except good heads.)

I would suggest that you get some advice from people that have used it. I do not even know how much it costs. One recent post that I read somewhere (about changing the coolant and additive and dealer wouldn't honor warranty unless dealer poured the stuff... *taking a breath*) claimed that all it was was REDLINE's "wetter water" (or "water wetter", whatever!) and didn't say anything about sealing powers. Again, I don't know. In absence of knowledge of the SOA additive, I would have said definitely need to remove heater core to deal with the leak. Heaters are a real pain. Almost wish they were made of cast brass or cast iron... might even outlast a soob.

Multiple slices is what I had intended. Sectioning, as in a biological sectioning. Might have to remove things like valve seats/guides. Anybody with an EA82T can make all the cracked heads they want if they try hard enough! I have a few (none my direct doing), but I am still hoping for the "plugging fairy" to tell me it is OK to fix them. Pat

A recent thread on stripped headbolts reminded me of this thought... Has anybody ever sectioned an EA82(T) head to see what's in there? This activity, both potentially fun and melancholy, might prove useful to the extemists in our midst. You know, the ones that want to port their heads, or look for tap points for cooling or oil enhancements. Or for dealing with stripped headbolts. Is there enough material around the headbolt holes to open them up to accept 12mm fasteners (preferably *studs*) in some common thread? How about 13MM? C'mon! Might be fun!!! And, since I figure anybody that has read this far is almost as sick as I am, has anybody tried having their cracked heads "plugged"? This is a fairly common practice in the rest of the Japanese engine world, but I haven't even seen a disparaging comment yet. Any horror stories?

BTW, when I talked about leak sealers, I only know about ol'-timey stuff (e.g. AlumaSeal, pepper, etc.). I hadn't even heard about the SOA additive until a couple of days ago. Seems that people swear by (rather than at) it, and if SOA endorses it then it is unlikely to do much harm. Manufacturers usually CYAF. (Well, except for the red antifreeze that Ford put in all of their cars in the '70s that turned to red grit after a little while!!!)

Location. Location. Location. Tons of 'em 'round these parts! Heck, make me an offer and I might drive one back for you! Top tier of states, winter comin' on... perfect time for a drive.

Oh... and as far as I know, NOTHING you pour into the radiator will fix a leaking cooling system. The leak may stop or slow down, but will return... often with a vengeance! And the stuff is almost guranteed to plug your heater core.

I used to work in a radiator shop (long before any of my cars were built), and my least favorite task was R&Ring heater cores. Usually ate up an entire day. (Tangent: I remember spending 8 hours tearing apart a dash just to remove a pencil jammed in the heater fan!) And that was on less sophisticated dashboards. Heater cores ARE just mini-radiators, but radiators from the 1950's. I have never seen a tube-and-fin design (which is what modern radiators are) heater core. Instead, they are folded sheet metal that is almost impossible to repair. I don't think that any reputable shop would try to repair one, as they need to get any repair area perfectly clean (nearly impossible with soldered seams everwhere), and the heat needed to repair is likely to open a nearby seam. This is assuming that you have a copper core. Most newer cars seem to come with aluminum heaters (just like they come with aluminum radiators). Aluminum is a poor choice for radiators/heaters, but is cheap. Radiator shops typically have listings for use-specific heater cores, but sometimes also have listings for the core itself (sans tanks)... again just for copper. Back in the day (last millenium), there were several reputable brands of radiators/heaters (e.g. - Modine), but I don't know these days. What it comes down to is its a crapshoot with either new or used. I've had heaters last 30 years or 30 days... didn't seem to matter where I got them. And given your symptoms, I can't see any doubt that the core is leaking. It doesn't take much coolant to produce a fogged window and glycol smell. A fogged window could just be a clogged A/C drain, but the smell is the tell.

See picture below. (If it works... first attempt attaching pic.)

Back in my day... (long ago, in a land far away!) My first job was working in a radiator shop, clientel was mostly Detroit iron, with thermostats mounted high and proud. But general practice was to do initial fill, replace radiator cap, start and warm up the engine to past the thermostat opening point (as judged by temp of radiator inflow hose and temp of radiator tanks), and THEN opening the radiator cap (carefully!) to do top-off. The point to leaving the radiator cap on during warm-up was that all cars "burp", kick out an air bubble that is somewhere below the coolant level of the radiaor tank. When they did that, it would push a significant, sometimes hazardous, amount of coolant straight out of the filler neck. If you leave the cap on then the burp is contained, and all you end up with is a radiator ready to top off. Just don't wait until significant pressure builds up before topping off; if this happens, turn off the engine and come back when things have cooled. Ok, so EJ's (maybe all soobs) are quirky, but it sounds to me like leaving the cap off while waiting for the burp is not a good idea. As a compromise, the cap could be half-on, which should allow any overflow to go the overflow tank instead of out the filler neck.

The doc that I have seen on the EA82T say that there is a restrictor orifice internal to the head (or block, I forget). The banjo joints are usually used in applications that require turning a fluid path 90 degrees with minimal restriction and maximum flow. Incidentally, any time airflow (thinkin' intake air?) needs to be turned 90 degrees it is recommended that the flow run into a chamber that is essentially an annulus ring with a side exit. "Elbows" su... er, stink.) You CAN overfeed a turbo with oil, as many of the older hotrodders found out. Well ok, it really isn't so much a feed issue as it is a drain issue. Try pinching off the drain tube and see how long the turbo lasts; I'll hold my breath and count. That blue smoke you see was (were?) your seals. The turbos in our size range normally spin upwards of 100k rpm (often abused to 130k+ rpm by overboosters). That whips the oil into something of a froth, which is why the drain line is not a nice, small 1/8"-ish line also. There is some point of flow/pressure that exceeds the drainline's capacity to rid the turbo of now-useless oil. I DO AGREE that dedicated feed lines would be better than some manufacturer-convenient, hand-me-down, second-best oil (and coolant!!!) supplies. Your method should also ensures a quicker supply of lube to the turbo on startup. Now, if we could continue oil and coolant flow for a while after engine shutdown...

Realistically, how much did the meagasquirt&edis route co$t you? I am really interested in going that (or a similar) way, at least partially 'cause I hate "black box" controls that I can't easily play with.

Many cars, especially newer ones, do not bother with heater valves. Fords in particular generally do not have valves. I am pretty sure that the Loyale-type do not have valves, although the '82 EA81 wagon I have does. There are a couple rationales for not having a valve. It is easier to provide temperature "mixing", and almost essential on automatic climate control systems. It is less likely that the heater core will become plugged with sediment if the coolant keeps moving. Heater valves tend to fail, so why have one if you don't need it? Probably a few others. (If you want "doesn't make sense" to do something... GMs early, and probably current, climate control had the air conditioner running constantly in order to provide cold air to mix with the heated air to get the right final temp. I suspect that other manufacturers did the same.) Anyway, all of this effort to remove air seems like a lot of work. What is the drawback to placing a flush/fill "T"-fitting in, for instance, one of the heater hoses? Is there something odd/unique that causes air to remain trapped in the system? I haven't experienced the problem in the EA82 "Loyale"-types. But I do agree that this is a good documentation of a procedure.

Getting kind-of back on topic... I thought that Subaru deliberately reduced oil pressure to the turbo, at least on older models, using a restrictor orifice in the head. And I think that their rationalization had to do with providing the turbo bearing with the pressure and flow rate that best suited it. (As opposed to reducing pressure/flow in order to ensure that upper-end still gets enough lubrication.) Any thoughts? If my understanding is false, I would love to change where/how my turbo gets its lube (and cooling, for that matter).

Diameter and length are pretty close, as I recall. I will check later...