Subaru Scott

I'm pretty sure most everyone here works on their own cars... cause soobs are easy to work on! If not they rely on local shops with suby experience. And with the wealth of info available here and elsewhere on the internet, difficult problems have been solved and posted by your kind brethren I hate to have to say it, but as a former dealer tech, there's probably 2 or 3 mechanics standing around at your local dealer with nothing else to do but jam it in your poo-poo...

IT'S ALIVE! Frankentruck circa 2000. On my way to NYC... notice date... tell you that story later Hauling too much

Hey all! I’ve popped in here periodically for awhile but have just now registered and started posting. I’m an old Subaru hack from WAY back and have realized that I should be involved here, not for what I can learn, but for what I can contribute. I’ve been into Subys since ‘79, when I went to work for my high school auto mechanics teacher during the summer in Indianapolis. He was a former Sub dealer tech and had quite a little business on the side working on roos. I was a down and devout Ford man at the time but I was definitely intrigued by this flat, all aluminum engine. Even though it was not NEARLY enough displacement for me at the time… it was obviously a superior design. The first car we had to work on was a 74-75 sedan that needed the engine pulled to do head gaskets, and I was thinking, we’re gonna be here all day. 20 minutes later, the engine was on a stand and we were pulling the heads! I have been hooked ever since!! We were test driving that car less than 3 hours later, and yes, we reshimmed the wet liners… if anybody remembers those. Since then I’ve owned many great Scoobydoos, of note: my first was a ‘73 orange sport coupe I got from the junkyard and slapped a 1600 in. That thing had these awesome “gator belly”seats… sure wish I’d kept that one! ‘82 GL 4x4 D/R wagon, what a great car!!! I couldn’t wait for sunset to fire up that dashboard… and I still have the passing light. In ‘89 I transplanted an EA82 turbo into an ‘86 4x4 D/R hatch… just a re-drill on the flywheel, a little hammer work on the frame-rail, and a lot of extra wires… easy! That was a bad-rump roast car with the front axle shafts removed, Peugeot 15” wheels and a brake spring on the wastegate (12 psi). Then, around the turn of the century (I’ve always wanted to say that), in need of a truck and my Brat was too rusty to be trusty. I sat wondering what I could put together that would last more than a few years in the salt belt. I had a pile of heavily galvanized steel from a power substation I helped take down, and a wrecked ‘91 Legacy mail car that someone had given me. So I pulled out the welder and the big drill, and made a frame off the legacy dimensions. I didn’t have any good Suby front clips to use for a cab, so I cut the front off my dad’s old Civic, slapped a piece of plywood on the back, treated decking for a bed, and Frankentruck was born! Aptly named because all the parts were salvaged from the boneyard or given to me. I literally had $40.00 in it at first which was for brake lines and a plexiglass rear window. It now has over 305k miles and still going strong. Other than oil, plugs, brakes and belts, I replaced the clutch once (with a good used one), cam belt idler pulleys and front axles at 250k, and 1 injector coil went bad at 300k. Still on the same alternator, starter, water pump, fuel pump, (I’m a little nervous about that) and original Subaru fuel filter! Yeah, I know, that’s really being cheap, but if it aint broke… :brow:think about it, as a filter collects particles, the filtering actually gets better up to the point where it cant pass enough fuel anymore and then you know it’s time to change it. The factory fuel injection filters are made with very fine stainless steel mesh so you don’t have to worry about paper elements getting old and disintegrating. And I’m leery about the aftermarket or even SOA filters being of comparable quality. Any car I’ve had with the factory FI filter, I have left on and never had to replace. I did have one finally stop up on me with my latest project (other than normal circumstances), but I just backflushed it. More about that one later… don’t want to be a windbag. I was a Subaru dealership tech during the 80’s and 90’s and some of that experience and information is still in my brain somewhere if anyone wants to pick it I will be more than happy to help. Glad to be a part of this cool community!! Wish we had this 20 years ago... wouldn't have felt like such a weirdo

*Disclaimer*: The following should only be regarded as reference/entertainment... Don't try this at home! Well let me tell ya, I've overloaded some Subaru's in my day. The first instance I recall was in my 79 Brat. I was moving aprox. 80 miles and had a garage full of Suby engines and transmissions, etc. Being short on time, money, and the wisdom of an older man, I packed the little truck tightly with engines and tranny's till the rear suspension was down on the rubber stops... and I kept loading, piling higher than the roof! I don't know how much weight I had in there, but I can guarantee it was WAY more than a ton. I thought the tires were going to pop, but I made that first trip without incident and many more like it. Later on, I got smart and built a trailer. I used two Leone rear axles with Loyale coilovers which gave me 8 springs... that trailer would HAUL!! Loaded it to the stops countless times hauling limestone for my house foundation and beams for the frame. I've seen a couple of broken torsion bars, but I never broke one. Don't know how they did that but I'm thinking they must have been defective.

Forgot to add my 2 cents about filters. And I think someone else brought up Wix as well previously but I'll second that! A few years ago I cut open a bunch of filters to compare and boy, was I surprised! I used to think Fram made a good filter... what a joke! Chincy piece of bent sheet metal for a bypass spring. Seems like Purolater wasn't too bad but Wix had the best materials and construction of any I found. The Napa gold series is the same thing made by Wix for them. I did this before Fram and others started offering the "extra-guard" or whatever so I suppose I should check them out just to be fair but I doubt they'll be much better.

What? A whole thread on oil on a Subaru site and no mention of Castrol GTX? What's wrong here? Castrol was the ONLY oil recommended in the Suby owners manuals in the 70's 80's... am I wrong? Well, let me tell ya. when I started working on cars professionally, in the late 70's, the way oil was explained to me was there were eastern and western oils. The eastern oils, Quaker state, Pennzoil, etc, were a paraffin wax base and the western oils, Valvoline, Texaco, etc, were not. After pulling the valve covers off die hard Quaker state fans engines, and looking like I just popped the mold off of a Jello or a bundt cake, I opted for Valvoline, till I was turned on to Castrol through Subaru, and that's all I've used since. I have never had an oil related failure and feel that synthetic is better but a waste of money on a daily driver since I can't let it go for more than 4k miles because it's DIRTY!! BUT... I will be looking into the P6 recommendation by GD because I value his opinion and facts is facts, right? So, any other Castrol com padres out there, 10-40 in the winter, 20-50 in the summer? Those were the good ol days right?

Well, let me tell ya... I knew a guy once that wanted to buy this Subaru that was owned by a corporation whose employees had been abusing it HEAVILY!! They told him that if anything major went out, they would get rid of it. So, he poured a whole quart of brake lathe shavings into the manual transmission. Now I know this was bad, but it was almost justifiable as far as saving the poor suby from many years of abuse. They say it shuddered and bucked and growled like a truckload of tigers in heat and then kinda quieted down before they gave it to the customer. It came back some 30k miles later for other issues... no mention of tranny problems, and it was quiet as ever. He eventually did buy (saved) the car from them and when the tranny was pulled apart, the whole inside was polished! With no considerable wear at all!! IT DIDN'T CARE! It ate metal and took it... these aren't Chevy's we're dealing with

GD, while I'm sure that's completely true up there in rust free land, (you lucky dogs) where I grew up in the "salt belt", I ran into some hard cases that were essentially one piece and a punch would just carve out hunks of metal and distort things till it was swing arm time! Harbor freight/Northern tool will have a socket for less than 20 bucks and it will only take 20 minutes at most with a cutoff wheel to make the perfect tool that you can put the BIG impact on and let it eat!

Well, I can tell you I swapped back and forth several times (usually back) and never had an issue with the crossmember in any car. And it was always my experience that a good running solid lifter 1600 had more poop than an 1800 (or maybe they just tried harder ). Slap a Weber on and you're definitely blowin' 18's doors. And with that tiny little stroke, they will SCREAM!

Buy a cheapy-cheap socket with the same OD as the nut. Cut down 1/4" from the rim the excess material leaving just the 4 "pegs" using your nut as a pattern. Grinder with cutting wheel works great. Made one like that and used it for years and years. I'd give it to you but I haven't seen it for a loooong time.

You guys running without belt covers reminds me of a car I worked on while I was a dealership tech in the late 80's. Work order said "check coolant leak" so I pulled it in and left it running while I opened the hood, expecting to see a water pump drip. When I looked down I couldn't believe what I saw... customer had gotten the engine so hot the covers had melted off... yes, OFF!!! Completely gone except for a few saggy strings of plastic still hanging here and there!! The thing still ran fine but I only replaced the pump and told him to drive it for awhile before replacing the covers to make sure the engine was ok... never saw him again.