Frank B

If I remember correctly, the 12v is to heat the bimetal coil inside the choke to open the choke. 12v will not be applied untill the engine is running, as it runs and warms up, the 12v element in the chike heats up the bimetal coil, thermostat basically, and it expands, turning the choke shaft to open it. Take you old one and carefully open it up. there should be rivets or screws holdint the round cover in place, remove them but hold the cover in place. Now trun the cover in one direction or the other, that will increase or decrease the spring load on the coil and open or close the choke. You should get a good idea of how it works then. Now while your engine is stone cold, like it is in the morning, do the same to the carb on the car. Turning it to close the choke plate, but just enough to close it. You don't want to go too far past the point that it is closed. You may not have to close it all the way either for the engine to start. There may also be an issue with the linkage. With it stone cold, open the throttle completely while watching the choke, it should close as soon as it's opened, I think. I can't remember if your year soob requires the throttle opened to close the choke like the olde ones do.

I can't see how the oil pump, or any other engine internal part could be damaged by it, unless you run 100% ATF and run the car down the interstate at 80 mph! The automatic tranny has an oil pump, it has valves, and bearings, etc. It also has a lot of heat to contend with. The only thing the tranny doesn't deal with is the unburned hydrocarbons(gas) in the oil that gets past the rings. If you use no more than a quart of ATF in your oil it will be fine. I've always thought of ATF as being a high detergent hydraulic fluid. That's what it is really. Just with more detergents, and friction modifiers. I've used a quart, sometimes two in diesel vehicles added to the diesel to clean the injectors, it worked great. I'm going to try it in my 82 fords' tranny. It needs it, and besides, I have a spare tranny:rolleyes: .

There shouldn't be anyhting wrong with soldering the wires. As long as it's a good connection, the AAV doesn't care. The coolant temp sender is the one wire unit near the thermostat, the coolant temp SENSOR, that's on the back side of the manifold passenger side and it has two wires. A bad coolant temp SENSOR will cause a poor running condition. The sensor is for the ECM input, the sender is just for the guage. The sensor is mounted horizontally, the sender is mounted vertically. You may luck out and just have a corroded connection, or wires. You can solder the wires directly too the sensors, but you should have a disconnect in the wire.

You mentioning it running better with boost reminded me of my first turbo(86 4wd 3-door). It had a bad miss, like not getting out of it's own way miss, that had the same symptom. It turned out to be a bad injector. I found it by pulling the plug wires off the plugs one at a time untill I found one that didn't effect the idle when removed. Did you get a code with the CEL? Still check the TPS, there has been talk of a lot of false codes associated with a bad or mis-adjusted TPS.

I agree Gary, I think it worked so well in the older engines because of the older oil, less detergents, poor quality and standards, etc. That left a ton of deposits! All the hydrocarbons getting past the rings didn't help either, those older engines were designed to leak a bit I think. I also believe that the older design gaskets were better suited as well, cork and paper mostly. Newer rubber variants don't like chemicals that they were'nt designed for. I wouldn't put kerosene or atf in a 2006 dohc, v-tec, plastic manifold havin', 0w30 requirin', etc, etc, engine but a 20 year old subaru that's been mis-treated with a ton of miles on it...... it should pull through.

The temp sender is screwed into the manifold just below the thermostat. It has one wire. If you look at the pic you posted, just right of the red circle and below the u shaped black hose. The messed up wire you mentioned on the AAV (auxiliary air valve) may have something to do with the hard starting???? I think every turbo has an annoying miss. Get your hands on an FSM or search for the ways to test all the sensors, TPS, MAF, CTS, etc and test them all. Add a few ground wires too. One from the manifold, one from the block, and one from the exhaust(for the O2). Clean the MAF with electrical contact cleaner(leaved no residue). Have you given it a tune up?

Check the condition of the wires and connector at the temp sender, on the thermostat housing. Or replace the sender. It's like $11 or $13 at autozone.

A half a quart isn't going to hurt it. I have heard of people using 100% and just let the engine idle for 10 minutes at operating temp to clean it out. Kerosene too. I have done the kerosene before with good results. Added a quart to the oil, idled engine for 15 minutes at operating temp, and drained. I suggest you change the oil and take it for a drive. A long drive. And change the PCV. The condensation will boil off after the oil has reached the running temp and held there for at least 30 minutes. Do you drive short distances only? I run atf in my motorcyle tranny, it's a two stroke so the tranny oil is seperate from the engine oil. At 100% it really smoothed it out, but also leaks out like crazy! It's thinner. I need to try the 100% atf in the manual trans trick.

Get every last thing you can off of it, what you can't use or don't want just sell it or give it away to fellow subaru owners to keep the parts out of the scrap pile. I had a spare tire, and a muffler off of a legacy I parted out a few years ago, and I held on to them for too long just because I couldn't throw them in the scrap pile at the dump. It seemed like too much of a waste of good parts to me. One day a lady in a legacy came to a yard sale my girlfriend was having and I offered her the parts after a long discussion about her love for her subaru, that lady still waves at me avery time I see her and that was over a year ago. It's a cool feeling.

If I remember correctly, remove the plugs so you can turn the engine over by hand, get number 1 cylinder at top dead center, drop in the disty with the rotor at the number one cylinder terminal on the cap. A trick is to put the cap on the disty, mark on the distributor body where the #1 terminal is so you can see the point without the cap on. As you lower the disty in the block, the rotor will turn due to the angle of the gear teath, so you need to start a bit off the spot so it turns into it as you lower the disty. It may take a few tries, but you'll get it. if it will not run correctly, you may have to remove the disty and turn it 180 degrees. This only happens if you get #1 at TDC on the ehaust stroke, instead of the compression stroke I think theres a mark on the flywheel to confirm TDC. This will get you in the ball park untill you fire it up, warm it up, and set the timing with a timing light. Good luck.

It was the Chrysler Conquest and the Mitsubishi Starion that were sister cars. 2.6l turbo if I remember correctly. I had the pleasure of driving one once, AWESOME! I was going 125 before I grabbed 5th gear!

I've had great results with the NGK R plugs and NGK wires. The wires are an exact fit, not too long and not too short like sooo many other brands. Plus they are labeled 1,2,3, and 4. It really isn't needed, but it's a nice touch. Where did you find the E3 plugs? What's the number? I have one in my 15 year old chainsaw and it gave instant results.

Yes that is the modulator. That's the only question I can answer. :-\

I have to say that this is just awesome! If it were closer to me I would have to bid on it.... http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290049662754&fromMakeTrack=true

I don't have much experience with auto subarus, but I'm sure someone that has had this happen will post.Untill then....It could be low on tranny fluid, or in dire need of a changing.Or the modulator valve is bad. If I remember correctly, it is on the passenger side of the tranny. You should be able to follw the vacuum line from the engine to the tranny to find it.

At this point all you can do is spray the engine down with water to get the antifreeze off, let it dry, top off the coolant and start it up to see where it leaks.

Now we need a pic of an engine that had synthetic in it from day one......

Bump for an update...... Does anyone have pics of the areas modified? Wasn't there some discussion about mounting the intake manifold backwards to avoid these problems?

Got it! It was the filter! We replaced it some time ago I just wanted to let it go a while to see if it really did fix it. Thanks for your replies.

There's one on Evilbay right now...... http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=004&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=&item=140050317265&rd=1&rd=1

That is just one that I had seen on Ebay. There are a few NOS reman units on there for $79.95 too.

What are your driving habits? And distances that you drive it? Condensation in the oil will not "boil off" if the engine oil doesn't get up to temp and stay there for at least 30 minutes. You can't avoid it, it will always be there. I had found the same thing in my 82 ford F150 when I bought it. I t sat for almost 8 years, only started and idles for about 10 minutes whenever the guy remembered to do it. I changed the oil and filter, added a can of Seafoam in the oil, changed pcv, and drove it! after a while it cleared up. I'd say clean it out, change the oil and add Seafoam to remove the moisture, change psv, and drive it for a while. If it keeps coming back or you've done all that already, change the gaskets, etc, as suggested.

Other than the nightmare involved with getting parts, how are the Solex carbs? Mainly the two barrels like the Solex 32/35 TDID and variants? From what I gather, the bolt patern is the same as a weber so mounting it won't be a problem.

Thanks, I looked but I couldn't find anything...........

Yeah, that was the plan, leave the O2 and just cap/remove the other junk. Thanks for the reply and confirmation! I see from the other posts that you are "experienced" in the SPFI swap, do you have a list and instructions made up? I really haven't chose that as an option, but I do like to explore the options....