idosubaru

make sure your mechanical timing (flywheel and cams) are timed dead on. i just ruined my XT6 by driving around with jacked up timing. had a bad distributor but couldn't figure it out so i just kept driving it for like 6 months like that. toasted my headgaskets and a rod bearing. i read afterwards a few articles suggesting that bad timing can cause headgasket failure. probably only in situations like mine where you drive around like that for many many miles.

i tried that rope down the spark plug hole method a long time ago and could not get it to work in my soob. i'm sure it does with the right rope size and and all. but definitely be careful, dont' want to snag it on an opening or closing valve and get material in there. probably really wouldn't hurt anything, but i'm a little leary about intentionally stuffing things in the cyilnders. it is a neat trick though, that's why i tried it (once). i'm about to do my OBS as well, there's no access hole in the transmission like older soobs to just jam a socket extension into? if you use a chain wrench i'd guess you cover the pulley with some rubber material so it doesn't mark it up?

the ports were cleaned but not worked in anyway. the intake all the way to the valves is clean, no hints of carbon or oil i typically see on heads when they are first pulled. i plan on hitting the ports even if i don't pull the heads. i can get to most of the intake side of the ports and smooth out all that nasty casting flash. i can get to that since the motor is on my bench and there's no intake or anything on top of it. i think i've decided to save the valve job for a build with turbo pistons. thanks for the input guys.

this may be a little tricky, but could be done with a helper and wouldn't take that long for two people that know what they are doing. (a lift would be really nice) turn the front wheel and count the number of rotations of the front wheel and the number of rotations of the rear output shaft (or rear tire). i know there's a power split between front and rear on an automatic, but i think the revolutions should be comparable with the car on a lift. the center diff *may* get in the way, but if your count doesn't verify 3.9 or 4.11 then you know the center diff was the problem. does that makes sense? you'll get one of three answers - 3.9, 4.11 or some bogus answer because of the center diff. but i think it will work.

you don't need new pullies, someone was confusing you and the other guy asking about timing belt pullies. he thought the original poster of this thread (with 80,000 mile OBS) was asking about the tensioners. but you were not, it was the Forrester guy or someone else asking about pullies. two different conversations, slightly confusing when trying to skim through the post. but tensioners are important, particularly on cars with interference motors (which yours has). if you have the money, the extra 100 or 200 for pulleys may be worth it considering a failed pulley can ruin the motor on these very reliable cars. 80,000 is very early for a tensioner to fail and by no means a *must do*. my 215,000 mile XT6 has some original pullies on it. i would suggest having a good mechanic inspect the belt. you can remove a timing belt side cover in about 10 minutes and check the belt. IF IF IF the belt was replaced, it would have been done relatively recently and it would be very obvious that it was replaced, because noone would replace it at say....36,000 miles. if it was replaced it was probably done recently....at 60 or 70,000 miles or more and the writing and condition of the belt would be very new. you're always good to go if you replace the belt.

got an XT6 a couple weeks ago with an extra engine he was building up. i'm putting the extra engine in my daily driver. the motor was in good shape, but he installed new head gaskets anyway (engine was not overheated or blown gaskets). but he did not have a valve job done. heads with new gaskets and reground delta cams are already installed. the ports are perfectly clean. already have mine out and this one is clean, painted and just about ready to drop in. i'm nervous that the valve job wasn't done or the head bolts weren't cleaned when installed. but i don't want to pull the heads, get new gaskets, get the valve job done and reinstall everything if it's not a huge deal. i emailed the guy if there were any cracks between valve seats, i haven't heard back from him yet. i guess i have space and an engine lift so i can always pull it again if i have too. any thoughts?

i'd use aftermarket low compression turbo pistons. trying to figure out a plan. i got 4 XT6's and 2 extra motors.....can't decide at the moment whether to drop a motor in my daily driver and build a turbo block out of a spare motor for later. or install turbo pistons right now. but i don't think i'm going to go that route. i'll just drop this motor in and start building another block with turbo pistons for a later install. thanks for the input.

if i installed turbo pistons in my XT6, but ran it NA for awhile before i installed any forced induction how would the car run? would it suck really bad?

compare the a/c compressor diameter to the crank pulley diameter to get an idea of what RPM range you need to run. the crank and a/c pulley are fairly close in size, so looks like the a/c typically runs 500 - 7,000 RPM's, easily doable with an electric motor. just might draw a!!loads of amps.

i fabricated a mounting bracket to bypass my A/C for most of the year using a smaller belt which i'm running right now (being winter and all). i attached a picture. there is actually a one size shorter (like 20 or 40 mm shorter) 6 rib belt that may fit without using any bracket at all. but mine works fine like it is, so i'm not going to try the shorter belt until this belt is ready to be replaced. i couldn't resize the picture to post here, so here it is: http://www.xt6.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3772

copy that, you'll be fine with stock fuel control. a good fuel controller would be nice though and probably smooth the car out a good bit if you want one.

driving on the curb trick is my favorite for low riders (lower than my soob). have your car lifted a few inches, that should do the trick. i seem to remember most soob trannies having magnetic plugs in the pan, not sure about yours though.

i've plugged dozens of holes myself with no problems. take your time and cut the plug down flat to the lowest part of the tire to prevent it from pulling out. i wouldn't trust a shop to do a plug, i'd make them patch it. they'll get some hee haw new guy to do it. i agree, if you took it some place, they should dismount the tire and patch it. being a new car i would think there's some kind of warranty on the tires. or they would at least fix that (the right way) for free. common place and easy to do. at 215,000 miles i've never gotten an alignment (owned car since 105,000) and drive a sensitive first generation 4EAT AWD automatic transmission. i always swap front to back, keep tires on the same side. so long as the tires are wearing evenly, that's what matters. actual tire rotation patterns and all are a waste of my time, that's why it's confusing listening to different people. tire condition is key. the transmission couldn't give a s!!t which tire you put where. OMG YOU ROTATED INCORRECTLY YOUR ATF IS GOING TO BOIL!!! it only cares about the actual tread pattern on the tires. sometimes tire wear or transmission power distribution dictate different rotating patterns but in my experience my XT6 has excellent wear patterns at 215,000 miles with no alignment ever. and i go offroading all the time, smashed the front control arm in half in the snow, installed all new suspension bushings, ball joints, axles and hubs rebuilt...and still no alignment. perfect wear patterns on my tires right now that have 40,000 miles and need replaced. and yes use a good torque wrench and do it yourself. very easy to do. why have your tires balanced. i bet they aren't balancing them. they'll charge you for balancing but since it doesn't need done they'll look at them for about 10 seconds maybe spin them once on the machine and say they're fine, because they probably are. but if it makes you feel better that it says "tires balanced" on the invoice, then go ahead and take care of your vehicle as it is a good one.

i thought only Autozone has scanners? advanced has them too? Back OT (ON Topic), if you're showing a code you're wasting your time fiddling with anything until you find out what code is showing for the check engine light. your car is completely different but BE ADVISED the FSM is DEAD WRONG for TPS adjustment on an XT6. don't bother trying it, you'll never get it to test by the spec's in the FSM because the FSM is BS. i'm not saying your car is like this, but check before you assume the TPS is bad. i wasted an assload of time trying to decipher this one night many moons ago.

i figured EA82's were supposed to do that! i resealed an EA82 last summer. complete valve job, ported and polished heads, delta cams, all new seals everywhere (except rear main), disassembled and cleaned all the HLA's, new OEM subaru PCV valve, timing belts, pulleys. when i was done the car was running like crap. while i was leaning in the engine bay i noticed that if i pressed on the oil cap the car smoothed right out and idled great. when i pulled the cap off it ran like crap, sputtered and i think it even cut off but maybe not. pulled the cap and realized one of the seals/gaskets in the head set was for underneath the oil cap. replaced that seal and the car ran great. still would idle bad when i removed the cap though, i figured it was supposed to do that since everything else was new and the car ran awesome with the cap on.

hanging out with an XT6 owner from hawaii yesterday. he had severe rust on the bottom of his windshield. he had the windshield removed, removed the rust and repaired it with fiberglass and reinstalled the windshield. sounds like you don't want to do all of that though. leaks can be a real pain in the rump roast to fix. i'd probably either fill it up with silicone (they make really runny kind that will flow into spaces) or pull the windshield and do it right. depending how long you plan on keeping the car. leaks suck, wait til it starts smelling like mildew. mine leaked, i pulled all the trim and ran silicone along every freaking edge and corner of the windshield multiple times and it always leaked on one of my old soobs. no rust..not around the windshield anyway. thought i finally had it fixed when a guy was installing a windshield in my friends car. while he was there he said he'd fix mine for 10 bucks. he ran some sealant inside and out....didn't work.

i'm speaking of swapping the turbo engine in place so you have turbo pistons in the car. still plenty of fabricating and playing for you to do with exhaust and plumbing. you'll have turbo instead of NA pistons. you could pull the heads and install turbo pistons if you're ambitious. otherwise you will be fine with 6-7 psi boost.

sell the engine and get a turbo engine to drop in there. they can be found inexpensively and that's a much better way to go. you can get to 200hp easily with the stock ECU, no fuel controller needed.

i was having a similar starting issue in my XT6 a couple months ago. thing wouldn't turn over sometimes, sometimes it would. tried jumping it when it wouldn't start and it did the click like you mentioned but would not turn over. ran the jumper cable straight to the starter and nothing. after my friend drove off with his car i decided to jump the negative terminal of the battery to a grounding point on the car. i think i noticed the wire was really hot, so that's what gave me the idea. thing started right up. got home and installed a heavy gauge wire to a ground on the motor from the negative battery terminal. never had an issue with it again and that's the OEM 215,000 mile starter.

if the pins match, even if it's a different connector all he would have to do is splice in the connector from his old (trashed anyway) trans. 2 FSM's would be really nice, that would make this job much easier. tell you exactly what is what.

need trans, drive shaft, rear diff, rear hubs, axle shaft. a very tricky part you need to find out is that some subaru's dont' actually have all the holes and bosses you need in the rear to mount the rear differential. it would require some minor fabricating, drilling and welding. but i don't know about this year and model so i can't tell you for sure whether those mounting points are avaible or not. i don't know if it's auto or manual transmission. if it's an automatic you'd need the TCU as well.

how about this - what doesn't go bad on them - the air lines. that's about it. compressor, drier, o-rings, strut bags, height sensors, one of the 5 solenoids, computer. but all in all, i've found mine to be very easy to maintain so far. replace the orings and keep your struts clean and free from rust and things will go much smoother. bad orings will run the compressor to death. and dirty, rusty metal on the struts ruins the air bags prematurely.

don't just turn the distributor cap an insane amount to compensate. i did that and ruined my motor. turned out the distributor was bad and i drove it like that too long. i eventually replaced the distributor and set the timing properly, but it was too late, head gaskets (brand new) were already damaged. afterwards i read that bad ignition timing can prematurely ruin headgaskets. i still have my old *bad* one, not sure what was wrong with it as i never really looked, the car wouldn't run when installed properly. but it would run if i intentionally installed it a few teeth off and set the timing somewhere off the charts. was a really weird problem, biggest pain in the rump roast that i've had with a soob because it never occurred to me something could be wrong with the distributor.

ask the previous owner. ask the previous shop that did maintenance on it. pull the covers off and have a look at the belts. if they still have writing and look good, then they are likely fairly new. still a pain, because you'll never know unless someone tells you exactly when they were replaced. the left and right covers should be easy enough to remove just to have a peak. remove a couple small bolts and have a look. i say replace them unless they look really good. i highly doubt the belts are original, it is very unlikely they would last that long (i'm sure someone will now post they drove 234,000 on an original belt). best to replace them if you're not sure. if it breaks you're definitely not going anywhere unless it's all downhill. at 143,000 i would bet they weren't changed anytime recently. easily could have been a factor in the previous owner getting rid of the car. "ooh....70,000 miles is up again, let's get rid of it instead of paying someone 500 dollars to replace the belt on a car with all these miles." but there's no way to tell unless you can ask the person who did it or owned it.

if you're not concerned with cost, go with the new one. or if you're paying someone else to do it, then a new one might make you feel better. the real question is, are the new ones more reliable? they start as parts and then they are assembled. a proper rebuild should follow the same assembly and should be just as reliable. my guess is that some rebuilders cut corners though. personally i'd get a rebuilt unit. i've never had one fail. but i did avoid buying the 8.99 subaru XT6 water pump. it might be great, but that just seems rediculously cheap. you could research a little on the internet, some companies are probably better rebuilders than others. rebuild, remanufacture, refurbish...they can have different ways of doing it. i'd like one that has been mic'ed and everything replaced, not just the out of spec or damaged parts. the EA82's are super simple to work on if that's what you got. i'd definitely go with a rebuilt one and replace it next time i did the timing belts as well.