idosubaru

can you get a wrench in there? that's what i always use. dropping the exhaust may give you more room to work with. you could use a torch around the catalytic converter if you've done that before and know how to do it. torch the threaded area around the O2 sensor but not the sensor itself. then try to break it loose. or spray the O2 sensor down with liquid wrench a couple days in a row.

those sprockets are no match for a crow bar or wedge. just be careful not to damage the aluminum block. slide them off and replace the seal. behind the oil pump - at 12 oclock and 6 oclock you can see very faint lines where the two halves of the block come together. this is the only place sealant needs to be used. use a very small amount to fill in the cracks around this mating area of the block. i use a dab of grease to hold the mickey mouse gasket in place.

if you have coolant in your cylinder i wouldn't pay much attention to the compression readings. i'll put it this way, i wouldn't assume a high reading is a good thing. i've seen cylinders with coolant in them (known due to later disassembly to be blown head gasket) that will show compression ratios over 10 percent higher than what they SHOULD be. for example, having 150 psi in all cylinders and 175 in the cylinder with the blown gasket. the coolant in the cylinder probably messes with the compression ratio and may reduce some blow by and compression loss that would normally occur with gases. no matter about my speculation or reasoning, i've definitely seen it happen...unfortunately! if this is an EA82 - the headgaskets are easy to do. rusted bolts are the most time consuming issue in my experience.

wet or dry? can anyone explain that to me? can the thicker EA81 sleeves be installed in an EA82? the pistons can interchange, what about the sleeves? probably interferes with a water jacket or something?

i'd look into CCR. don't really see any reason to go with anyone else unless you have a very reliable and quality local guy to do it. while the motor is out: take hubs to a shop and have them replace the wheel bearings take calipers to the shop with a rebuild kit and have them rebuilt or do it yourself (kits are like 10 dollars and super easy to do) have the alternator and starter rebuilt these are items that can leave you stranded. well spent money if you like reliability and not being stranded somewhere. ship your fuel injectors off to be professionally cleaned (RC Engineering for example).

where exactly is the pitting? anyone want to slap an arrow on the picture? what causes it?

i've removed O2 sensors or disconnected them from more than one XT6 and they run just fine. gas mileage drops some, but nothing atrocious. if it's never been replaced, best to replace it as it can lower gas mileage some if you're worried about it. if the car ever had major problems, coolant loss, lots of additives thrown into the gas tank they may degrade the O2 sensor some. why not just replace it and be done with it?

double post

all XT6's alternators are identical. if you've ever taken an alternator apart, there's solder joint inside of it that causes the demise of most XT6 alternators. resolder and drive on. i've got a rebuilt one so i've never done it though, but know someone who has.

archemitis, you can definitely do this without any problems, don't worry about it. pull it off and never think about it again. just be careful with pets in the interior, small dogs and cats will depress that freaking diff lock button. if you plan on leaving it like that for awhile i'd cover it up, remove it or something so it can't accidentally be unlocked while making a turn in front of oncoming traffic. i'm repeating what miles said, because he's right. remove the rear half of the drive shaft and leave the part in from the trans to the center differential support. the rear half will come off by removing eight 12mm bolts, very simple. then you can run different size tires front and rear too...not that you'd want to but you could.

ignition - could easily be. but i'd guess plugs, wires, cap and rotor before coil. because i've had 207,000 / 198,00 and 196,000 miles on 3 different stock coils.

if the elements are there, applying 12 volts to the harness will operate them without harming anything else. the harness at the seat is disconnected therefore it has no interaction with the rest of the circuitry in the car right? i'd be very surprised if the elements were there. but it's worth a shot.

best bet is to build one from a 3.7 lsd unit and an open 3.9. keep your eye on ebay as well, but they'll go for 300+ and i've seen 2 in the past 2 years. you will likely wait a long time before you see one on there though.

try doing a search, you'll get tons of commentary on this subject. easiest to get a 3.7 lsd and convert your existing open 3.9 using the internals of the 3.7. i believe there's information and a write up addressing this. do a search on this group and you'll have plenty to read for quite some time, with lots of lists of vehicles...

bad plugs and a severly clogged air filter can cause these problems. not likely, but i've seen it before and it's easy enough to check. a friend of mine had his truck (can't remember what it was) towed to his mechanic because it quit running and wouldn't start. his mechanic called him and told him he needed a new engine for $2,300. so him and his dad (who was in on the joke because the mechanic had called the house) drove over to talk to the guy. while telling the guy he'd help him work at the shop to help pay off the bill the guy started laughing and said, "give me 12.50, i replaced the air filter".

brake pads wear down and the caliper piston gets pushed out by brake fluid. this reduces the amount of fluid in the master cylinder and can cause the brake light to come on. and typically at the onset the brake light will come on and off as you're driving due to hills and turning, anything that shifts the fluid and triggers the sensor. like someone mentioned, just look at the brake fluid level. if it's close to "low" it probably just needs more fluid, this is totally normal. this would also indicate the pads are worn. inspect the brakes, if they are worn down and need replacment at 48,000 miles, that's a good indication that this car was driven aggressively, in heavy traffic or windy/mountain roads. not necessarily a bad thing, but like already mentioned i wouldn't expect it to be babied and this is probably the case on any used STi. if you turn the wheels all the way to the left or right sometimes you can visually inspect the brake pads yourself. brake pads have a wear indicator on them, a small notch in the pads. once that notch has disappeared it's time to replace the pads. but i'm not familiar with the STi so i don't know that you can inspect them without removing a wheel.

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?p=224635&posted=1#post224635 238,000 miles on the original clutch, that's reassuring.

clutch is nothing spectacular, just a cumbersome job because either the trans or motor has to come out. i'd avoid the dealer like the plague personally...actually i avoid them all and do it myself. but i do know a very reputable transmission shop in town that has been around for 20 or 30 years so i would tell someone to take it to them. dude that's nuts - 238,000 on the original clutch?

what is the key to avoiding wheel bearing failure? repacking them? proper lug nut torque? thanks.

look at the picture - your coolant temp sensor will look like that one, probalby including the green corossion!

the addage that AT gets worse gas mileage than MT is outdated. used to be *more true* than it is today. but those that say AT gets worse gas mileage (in general and not for a specific application) are regurgitating what they've heard others say. for certain applications, it is true but in general it only depends on the final gearing and the type of driving you do. so if someone says *this gets better than that* be sure they are talking about a specific car and know both transmissions well and aren't just repeating verbage they've heard in the past. the 4EAT transmission in the XT6 gets better gas mileage than the 5MT in the XT6. this is assuming everything else is equal - driver, terrain, gas, condition of motor...etc. at 75mph the 4EAT (i have two of them) runs around 3,000 rpms. at 75mph the 5MT (i've owned 4 of them) runs close to 4,000 rpm. it's louder and gets worse gas mileage at highway speeds. test drive both and see what rpm's they are at for highway driving. the one with the higher RPM at at given speed will have worse gas mileage. if they are equal, the manual transmission will get better mileage because they sustain less internal loss and are lighter. the 4EAT lock-up can be controllable. all it takes is installing a switch in line with one wire at the wiring harness to the transmission. very easy to do and well worth it for those driving off road or in the snow. with that, you have full control over lock-up, if you want it. technically you have more options than a 5MT. because you lock it up when you want to. But, when you don't have it locked up the computer can instantaneously adjust to driving conditions which the 5MT can not. if you're buying a new car you're off to a great start. a well taken care of automatic transmission can outlast the engine. install an AFTERMARKET TRANSMISSION COOLER immediately. subaru may install it for you. they are 30 dollars at the parts store and very simple to install and do wonders for AT's. a good transmission shop never returns a rebuilt or newly installed transmission without installing one of these as standard practice. by now, many older automatics are not as reliable as they are new because people haven't taken care of them, they have tons of miles without having the fluid changes, etc. that won't be an issue for a new one that you have control over. in the older transmissions (i've owned 1 XT and 6 XT6's) i find the manual transmissions weak. i've had problems with pilot bearings, throw out bearings and clutches. and i drove manual transmissions in the *early* days of owning XT6's, when they weren't nearly as old as they are now that i drive auto's. but i drive off road, mud, snow and stuff like that which is rough on a manual trans. city driving or an aggressive or off road driving style may lead to needing the clutch replaced which may end up costing more than AT maintenance. if you're not keen on maintenance or details then a manual transmission would be better suited. the manual transmissions are more forgiving. they are less sensitive to having mismatched tires and being towed improperly. if you don't rotate tires or blow tires and replace one with the wrong size or that's new and the rest are quite old....not paying attention to having matching tires...etc. these things can adversely affect an AT much quicker than a MT. MT are certainly easier to rebuild and much cheaper if you happen to have a transmission fail on you. and there are no computers and almost no electronics to cause issues.

it could go away. it could stay forever. you have a tiny disk only a few inches across stopping thousands of pounds of vehicle, it's not difficult for some of the energy to get dissipated into sound instead of heat. a brake job *normally* doesnt' make noise, but it's not unheard of, no pun intended. ask him what kind of pads he used. a different set or manufacturer of pads may help if the problem won't go away and is unresolvable and intolerable. i wouldn't call this an immediate concern so long as he didn't forget to tighten something. noisey brakes aren't a safety hazard (unless someone did something really stupid). i'd probably give him the benefit of the doubt if you trust him and wait a couple days. i wouldn't wait more than a week if you really want him to resolve this for you. brakes are so easy to do, with the wheel off for disk brakes the pads come out by removing ONE bolt. so he should be able to check it very easily.

don't know, but i hate to hear of OBS quirks as i just bought a 97 AWD Automatic OBS today!

Rockford has internet prices of 22.77 for the 430-09 (justy size), the 430-10 (should be for all other 80's subaru's) should be the same price, though i couldn't find a price for it.

a machine shop can rebuild them. you could even do it yourself. cut the old joint out with a sawzall type tool and then with some grinding and such you could probably do it yourself. i had a machine shop do it for about 100 dollars. can probably find a place to do it cheaper than that though. this is BETTER than a new unit because the ujoints are greasable and replaceable once they've been installed once. purchase the ujoints or get the part numbers from: http://www.staugustinefwd.com/ i think they run 29.95 per ujoint. seems expensive, you could probably get cheaper ujoints somewhere but i already had mine rebuilt so i haven't looked into it. IF YOU DO find a cheaper source let us know i might rebuild the ones in my other XT6's. i drive alot of miles (40,000+ a year) and drive off road alot in my XT6 so buying used wasn't an option....well after the 4th or 5th time it wasn't anyway. it was cheap, but i was getting tired of replacing used axles all the time. used ones are old and have been sitting around for who knows how long. depends what you want to spend and how much reliability you want.