idosubaru

(joke forthcoming) I'll tell you what sucks, having only one or two vehicles. Then you're reliant on that one or two vehicles to do everything. How lame is that? I like having like 10, and they're all 4WD except my FWD conversion craziness. Owning less than 10 cars sucks, how restrictive and dependent to just have one or two cars running at all times:lol:

right on, too bad there's not a special edit feature for that, even after you request no commentary on it! i get the same thing with mine.

thanks Dave! i always use the metal gaskets too.

you may have a much simpler option that all of them did not mention and requires no transmission work at all. if the center diff is indeed shot and essentially "locked" right now then you have a very simple option. remove the rear driveshaft and run it FWD. that takes 30 minutes and you don't have to do anything to the transmission. i know folks doing this right now and that have done it - you even have a choice of FWD or RWD, one guy I know is running RWD right now! if the center diff is in permament torque bind you're golden. if not, just run it until it is then do it :lol: otherwise, replace the center diff. transmission does not need to come out to replace the center diff and a guy in cincinatti or something mentioned about a year ago a shop charged him $500 to fix. probably better than swapping transmissions.

mileage? general maintenance history? can you take some pictures? what you're describing doesn't normal at all. if it's leaking that bad you should be able to find it. there's all sorts of possibilities here, we need more info. make sure it's engine oil, you are loosing oil? it's not power steering fluid, that is much more common and likely to find "all over engine comparment". if it's getting on your timing belt you need to replace that ASAP and fix the leak. oil will degrade the belt and it'll break, which will ruin or cause extensive damage on this vehicle since it's an interference engine. a friends car did this and the oil soaked belt, which was brand new, only last a couple months and a couple thousand miles.

I'm trying to determine if the water pump on this 1998 Outback has been replaced already. It appears very clean looking and I can see a cork gasket with a bit of black sealant on it that was used for the water pump gasket. This tells me the water pump was replaced since from the factory it should have had the metal gasket right? Did older Subaru's all have metal gaskets from the factory? The car also had an aftermarket timing belt, so it was replaced at some point, although i'm still replacing that.

i tried all sorts of combinations for the key and handle pressing/pulling, etc with no results. i have yet to try pushing from the inside. i'll get a chance friday to work on it.

the FWD doesn't add any complexity over an EA82 4WD swap does it? it's the same conversion as anyone that's ever put an EA82 trans in an EA81 or put EA82 stuff in a brat before, right? There should be threads on here or the USRM about swapping EA82 stuff into an EA81? I converted my Legacy Lsi (in my sig) to FWD. It was easy..and I had to do it with an automatic and also castrating the EJ25 to an EJ18. Remove the driveshaft, rear diff, rear axles and use the outer cups off the axle to retain inside the rear knuckle. Only two bolts hold the rear driveshaft in place - at the carrier bearing (oh sorry, at least on an EA82, ER27, and EJ stuff - i guess eA81 is the same...some of those even have just a one piece shaft right?) Anyway - two bolts roughly. On EA82's there are 3 bolts holding the rear diff in place - one up top, two on the mustache bar. Then knock the pins out on the outer end of the axles and the whole deal drops off. That's only 5 bolts and two pins to have the whole mess on the ground.

there's no apparent rust issues on this car, but i guess you can't really see in there. also - the handle springs back just fine, squeeze, let go, squeeze, let go - it goes back to normal position just fine. doesn't really matter i guess, either way it's broke and needs fixed. didn't get to it today but i will in the next day or two and it appears i'll have to bust up the interior trim.

Susie - the older vehicles had a read memory mode, which would tell you all codes that were set at some point (since last cleared). I can't imagine the newer models don't have that functionality as well since the ECU's are far more modern and capable. Funny, I have a scanner, I've just never had to read a code from memory on a newer vehicle so i'm not sure. Hundreds of folks on here know the answer to that hopefully they'll pipe up. If you can - you'll want to pull those codes from memory and let us know what they are. post the exact codes - not what someone else thinks they mean.

What is this "push the opposite way" comment I'm seeing? What does that mean exactly, I don't quite get that.

crack, thanks for the heads up rooster. time to pry from the top to have a peak until it breaks. maybe i can get enough room/visibility to push a latch or something? luckily my 97 impreza cover is already off, so i'll have a working, exposed mechanism to look at right next to it. maybe that will help? thanks for the help guys!

i'll take a look tomorrow during the daylight, hopefully the trim is removable? inserting/turning the key didn't change anything, although i can feel/hear a light clicking as i turn the key, so something it moving in there.

good question. i just went and checked and i don't think it does but i'm not sure what it's "supposed" to feel like it just moves with no feeling of resistance at all. i compared it to my 2002 OBW. when that is locked, i feel the handle move, gets really tight (like it's pulling somethign), but doesn't open. when it's unlocked i feel the handle move, gets really tight and then *click* it opens. on my friends 96 Legacy the handle just feels like it's moving freely, no resistance at all, but it does squeeze. it could be different than my OBW though?

your best bet is to get the exact code and relay it to us. the parts store guys can really be hit or miss. they see all sorts of different makes, models, and countless different engines, it is not likely they are very familiar with subarus - if that familiar with cars at all. i can appear psychic to folks about subarus. but folks come to me with other cars andi get it wrong all the time! engines are dynamic. "a code" doesn't necessarily mean "a fault". a signal out of range causes the check engine light. there are typically multiple causes for a signal to be out of range. a sensor not working - or not plugged in may cause the same fault. one means the sensor is bad, the other means the connector is bad, but the code is the same. extrapolate that to all sorts of possibilities and you begin to see the scope of the design.

A friend of mine's 96 legacy wagon won't open. The rear hatch just doesn't come open no matter how hard you squeeze the handle. She said she was able to get it open when her boyfriend pushed really hard from the inside while she pulled on the handle on the outside one time. Otherwise it's never been able to open. How do you get to it to if it's "stuck" shut so I can look into the mechanisms of it?

hmm, really? should be easy enough to check at least...if the FSM isn't completely dead wrong like it is for the XT6!!!!:-\

The shifting just doesn't seem to be what it should be. Mainly it won't downshift sometimes when it should. It'll shift fine manually and sometimes I just downshift for it manually since it waits too long.

Been driving this car for awhile and I should finally have time to swap a closer matching TCU into this 96 Legacy project car. It is a 96 Legacy EJ18 FWD automatic. I have two options for FWD TCU's: Match the engine - by getting a FWD TCU from an EJ18 powered impreza. Match the body style - by getting a FWD TCU from an EJ22 Legacy. Which is better - match the body style even though I can't match the engine which has lower output? Or match the engine size even though I can't match the body style (weight differences)? I'm leaning towards trying an Impreza EJ18 TCU since it'll more closely match the engine output. But I'm not sure how interchangeable EJ18 stuff is since they are a good bit different electronically and all. Guess I'll end up trying both.

i'm sorry stickedy, i was thinking you had the MPFI dual port heads. only the later XT Turbo's had those and i was thinking that's what you had for some reason. it may be that yours are the same, i'm surprised someone else didnt' chime in. i can promise this information is already on the USMB, a search would tell you if heads are interchangeable and differences.

rotor? cool, that's great all that stuff is good to go. go snag that code.

Clear the memory and then right after it happens again, check the READ MEMORY mode. It will tell you the code that tripped the check engine light. You could try it right now, but often it gives you a list of codes...stuff that triggered when you were working on something, disconnected something, something from 4 years ago..etc. Though you might get lucky and just have one code listed, so it's worth a try to read the memory now. How's the tune up stuff - general plugs, wires, cap and rotor will easily cause this. Although I don't suggest throwing any parts at it until you read the code, since you already know it has some information for you.

so you're not sure if it's the heads or the block that's hosed are you? the heads are turbo specific, not sure if you can "make" the carbed heads work with some drilling and tapping for the oil/coolant ports for the turbo but the carbed versions only have single port intakes so that might be tricky. best to know exactly what is wrong, it could be fixable. if the block is bad i think you can install all the turbo stuff inside the carb block - pistons and all, then bolt the turbo heads to it. so basically you'd only use the carbed block. the carb block won't have the knock sensor port, but usually the boss is there. the one SUbaru engine i did that didn't have a knock sensor even had the hole and threads there, i just had to screw the knock sensor in when I used it in a car that had a knock sensor.

O2 sensors rarely cause a no start condition, so i'm not sure that will fix your issue. it might be more likely that the actual issue caused a mixture problem, triggering the O2 sensor code. that being said - this is a simple problem if everything you tell us is true: tune up done, car runs fine with no issues (when it runs), and the timing belt has been replaced. there are a lot of suggestions being thrown out here, all of which i doubt you can spend time on. if it has issues again we need to know a couple things to narrow this down without throwing parts/time at it: does it have good spark at all 4 cylinders? is it getting fuel? with the strong noticeable smell of something running hot that could mean the catalytic converter is hosed. or it could just mean axle grease or a drip of oil hit the exhaust which doesn't really mean anything or cause any problems.

Not being hydraulic, I'm doubtful they'll quiet down on their own. On the hydraulic actuated older stuff the good news was that the ticking is not detrimental to the engine, hopefully the same is true of this style as well? If it didn't do it before and does it now then something is amiss. I'd wonder what some of the folks more knowledgeable with head rebuilds has to say - about valves, seats, head work, machine work, etc?