NOMAD327

The ethanol is there to replace the MTBE that's been put in for the last few years for no good reason. (oxygenated fuel) It's been phased out a lot of places because it likes to help any fuel leak go straight into the ground water in the area. I wouldn't expect a big economy difference with 10%, but the 85% that the greenies are now pushing as the next big thing is another story

The most common oil leak problem is from the front crankshaft seal or the adjacent oil pump area. If this is the leak, it will drip down dead center in front and blow back over the bottom of the motor and the exhaust. There will be smoke and burning oil odor. If you look under the front of the motor below the crank pulley there are two vertical metal cylinders protruding down an inch or so, one very near the oil filter and the other on the driver side. There will usually be a couple drips of oil evident on the bottom of these two metal cylinders if it's a front seal leak. It could be from a couple other places, but I would look here first.

My thought would be tree sap or paint overspray from a new bridge painting project in the neighborhood, but that would normally be on the paint surfaces as well. If they are rock hard, a fast evaporating solvent won't work, a mix of blade to get the bulk and solvent to remove the smears left behind would be my best guess.

There normally seems to be some rubber residue that sticks to the glass in the weatherstrip area. Removing the residue with a razor blade and some glass cleaner will help the windows go up and down in all weather. Some sort of silicon on the rubber is probably best. If the windows are still stuck, run an electric heater inside the car for an hour before trying to unstick the doors.

This usually is from a bad weatherstrip on the trunk to deck seal, or a leaking rear window seal. It's also possibly something weird like a taillight seal, a hole in the metal bodywork from rust or collision damage or some penetration at the fuel door area. If you have a fold down rear seat, put it down and look into the trunk while someone wets the back of the car with a garden hose. If the seat doesn't fold down you will have to get in the trunk with a flashlight.

If it was done in the past by a Subaru dealer, it will be in the computer and a dealer can check for you. Otherwise, if there's no receipt or note in the car, you cannot be sure. The normal schedule on that car is 105,000 miles and it's believeable it's still the original.

The small silver piece the size of a dime on the radiator cap is stuck to the big rubber gasket. Just pick it loose with your fingernail and it will be fine. The big spring in the cap is the overpressure relief, and the small silver disc in the middle is the underpressure relief. What happens is water expands on heatup and is vented to the overflow. On cooldown, a vacuum forms in the system and the water is supposed to siphon back into the radiator to keep it full. The hoses collapse due to atmospheric pressure and will be fine unless it's been like this for a very long time.

My buddy has an 01 OBW and just had automatic transmission rebuilt, it had internal seal leakage which caused delayed reverse engagement. A shop put a seal conditioner in which helped, but he had a full rebuild with a new kit done by an experienced independent shop. There were no problems with dirt or contamination, bad seals were found and replaced and the transmission now works normal. He unfortunately is now experiencing torque bind which was not there before. The tires are all matched and no other obvious problems. Installing the FWD fuse eliminates the bind, which to me rules out wiring, connectors and the actual duty c solenoid as being problems. Any ideas what might be left to check?

Should your problem be a blocked airbox drain, the blockage could be in the hose, but would more likely be something inside the box that can't get through the choke point where the hose connects. To check, poke a nail or short pencil in gently for an inch or so. The water would be ever-present if this is your problem, and a small gush of water will normally come out when the hole is opened.

My 99 manual shows the hose coming out of the firewall horizontally a few inches directly below the refrigerant hoses with a small hose clamp and an approximately 90 degree bend downward. I do not have my car nearby to check. The hose is probably about 3/8" diameter and comes to an open end at or slightly above floor level. On a lot of cars, it comes straight down from the heater and goes through a hole in the passenger side footwell. In this case it will extend slightly below the level of the floor.

The fact it occurs going around turns makes it sound like the drain on the air conditioner box is blocked. The condensate that drips off the evaporator lands in the bottom of the air box, and normally drips onto the pavement from a rubber or plastic tube that leaves the bottom of the heater enclosure and goes out through the floor somewhere on the passenger side near the firewall. If seeds or dirt get into the ventilation system through the air intake, they can block this small vertical hose, causing a backup of water which will rush around on turns making a sloshing sound. The scenario of bubbles in coolant are more common, but would be related to gunning the throttle, not making right or left turns. If it gets bad enough, going around a sharp turn, you will eventually get a slosh of water out of the floor heat outlet. An antifreeze leak will normally have an unplesant sweet odor, and normally will cause the windshield to fog up on the inside when the defroster is on.

Thanks, very thoughtful and informative!

Pulling the thermostat gives a real good drain, if really concerned, park on a slight downhill grade first. Always good to replace the thermostat in any case. (use genuine subaru replacement) The best refill by far is to pull the top radiator hose at the radiator and pour coolant down into the motor through the hose. This overcomes the normal roadblock the bottom mounted thermostat creates. Also fill the radiator and then replace the hose. This ensures at least a 90 percent fill. It works slightly better on a slight uphill slope, but I have had no problems doing the initial fill on a downslope or on the level. This is an engine you do not want to overheat.

The two referenced choices were part number 1050002 GM Top Engine Cleaner, or part number X66-A AC Delco Carburetor Tune-Up Conditioner. The Seafoam product would probably do at least as well, as long as it was O2 sensor safe. Per manual: Cleaning applies to 2500cc engine only at least on 99 model year. 1, start motor and warm up until radiator fan operates. 2, hold throttle valve to maintain engine speed 2000 RPM. 3, Disconnect air by-pass hose from air intake duct. 4, slowly pour one 16 oz. can of cleaner into bypass air hole. 5, leave the engine running for five minutes, allowing white smoke to come out from muffler until the cleaner is used up. 6, stop the engine. 7, Release the throttle valve. 8, Reconnect the air by-pass hose to the air intake duct. 9, check the duty ratio of the IAC solenoid using Subaru Select Monitor. (should be 25 to 40%)

The 99 factory service manual talks about cleaning the 2.5 IAC valve using either GM top end engine cleaner or another spray solvent which I forget, but was probably Subaru dealer provided. It involved using a fast idle and injecting through the inlet tube. The 2.2 has a different arrangement and was to be cleaned in the traditional way. The high idle is necessary, because the motor will not run slow with the tube disconnected. I disassembled the throttle body and the IAC valve and cleaned them manually on my car with no problems, but the IAC valve is hard to access on the 2.5 and has some small scary parts that have to be handled correctly. The GM top end engine cleaner is good stuff but $10 a can.

Batteries last three to seven years depending how good they were to begin with, that's with everything else working properly, your's may just be getting near the end. Radio Shack sells a nifty tester for about $5, it's a set of wires and a series of LED's. First you connect it to the battery without the motor running and it will tell you battery condition. Then you start the car and test it again and it will tell you how charging voltage is. If it has low battery voltage but is charging fully, drive awhile and see if the battery voltage comes back up. If not, there are a number of things to check, The most common problem for this sort of thing is loose or corroded battery terminals. You can check the water level in the battery cells, but this is not a big issue like it used to be and is seldom the cause of any problems. Unhooking the battery wires will loose radio and clock settings, and on models from about 95 to 98 with keyless entry, will trip a blinking parking light/horn which will need thee key fob to turn off. Other things would be a loose drive belt, ours do not have spring loaded tensioners like a lot of cars, so they may need to be tensioned a week after initial installation, and maybe once more after a few years. Loose belts normally squeal for a moment on startup, especially if it's a damp day. The ground wire should be checked where it attaches to the body and any ground wires between the engine and the body should be in place. start with that stuff.

The standard answer is to change every six months if miles do not accumulate fast enough to perform a change based on mileage. I have two vehicles in this category, and I usually change them in late Fall and again in Spring. I had a truck which only saw about 800 miles a year, so I was doing 400 mile oil changes on it. The oil would drain clear. I once tried to go a full year with it and started to notice after about ten months that the oil light would take noticably long to go off when starting the first time in the day. I went back to six month changes just to be safe. This was with regular oil, but it still drained clear after ten months.

You need to use relays to control auxilliary lights as the regular factory wiring and switches are not designed for the extra current. Most aux lights are sold as a kit including wiring and relay and switch. The way a relay works is a small coil of wire becomes a magnet when energized. This magnet pulls a switch closed turning on the main power. Since the coil does not require much power at all to energize, the factory wiring is not challenged. The other current loop is from battery or other high power terminal through a fuse and usually a manual on off switch through the relay switch contacts to the aux lights to ground. This second wire loop is the stuff that comes in the kit. You can tap into either headlight socket for coil power or find a wire at the dimmer switch. The other side of the relay coil is grounded to allow current to flow through the coil. There are three wires that go to the headlight socket, ground, low beam power and high beam power. If you pull the plug, you can determine which wire is the high beam wire. There is a lot of info on this on the web, you could search for driving light wiring or look for info on Bosch relays. Most auto relays you will find will be knockoff's of the Bosch design

This is usually just a belt tension issue, overnight, moisture forms on the metal parts and has to be rubbed off. This makes the belts more able to slip and you get the squealing sound. Most engines have a spring loaded belt tensioner any more, but the Subaru belts require manual adjustment, usually only once or twice in their life and about a week after initial new installation.

Oil never breaks down in the conventional sense of the word, we have giant turbines at work that have been running twenty years on the initial oil fill. What happens in an internal combustion engine, is chemicals and solid particles are formed by combustion, and the contaminated oil is less capable of lubricating the engine. I called mobil 1 years ago on the subject, and they said the interval was identical to conventional oil. I had a new 88 camry, and the factory recommended interval was 10,000 miles for regular service. I have heard some of the new GM and German cars with oil wear monitoring computers will sometimes call for an oil change with mileage in the teens. I would never stretch my interval that far even though I do lots of highway miles. I like 5000 mile intervals, because I don't need a log book. just change at 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 etc. It's easy to keep track, and is a bit more conservative than manufacturers ratings, but not excessively so. I use synthetic in air cooled motors and turbocharged motors, but do not consider it necessary in regular engines. Severe or extremely dirty service would be another matter.

I had a Ford duratec 2.5 in a 2000 cougar. I really liked the car and the engine. The one trick I know on them is a lot of those engines come with a plastic impeller on the water pump. It will sometimes come off the shaft and rapid and extreme overheating will then occur. If I owned one that was getting up in miles, I would replace the water pump with an aftermarket pump with a metal impeller.

The sending units are pretty easy to remove, and can be restored to accuracy for a while at least, by cleaning the wiper area with a pencil eraser. There is a sender on each side but the pump and low fuel light probe are on the passenger side only. The light circuit is completely independent and does not seem to vary with time. This has been discussed quite a bit, as has been stated. If you want to avoid carrying fuel to test the operation of the light, you can sneak up on your tank capacity by observing how many gallons to fill up versus miles on the trip odometer. Just compare how much you can get in to how much the tank holds and go a little farther each time, there should be close to two gallons left when the light comes on and for most people 250 to 300 miles on the trip odometer. One catch with this is that my car at least, when filling will click off at some pumps utterly topped off, and at other pumps, will accept a gallon or more after it clicks off. You only need to carry a gallon in a lawnmower can and don't have to carry it until you are close to empty.

oil pump is dead center surrounding the crankshaft, the lower driver's side pulley is the water pump. If the water pump locks up, the engine will skip time and have internal damage.

I used a mix of the following: a socket with 3" extension, a normal socket placed on top of the upper hex on the spark plug socket and a swivel held straight as a shorter than 3" extension. If you need a slightly longer reach, do not fully insert the square drive in the socket. I would pull the sponge rubber out of the spark plug socket or you will have a hell of a time removing it once the plug is tightened in place. There was one plug where a standard deep socket was a slightly different length and fit better than the spark plug socket did. There are two tricks that help pretty much, the first is to start the new plug in the hole and thread it the first few turns by putting a rubber vacuum hose about 3" long on top of it and twirling it in with your fingers. This ensures it is started straight, and is much faster than a ratchet for as tight as it can go. The second trick is that the socket has to be put into the well first, then the extension, and finally connect the ratchet. They have to be assembled in place, especially on the two rear plugs. I would do the front plugs first as they are easier and get you up to speed a it easier. Gap check the new plugs and apply never-sieze to the threads, double check the washer is in place before starting it in the hole.

Just as an aside, Radio Shack sells a great LED tester for battery charging system and it's less than $5. There are 6 LED lights on it, and a pair of test leads. you touch it to battery poles with motor off, and should see two or better still 3 lights lit. Start the motor and try again, should see at least one more and preferably two more lights lit while under charge. The top LED is 15 Volts and will only come on if there is an overcharging problem. It doesn't do anything a digital multimeter won't do, but it is simpler to use and cheap if you don't have a meter.