jonathan909

Well, I don't think I'll be bothering with that step. I sat down the other day to install the timing kit, and immediately discovered what broke that chain - a seized intake cam. So in all likelyhood I'll just be pulling the motor and figuring it out from there.

100%. It's really interesting to me that the toothed idler fails at such a higher rate than the smooth ones. The one spontaneous timing failure of an EJ25 I've experienced in about a dozen years of driving these things was that idler seizing, and the result wasn't pretty.

No argument here, just asking the question. And important to note that this is the 3 litre H6, not just another 2.5 . If you haven't driven one, then you're going to have to trust me that regardless of whether it's interference or not, this motor kicks the 2.5's @$$ in a way I didn't expect (and we've owned more than half a dozen EJ25s (AT and MT, all NA of course, no turbos) in addition to a couple of EJ22s). When it's all loaded up, towing a boat, and climbing a hill, it has the juice where the 2.5 struggled.

This is the one - worked a treat, fit perfectly, without having to unnecessarily dismantle stuff that's just fine where it is. I found it locally at Canadian Tire as OEM Tools 77515. It's also on amazon.com as 37308 and 26553, and god only knows where else by what other number(s). OEM Tools doesn't appear to be a "real company" - that is, they just link to their amazon store. So without an actual catalog or data sheets where I might confirm dimensions, I can only say that I think that these are all the same tool rather than, say, different versions (e.g. sizes) of the same style of tool. What-ever, it works and I like it. And I see that amazon.ca has a $45 five-piece kit in a case that includes this puller. I paid almost that at CT for this one, so it is left as an exercise to the reader what my plan is now.

That may be the style I need to find.

Forgive any errors here, because I'm working from memory. So I'm now unbolting the caliper in order to take the rotor off in order to get at those dust shield screws. And I think that there's an opening in the shield that will then allow me to slide it off (and not unstake the hub nut and pull the hub) - but that's the part I can't remember for sure. Regardless, that's a lot of stuff that's working just fine and doesn't need to be disturbed in the interest of simply getting a puller around that tie rod end. Not a lot of work by any means, but completely unnecessary. I just got the two pullers that Princess has, and neither fits.

This is the smaller one, with jaw gap 1.125". That appears to correspond to the size of the tie rod end. They have a larger one with a 1.625" gap. But I'm really uncertain about that leg fitting between the knuckle and the brake shield. I just bought an old Bridgeport J-head I can use to cut it down to fit if necessary, but I'd also be concerned about making it too thin and fragile. Also, the mill is going to need work, starting with figuring out how to spin a 600V 3-phase motor when all we have on-site is 220 single-phase. (Note: I know what all the options are, so no suggestions needed, thanks.) Point is I need to get this car back on the road long before I expect the mill to be up and running.

I've tried a lot of 'em, but none don't suck. Pickle forks (whether bang-with-a-hammer or air hammer) never quite fit and always tear up the ball joint boot. I've got a hydraulic spreader, but there are rarely parallel surfaces across from each other to use it in. I'm always happy to go with brute force and ignorance (i.e. just beat on it), but that's not good either. Does someone have the right answer? Is there a screw-type puller that fits in there and just works perfectly? [edit] I'm looking at this one, but just don't know whether the arms are too thick to fit between the knuckle and the brake dust shield. https://www.princessauto.com/en/tie-rod-end-pitman-arm-puller/product/PA0009065079 Could just go get one to try, of course, but that's an hour or two wasted if it doesn't fit.

Yeah, that's a lot of crap (including the engine) to move - when I get to that point. At the moment I'm just pissed at the bait+switch that DHL is pulling on me - again - over my shipment from Rock. UPS said it'll be here next Tuesday for a reasonable price. DHL said that for five bucks more they'd have it here tomorrow (Thursday). Tracking now says next Tuesday, and I strongly doubt they won't screw that up, because we're rural and just past the edge of their delivery area (by, like, a mile) so I have no idea how or where (let alone when) I'll get it. I'm an idiot, because I knew better. I'm Charlie Brown running to kick the ball - again.

(A few months later, 'cause I had to clean out enough of the garage to get the car in over the pit and buy a Warn Pullzall (110VAC comealong - got a smokin' deal on it) to pull it in, then wait for a break in the weather, since the garage is unheated...) But now the cover's off and I've confirmed that the driver's side chain broke. Since the driver's side chain drives the passenger side chain, what sounded to me like just the crank and no cams cranking was in fact just the crank and no cams cranking. It's not clear whether the chain broke on its own, or whether it was caused by a guide fragmenting, and there are some loose plastic bits in there. Doesn't matter much, timing kit is en route from Rock. As for whether anything got hit, jury's still out. It's so damn tight along the sides of the engine that I'm not sure I can get a compression gauge in there. But I'm also replacing the steering rack while it's over the pit, so I'll be dropping the exhaust and can take a peek up at the valves. Otherwise, I'll just see how things behave once the new kit is installed. I do have an untested junkyard motor on the shelf (bought as a spare a couple of years ago), so I can draw upon that if necessary. But I'll see how it goes over the next few days.

No, this is a real-world problem. Car died very suddenly on the highway (en route home from the glass shop with a brand-new windshield after a windstorm+tree took it out. Such is my life these days.) and the symptoms are: Cranks, but sounds different, like less stuff than normal is turning; cam position sensor error. That it's turning at all seems like somewhat good news, as that suggests I don't have a piston wedged against a valve, though it doesn't mean there wasn't a hit. Hence the question. So my first guess is a thrown chain (the EZ30 has two). But since then (last week), winter has set in here for real - it's subzero, we're under a foot of snow, and the car is not (yet) in my (unheated) garage, where I'll have to pull the 64-bolt timing cover in order to confirm my suspicion. And first I've gotta bolt a winch onto the far garage wall so I can pull it in...

Hoping for a known fact rather than a bet.

Interference or non?

By "earthed solenoid" I assume you mean "grounded the coil of the fuel pump relay". So far, so good. From where you are, I wouldn't jump directly to "bad ECU". Let's go back to first principles, and stop me if I get anything wrong. The initial failure symptom was no fuel, but you know the relay and pump are good, so you changed the ECU, but that didn't solve the problem. You're reading that as "two bad ECUs", where I read it as "ECU not the problem, because you just swapped in a known-good (according to the supplier) one". The whole point of the ECU is that it listens to a whole bunch of inputs and drives a whole bunch of outputs. So I'd be looking at all of the inputs to see which ones need to be satisfied in order for the ECU to want to pump fuel.

Yup, right up until you go to change a ball joint, and the bottom of the steering knuckle swings out a bit, and instead of the rollers in the inner CV hitting that internal stop, the boot pulls off and the rollers fall on the floor.

You've all misunderstood the question. The clip at the end of the shaft that gets stuffed into the diff is not the issue. The clip is there and there's nothing to ask about. The question was about the clip that isn't inside the inner CV joint itself to prevent it from coming apart. I just looked at another couple of that type of shaft at a buddy's house, and there's nothing on them either. So I'm just calling it a $h!++y CV design that relies on the boot to keep it together without any positive retention mechanism for the greezy rollers contained within.

How long ago did you do that? If recently, there may still be prayer in your future. Depending on the severity and frequency of overheating, you may have compromised the main bearings - they're what goes if you overheat badly enough, often enough. So if you get the death rattle of spun bearings, STOP IMMEDIATELY and overhaul the engine. If this is caught quickly, it can still be salvaged. If not, permanent crank and/or block damage will result.

Oh - you meant the ignition switch. Okay, no argument there at all. Mechanical contacts like that degrade over time, and (as I proved years ago) that's exactly the reason for you not being able to program for your key fobs anymore. But "the ignition" refers to the whole system, and that would have been a bizarre claim, kind of like "my windshield wore out". "Cracked? Pitted?" "No, just wore out, stopped working, can't see through it anymore."

On your philosophy of grounds, Disagree Strongly. You can, in fact, have too many grounds, though probably not in this context, rather in small-signal applications that are really noise-sensitive. In that case an excess of grounds can result in what are called "ground loops", which behave like little circuits of their own in which very small currents can circulate and disturb the performance of other circuits, notably amplifiers, which will raise the voltages created by those circulating currents to a point at which they become interference. And while you may think you're being "strategic", you may discover that the electrons do not agree. So while you can often get away with adding grounds arbitrarily, they can come back and bite you in the @$$. Plus, in the Jeep case I cited above, that wouldn't have helped anyway, because it was a +12 line that failed, and the problem wasn't going to be solved without first identifying exactly which one it was.

That's a really weird thing to say. What does "ignition wearing out" mean?

Wow - this has been dogging you for more than a year? Awful. This is not going to be easy. It's easy to say "look for a bad ground". It's quite another to find it. Get the drawings for your exact model and year, because here minor variations count. Then trace every ground and +12V wire, and make sure that both the wire itself and the terminations are good. Here's the example I usually cite: I had a 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee before moving to Subarus. Ran great for years, until the high-miles motor blew (rod through block). Then it sat over a winter until I dropped in a new engine in the spring. When I started it up again, all of the electricals were wonked out. Turning on the stereo affected the wipers. The lights affected the heater. All of this unrelated stuff was suddenly functionally coupled in the most chaotic manner. I bought the big thick book for that year's model from Chrysler and started tracing wires. Eventually I found that where the big harness passed through the firewall (in the most inaccessible spot, of course), a tiny pinhole in the insulation on a +12V wire had let in enough moisture over time to corrode clean through the copper conductor. Absent that supply line, a bunch of stuff found alternate supply paths - through other things, the result being that both were semi-powered and acted nuts. The lesson is that because the effects were so random and crazy, it would have been a waste of time to try to think them through - you just have to check every wire that can have that kind of global effect, what we call "exhaustive search". The other example is a simpler one: After I had the motor out of my (first) '99 Outback for I-forget-what, the AT got all kooky - the shift points were all over the place. Everything else in the car was fine. Turned out that I hadn't tightened down that big, most-obvious-ground-in-car ground lug on top of the intake. Tightened it and all was well. So the effects can can be globally insane, or just localized to some weird thing.

Not looking into the diff; it's just sitting on a jackstand (because we had no intention of messing with that) and hard to see in there. But the CV came out of it with a "reasonable" amount of prying, so my inference is that it's fine. I just don't know how to proceed with putting this joint back together. Obviously, Haynes can't be trusted absolutely, but prior experience with the older-style CV - and common sense - say that there should be a retaining ring... and a groove to hold it. So I'm kind of stuck.

I've been awfully quiet, not even lurking, just in one of those not-many-car-problems periods, which is fine with me. But now I'm back with a question. Daughter and I set out to change a couple of ball joints on her '03 Forester today. They were, of course, a PITA to get out, and at this point one is changed. But we ran into a bit of nastiness in the process: The inner CV pulled apart, which was a really rude surprise. I'm accustomed to the older cylindrical type that are roll-pinned to the diff shaft. This one just presses in and the housing is hexagonal. But the shaft and tri-pot roller assembly just pulled out of the housing. Haynes says there's supposed to be a retaining ring in there, but there's no groove for one. So do you just have to be careful never to tension one of these type, because all that's keeping it together is the boot, and if it slides off, you're SOL?

Wow - 2019. So many cars since then. Nice that I indicated which it was, otherwise I'd just be guessing. The '01 Forester must have been my daughters' car at the time, since sold, they briefly had a Jeep, then unloaded it in favour of one or both of the Subarus (one '03 Forester, one not-sure Legacy) they have now. I'm perfectly happy with all of the Mahles I've used. In fact, I think that one set I bought was actually of Subaru manufacture, according to the logo on the gaskets. So yeah, I think they're fine.

None of the above. Nothing so complicated, simply air getting past the bleeder screw threads. We got our Speedi Bleed yesterday and bled the system today. Quick. Silent. No pumping. Painless. No bubbles. Just Works. This is a great tool. I don't think I've ever specifically endorsed any such here, but it gets a hearty two thumbs-up from me.