jonathan909

This is a weird one - a problem my daughter's having. The car is relatively new to her and in pretty good shape. Despite this, it's put her in a jam a couple of times, both after the hour's drive into the city center, downtown during rush hour - about the least desirable time/place for such a failure. The symptom is that she'll stop at a light, and when it turns green attempt to move, but letting out the clutch simply stalls the engine. Repeated attempts yield the same result. She then calls for a tow and the driver has to brute-force the car onto the flatbed because the wheels won't turn. By the time it arrives home via the truck, whatever jammed has let go and it's returned to normal. Frustrating, to say the least. I was hoping (as well all do) for the simplest and least invasive discovery, e.g. something loose in the rear brakes, but pulling those drums is itself a PITFA and all we managed to do is create more problems without finding anything. So before we go any further, can anyone suggest anything?

All of which is extremely informative, but doesn't actually answer the question I asked. Which was: Does anyone here have a problem with running tires from two different manufacturers, (probably) paired as a "front set" and a "back set", assuming (of course) that all four are of the correct type and approximate characteristics (e.g. M+S)?

As a well-understood matter of course, we run "matching" tires on all four wheels in order to eliminate unnecessary strain on the drivetrain. But how matching, exactly, does "matching" mean? Case in point is my '01 H6 OBW, which recently blew a tire on the highway. I think it was the delayed product of the long and heavily-loaded road trip last summer involving a lot of old computer and test equipment - and a sailboat - which featured a broken right rear spring (it had lost part of the first turn, which lowered it about an inch). I think that the resulting lowered suspension over that wheel caused the tread to get scraped a few times, leading to the blowout about 8 months later. Anyway, that's one down out of an otherwise-good set of four. When this happened, we bought a new set of four, and now I'm staring at three perfectly good tires on rims that I think it would be stupid not to use. Now, I stick with stock sizes, so in this case everything is 225/60R16, generally M+S. The question is, then: Assuming all of the tires are of the same rated size, what latitude do we have in mixing manufacturers? Since I have three good tires on rims from my previous set, can I use, for example, two of those on the front, and two of the same size from a different manufacturer on the rear? Is there enough real-world deviation in running geometry between manufacturers for this to be a problem? Inquiring minds want to know!

Not half as strange as us driving on the right side of the road, when every other (former) British colony, member of the Commonwealth, etc., drives on the left. Go figure. Though what would be really weird would be having to switch sides at the border when crossing to/from the US...

Since I happen to have a pair of '01 H6 OBWs I'm going to give that (another) look, though I'm pretty sure I tried it there.

I dunno what the actual name is - around here we call it a dog gate because non-dog cargo doesn't usually try to climb over the seat. Perhaps your dogs are better behaved and act more like cargo. Certain that it's not custom - you can see the Subaru logo just behind that right wall hanger. The thing that would seem to make sense is that it's for a Forester, because that would account for the asymmetry. Up here, at least, they have a seat belt (shoulder restraint, I guess) on a retractor in the ceiling near the rear door (on the passenger side - that's the right side in these parts, Oz!). Yet it doesn't fit any of the Foresters we've had - at least, I think we tried it in all those we had from '99-'02. And I think someone on freecycle gave it to us or something.

I've had this kicking around for years, and only recently tried it in ever car we have. What I discovered is that it fits none of them. Any idea which model/year it fits?

Heard you missed me - well, I'm back! No news has been good news - cars pretty much behaved through the winter, so I had little reason to hang out and was deeply immersed in other work. That changed today: In the city for some shopping, sporadic noises I'd been hearing became real, and the '01 H6 tossed its belt. When I raised the hood, I could see that the idler had departed its bearing, which seemed weird. Upon closer examination, what went was the tensioner bearing, and in the process it trashed the arm. I hoped that the spare engine I picked up a couple of summers ago would be a donor, but no such luck - I have the engine and manifold but none of the ps pump/alternator/ac compressor brackets and mounts - they must have already been missing from the junkyard donor. So tonight's question is: Are there any other engines that use the same tensioner? Thanks much. Jonathan

Hold my beer - watch this.

That's a lot of fuss for something that costs a hundred bucks to replace (here I am on the other side of that argument for a change), but maybe worth giving a shot. Any preferred product for flushing - or any to avoid?

Wot, crickets? I thought that was a good one. Tough room.

Whoa - that's a steep grade alright! What kind of tires do you use with that?

Just got back from another little boat-hauling road trip, this time over the Rockies and into the British Columbia interior, where it's pretty damn hot. Two years ago the town of Lytton burned down after the temperature exceeded the highest ever recorded in Las Vegas. My problem is that in 30+ heat I was barely able to hold the temp gauge's 9-o'clock norm. Any extra load - climbing a hill or turning on the AC - would cause the temp to climb, forcing me to slow down, turn off the AC, even turn on the heater in an effort to keep it from going past the 10-o'clock mark. That I can tweak it on the fly like this suggests that it's a marginal problem, and in the past (e.g. with my old 318 Dakota) the answer was a new rad. 1. Is there any reason not to take the same approach this time? 2. Of the rads available from Rock (in ascending order of price): CSF, Ultra-Power, TYC, FVP, UAC, Koyorad, Agility, GPD, Denso are there any particularly good or particularly bad?

Absotively - I always pull the ground (first) rather than +12. There are some other delightful failure modes as well, such as your big college ring or metal watchband coming between that wrench and ground.

The headlight relays are. The high-beam relay isn't.

Belay that, looks like they're behind the kick panel.

What about the aforementioned kid?

Both the docs and the clicks I'm hearing confirm that it's somewhere over on the passenger side. Before I start pulling stuff apart, can anyone be a little more specific e.g. behind the glove box, or the kick panel, or what? thx.mch.

I've never had an Impreza, just Legacy and Outback wagons and Foresters, but I'd be surprised if there were any difference, because they're all the same engines. Other than pulling the air box and pushing some hoses and wires around, it's a nut and a bolt that holds it to the bell housing. The nut under the starter can be a bit of a PITA to get at, but you can still do it from above.

To close the loop on this: Figured it was time to stop thinking about it and actually do it, since I just completed a 12-day road trip carrying a lot of stuff and pulling a boat, during which the RR wheel well was within a cm of the tire - turns out that in addition to being old and soft, a little less than a turn had broken off of the bottom of the spring (it was intact when I replaced the shocks last summer). When I called the dealer to place an order, the parts guy asked for the last eight, and I don't have a Baja, so I called my buddy who does and he supplied his... and the parts guy said that it listed the 20380AE39A spring, which only confused things. So I ordered two of the 50A, and the idiots in the (Portland?) warehouse shipped one, and I put it in yesterday and it fits fine and looks great, though I won't really know until I load it up. But if it's stiffer, I should be made in the shade.

That's a bit of a head-scratcher, alright. I'm tempted to dig out the drawing and see if anything stands out. My only comment is over your "Something seems to be causing huge resistance somewhere", because the symptoms you describe - particularly the fan slowing down when you try to actuate the window - suggests too high a current draw rather than increased resistance (which would reduce the current). But that doesn't make a lot of sense either, since you've verified the motor and mechanism. [edit] Hmmm... actually... increased resistance somewhere upstream is a possibility too, as that could cause an unusually high voltage drop when the window motor draws serious current. You said you checked the fuses, but did that include the fusible link? They're usually a little less obvious. [end edit] About all I can suggest at the moment is the old tried-and-true "check the grounds". Seriously, a missing ground (or even a broken +12) can cause astonishingly weird symptoms as the current finds an obscure, unanticipated path. And since the wiring harnesses have to pass through the door hinges, that's primo opportunity for a wire to get flexed and broken, or for a little nick in the insulation to allow moisture in to invisibly corrode through the wire inside (that happened to my Grand Cherokee years ago where a +12 passed through the firewall - drove me nuts). p.s. Your punctuation does not go unnoticed; I thought I was the only guy using semicolons these days. But you need to follow a colon with a capital letter...

Great news on the '02 - I love mine, that engine has power to burn. And total agreement on your '96 - our stable includes a '95 2.2 MT that I thought I was buying for parts about ten years ago; on the drive home I realized there was nothing wrong with it that a CV axle, a tailpipe, and a window crank wouldn't fix. And of all our cars, that's the one that's goddamn unstoppable - it isn't a daily driver these days, but a backup that we know we can walk out to in the middle of winter, -30, not plugged in, hasn't been started in months - and it'll just start and run.

Hmm. Good point, worth checking.

The gasket in question is a rather intricate coated metal one a la our head gaskets, so I don't think that's happening. So my next thought is whether the existing gasket (once the coating has been cleaned off) might be reused with the addition of an anaerobic sealant. This appears to be a single bolt retaining splines, but once the bolt is out it's... um... reluctant to separate. Well, that's kind of a circular argument, isn't it? If they're not available, nobody can buy them and do the repair. If they were, they would. By that logic, there shouldn't be any H6 head gaskets available because you prefer to replace the engine over the gasket (which I'm not arguing with, btw - your reasoning is sound). As far as availability of a replacement goes, Rock (just a point of reference, not definitive) doesn't have one available for the H6.

I'm catching up on getting the AC running in an assortment of cars, starting with the two '01 3.0 H6s. On the car of present interest, I've chased down and replaced the various bad O-rings, think now that what I thought was a leaky condenser isn't, and just discovered a leak in the compressor, where the back plate mates with the body. Seems to me that this should be a SMORAG (Small Matter of Replacing a Gasket), but there don't seem to be any gaskets or kits readily available. What gives? I mean, I'm not talking about a black-goo-and-broken-metal failure, just a leaky seal. The context is that yes, I'd normally just go get a junkyard replacement and drop it in, but the H6 uses a serpentine belt, which means a 6-groove pulley rather than the usual 4-groove non-serpentine 4-cylinders - and there aren't any H6s in the yard at the moment. Suggestions? [edit] Actually, I guess a clutch transplant from this one onto a compressor from a 4 would work... but what's the trick to removing the clutch?