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when I first got my car with about 80,000 miles on it I noticed no one had ever taken the original spare and put it in rotation. So now I have four well worn tires and a new spare made in 1998.

anything with a grain of salt. The best thing I can do for myself is to go by manufacturers reccomendations as far as I trust them. When I was younger I was always hot rodding things and whatever came out in the magazines that week was in my car. Now I am a bit older and have been in charge of fleets of busses, trucks, and cars for about 30 years now and want to experiment a lot less. If you have heard good things about a product from a number of people you trust it is probably safe to try. That is why I think I am going to try Redline in trans and rears. My BMW has lifetime fluid in tranny and rear and I tend to think that it has to get dirty too, so I plan to exceed factory specs by changing it regularly. My Subaru has been getting mostly dealer service except for brakes and struts and a few other items I have done myself. I really don't think they have changed the diff fluid and tranny at all.

Have you checked out bobistheoilguy? There are some real high mileage folks on that board and one guy here was running Dello in his high mileage sube. I used to run Dello in my diesels but never tried it in a car. I use synthetic in my M series BMW and have from new and the subie gets dino changed frequently. Since I am over 100,000 with the subie I will also be looking at the new high mileage oils soon and plan to change the diffs and tranny to Redline on both cars. The BMW is still under warranty so I won't change those till five minutes after it gets off.

In 96? every time I hear piston slap I think 2.5, but now that I think of the late 2.2s had some of the same problems didn't they?

way into old age. It will get noiser and burn more oil as it goes along. My guess is that a 2.5 can do 200,000 and maybe more in rare cases, but it is no 2.2.

assessment. Since nearly all phase 2s slap eventually and we know they run at least 100,000 miles that way most Subaru dealers are unlikely to do anything about it. I have heard of the worst complainers getting a short block but in at least a couple of cases the slap came back a few miles down the road. A real fix would entail a piston redesign with longer skirts.

It may not be a fireball but if you want a fireball maybe you better see what Porsche has to offer. The ones I have known have been as reliable as the old 2.2 which makes sense as it is pretty much a 2.2 with a couple more cylinders. True it has not been around long but I seem to recall hearing head gasket rumors about the 2.5 in the first year or so. The H6 might just bring me back to Subaru for my next carry stuff car if it pans out. Funny to think that if I and my relatives had not had such good luck with the 2.2 I would not have the 2.5 I love to hate.

without all the fancy bits. a lot of times the pump is the first thing on the outside of a case and the torque converter slides right off. There are some seals in Subarus that seem to be famous for failure. You still have to pull the engine or tranny to do much about seals though. You might do a search on this boards archives to get an idea of waht others have done. I have not worked on an automatic myself for at least 10 years so I am more than out of date. It sounds like yours does exactly what my 85 did though.

It depended on the weather and how fresh the fluid was. I reckon the pump or a seal was weak and I would just drop it in drive and wait a bit.She would pump up and take and off we would go. Several years later she finally failed to shift to second on the San Mateo bridge but she still drove me off the bridge very slowly. Many people were not pleased with my speed in first gear and let me know it. When it was cold it took longer to pump up and right after a fluid change it acted more normal for a few months.

or seal failure. This is after you have checked the usual linkage, fluid, filter etc. Heck if you can get a Forester that cheap you can afford to do a proper tranny job with a used one from Japan or just pull it and have it overhauled.

and there should be no problem. Racing is only another excuse to drink beer anyway.

those Kenworth badges? Might give us some pride in our rigs.

get tested. They put them on a dyno and run the snot out of them and then pack years od real world testing into a matter of months. They take them to the Arctic Circle and feeze them and buzz though the desert down in Arizona and New Mexico. We have seen them here in SF trying new cars on the big hills. (This is why the Honda 600 sports car never got imported, it flunked the hills.) Things that take a few years of normal start stop wear often get missed. For Subaru we can say head gaskets, piston slap, the organic clutch, add your personal irritation here. Those cute little short skirt pistons are great for emissions and fuel mileage but don't do much for the Subaru image.

gas test and still showed a blown gasket on teardown. Look at it this way, if it is an old car it probably needs a radiator soon, and if that is all it is you buy the beer!

your hands. This is the sort of thing I though was a great idea when young because I enjoyed the work. Make sure you have both cars sitting right there at the same time not one in a junkyard ten miles away. For all sane adults this is not worth the time and money so you better enjoy doing it.

my understanding is that if you line up all the marks you are golden. Most engines are not set up with the multi marks and you may see Subies with non standard belts or belts with marks that are worn off. A timing belt is only a belt of a certain length and width. A genuine Subaru belt I have seen has marks that make it easy for you. Thank you Subaru!!! Not everybody is this kind. I saw one in New Zealand with no marks on the belt and the dang thing was so dirty we had a heck of job spotting where to put the belt under the light of a shaky flashlight. Good old non interferance 2.2s, we finally got it running and no worse for wear.

They have been pretty good for my projects.

just back from the machineist is a bit more of a pain than a service cam gear, chain, or belt job. Follow the book exactly if you are just changing a belt on a running engine and find TDC on the compression stroke on any accepted method. Then follow the procedure for that engine exactly. This poor guy has had his crank keyway strip and should check to make sure his TDC is really TDC. All timing usually follows from TDC. When you blueprint an engine the first thing you do is set an accurate TDC with the piston, rod, and crank combination you are useing. Then you go on to set your cams where you want them. Frankly there are whole books on this and it would waste a lot of bandwidth to go into it here. If you are doing a job like this for the first time it would be best to tear down exactly like the manual says to prevent any valve damage.

Subaru sent me a nice letter telling me they were commited to thier customers and the best part was a check for $1,066 for the headgaskets I paid for a while ago. They also reminded me to drop in for my phase 2 goop and test drive a new Subie. I think I may have been one of the first to get the letters and I had the dealer change the gaskets, saved the original recipt and mailed it right out. So on a phase 2 you have hope.

And all hoping commuter keeps rolling!!!

stroke. You are setting where the compression stroke will be when you set your cams. This will just show you that you have your tdc mark in the right place. This can get tricky on certain engines that require a mark on the flywheel to trigger the ignition as you have to use the stroke that has the number one piston up and the flywheel trigger aligned. If I recall Subaru is using the crank pulley for a trigger so if you have number one up and test fit the pulley it should show tdc. Then you can fasten it up and move everything to the correct spot and put on your belt or belts as the case may be. If you were just prepareing a running engine to change the belt you could use the old paper towel bit in the plug hole and bump it over on the starter till it blows out the paper and there is your compression stroke. There are several ways to do this.

spark plug. Since you probably don't have a degree wheel and a dial indicator take a piece of wire, coat hanger will do, and put it in the plug hole to feel the piston top. When it is as high as it goes you are on TDC. You can use this to double check your marks but when you time it up follow the procedure in the link above exactly.

is used to control amp, power antenna, and if it has a line amplifier for the FM antenna. I have seen blue used for this by Blaupunkt. Since my Forester does not have power anything this did not come up with the Sony install. I have the Sony Explode directions still at home and can answer you this weekend if no one does. All you have to do is get power from a radio switch on off for the antenna.

you don't even have to buy the adapter. The adapter is easier for sure and would make putting the old one back to sell it simple.

I have a 99 and if I recall the last time I was in there I pulled the console first which has several screws. There might have been a couple of screws in the cover over the stereo but I am not sure now. I did not have to pull the cupholder and the cover popped off easily. On mine the stereo is held in by a couple of screws once you get the cover off. Since stereos usually come with dierctions it should be fairly easy. If you buy from Crutchfield they come with good directions.