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Think of two gears approaching each other. If they are not alligned correctly you will have to force them together. The syncros are friction clutches that will cause the two gears to match speeds and to turn enough to spin till they line up. On old non syncro first transmissions the never shift until a stop was a good idea for the average person. I have rebuilt many a tranny with big chunks out of first gear form injudicious shifting into first while moving. What I would like you to try is select first as the car just stops. perhaps half a mile an hour. Just hold it there with light pressure till it slips in itself when the gears align. Even on these cars sometimes it may be necessay to let the clutch out in neutral to spin the gears before you select first from a stop while cold. You can force it in and it will go but you are causeing a bit more wear.

as you roll to a stop you will do the tranny and yourself a favor. You can feel your way down through the gears, or up for that matter. As you approach the proper syncronised speeds shift out of gear and start to apply a tiny bit of pressure to the correct gear slot. When the speeds are matched you will feel resitance ease and it will slide right in. This is how we used to shift the big non syncro trannies in trucks and busses. You don't really need to double declutch on a syncro tranny, but it could save you some day if you know how. It has taken me years to mostly drop double clutching as it became such a habit in ten years on the road.

Bars leak can get you home in an emergency or you can use it in a car you are about to junk. It is full of large globs that block up your radiator and internal cooling holes in your engine block. Save it for junkers and fix that 2001 right or keep the radiator fluid up. By the way I had the latest gasket put in my 99 last year and no leak at all. Over six months and two trips and I have added nothing. With a 2001 I would talk to Subaru about fixing it. Even if you are a bit over the warranty. I was the second owner and was near 100,000 so I got to pay for mine.

an out of balance condition can cause issues like this and so can a bent rim or a bump in the tire. It is also possible that you notice it becuse it is on a different end. First unrotate the tire and see if there is a change. While you have it on a lift inspect the tires carefully. I once took a car to severalt tire stores before someone found the flat spot that was bothering me. They kept putting it on the balance machine and since it was in balance it must be round.

a clutch most folks seem to leave the engine in the car.

my Forester has a full size spare and no one has ever rotated it. This means the sucker is noticeably larger and I would only dare to put it on my 5 speed car in an emergency. When I called a shop on not rotating it they said, "We just leave them there untill the next time you buy tires." At that point it was already too late as several shops had done the same thing.

I have removed them on a few cars. the last was on my 85 Mercedes. I kept having failure problems and it was very expensive from the Merc dealer. I had a local muffler shop replace it with a straight pipe and got no effect at all other than a slight burble to the exhaust that you would not notice if you did not know the car. Of course the Merc has a large full muffler and a cat as well as the resonator.

for Alias? How did the trip go??? I had a huge breakdown on mine requireing radio removal on return. In the dark and pouring rain my wife did not want to put on an interior light on a winding mountain road to distract me. She neatly put a Johhny A CD in the gap between the radio and the cupholder. Johnny is fine on removal and I guess I better find some black plastic to make those gaps small enough that a CD does not fit in them.

I do notice a tiny chatter sometimes when extremely cold, but otherwise the car now has put several thousand miles behind it with a proper clutch.

what I learned in history class. Contrary to what many may believe, synthetic lubricants are not a recent development. As early as the 1930s, Standard Oil of Indiana conducted research into synthetic oil. More serious development and production was commenced by the Germans during WWII, as their conventional lubricants congealed and froze on the Eastern front and stalled their advances into the Soviet Union. As jet engines were developed after the war, it soon became evident that conventional lubricating oils couldn't withstand the high temperatures and pressures, and synthetics came to be used in all military commercial jet aircraft engines.

a wire service. Request replacement parts in the same color and odds are you might not need to paint it. On old paint jobs I have gotten away with this several times as the paint is faded about as much as the original. The wrecking yard should do the translation for you as they have books on what fits what. This is not what I would do on my BMW, but it would be a fine repir for my 99 Forester. If you are not going to paint tell the wrecker that up front so he can tell the workers not to scratch the panels.

You were probably going to need those head gaskets and the timing belt changed anyway. It is good that these folks have stood behind the repair. If you monitor it closely to make sure the work has been done right your car may be better than it has been for some time.

invented synthetic oils in WW2 because our bombers were keeping them from a supply of dino. Anyone feel free to correct me if you know more about this. I use synthetic in my BMW, the special Castol manufactured I believe, unless the dealer is cheating. I add a tiny bit of Mobile 1 just before the oil change as it goes down about a pint. The Subaru at nearly 100,000 just did its several hundred mile Xmas trip with fresh dino, and I was pleased that it used no oil. When it has done this trip before on old oil it has used at least a pint if not more. This probably means that by that time the oil is pretty diluted with fuel. I have been contemplating running the Subie on Mobil 1, but I think that with an engine that just does not control fuel as well as some others may benefit from the more frequent oil changes that I feel I can afford to do on dino. Perhaps other folks Subies have better fuel control than mine, but I have heard of more carbon problems, and I am sure mine dilutes the oil at the end of the oil's life. I would love to see an oil test series on a Subie 2.5.

and I am in CA things may be a bit different. All I would need to do is go down to my local forign auto parts store, tell them the make, year and model, and that I was going to rebuild the starter. They would give me brushes, bushings, and a drive. If it has an integral solenoid I would get new contacts for that too. You can clean the ones you have also, but it is quicker and easier to replace them. You can also order Subie parts off the web as many folks do here, or go to the dealer. I have found my local dealer to be an OK but expensive place to order parts. They have dealer only items that parts stores don't have, but at about twice the price. Develop a relationship with a good parts guy and he can be a great help to you. You need someone who will make all the phone calls to trace a hard to find part, and who has intelligence and experiece. I never seem to find this in my local discount auto parts stores as the turnover is so great.

starter drive when I was a mechanic. Yes it is a part that is fairly easily changed. Usually you split the starter case with two to three bolts (after removing the starter of course), and remove the engagement fork before pulling off the drive. Start by inspecting the flywheel or flexplate teeth to make sure they are OK, as if it was run long enough with a bad drive they can be damaged. Most mechanics just install a rebuilt starter these days as they are more reliable and take about a third of the time to change as doing a rebuild. In my college days I rebuilt many a starter on the kitchen table. If you are going so far as to put in a starter drive you would be well off to service the entire starter as the contacts are known to be weak.

defective clutch master cyl. I have had all the usuals from defective head gaskets to clutch disk, pressure plate,etc. On the clutch actuating mechanism I folowed the Subaru bulletin when I had the clutch sticking to the floor. I changed the hose, the gaskets, and the slave as mentioned in the bulletin. I still had insufficient pressure from the master so I changed that and it was cured. Now I don't think I needed to change the hose and slave, but this is good PM anyway. On the clutch itself using the latest numbers it is not necessary to change the flywheel. The new disc and plate have all but totally cured my clutch chatter and slip, but I do not operate in the extreme cold that some of you do.

Mine was cheerfully doing exactly what yours is and the former owner drove it from DC to SF. She said it would just go down a bit when it was cool and did the same thing for the several years she owned it. As soon as I located the leak on the left side I had the dealer change both for preventitive maintence. If you keep an eye on the levels I would think you should be fine. I am going to put a few hundred miles on my 99 forester in the next couple of days with five people and a heavy load of luggage and presents. I plan to stop and check all fluids every 1.5 hours. By the way I have made New York with a Greyhound bus that had a cracked head when I left SF by keeping the fluid levels up.

and hook it in line at the solenoid. If the car starts right up bypassing the ignition switch then you have your problem. Frankly this car is so old it should have a switch as PM. You can always install a button.

Since a good rust protection involves spraying inside every door (where there are contacts) and darn near everywhere else... this could be a real drag to find. I would take it back to the place that did the rust protection and say you get to fix this.

and both types of clutch failure on my 99 Forester. Get this done while you have the warranty as I got to pay for mine. Seems satisfactory after fitting the latest bits about six months ago. I have hopes that now I can catch up to you 2.2 owners in the next few years operating costs.

to you if you are in hammytown. Nice place though. A friend of mine swore he had bought every available transmission in Hawai for his BRAT. He got tranny after tranny to have the bearings fail. Needless to say he does not drive a Subie today. The advice about the main bearings may be well taken.

works for us.

If he is spending only several more months in kiwi a patch job may be fine. A transmission will make noise for a long time. At the end of that time you sell it for what you can get. If the job came out great then fine, you get a bit more for the car. If it howls you get less. To use the example of my Anglia van I was offered $1,000 kiwi from the guy I bought it from. The windshield was broken by a rock on the trip so we took that much off. For an expenture of $800 US I got a car for three months that I could sleep in. Fair enough.

My brother in law in Queenstown runs the Pegasus agency and knows a lot of folks in the trades. I have been in New Zealand myself rebuilding the cars I used to own there, and found Kiwi mechanics and machineists to be incredably helpful. They had ways to save parts we would throw away in disgust in the states as totaly gone. My Anglia van had an Escort engine that was bored to the third oversize on the mains. We would toss it here if it needed one. That van also had parts from three junkyard cores in the tranny. I put the best stuff I had from all the trannies I could find and it ran three months all over Kiwi untill it was time to go home. Had one radiator hose fail in all that time climbing up a mountain.

and crimp for 40 plus years. the solered and heat shrunk connection is hard to beat when used ina situation where the wire is exposed to salt. But crimping and carefull protection with silicon can do a good job too.. When I started we did not have silicon and crimp connectors came in when I was a kid. They were considered God's gift to mechanics at the time. I have seen many of them fail from corrosion. But this is usually the mechanic's fault for not taking the time to seal them. If this was my car I would probably fit drivng lights. On the Jeep I just sold I made a mount and fitted them on the outside with a seperate relay and and another foot dimmer switch for control. I used used wire and connectors rated for twice the load, and used it for ten years without another thought. By the way, my little brother has a dump truck up in Maine that I rewired in 1966 using soldered connections and has had no electrical failures since. I used the Petersen's book on electrical work for automobiles at the time. Now that heat shrink tubing is available things are only better. I think it makes a vary professional looking job.