nelstomlinson

We put a new belt, sprockets, water pump and so on onto the '95 right after we towed it home, and toward the end noticed that the keyway on the crank nose was damaged, and the crank sprocket had been jb welded in place. We think it was glued on a little bit out of time, and the engine won't start. Gave it a whiff of starting fluid and one cylinder fired while we cranked...looks like this engine is done. We'll pull the engine from the '96 this week, probably, and swap over the new belt, etc and the flex plate from the '95. The timing kit is the same for both engines, per the kit instructions. You say to swap the intake? Why is that?

We have a '95 Legacy with automatic transmission and a damaged engine, and a '96 with a strong engine and problems with the manual transmission. The '95 has a great body and it makes sense to swap the engine over to it. Obviously we need to replace the flywheel with the '95's flex plate. Will that mess up the engine balance? What other problems are we going to have?

Yes. It's been too long, I can't remember the numbers in the manual or which of the three it was, but it was indeed one of those three connectors.

So far it's parked in a field, because he thinks it's too hard. It really doesn't look any harder than a timing belt, just a couple more steps. I'll see if he wants to open it up. If he does, it'll almost surely need a timing belt, etc.

A friend has a '99 with a replacement engine from Japan. He believes it needs a new oil pump. He's quite sure that this engine requires different parts than the original did, but "engine from Japan" is all the info he has. What am I looking for to identify that engine, and how do I search for parts to help him out?

And it's running. It turns out that there isn't a little square mark on the front of the crank cog, instead there's a little line on the tone ring in the back. _THAT'S_ what has to be lined up with the witness mark on the engine and with the line on the belt. The last one I did was the '02, and it did have that square mark.

I don't think we've ever done a Subie timing belt in just once, we have to do and redo every time.

The problem is that we don't do this every year, so we don't remember about the square mark versus the little arrow. We also just realized we forgot to pull the pin out of the tensioner, so we would have had to go back in there anyway! Oh, well, that's going to make redoing it way easier, so it's all working out.

This one is definitely not interference, we can bar the crank over with the cam in any position.

And my son just found a picture of the crank pulley properly lined up. We should have lined up the square mark, not the notch 90 degrees away from it. Oh, well, we'll do it again tomorrow.

We got the new timing belt in, and now when we try to crank it over it doesn't want to turn. We can bar it over by hand with no problem, if we take the spark plugs out it spins over quickly with the starter, but with the plugs in place it sounds as if the engine is kicking back against the starter. The Aisin waterpump kit was all made in Japan stuff except for the Mitsuboshi timing belt, which was from Thailand.

In the worst case, you're probably getting at least $300 worth of parts for the next one you buy.

The current water pump is an aftermarket already, we replaced that around '17 I think. I need to get the maintenance log out of the glovebox and re-read when we did what on this one. I think what you're seeing that looks wrong is the broken belt is bunched up above and left of the cam pulley. It does look a little like the toothed idler, I guess.

The kits I'm finding have GMB idlers, any good?

It was a mitsuboshi belt that broke. We took the toothed idler off, and that's definitely what broke the belt: it's seized up solid. Pretty sure that one was factory original.

Where is a good place to source a high quality complete kit with belt, tensioner, all the idlers and maybe a water pump too?

The timing belt was broken. I don't think we had even 40k miles on it. The toothed idler doesn't turn, so I suspect it seized up and snapped the belt. Anyway, we'll need to get a complete kit on the way.

We'll push it into the shop tonight and get in to the timing belt. It's really weird that it could just suddenly skip a few teeth, but that is looking likely now.

Should have added that we can clear the codes, try to start the engine and the P0340 comes back after a few seconds of cranking.

Just driving along and the engine shut down. The only stored code is P0340, cam position sensor. The P0170 fuel trim code was pending. We put in a CPS from an engine that ran when we parked it. Didn't fix it, so we checked continuity from the CPS connector to the B20 connector at the back end of the engine. Wires are good. We checked continuity from the B20 connector to the B84 connector on the ECU. Wires are good. What else should we check? We will have a new CPS from NAPA tomorrow, but new electrical parts are a crapshoot...

Subies are definitely more popular on the coast, where there's more snow and less cold.

A little update on this. I had bypassed the ignition switch, ran power from battery to starter solenoid through a momentary contact switch on the dash. We noticed that it only started hard if we turned the key to on, then cranked the engine. If we turn the key briefly to start, then let it go back to run, then push the starter button, it starts easily. Probably the computer is confused. With all the problems my old diesels have, they are still so much better than this.

Meanwhile some of my old diesels will burn a quart of lube oil in 50 miles. Check your oil regularly, add it when needed. It's pretty easy to add oil on these little Subies.

We think that the boots are cracking in the cold. Certainly the aftermarket axles have garbage boots. Preheating wouldn't do much, since they're exposed to the cold air as soon as we start driving.

Well, I went looking for OEM boots and found this: GSP NCV66037XD Xtreme Duty CV Axle. They claim it's good down to -50F, and it is rarely colder than that here, just a few days a year. We'll see, I guess. It's good to know that the '96 and '01 axles interchange, thanks.