asavage

Huh? The 1st pic shows very different valve event timing for the two. Or am I missing something? The 2nd pics shows identical lift. In general, turbo cams have reduced overlap.

When you're starting with a $500 car, it doesn't make sense to plan for the long term. Use the 30W, it nearly the thinkest oil you can buy, so your mileage suffers, it won't keep the internals as clean as a lighter oil, but who cares? As you say, it's a toy, and it'll help in marginal bearing situations or really leaky lifters or other poor oil pressure situations. Makes the starter work harder, sluggish warmup, etc. On Slick-50: it's useless. Teflon won't stay in suspension, it's been proven over and over, DuPont distanced themselves a long way away from lube oil applications, it won't chemically bond with the engine parts, it won't do anything but get stuck in the oil filter and get taken out at the next filter change. I'm not going to cite references, you can find them via Google if you're interested, but anecdotally the company that bought Slick-50 won't even advertise it anymore, they know it's a sham. Don't know about Prolong, and it's too late tonight for me to go read up on it. Snake oil, probably, but you folks like your "mystery" oil (which is fine for air tools, but in my crankcase?? I don't think so!).

It's past my bedtime, but I'll stay up for this one. I'm soon getting back my '82 Datsun Maxima (yes, they were Datsuns for one year: 1982, B4 that they were 810s). Three years ago I sold it to a friend, and now he's gonna get this Loyale, once I have it sorted. Before I sold it to him, I had both it and a 300D, a really beautiful one, just stunning. And I sold it and kept the Datsun. I ran that Maxima up & down the west coast I don't know how many times. One trip I remember well, I took a friend to Spokane to look at a GoldWing. He bought the bike, and we caravaned back to Renton. There is some elevation change between Spokane and Renton Traffic was heavy, a lot of folks finishing their weekend. I got in the left lane and left 'em all behind in a cloud of black. That 2.8l diesel is a honey, and I'm buying it back just for the drivetrain. Gonna put it in some old car someday. Runs like a watch. Starts in 20° without a hitch. Parts are cheap, leaks nonexistent. Long legs. Nowadays, everybody's got a diesel, but this was made back when GM was killing off all desire for diesels with that damned Olds 350ci conversion (which was actually a decent, reliable engine by the fifth iteration, in '83, but by then, who cared?). If it wasn't for the noise and particulate and stink issures, I'd be very pro-diesel. As it is, I feel they just are too dirty to promote, unless we can get everybody onto direct injection and clean up the polycyclic hydrocarbons. It may come to that, I hope so. In the meantime, the old smelly, sooty, no-NOx no-HC no-CO Maxima will be a "someday" donor car.

I had my passenger side PCV breather hose "explode" on me tonight. I have put worm drive clamps on both rocker hoses, because they leak just a little bit there. Well, I was doing the "water in the intake" thing tonight, running wide open and feeding water into the rubber boot, and I suddenly got squirted with oil/water. The hose cracked right above the hose clamp -- pointed toward me, of course. I cut the hose back 1", reclamped it, got out the aerosol Gunk and cleaned up the bay, then cleaned up myself.

The closest I can do is to provide a better broken link. Don't click on it, it won't work. http://photos8.msn.com/imageserver/image.aspx?Image=HcZNnT9kkUh6!cx8ceVWZnvKU3RK0ivFR5MImARk93*GQNb!iL75fHuiWB%20KHotWc!ooCgRI*BlUAlM9WqzwHHm9fLt48l3J*Xy4Czx1toUQRRUf6Ew*D0Rmra4UevK3gx*3fbACNqB9SWyC!gcrsCQ$$ (vB won't parse that link correctly and treat it as either an img or http link, it puts a space after the '?'.) If you have a browser that shows you the link (Netscape, Mozilla) in the status bar, you can see the error: a space inserted between '?' and "Image..." If you're using IE in default mode, you are "protected" from this information :/ You can RMB on the link, copy it to clipboard, then paste it to the Location field, then edit it to remove the errant space, to see his battered undercarriage. That'll work.

I own several of the "end user" AllData CDs for various cars, and I have access to the quite expensive "master" AllData DVD set, which I'm using for my '93 Loyale. For my Loyale, there are several very bad omissions and system description errors, really bad ones, like the fuel pressure regulator system for example. The Description of Operation is not merely a bit off, but completely wrong. I wasted a couple of days figuring this out, finally had to compare and take measurements on two different cars to get it right. The wiring diagrams can sometimes be misleading, too, but that's not a problem exclusive to AllData. You will find abbreviated repair procedures, and unlike AllData CDs for other cars, the TSBs are not all that useful, at least not for '93. Still, if you can buy it for $15 or whatever, it's nice to have as a backup. At least you do get some wiring diagrams, which most paper manuals don't. The vacuum diagrams are useless, they're basically the same as the underhood sticker. I'd like to buy the Chiltons one and try it out. Anybody tried it?

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Misery doesn't just love company, it demands it! History: When I bought this '93 Loyale 4WD 3AT wgn a month or so ago, the brakes' friction materials had been replaced several months prior (I have receipts), new rear wheel cyls, and one new rear drum. The brakes were horribly squealy when cold. But they worked fine (other than a judder) and the pedal height was fine. A week ago Sunday, I took everything off, cleaned out the rear drums of accumlated black dust, vacuumed off all the rear brake parts, 100 grit sandpapered the (like-new) rear shoes, backed off the auto-adjusters, and put them back together. Removed and turned the front rotors, cleaned up the (like new) brake pads and added the anti-squeal glue-like gunk to the backs of the pads. No more squeal, no more judder. But! I have a steep downhill driveway, and now when I leave in the AM, the rears sound like metal-to-metal. Just as you describe, if the car sits a while, the first few uses are very "grindy". I took the rear drums back off and looked everything over, did a manual adjust on the rear shoes because the auto-adjusters don't seem to be doing their job. I notice that the replaced brake drum does not fit perfectly, and that at the correct torque-up (145 ft/lbs) I cannot use a full-size cotter pin, the holes are partly occluded (by about 1/3), so I have to use the next size smaller cotter pin. Also, the pedal height is noticeably lower, like the shoes aren't adjusted, but I've got slight drag, they're as tight as I want them. I'm not a newbie when it comes to brakes, but this sounds like a Subaru-specific thing. Ideas?

Summary: no, it would not be worth it. Details: Perpetual motion doesn't work. Conservation of energy: you don't get something for nuthin' (TANSTAAFL, R.A. Heinlein, use Google). Although you could size and built an AC system large enough to reduce your intake charge temperature, the amount of power you pick up from this will not exceed the amount of power you expend to compress and move the working fluid (refrigerant). Put another way: you will consume more HP to create the cold air than the cold air will increase your total available HP. Plus, you have to put the heat you removed from the intake air somewhere. Where does it go now? Oh, yeah, it's dumped in front of the engine. Add a blower or turbo and intercooler instead, they increase volumetric efficiency.

Close. Air is about 1/3 oxygen, the rest being mosty nitrogen. NO2 is 2/3 oxygen, plus it gets to the engine a lot colder than the surrounding air (in most cases), so it's denser. The net effect is that you can get more oxygen, and colder, less preignition-prone oxygen, into the cylinder. Then you have to find a way to get more fuel there, too. Modern intake manifolds are not designed for fuel flow, only air flow, so if you dump fuel in up at the throttle body area (on a MPFI setup), the fuel is not going to have good distribution, will tend to settle out and not vaporise, etc. On an SPFI setup, adding more fuel at the throttle body would be a good choice. Back in the day (maybe 25 years ago) when I was looking at NO2 systems and turbos, the trick setup was to inject the nitrous near the compressor, and the fuel somewhere downstream. This was before mainstream FI other than Bosch systems. I venture that there are not very many long-term NO2-enabled engines running around. It's not a gentle shove, it's more like a hammer blow, and it's not easy on engines nor drivetrains. But fun, in the short-term.

I'm with Skip on this one. I'm not really familiar with the Turbo model, but I looked hard at an 86 EA82T last week, and it needed its driver's side PCV hose replaced (it was cracked where it attaches to the rocker cover). Subaru had it for about $30. Special order, but no problem, the part number is not NLA.

You are not alone in this -- many people agree with you, that the benefits do not outweigh its cost. I disagree somewhat. Though the crap is the major wear factor, oil does not last forever, it does break down into other, shorter-chain molecules and as it does this it becomes something other than an ideal lubricant. Synthetic oil just takes a lot longer to do this, and has a wider temperature range where it does not appreciably "wear". Violently disagree! AMSOil (and others; Racor?) make a really nice combo dual-filter full-flow/bypass unit for under $200. The full-flow portion of the unit works as the OEM does, and does the usual/typical 20-40 micron (about .0015") filtering (BTW, filters filter better (finer) as they begin to fill up with particulates); the bypass portion filters about 10% of the oil, returning it to the sump, but filters it down to sub-micron level. Read about it, it's great stuff. I've never installed one, but I want to, badly. Trouble is, I don't tend to keep cars long enough -- This Loyale is my 73rd car, leaving aside all the motorcycles over the years (I've got a list here somewhere). Using this filter setup, some people never change their oil, which is a possibility, though I don't know if I'd go that far. The oil stays clean. Tractors use sliding gears (like reverse gear in your Subaru). Sliding gears have high contact area compared to baulk rings /dogs. Tractors don't have input shafts that might turn 6.5k . 90W gear oil (75W90, 75W140, 85W90 et al) is an EP oil (Extreme Pressure) and contains additives for this purpose. It contains sulphur, phosphorus and (boron?). The ball or roller bearings in a transmission won't care much, but bushings and bronze alloy sychronizer rings do, they have a large contact area and it's all sliding friction. Most modern manual transmissions have gone over to ATF for their lubricant, but the sychronizer parts have been redesigned for this different friction characteristic. ATF has sturdy anti-foaming additives; tractor hydraulic fluid has much less so. Foam is bad for gears, because it contains air . Air is an excellent lubricant, but not for gears! (And ATF now comes in at least five broad, mutually-incompatible classes: Allison/Chrysler ATF+4, Dexron III/Mercon, Mercon V, ATF+3, the old Type F, etc. etc.) Any oil is better than no oil. You could likely fill your trans with salad oil, and it'd work OK for a year. I doubt it it's a good long-term idea, though. You could gain some performance by using 3-in-One oil and removing some of the balls in the ball bearings: you'd get better mileage, faster shifts, and your teeth might look whiter. I'm not implying that the trans will make 300k, though. It's all about compromises. The mfgrs have an interest in getting the cars out of warranty period without spending any warranty money on them, so they're going to expend enough engineering to do that much. The safety factor in gear lubes is huge. But gears and bearing surfaces get smaller every year, to save material cost, weight, and parasitic losses (drag). Whenever somebody comes out with a better lubricant, the mfgrs counter with smaller parts, taking advantage of the better lube. That's why we get such a large improvement in wear when we switch old cars over to new lubes. I had a more detailed, vebose response typed up, but I had a power failure that outlasted my UPSs; I've got to go yank out my car batteries under the desk and load check 'em, they may be too old again.

I can't find my notes, so I'll have to make this up as I go along. I was bribed to attend a Chevron/Texaco tech presentation last year -- free dinner, which is a pretty good way to get me to go anywhere Synthetic oil is man-made, sure, but what isn't generally well-known is that it's man-made from natural gas, which is the same stuff (essentially) as all other crude oil products. That is, crude oil, when run through the conventional cracking process, yields everything from lubricating oils, diesel, kerosene, gasoline, benzene, tolulene, LPG, and CNG (as you move up the chain from heavy distillates to lighter ones). The heavier distallates have more crap in them. They also contain more total heat energy (BTUs, watts, whatever). This is why diesels get better mileage than gasoline vehicles, and why LPG and CNG vehicles get slightly less mileage: the BTUs per unit are less with lighter distillates. Natural gas is found, er, naturally (ie pockets of the stuff underground) and is also created by the cracking process used to make other distallates -- you can get it both ways. Synthetic lubricants are formed by taking natural gas and using it as the base stock, instead of the heavier crude oil. The longer chains are custom-made from a natural gas base. So, instead of cracking crude up a ways to lube oil, it's cracked all the way up to natural gas (a mix of light distillates such as propane, butane, and methane), then reformed into longer-chain molecules back "down" to synthetic lube oil. This is more expensive, as you might guess. See, synthetic oil is still organic! The huge advantage that this has had in the past is that the end product is extremely clean -- it contains none of the waxes and crap that the original crude oil did, having been a gas at some point. Synthetic oils then have their own additive package added, but the main advantage is that it started out about 75% cleaner than a lubricant from heavier crude stock. The way it was presented to me (in-between the appetizer and the main course) is that sometime in the past, Chevron introduced a new hydrocracking distillation process that can produce much, much cleaner lubicating oil without having to use natural gas as the base stock. This process is called hydrocracking, and is the basis for Group III processing -- again, this is all from memory, and I might have it wrong. Many refiners have moved to Group III refining because auto mfgrs are creating new API specs that the older refining processes are hard-pressed to meet. Even, ugh, Pennzoil has moved to Group III refining, which means that for the first time in a hundred years, Pennzoil might actually be good enough to use as a lubricant, instead of just a bonfire starter . . . but I'm not switching over just yet. I'm going to leave aside discussion of Poly Alpha Olefins and ester/diester blend additive packages for now, as not only is it more technical, but I'd really have to go find my notes -- Sherlock Holmes, an Arthur Conan Doyle literary creation, would say that the mind is like a shopping bag, and when it gets full, in order to put something in, you have to take something out. Well, oil processes must have gotten taken out of my mind last week to put SPFI in, I guess. Synthetic lubes do not require exotic additives to keep their low temp pour point depressed, because they're not full of gunk that congeals at cold temperature. Synthetic lubes do not require more wierd waxes and polyesters added to increase high temp film shear and hydrodynamic performance, and to reduce volatility: they are "naturally" good at these tasks, because they do not contain the pot-pourri of crap that the reg. oil does. Reg. oil has additives to help maintain the pH balance when exposed to combustion acids, and to help keep all the crap (and ash) in suspension. Synth. oil is "naturally" low in ash, has no crap, and is resistant to pH movement. That said, if the Group III thing is true, then the difference between Group III refined oils and Synthetic oils has become a lot less than, say, 10 years ago. As to the relative merits of one Synthetic product over another, in many cases it's hair-splitting to me. If you're changing the oil when you can't read the lines on the stick anymore through the oil, I don't think the actual oil is going to make a whole lot of difference except in the very, very long run. Auto engines are, by and large, designed for bonehead maintenance. Don't run dirty oil, and unless you have special operating conditions (very cold, very hot, long periods of time at more than 1/2 throttle), merely changing the oil on-time is the best thing you can do. I've already commented on Castrol's substitution of a Group III lubricant for Synthetic refining, and I positively saw a decline in performance when they did it -- but I didn't know why until much later. Every car I've switched over to synthetic oil has seen a dramatic decrease in oil consumption -- example, '83 Chev G30 6.2l diesel, 102k miles when I got it in '93, one qt. in 800 miles consumption, no oil leaks. 80k miles later, when I sold it, it was down to one qt. in 1700 miles, still no oil leaks, average MPG over that 80k miles was 19.1 MPG. I have other, personal anecdotes that run similarly. Synth oil Good. I, of course, am an oil snob, and run synthetic lubricants everywhere, even in my lawnmower. I don't pretend to be rational, though. The economic payoff is very debateable.

I don't know, I've never seen one. Is it LCD, LED, or electroluminescent? I've fixed other digital dashes (mostly Fords). But I've heard that some of the GM ones are impossible. You did see that I didn't write that stuff, I was only repeating it, didn't you? A cursory search via Google reveals that that unit's speedometer has a cable just like the non-digital dash, up to the back of the cluster. Strangely, very few people are complaining about the early Subaru digital dashes -- I found only about four posts on dead or dying ones. It'd be a lot easier if I had the car as well as the dash, but if you're willing to ship me the cluster, I'm willing to look at it. I've had pretty good luck with other automotive electronics. ZIP 98368

Yup, there's an easy cure, if you can operate a flat-edge screwdriver and a low-wattage solder pencil: Dim/Dead clock repair

A poor diagnostic tool is often better than no tool at all, if you know its limitations.. The averaging that I think is going on implies that what you see is a guess from the electronics, and one which is a few heartbeats behind reality upon which those guesses are predicated. As long as you know this, and factor it into your tuning, you can compensate for the tool. The problem arises when you think the tool is doing one thing, but it's not. In knowledge lies power. We now have wide, fast worldwide communication, via the internet. This is great! But information and misinformation and downright lies can be broadcast equally easily. It has become very difficult to determine the wheat from the chaff, the signal from the noise, the truth from the BS. In a typed msg, everybody sounds like an expert or a fool. Just as a pretty font and nice, even margins do not imply that what the words say are true, my or your writing or grammar skills do not imply the veracity of what we type. For this reason, just as in Real Life , I require a source to be vetted (or, put another way, to qualify themselves) before I accept the proffered knowledge. I'm not an expert, but I play one at work We all have different skills, talents, abilities, resources, and passion to bring to bear against problems. The trick is to keep the dissembling to a minimum, and when misinformation can be refuted, to do so. It likely has some value. I don't know, I've never used one of these sub-$200 units, being skeptical of the methodology used in their construction. I steer clear of tools that I think were designed for the same purpose as the Sears Self-Sharpening Chainsaw (am I going back too far?): it wasn't designed to cut wood or self-sharpen, it was designed to do one thing well: sell like hotcakes, and it succeeded. I think that a conventional O2-based A/F display is too close to that Sears POS, but that doesn't mean that you can't prevail and cut wood with it, only that you have to bear in mind its limitations. I hope that I've helped dispel the myth of the A/F meter's infallability -- if you take its output with a shaker of salt, it may be quite useful. Better than seat-of-the-pants, not as good as a chassis dyno or an onboard OBD-II realtime scantool. There are a couple of reasons why SnapOn, Mac, OTC, et al charge so much for their scantools, and it's not all in the hardware or support. Keeping up with changing tech is so challenging, that most of us will change careers something like seven times over our lifetime, and that number is rising! If you're young, this doesn't sound too bad, but if your on your fifth career, its scary, indeed, let me tell you! [preach] You, Skip, are a cornerstone of this online Subaru Enthusiast community. As such, you have invested considerable time and effort in this community, and people who come for an specific answer, tend to stay to learn more, and to build on the social glue that you and others provide. Because you "qualify" yourself with every new posting, you've become an influencer to those here, and your words carry weight. It's doubly important that you type what you feel to be truth, because others will take it as gospel, and truth and fiction travel at the same speed. I, Al S., will likely move on from this (excellent) Subaru community in a few weeks, when I have this particular project behind me; I prefer slow, quiet, and cushy to the qualities of this '93 Loyale, and the reasons I bought this one are that the woman needed to leave the area immediately, needed money bad, and I had a friend lined up whose wife wanted it. I'm just making sure that all parties are satisfied -- I'm not a long-term Subaru customer. But, I can't not fight the darkness; I have to try to light a candle. But you have a responsibility to keep flow of information on the Truth side of the deadband, and when it swings over to the BS side, nail it as you see it. [/preach] I hope I've helped. Keep On Truckin'

High CO = too rich, or incorrect ignition timing. Partially burned fuel. High HC = misfire (way rich but you also get high CO with it), too lean so it misfires, or low compression in one or more cyls. Unburned fuel. I wouldn't look at plugs, but dbl check the timing, air filter, PCV system (not just the valve, but the hoses: mine were plugged solid!). If the ignition is misfiring, you'll get high HC every time -- unburned fuel.

I misstated my noise in the '93: it's on both accel and decel. For some reason, I didn't remember it that way. Sounds like you're gonna need a diff replacement, if the lube looks that bad. Mine's staying pretty clean after two flushes in 1k miles, but I don't know if I'd take it on a long trip just yet -- it's got to prove itself first. 2.6 pints = a bit over 1.25 quarts. I poured about a gallon of gasoline through mine with the drain plug out, before refilling.

Synthetics got a bad reputation in the 70's because they didn't contain the seal-swelling gunk that reg. oil does, and have almost none of the debris and waxes that reg. oil does, so seals of that period would leak if switched to synth. Two things have occurred over the past 30 years: * Seal materials used in cars no longer rely upon the higher percentage of volatiles in the oil -- synth. oil has very few volatiles, and has a high flash point: this combo gives much reduced oil loss through evaporation -- don't laugh, a lot of reg. oil gets used up this way. * Synth oil designated for use in older cars do have some lighter distillates added to keep the seal materials supple. I don't recommend using synthetic lube in units that haven't been rebuilt using newer seal materials, but otherwise I'm very pro-synthetic. Caveat: what is being sold as "synthetic" isn't always, notably Castrol Syntec is merely a good Group III oil, and AFAIK does not contain ester/diesters or PAOs. I used Syntec from '93 until last year, but have switched to Mobil One (and, yes, I had noticed increased oil consumption over the last two years, and wondered why -- then I found out what Castrol had done). Castrol was sued over the switchover from PAO to hydrocracking (IIRC), but won the right to call Syntec "synthetic", much to the chagrine of other refiners who are using the more expensive refining method. AMSOil and Redline are aguably the best synthetic lubes, but have the downside of their distribution channel and retail pricing; I can buy Mobil One at Costco. My local NAPA will bring in AMSOil for me, but the price is not remotely competitve. I used to maintain a "preferred" AMSOil account (it's like $20/yr.) to buy at a reduced rate, but for the rigs I drive, I can't justify the hassle anymore, and I just run the Mobil product.

I doubt it. Unlike OBD-II systems, our older Soobs do not have any way to measure whether the Purge Control Solenoid is plumbed or not, other than the coil impedance, so as long as you have some kind of coil of the correct impendance connected, the ECU doesn't care if the vacuum lines are connected or not, AFAIK. 1995-on, it makes a difference, and if you leave your fuel cap loose, it'll tell you.

I think you're thinking about the upcoming "Wideband" oxygen sensors. How 'bout this: "The newest O2 sensor technology from Bosch builds upon the planar design and adds the ability to actually measure the air/fuel ratio directly for the first time. Instead of switching back and forth like all previous sensor designs, the new wide-band O2 sensor produces a signal that is directly proportional to the air/fuel ratio. . . . The result is a sensor element that can precisely measure air/fuel ratios from very rich (10:1) to extremely lean (straight air). This allows the engine computer to use an entirely different operating strategy to control the air/fuel ratio. Instead of switching the air/fuel ratio back and forth from rich to lean to create an average balanced mixture, it can simply add or subtract fuel as needed to maintain a steady ratio of 14.7:1. . . . But instead of switching abruptly, it produces a gradual change in the voltage that increases or decreases in proportion to the relative richness or leanness of the air/fuel ratio. So, at a perfectly balanced air/fuel ratio or 14.7:1, a wide-band O2 sensor will produce a steady 450 mv. If the mixture goes a little richer or a little leaner, the sensor's output voltage will only change a small amount instead of rising or dropping dramatically" It goes on . . . http://www.forparts.com/BoswidebandO2.htm "The trouble is, conventional oxygen sensors give on a rich-lean indication. They can't tell the computer the exact air/fuel ratio. When the air/fuel ratio is perfectly balanced, a convention O2 sensor produces a signal of about 0.45 volts (450 millivolts). When the fuel mixture goes rich, even just a little bit, the O2 sensor's voltage output shoots up quickly to its maximum output of close to 0.9 volts. Conversely, when the fuel mixture goes lean, the sensor's output voltage drops to 0.1 volts. Every time the oxygen sensor's output jumps or drops, the engine computer responds by decreasing or increasing the amount of fuel that is delivered. This rapid flip-flopping back and forth allows the feedback fuel control system to maintain a more-or-less balanced mixture, on average." "The newest generation of oxygen sensors are being called "wideband" lambda sensors or "air/fuel ratio sensors" because that's exactly what they do. They provide a precise indication of the exact air/fuel ratio, and over a much broader range of mixtures - all the way from 0.7 lambda (11:1 air/fuel ratio) to straight air!" That's supposedly Bosch writing those words, though with the number of typos, I hope not. Anyway, they said what I said: the typical O2 sensor in use today has a very narrow balance point (deadband/hysteresis) and falls off that point very easily. The whole feedback system is designed around this feature. The ECU can get three possible values from an O2 sensor (after filtering): [*]Signal > .5v = rich condition exists [*]Signal < .45 = lean condition exists [*]Signal = .45v = sensor failure or not up to temp. [/list=1] In practice, the midpoint is likely a lot wider, possibly as wide as 0.1v, but the sensor is not going to output, say, 0.35v to indicate "a little bit leaner than stoichiometric". The upcoming wideband O2 sensors will do just that, but that's not what we have available today, for less than several hundreds or thousands of dollars, and if you read the details of this dual-elemen, oxygen-pump widget, you'll see that this wideband tech is exactly what Mark Stavropoulos posted about UEGOs in 1994 at http://www.wps.com/LPG/o2sensor.html . What is being sold as an A/F meter is, I assume, a conventional O2 sensor and some time-based averaging electronics glue parts, so that if the O2 sensor tends to spend more time ON than OFF, the gadget lights up more of the "rich" LEDs. And vice-versa for lean. Is this a correct relationship? Well, sorta. Is it useful? Probably. Is it telling you the actual A/F ratio? No -- it's just guessing.

O2 sensors wear out, that's a fact. They wear out less frequently when they are not overheated, contaminated with silicone (from some Room Temperature Vulcanizing sealants, or a leaky head gasket that causes coolant to go out the exhaust -- coolant which contains silicates), lead, phosphorus (from older oil formulations and snake-oil additives and lots of oil burning in a worn engine) or subjected to very rich mixtures over an extended length of time. Also, they will not operate correctly if the exteriour jacket is coated with crud, as they operate by the differential of oxygen on the outside with respect to oxygen on the probe side. This page has a test procedure for testing for a dead O2 sensor that is pretty easy, and some decent info on O2 construction and integration (though there are several misleading statements on the site, such as assuming "fuel" = "gasoline", kinda like assuming all PCs run Windoze). We Subaru owners have it easy, because our ECUs have an O2 monitor LED which can tell us whether the rich/lean signal is "crossing" .45v -- which is should, in normal (closed-loop) operation. But that only covers one failure mode: failure to detect lean. A mostly-dead or contaminated O2 sensor will falsely tell the ECU that there is an excess of oxygen in the exhaust stream (lean), and the ECU compensates by increasing the injector pulse time. So, if you think you're running lean, I wouldn't go to the O2 sensor as my first choice, unless your O2 monitor LED does not light at all. I'd be looking for intake air leaks, dbl-check the fuel pressure regulator (and triple-check it on Turbo engines), and EGR operation (because when the EGR operates correctly, it replaces intake charge oxygen with non-oxygen, and the ECU reduces fuel to compensate, but if the EGR exhaust port is plugged, the net effect is too much air for the fuel being injected -- in theory, the ECU would compensate this.) A worn but not worn-out O2 sensor gets "slow", and does not change output from rich/lean fast enough, which misleads the ECU into always trailing behind actuality. This failure mode is harder to test for, and is the main reason why so many mfgrs have a blanket mileage replacement recommendation. Like timing belts, they're going to fail, but the actual number of miles to failure varies considerably. Unlike timing belts, an O2 sensor's performance usually deteriorates gradually, unless contaminated.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=33730&item=2435701088 $160, or Buy It Now for $180 I have no idea if this is a Good Deal. There are several more kits at eBay: http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&krd=1&from=R8&MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&query=subaru+clutch+kit including one for $69 (for a "4CLY", whatever that is. Sheesh). Rebuilt (not new) with a flywheel. [That auction says, "we have . . . clutches for EVERY CAR & TRUCK". I ought to inquire about a Hillman clutch and watch them sputter.] If there was any trace AT ALL of rough clutch engagement, have the flywheel turned. Or buy a kit with an exchange flywheel.

If you have to disable fuel feed . . . My manual says to disconnect the injector at the connector (SPFI, but similar x4 for MPFI), but when I was all done checking compression and got it running again, the ECU had set a code (14: injector) because it sensed the open circuit on powerup. This doesn't set the CEL (because once you reconnect the injector, it's no longer an immediate problem) but the malfunction code does stay in memory, which can confuse you later when your do a Read Memory check. So, if you go this route (disconnect injector for compression check), you may want to consider running the Clear Memory procedure to remove the now-hidden code from the ECU: ========================= To clear codes, you have to run the Diagnostic (D-check) and also have the Read Memory connector connected. Warm up the engine to operating temperature, shut it off, connect BOTH the D-check (green) connectors and Read Memory connectors. Turn on the ignition, wait for fuel pump to stop (about 1.5 seconds), verify that the CEL light comes on, press accelerator to floor, then back off to half throttle for two seconds, then release it completely. Start the engine. Then drive it constantly above 5 mph for at least 39 seconds (yeah, I know). The CEL is supposed to blink, indicating no codes found -- and the old codes are now cleared. Shut it off, disconnect the D-check (green) connectors and the Read Memory connectors, and you're done. If, after about two minutes of driving above 5 mph, you get the CEL light again and it's not blinking, the ECU has finished the diagnostic check, and it found another code, which you will have to read and deal with. Read it off the O2 sensor monitor LED on the ECU itself: see also http://usmb.net/repair/?CurrentDirectory=FOLDER_3f29b58f4430b8.49200047/&FileType=Article&File=ARTICLE_3f2c055f4862e9.39782181.art

Cool. Do that. I've got a portable 'scope, but lack the ambition to do the testing. Do let me know what you find. [later] As someone else recently posted, the WPS site (we LPG enthusiasts call it the "old Rambler site") has a good collection of decade-old O2 sensor info, some of which is contradictory, but most of which does support what I've been saying: the O2 sensor that we get for automotive use can sense A/F in a very narrow range only, and the range is so narrow as to be a "rich/lean" indication rather than a set of gradations that can be mapped to an output that makes sense. Apparently, several firms sell inexpensive things that purport to give A/F output using a <$100 O2 sensor. While I don't doubt that an LED bar graph can be driven using the output of an O2 sensor, and that some relative richness/leanness can be implied by using an O2 sensor -- after all, that's what they're designed to do -- it does not appear to me or others that the range of O2 sensor output is sufficient to imply the range of LED bar graph output that I've seen on the units being sold. It's better than nothing, I suppose. Anyway, when you do your testing, I'm interested in the results. Esp. if you can get stable numbers without signal conditioning -- you may have to load the line and use a current probe rather than a voltage probe, depending upon your particular environment. And the amount of current is going to be very, very small. Hey, I may be all wet, but I'm not going to assume so

Without thermostatically-controlled air (ie a carb air preheat hose), are these conversions prone to carb icing? I know with the progressive Holley/Weber/Autolite conversions I've dealt with on the air-cooled VWs, that even with the exhaust heat riser passage left connected, here in northern Washington in cold, foggy weather they'd still ice up and put you by the side of the road, unless you rigged up some warm air feed to the air intake. The Soobs (at least the EA82) have coolant flowing under the SPFI throttle body base, but is that enough to prevent carb venturi icing in cold wet weather? Or is someone fabbing air filter housings with a snorkel?