adge_082

I dont like amorall simply because it contains silicone, when the silicone dries it tends to shrink your dash and you will see cracks appear, there are plenty of silicone-free interior protectants out there. Mothers is in my opinion the best by far, i love it and use nothing else, does a great job (dont spray directly onto interior, use a lint free cloth). i think the fact that your trying to do something about preserving the interior is more important than the product you use. some people use amorall and have no problems, as long as your lookin after the car youll be fine. And a bottle of any interior protectant will stretch a LOOOONG way if you use it right, so whatever you have to pay to get good stuff, over the course of 6months to a year, its pretty cheap.

Last night i decided to remove the snorkus and see what happened. I took the ugly contraption out of the fender, cut it up with a jigsaw leaving only a short pipe with a 90 degree bend and a blot to mount it. After resetting the computer i took the car for a drive. The results: Smoother power delivery, i no longer get a slight hesitation or bogging down feeling when accelerating in second from very low rpm. Quicker acceleration, this was the most noticeable thing. Maybe better fuel economy, this could be just me thinking its better (i drove 100km last night) The car does make more noise, slightly less refined sound, but thats ok with me, i like it. sounds better from outside the car, i heard that when my girlfriend drove it away this morning. Overall the car just seems happier about the whole thing, definately worth doing, and it costs nothing...perfect. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, car is a 96 Liberty (Legacy) Sedan, 5MT EJ22E

someone just posted in another thread "if you go to a VW forum people are vowing never to buy german again and vice versa on this board" or something to that effect anyway. all cars have problems, this board is a good source of knowing what may go wrong in the future, save for maintenance and you should be fine.

Not washing and waxing your car because its only going to get dirty again is the excuse we all use. But it really wont help your car. When you leave the dirt on your car, you letting all that crap in the dirt eat at your paint and body of your car, and its not so much the visible dirt you have to worry about, its all the crud in your wheel wells and door jams and areas that are hard to get to like the boot and bonnet. When i wash my car i always pop the boot and hood, get an old yukky looking (but clean) chamois and get all the water and dirt out of all the little crevices. have a look at where your car is rusting, and provided its not a fault in the panel that existed before the rust developed, try to figure out why its rusting there and in no other place, im sure with a little time and tracing dirt marks and you will see it. some people are doomed to get rust because of where they live and the conditions they drive in, but you should at least be able to slow it down a little with some proventitive maintenance. And a bit of elbow grease and wax is a lot cheaper than re-spraying new panels every couple of years.

I got my 96 Liberty about 4 months ago in summer here in Aust. Now that we are heading into some colder weather i am hearing piston slap, goes away pretty quick though, 2 blocks and its gone, and its real faint for the two blocks anyway. Im not worried about it, try to get it in writing (if you can) that it wont hurt your engine, then you have some sort of insurance from subaru. Doubt youll have much luck getting it in writing, but its worth a shot.

If your running some serious stereo equipment, why not run a dual battery setup and a stiffening cap? Seems like when you load up the system you get the whine, i have it too, but i suspect the factory ground for the head unit is the culprit in my case, i just need time to re-ground the thing. Double check that all your grounds are REAL good too. Noise suppressors in my opinion just hide a problem with your electrical system. I would even consider taking the car to an auto elec that has an interest in car audio and have them do a good check up on your elec system. Is your alternator in good shape?

Someone once mentioned to me that he had great results with copper head gaskets for high boost applications. Would that work? He may have been FOS too, not the most reliable information source, but it made sense, and i know of a guy who will make them for any application, not sure of the cost involved though.

I dare say that it isnt quite as simple as whip out the old AT, bang in the new MT. There will be issues, there always are, so im guessing it would cost quite a bit more to do the conversion. Plus you then have to install a clutch and plumb the pedal in as well, remove the no start in gear thingo, all of that stuff. If your willing to spend the $$$ then go for it.

Do you have the link to the thread? I will call the spare parts depo at subi here in melbourne, i think they can get a fair bit of stuff, old or new model. Subaru over here seems to be pretty good.

you could photoshop it and have a look for yourself. If you dont know how to photoshop it and do have a pic of your car, email it to me. web@oxyprint.com.au I will be able to do it pretty quick and get it back to ya. Some cars look great two tone, others look cheap. I like white over charcoal or silver. Blue over black might be a bit hmmm. Blue over charcoal looks good though. Being a first gen, it should look pretty good, IMO anyway.

is to go grab yourself the Mothers 3 Phase waxing system (a pre-wax cleaner, sealer and glaze and carnuba wax) and get to work. You should be able to clean up the oxidization and then protect the paint with a good sealer and glaze once every couple of months and a wax once a month. Or if your like me and get fanatical about having a clean car, wax and seal/glaze every week. It will definately stop it from progressing, and your car will love you for it. Its likely that subaru would probably just tell you that you havent cared for the paint well enough and its your fault for letting it get like that, so i doubt youll get a re-spray out of it. And please dont take that the wrong way, im not saying you dont look after your car, thats just what the dealer would say to get out of it. There are stacks of cars newer than your around with pretty bad paint, i dont think car manufacturers put enough effort into paint quality anymore. Just look at some of those gorgeous old Mercedes Benz's or over here old Holdens, they dont take the time to really make the car look great anymore. Use the mothers stuff, or comparable quality products, McGuires is overpriced, but anything along those lines will do your car a world of good. Just steer clear of anything cheap, or a convensional polish (no good for clear coat, which i assume your car has, but maybe not.......i dont know).

Before i owned the Subie (96 Liberty LX AWD 5spd) dont know exactly what that converts to in Legacy for you guys, i had a Porsche 944. Purchase price was about the same. I ended up putting 15,000km on the porsche in a little over 3 years, and it spent a FULL YEAR AND A HALF in various garages being fixed for various problems. The day i sold it, it started overheating. It was just plain trouble. Now i have the subie, 17,000km in 4 months the ODO reads 180,000km (Porsche read 75,000km) and all i have had done is a minor service and a new battery last weekend (i put 3 new batterys in the porsche). Its by far the best car i have ever been in, it has comfortable interior, plenty of stuff that other similarly priced cars forget to include, like a tacho for instance.. And it just runs and runs, gets great mileage, sounds awesome with that boxer under the hood, looks smooth and nice. I just dont know what more you could want in a car. This car has already given me the feeling that if i lost it right now, i would have gotten my moneys worth. Strange thing is, everyone in Australia seems to agree that for reliability and value for money you cant go past Subaru, yet even with that mindset people still dont buy em. Strange.

I imagine that the head gasket issue is one of those things that they just couldnt test for. When tested the results come back fine, so they go into production. 50,000miles down the track (sometimes sooner) head gaskets start leaking. Some do some dont, it will definately happen sooner or later, but the when part is pretty sketchy. You cant really test for that, you make 5 cars or 10 cars for testing and of those 10 or whatever after 20,000miles of real world driving nothing major is wrong, you would assume that they should be fine to at least 150,000. After all the engine isnt drastically different. In any case Subaru were wrong, and the Phase1 isnt a great engine. So they bring out the phase2 in a hope to rectify the problem, only this time the gasket leak is external instead of internal. Same deal, they probably tested it, but how much do you have to test something before releasing it, do we wait 5 years while manufacturers test their engines, and give up 5 years worth of technology to have an engine that may or may not make it through testing and may have to be re-designed any way? I dont know what they could do to solve the problem, it looks like they have tried, releasing the phase2 was an attempt. Maybe they should have re-called the phase1 and dropped new engines into all the outbacks and what not that came with that particular engine, but we would never be able to afford a Subaru in the future if they did. Same deal with the phase2, they could re-call, but do we really want them to? They are using a stop leak and giving you an extended warranty, and yes, your car may fail afterwards. So sell it, buy a new one, dont wait for the catastrophy if you suspect its on its way. Im not saying you dont have reason to be angry and upset over a poorly designed engine that will cost you money in the future, but these are still cars. Your still going to have to spend money even if you sell it and buy a honda. You trade one set of problems for another, at least you know whats wrong with your car now, and when to expect a failure. Thats my 20 cents anyhow.

Unfortunately mines only the NA, but it is the ej22e, 96 awd 5spd. Its a nice looking car, dead straight (mate is a paintless dent remover). Im getting some 97 wrx 15"s for it in a week or two off a guy who i speed skate with, at the moment its got 14" white alloys, theyre strange, but not ugly. I have changed the muffler for one that growls a little, and lowered the car 1.25". Got big plans, but not big pockets so i dont know how far i will go with it all, maybe an ej22t, maybe not.. will have to see what the better half says when/if i ever get the $$$ to do it.

I think it was a slush box, from memory, but i could be wrong. Its a very nice looking machine too, i have a photo in a Hot4's mag at home with some basic info, if i remember which mag i will try to bring it into work and scan the small article and photo.