Hank Roberts

That's no longer a valid URL, at least at the moment -- anything newer?

Good advice for David C. there ('do it yourself') I hope. For me, I have to have the manual shift low-range 4wd, and buying another would be as much of a risk as fixing this one up. With oil leaks, I figure I can watch and track oil use and decide. I drive maybe 1500 miles a _year_. With water leaks, though, it's an emergency for David C, I guess?

Are there any better-than-stock seals and gaskets recommended, for these old 1800-engine Subarus? I have always figured a head gasket now and then is the cost of really taking good care of a vehicle. Worth doing. But it's always a big gulp. This'd cost $1500 at Berkeley SOS Subaru, as I learned this morning; my 1988 GL had a swapped-in used Japanese engine, 60k miles ago. I got it a few weeks ago. The more I learn about the previous work done on it, the less I trust it. Like the plugged EGR channels in the engine, finally detected and fixed last week. Since I got it a few weeks ago, the engine's lost a couple of quarts of oil in 500 miles of half freeway, half steep gravel forest-road driving. Not sustainable over even the short term. That's with 10W-30 oil. No smoke, just dribbling and drooling. Head gasket service, I gather, goes through (so also replaces) the front engine seal, back cover of timing belt, cam towers, front engine seal. Anything else in there that can leak? Anything else worth adding (extra oil cooling, for example?) while it's pulled apart?

1988 GL wagon here. I'd buy new -- anytime before next winter, good chance for a group buy -- a big Phillips screwdriver, even my palsied (carpal tunnel) hands can handle! They're riveted into the brackets on either end --Subaru-specific? Or are these like many Japanese car parts, standard on many brands? If unique, I wonder if the rivets could be drilled out and a generic strut put in, and re-riveted? Junkyard parts won't do unless picked known good in below-freezing weather -- I need mine to hold that hatch up while I'm winter weather gear, cold camping, where hatch creep-down-and-whack-you happens. Or does anyone have a pressure meter/scale to test a good strut for compression? I suppose I could refrigerate mine and then test them .... Naaaah. Too much.

Aha. Dang. So after checking everything else, the mechanic in Berkeley started rechecking the work done for the previous owner just before I took title. They'd replaced the EGR valve saying it was clogged, then the ECU, then said exhaust port (that leads combustion gases back to the EGR valve) was completely clogged up, and cleaned that out. Well, they apparently didn't do a very good job on that. -- The exhaust port is open but dirty, still needs cleaning, and -- The INTAKE port (from the EGR valve back to the combustion chamber) is plugged -- completely -- solid. Now the previous owner had been running for months with the Check light on, and using the cheapest gas he could buy, and at least the rubber tube that connects the EGR valve replaced by some chunk of hose that was crimped and clogged. So, I am hoping, this will sort things out. Now, what octane rating (and brand?) are you California old-stock-engine Subaru folks using? If there's a thread for that I've missed, please point me there. And I'll add more news here if I can contribute anything useful. I don't recall any mention elsewhere about cleaning out these EGR ports, so maybe this isn't all that common.

> Tire pressure This may be different for different models, but I've seen warnings elsewhere that for the GL series like my 1988 turbo, higher tire pressure will wear out the middle of the tires fast, and to stay with the factory specified (which I think is 26 -- but don't trust my memory, I don't!). Now I've only had the 1988 GL turbo for, what, three weeks now -- 240k miles on the body, 60k miles on a swapped engine -- and made one long trip with it. About 200 miles on the freeway, 30 on 2-lane pavement, and maybe 50 on steep gravel Forest Service mountain roads in mostly 4wd low gear. 21 m.p.g. so far overall. Not what I"d hoped -- but it's back in the local Berkeley shop for a Check Engine (34, EGR solenoid) light that has persisted through three different mechanics' attempts to solve it. Makes me suspect something else is wrong in there. I'm very glad to see the thread started, I'd been thinking I really wanted to know what kind of mileage, RPMs, tire pressure etc. others report here.

Have you got the glovebox manual for your car? If not, when I get home I can send you the info -- because I was baffled completely by the A/C on my 1988 GL as well. I've only had it a couple of weeks. The manual gives several pages to how to operate this. It's a totally non-obvious combination of the little lever down by your left knee (AC/Vent) and use of the buttons and temperature slider, that decides whether you're getting recirculated inside air, or outside air. All I remember now is that I thought the manual contradicted itself -- one place it says set that AC/Vent lever to AC to get recirculated air, and another place it says that when that lever is set to AC and the AC button is pushed, then you're getting outside air. Or something like that. Don't trust my memory, I don't.

Thanks! The glove box manual doesn't give a clue about that placement. Hmmm, looks like I ought to get a couple of wheel chocks, too, and the other tools the manual lists as standard. I had the wheel lug wrench and nothing else, but my old Toyota jack seems to be standard for these era cars. But reading the manuals helps. Ah, switch from normal to low one while moving in gear, but put the clutch in AND no faster than 20 mph to switchbetween low 1 and low 2 range and don't hesitate in between them, it says. No mention of what happens but elsewhere it says shift from low 1 to low 2 briskly or firmly or the like. Before the gremlins leak out I guess. Elsewhere (NASIOC) I found the note that it can help to be moving in reverse to make the transition out of low range, too. Hmmm, the carpet's shrunk in the back too, the little plastic plugs don't quite reach their sockets Carpet stretcher (sigh), not something I"ve got handy. Oh well. I also need to replace the radio (it's been beaten up and the am/fm button is replaced by a bent paper clip, distracting in traffic when trying to switch bands!). And the radio antenna, which is just a half ihch stub of wire. Looks like that'll be fun to dig out. I'm going to want to try to mount a 2-meter ham radio in the console as well if I can, if that's really a blank space under the current radio where one can fit. More antenna considerations, hmmm. Is there any easy way to bring 12v into the passenger area through the firewall (or tapping off something) while the key's not in the ignition, or, to mount a second battery in a wagon safely? Here's another one -- the past owner had removed the outside gasket around the hatch window, and put it back, and it appears a bit shrunk, the upper left corner is not quite fitting all the way into the angle, I can push it into place but it eoesn't stay. Should it be glued in? I started looking and poking and can't see if it's supposed to be a pressure fit or stuck on. One other observation, no real surprise -- this is definitely a peppier car than my old Toyota Tercel 4x4 -- a bit easier to have the rear end swing wide on soft dirt/gravel bumpy roads and need to pull the car through the turn by speeding up, which was disconcerting -- new struts in the rear, maybe the back wheels stay off the ground more on washboard than I expect. One last one tonight -- the gas 'shocks' that hold up the back hatch are tired -- I notice they stay up just fine til the temperature gets down to about 60 degrees then they slowly fade and the hatch comes down. Clearly I have to replace them -- do they come off wityh the mounts they're attached to (ttwo Phillips screws on each end)? And what's a good bet to replace them? Here, I won't be able to tell if second hand ones are good unless I have someone hunt in a junkyard in Alaska! And I want them to stay UP even in below freezing weather, I camp a whole lot in the cold these days.

Let's see -- I got 198 miles from the mechanic who replaced the EGR solenoid before I refueled, and when I got back onto the freeway the Check Engine light came back on. Same code 3-4. 4wd worked fine, got to my back country meeting with the Forest Service prescribed burning expert and walked the whole site that needs a good planned fire. Aiming for late December after the rains are coming again. Should be fun. Tried going back down the mountain using engine braking in 1st gear and it popped out several times on the first 10 percent (4wd-required-going-up) grade. I see now the manual says use 4th, 3rd or 2nd gear for engine braking. I used 2nd gear plus real brakes til I got to the less steep slope. I wonder about this. Going home on the freeway I noticed the turbo light hasn't been coming on at all, since the last mechanic worked on the car (it did come on and I could feel the extra boost, before this last mechanic worked on it). I bet that's going to be fun. Looking in the little glove box manual, I find the warning not to use the little rectangular storage compartment under the floor just inside the back hatch for anything large and solid (like the scissors jack) because it's there to serve as more crushable space for a rear-end collision. Hmmm. Where am I supposed to find space for the scissors jack? Not too bad for owning a Subaru for two weeks now -- at least I've gotten to where I forget how many days exactly. So my current issues are, did I lose the turbo when the mechanic replaced and rerouted and reconnected the vacuum tubes he said were put in wrong, and why does the EGR Solenoid code come back with a new EGR valve, new EGR solenoid, and new ECU computer all in place. I'm starting to understand why people beat Subarus up, I think -- it's because you can't keep them working in a plain boring normal way, eh?

I'll make a thread for gearshift stuff if I don't find one active and follow that up there. Should've done that first. Meanwhile --- can anyone suggest anything -besides- the wiring to look at, for the Code 34 (EGR solenoid) coming back with all new parts installed?

Wellll .... took it to the Berkeley shop (SOS Subaru) that's been well spoken of. They agreed a code 34 is the EGR solenoid, and replaced that. They also found one vacuum line hooked up wrong and the rest sort of scrambled, sorted those out and replaced some bad ones, and off I went. I got 197 miles, filled the gas tank, went back on the highway, got up to 60 and blink, CHECK ENGINE light on again. Code 3-4 again. EGR solenoid. Duh. It did get me up into the mountains, I had my chance to walk the 40 acre swith the expert Forest Service guy and talk about forest fire, prescribed burning, what works when, what looks safe -- and come mid-December after the rains, now have some patches of brush I know can be burned safely. Subaru did OK getting me there and back, which is why I bought it. Other than, um, popping out of first gear when I tried to use engine braking on the very steep (more than 10 percent) downgrade stretch, though once I got back to 7 percent grade that didn't happen again. But that may be another topic if it happens again. And back to the shop Monday morning. Now that it's had new EGR valve, new EGR solenoid, new ECU computer, and new vacuum lines, I suppose it's time to ... um ... I dunno. The guy there has been working on these things for a long while, seemed to know what he was doing, although he didn't know about the factory design defect in the EGR solenoid (the coil wires not being soldered internally but just wrapped and shrinkwrapped). I gave him the alt.autos.subaru printout on that bit. I dunno. I'd checked the wiring and grounding as best I knew how, but I suppose that's the last thing remaining. Unless one of the parts already swapped in is bad intermittently. The gas cap's good and tight, but I'm suspicious that it's something connected with the fillup -- or with the stop then start and go up to highway speed -- kicking this light on. Danged carpal tunnel, I wish I could still do tool work without dropping everything. I'd just rip-and-swap myself. Now I have to think, instead. Any thoughts welcome.

About frying comptuers -- I do see warnings here and there about being very careful to always disconnect the battery before removing either any sensor or the ECU itself, to avoid frying ECUS -- someone posted he'd fried three before figuring that out! ANyone got experience or references on doing that the right way?

Anyone got part numbers to compare? THis one came off my 1988 SPFI GL 4wd wagon (said to have failed and not be giving a good ground signal to the EGR solenoid): MECF-022-4E (printed) with stamped numbers: 4668 on the narrow end. On the flat side is a label with a bit "42" and "Hitachi Ltd. Tokyo Japan" and printed in boxes on the label are the numbers 22611 AA392, MECF-022, then a stamped 8809. This is the label on the box from which a replacement Subaru ECU came: Subaru Parts, FUji Unit AY-EGI CONT 22611AA398 QTY 1 94.2 S And another label: M80650515 (This could still be a very old ECU, the tape on the box was so dried out it was coming off).

85Sub4wd -- would you explain what this means and how you checked? > a T-code (trouble light code) > for the CAS ( ) > and no IG-pulse ( ) > after I did my conversion, turned out to be a bad computer! My 88 spfi 4wd got a new computer just before I bought it -- the shop had said that "the computer is not sending a ground signal to the sensor" -- which only fixed the problem for a few days, long enough for me to buy the car and drive it about 50 miles. So -- if you know how to check this problem, I'm guessing that an "IG-pulse" is something to do with the reference ground signal provided by the computer? Anyhow, if you can spell it out -- I've only owned a Subaru for, um, nine days now. ----BUT, I took the boiled down summary info I've collected here to the local Subaru shop that's now working on it for me, and they were impressed. They didn't know some of this stuff.-----

Any chance you went a while with a mostly empty gas tank? If so you'd have water accumulated there -- condensing from the air inside the tank at night and sinking to the bottom (and each morning the tank is warming up, 'exhaling' and then next evening 'inhaling' more cool damp air). If so some alcohol would help (it mixes with the water, and the mixture will burn instead of killing the engine when it gets sucked through). Just an old coot type guess. It's the argument for trying to always keep the fuel tank close to full when the car's sitting around.

Hmmm ... I have a liquid teflon lubricant made for bicycle chains that once it's dry is not sticky at all, unlike any oil or grease -- doesn't hold onto grit. I wonder how it'd work in electrical switches. Probably somewhere out there there's a good sealed switch that'd just drop in in place of the older Subaru stock. Are passenger door window switches grounded to the door metal, or do they have ground wires going back to the door master switch in the driver's door?

Oh, lordy lord lord lord lord .... Let us know when it warms up there and you do check everything back to the ECU. I'm afraid I'll still be wondering about this too. I'm starting to suspect .... everything. Have you looked at the tech note I quoted elsewhere, from the Usenet alt.autos.subaru group, reporting a manufacturing defect in the EGR solenoids? The author -- a computer guy with a good reputation going back years -- took one apart and found that inside, where the coil wires should have been soldered, they were just wrapped a quarter of the way around the contact point and the whole thing shrinkwrapped. He said after a few years, enough oxygen gets through the plastic to corrode such a 'connection' (and he speculated on how many solenoids made this incompetent way are out there going bad). He suggested either carefully disassembling it and soldering the connections, or just swapping til the light goes out, basically. I thought it was bad when I took apart a wall in my house, and found out the carpenters had just stood some of the studs up and forgotten to nail them to the top plate (in earthquake country). But forgetting to solder electrical connections worries me almost as much.

There's a warning at the Nyo site not to use _conductive_ grease on sliding switches. I think the nonconductive grease is meant for things like spark plugs that don't move (to keep the electrons inside their proper area). I'd think in a sliding contact it'd be more likely to interfere, but just guessing. Try google for "nyogel" if I didn't post a link earlier for their info page. I'd use something like an electronics cleaner off the Radio Shack shelf -- and I have several such windows. I'd been guessing it might be dirty grounds in those switches as well -- if it's a grounding problem, you'd want

One of the bits I snipped out of that short quote reminds us that it's wise to twist the pair of signal and ground wires going between ECU and sensors, which counteracts the 'electronic smog' noise inside the engine compartment -- same reason that Ethernet uses 'twisted pairs' of wires, so any induced current flow where the wire is affected by some other electromagnetic signal is neutralized. Spooky stuff going on under the hood!

Found here: http://www.innovatemotorsports.com/resources/electrical-grounding.php QUOTING an excerpt, my emphasis added; see original page for the real info: ... wiring the electrical system in a car the best way is to run separate ground wires from each system to a common ground point. The common ground point should NOT be just a bolt where lugs from each device are stacked in top of each other. The contact patches between the lugs create their own resistance and ground problems. The very best way is to bolt a short piece of copper bar near the battery to the frame. Connect the copper bar to the battery with a heavy duty ground strap. Drill and tap the bar for each ground return. The heaviest current user in a car is the starter. It can take up to 800 Amps of current. So it should have its own ground strap directly to the battery. So should the alternator. Its wires carry the second most current after the starter. Electronic fuel injection and ignition systems have their own caveats though. Ignition systems create very high current pulses for a very short time. This is especially true for Capacitive Discharge Systems. Those need their own ground wire to the common. EFI systems rely on different sensors in the car. Throttle position sensor, Intake and coolant air temp sensors, Manifold pressure sensors and so on. These sensors typically have 2 or 3 wires. When they have 2 wires, one is typically the signal and the other ground. 3 wire sensors need a 5V supply, signal and ground. DO NOT connect the ground of these sensors to the common ground as described above. The EFI computer, as any electrical device can only see its own ground and references all measurements to that. The EFI computer also switches the injectors on and off. Injectors use relatively high currents, and these currents have to flow back to the battery through the EFI computer’s ground wire. This causes a voltage drop on that ground wire. Were the sensors grounded to the common ground as described above, the ECU would see only the sensor voltage minus the voltage drop of its ground. Instead ground the sensors directly at the EFI computer to its ground. Sensors only take a few mA of current anyway, so the additional drop on the EFI ground caused by them is irrelevant. ... Audio systems in cars also need to be connected to this ‘star’ ground. The human ear is the most sensitive organ we have. The difference between the loudest noise (pain threshhold) and the quietest noise we can hear is over 1 million to one. So any electrical noise from inadequate grounding can be amplified by the audio system to hearing level. .... The only effect a better grounding system can have is if the sensor grounding was so bad before that the EFI computer misread the sensors due to ground offsets. This can be inexpensively remedied by following the grounding guidelines above. .... END QUOTE

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More, excerpted from an article here: http://www.sailmail.com/grounds.htm Inconsistencies in the Ground Rules So now, you are annoyed with the inconsistencies. We said to leave all bits of immersed metal electrically isolated when we described electrolytic corrosion and hot marinas, but then we said to connect wires and copper tape to your keel and engine for lightning and RF grounds. So what to do? RF ground. The RF ground needs to be a ground for RF signals only. It does not need to conduct DC, and as described in "Bonding and Electrolytic Corrosion..." above, you do not want to connect another DC ground to your engine and to your keel etc. The solution is to find a dry secure place along each of the copper RF ground tapes that are running to your engine and keel. Fasten the tape securely to an insulating piece of phenolic or to a terminal strip, cut a 1/10-inch gap across the tape, and solder several 0.15uF ceramic capacitors across the gap. These capacitors will be transparent to the RF, which will be happily grounded by the ground tape system, but they will block any DC currents from running through the RF ground system, and will avoid any resulting susceptibility to hot marina electrolytic corrosion. It is worth selecting the capacitors carefully, because they may carry a significant amount of RF current. An acceptable choice of capacitors and vendor are listed at the end of this article. ........ Summary By using capacitors to block DC connections in a few key areas, it is possible to have perfect ground systems for AC, DC, RF, lightning, and corrosion, and have a boat that is immune to stray DC currents that are traveling through the water in "hot marinas." ... Capacitors for use to block DC in SSB grounding tape: Digi-Key, (800) 344 4539. Type X7R Monolithic Ceramic capacitor, 0.15uF, $0.91 each, Digi-Key part number P4911-ND.

Long time since you posted here, still around? You know you have to get rid of the codes, after you fix a problem -- they're stored and keep displaying until you clear the computer. Then, if the problem was fixed too, no new codes.

OK, got a 3-long, 4-short code flashing with the key in the 'run' position -- this is with the under-hood connectors disconnected. EGR solenoid -- no surprise there. Now my only real question is, do I risk more if I take it back to the mechanic an hour and a half away, who replaced the EGR valve and then the ECU (a $700+ part) but not the EGR solenoid, proclaimed it fixed, and sent it out -- then my old friend sold it to me and I drove it off, as noted. Or do I risk more if I take it to a local Subaru mechanic (in Berkeley, there are 2 shops that come very well recommended for the old generation Subarus)? They ought to know what to do. But if they find the newly-installed ECU is bad, who do I blame? (Well, that's easy, I blame myself, I never owned a Subaru, and didn't have the opportunity to do the research before I bought this one at a distance.) I am guessing just replacing the EGR solenoid is what it needs. I am worst-case afraid that the new ECU failed in the first few hours of use for some other reason, computers do burn in and fail sometimes. In which case, I guess I'd be better off going back to the mechanic that installed it. Or -- bad mechanics cover up bad work sometimes -- maybe I consider that a a sunk cost, forget about it, and find a better mechanic close to home. I'll learn my way around this thing, but -- having been a Subaru owner for less than 4 days now (when do I quit counting the days?) -- I need it working reliably as a baseline. And I need to make a backcountry mountain trip in a week to see a Forest Service guy about a big prescribed burn .... ---> Yes, I'd just pull the EGR solenoid out myself and put in another one, but with the carpal tunnel even this little thing's a bit chancy for dropping and screwing up parts. ---> I have an ohmmeter, can measure resistance if I find the points ---> I think I've found the EGR solenoid itself -- way down under the air intake hoses, sitting on um er a a big engine part. ---> I could try, but -- if that didn't fix it, the question becomes who would my dear wife blame. I'd rather it were a mechanic (grin). Urgh. Well, that's the news from here, now. I suppose I can also clear the code -- I've got the decision tree for that, connect, rev, turn off, hold the accelerator a particular way, go drive with RPMs above a certain level, see if the light comes back on (this is from memory, really, I do have the list to follow).. And see how long it takes to come back. I dunno. I hate computers. Did I mention that? I've worked with them since the 1960s IBM 1620, which had a small hallway right through the middle of it, and less capability than my current wristwatch ....

Does she have a green pair of single-connector, a white (clear?) pair of single-connector, and two much bigger plugs each with multiple connectors, that don't mate up one brown/translucent and one black? That's what I'm staring at on my 1988 (and it's had an engine swap and I"m realizing I may not know what it is).