SuspiciousPizza

Yep I spoke too soon. Went to start my car this morning before work and I got a CEL. Double bugger. Code 35, purge solenoid. So I'll be doing some tests tonight after work to see what's going on. If I need to, I'll be replacing the solenoid with the same model I used for my EGR solenoid replacement. AISIN VST-026. Boy have the price of those jumped since I last bought one! Nearly double the price.

I don't want to speak too soon but I believe I've fixed the issue. As I was going over the vacuum hoses and trying to hone in my timing I got a check engine light. Code 34 EGR solenoid. Bugger! On my other engine I was using a Toyota EGR solenoid. I used a "good" OEM solenoid on this setup. Well turns out that solenoid wasn't good. I swapped my trusty Toyota valve back in and it runs like a top. Vacuum at idle is strong and steady between 20-21 inHG. No more fuel smell. I'll do some city driving tomorrow to test it out. It likes to act up most with frequent starts and stops or rapid deceleration to a stop. :]

It'd definitely be a labor of love that's for sure. Even to cover costs, to just break even. Say a panel costs $60 not including mold cost. If someone's only willing to pay $50 to buy an unfinished panel. Then the numbers don't work. I'd have no issue making the panels and selling them for no profit. Just knowing I'm keeping cars in the community alive is worth it. But selling at a loss, that's difficult especially with the time investment. Again these are all ideas and I haven't moved forward with it but I have easy access to all the materials necessary to do so. Maybe if I'm ever in need of a body panel I'll make a small batch and go from there. I'd also love to draw up and 3D print NLA trim pieces. But I cannot afford design software at the moment. $2.5k/year for software... I have some opinions about that price and an orifice in mind they can shove it in.

If you were in the market for these parts what would you consider a fair price for the different panels? Also I'm not excluding the possibility of 1st and 2nd gen body panels. Just throwing ideas out there.

I've been talking to a coworker who does composite work on the side. Right now he only focuses of making carbon fiber parts for KTM super motos. I've had the idea for a few weeks to start manufacture of NLA body panels for these old Subarus. I talked to him about this and he doesn't have any objections to taking on the project but he doesn't know if there's a market for these parts. Making the molds takes significant investment of both time and money. Would anyone be interested in composite body panels? I'm thinking just fiberglass (to keep the cost down) but face layers of carbon or kevlar would be possible. Or even panels made entirely of carbon or kevlar would be possible. No sanding, no paint. They'd ship as bare parts to he finished by the buyer (or just throw them on without sanding or paint). If anything we'd start with 3rd Gen front fenders and hoods and we could move from there if there's enough demand. Just putting feelers out there if this would be worth our time. No ideas on a price at this time. :]

Last night I managed to repair my grille that most would have looked at and considered a total loss. The deer hit the corner of the grille and shattered it like glass. Luckily my lower valence panel caught almost all the pieces. All you need for this repair is a bottle of THF (a chemical used as a precursor for polymer synthesis) and some applicator bottles with needle tips. The THF will wick to into thin cracks where it then melts the top layer of plastic. After the solvent dries, the molten plastic molds together forming a chemical weld. To better understand and visualize this process, look up how model builders weld their models. It's the exact same process. You could also use this process to repair interior or exterior trim pieces. THF works with most plastics but it does NOT work on polypropylene (PP). Look for the plastic composition molded into the piece you're working on. For polypropylene your best bet is using an adhesion primer along with CA glue (super glue). :]

If it comes to no other options, my parts guy may have a door. I remember seeing an early 4 door he had. Was fairly clean if I remember, baby blue. He's a bit of a... Collector... So he may be hesitant to let it go. But if you need I can always ask. It may take a bit for me to get it. I'd probably have to buy the whole car since it's in decent condition and he may not want to part it out. :] P.S. I believe the car is actually a first gen. I remember it having an EA63 in it. But he may have something laying around, he gathered up quite a few of these Roos.

I used Lemforder 3015501 boots. I just replaced them a month ago so I cannot attest to their durability. They did feel and appear to be of OEM quality. They withstood my manhandling when installing (IYKYK) without cracking or tearing.

I got a bumper but the only one available is in very rough condition. The car it came off of clearly had a front end wreck. The metal has a lot of deformations. So I may not use the metal of the bumper. I'm thinking a rectangular tube structure that uses the bumper mount locations. The bull bar is mounted to this structure with the bushings. Then I'll modify the plastic portion of the wrecked bumper to fit over the rectangular tube structure. This way it looks like the factory bumper, but it uses a different metal reinforcement. I'd probably make this out of aluminum. I cannot find the clips on the inside of the door. They're covered by a stamped piece of metal that runs the length of the door.

I've been looking at the rally Leones and their brush guards and I was thinking something inspired by that. Something that mounts to the bumper and wraps around the side to cover the running lights. I'm buying a spare bumper from my parts guy so I don't have to modify my factory bumper. I plan on using industrial rubber vibration dampeners (originally designed to be placed between heavy machinery and a concrete pad to absorb vibrations). Hopefully these will act as a bushing to absorb impact. Otherwise I'd have to figure out some sort of suspension system for it. The rubber dampeners seemed to be the simplest solution. Otherwise I could make the mount out of aluminum tubing and bolt that to the chrome moly guard. The aluminum would act as a sacrificial absorber.

I believe not all SPFI cars here in the US came with an O2 sensor. California has more strict emissions regulations than the rest of the nation. The California cars got O2 sensors, the cars sold in all other states do not have O2 sensors. I believe. Regardless, not all SPFI cars have O2 sensors from factory. I have found it interesting that despite my car originally being sold in California, it doesn't have California-spec emissions equipment. It has the national standard emissions equipment. I believe the national standard is just an EGR setup and a charcoal canister. No O2 sensor and no EGR temp sensor.

I do not have an O2 sensor nor an EGR temp sensor. My coolant temp sensor is a good quality sensor and it's basically brand new. New doesn't mean good, I haven't tested it but I'd be rather surprised if that was the culprit. The car has always had a fluttering idle, even with a completely different engine. Also it's a D/R so there's no 4WD vacuum assembly like on a SR4WD. I wouldn't be surprised if the HVAC system has a leak. I'll give the hoses behind the dash a look. Interestingly the vacuum flutter on cold start isn't as bad and subsides much more quickly if the oil was preheated. Maybe one cylinder has bad rings? I brought the timing up to 15deg and I was pinging on regular. No issues with pinging when running premium. The heads have been resurfaced for sure once. No clue on their prior history. I'm not sure how the ECU learns mixture and timing curve but perhaps the ECU is expecting SPFI cams and the carb cams are making it freak out? I doubt this but it's a thought I had.

Coming home from work this weekend I smoked a deer. Luckily my headlight took the brunt of the impact but the deer spun around and caved in my driver side door. It ripped off some of the side protectors and damaged the protector on my door. I'm talking about the 2.5" wide black plastic pieces. Are these pieces held on with plastic clips/rivets or maybe a double sided tape? How would one remove them? I'll be installing a "new" door in the coming weeks and once I get my hood straightened out I'll be back on the road. Next summer I'll get my door fixed and a buddy and I are going to repaint the car. I also will be welding a bull bar from chrome moly tubing so I don't have to worry about deer as much in the future. Thanks :]

I've been driving around with the vacuum gauge installed for a few days and here's what I've found (other than the constant roller coaster hills in my area destroy my fuel economy). On a cold start the vacuum seems quite low (13-15 inHG) and it flutters (correlating with a rough idle on cold start) within a range of 1-1.5 inHG. After the engine is at full operating temp, at idle it'll sit quite steadily at 20 inHG. However, my idle has a rhythmic roughness where the vacuum will drop about 1 inHG and it'll flutter slightly more when it drops. The rhythm is about 2 seconds smooth idle then 1 second rough idle, smooth, rough, smooth, rough, etc. My vacuum seems on the low side so I'll get some fuel pressure gauges spliced in and see if advancing my timing to the factory spec of 20 BTDC smooths anything out. Any ideas or thoughts are appreciated. :]

Are you getting a code 55 with the sensor connected?

No funky smoke. Exhaust definitely smells of fuel though. After I've been driving, the hot idle is at about 1k vs when I cold start, it'll sit around 750. Could a vacuum leak caused by the HVAC system cause the EGR valve to not open appropriately? I bought the cheapest vacuum gauge from a decent brand I could find so I'll be hooking it up oil crisis style. Diagnostic tool + fuel savings. I should also note I'm not 100% convinced I'm experiencing a misfire. It very well could be excess fuel in the exhaust burning off causing the illusion of a misfire when I put my hand at the tailpipe. I lack the experience required to say for sure, I'm definitely still learning.

I noticed something today while I was leaving work. It's starting to get cold here so I let the car warm up without the heater running. As I was going to leave the first thing I did was turn the heat on. Hmmm. The idle dropped 300 rpm and started to sound like it wanted to stall. Perhaps I have some sort of vacuum leak and that's causing the issues. The EGR valve operates with vacuum. Maybe it's not operating properly due to vacuum loss. Perhaps this is causing my fuel smell? Some time in the next few weeks I'll run a D-check, do a fuel pressure test, and check for vacuum leaks. I've given the entire engine bay the smell check for fuel leaks and didn't find anything. I don't smell gas in the garage either after it's been sitting overnight. I do keep an extinguisher in the car though. :]

EA82, SPFI, 5MT D/R. My engine runs *okay* and can do short back an fourths to work alright. However, it has a misfire. The entire throttle body (injector, TPS, and regulator included) is a "good used" part. My fuel pump is also noisy and I have no idea when it was last replaced. TPS is properly setup. Used the 2 feeler gauges. Once I've been driving for a while, sometimes it'll run like a top. Buttery smooth. Other times it idles rough. It doesn't buck the car side to side but it does vibrate. A noticable gas smell comes from the driver side and the plug for cylinder #4 has more carbon buildup. I've had the engine stall 3 times after coasting to the bottom of a hill and pushing in the clutch. My guess is the rich mixture floods as I'm coasting and not burning all of it off. Then once I clutch in and the RPM's drop, the mixture is too rich and it just stalls. I've swapped in hotter plugs with a tighter gap, cleaned the MAF, and checked my timing (15deg BTDC. I'm using carbed cams on a SPFI setup). Coil, alternator, plug wires, battery cables, PCV, and CTS are all new. I don't have any codes. All engine hoses are new. My guess is it's the fuel pump, injector, regulator, or the distributor. (Cap and rotor only have about 3k miles on them). Could also be a tuning issue. I have not fiddled with the idle control. Any thoughts or ideas? :]

I read in a discussion that the OEM gaskets (like intake manifold gaskets, cam tower oil passage o-rings, etc) are the only gaskets to be used. This is due to the density of the cork "cells". Aftermarket gaskets aren't the proper cork. Allegedly. I used an OEM gasket on my rebuild without sealant and it worked just fine. I also cleaned the sealing surface on the block as well as the oil pan. You can still buy the oil pan gaskets new and they're around $5 USD. Only downside is you may have to order it. RTV is faster and arguably would work just as well. Also the bolts shouldn't be torqued. In my opinion this is a hand tool only job. You can use a screwdriver and "2-finger tight" is plenty. For the rear bolts I use the longest 1/4" extension I have with a swivel on the far end. Snake the extension in from the side and use the aforementioned screwdriver to steer the socket. A shallow socket holds the bolts nicely. If you have the engine out then just use a screwdriver. To drop the pan you must first angle the pan out from between the engine mounts then rotate it 180°. Operation is the opposite for the install, start with the pan backwards. If you over torque the gasket, especially non-OEM gaskets, the gasket will split. It is wood, after all. This creates little openings for oil to leak from. The instinct to tighten the bolts makes the issue worse.

Best to just leave the car unlocked. As much as it would suck to have the steering column plastics destroyed I'd rather the plastics be destroyed than glass being smashed. Honestly who would steal an older gen Subaru? And a manual at that. All modern cars are far quicker and blend into traffic far better than these anemic econoboxes. I could see a BRAT being stolen, maybe. In general though these subies have a face only an owner could love.

I found a NOS factory security system. I bought it for the novelty and don't know if I'll use it (maybe if I ever get an RXII). Car theft isn't an issue in my area, thankfully. P/N: SOA386R100 There's still a couple available on eBay, there's photos there. Has anyone had experience with this specific factory security system? I'm curious how it works if anyone knows. The switch labeled "shock" intrigues me. :]

No go on the gaskets. They weren't in my gasket collection. Is there no results when you search the P/N?

You could get some gasket material and trace the spacer to cut out your own gaskets. You could also use the tube. I'm not familiar with the 2nd gens as much so I'm not sure if they're a paper gasket or a metal graphite composite. I might actually have some gaskets at home, I'll have to check. I have an EA81 sitting around for something someday and it came with a full gasket set. I'd be converting it to TBI anyways so I don't need the carb gaskets. I'll message back here later today or tomorrow and let you know. :]

That'd be my guess. Because first start up the pressure was steady but during that start up the brittle o-ring may have sprung a leak (the engine was sitting for 20 years or so). Every start up after that first one the pressure was jittery, but it has been slowly getting less jittery. Either way I'll keep an eye on it. I have a spare pickup tube but I've tried to remove one before and it really is a major pain. I can deal with the jittery pressure so long as the pressure stays in the range that it should be then I'll just leave it. Thanks for the insight, I appreciate it. :]

The kit number for my gauge is R12211. The gauges seem to be very quick and responsive. Oil level was okay (85% full by my eye). I added half a quart and it still is jumpy but the variation is within a tighter range. Maybe within a 3 psi range. Still no low pressure issues so I'm not super worried about it but I'll still keep an eye on it. I wonder if I bumped the pickup tube when I dropped the pan. That doesn't have a seal on it does it? I thought it was just pressed in.