PopsicleMud

I got my rump roast handed to me by a Prius the other day...

I keep reading the title of this thread as clamslap.

The other day, I took my Loyale in for its first oil change since I bought it a month ago. I could do it myself, but it's just a mess I'd rather not deal with. I'd rather spend $20 - $30 and read a book for 20 minutes while someone else does it. Anyway... I started to notice the smell of burnt oil now and then after driving it since the oil change. I checked the dipstick today to see if I was losing oil, and it's actually overfilled, maybe a quarter inch above the "F" on the dipstick. Does anyone know if having a little too much oil could cause the burnt smell? Can it cause any damage?

Hmmm... When I bought my Subaru, I kept my Dakota because it comes in handy for moving stuff. After seeing this, I think maybe I could go ahead and get rid of the truck.

Here are my Hella 500s above the bumper and some cheap Pilot fog lights below the bumper. My Hellas are the driving light style, which have a beam just wide enough to light up the road ahead. If you want something for offroading, they have wider patterns as well.

Part of the appeal of electric vehicles or hybrids that you can plug in is the ability to produce clean power, either by using something other than oil/coal fired plants or by adding equipment to oil/coal fired plants to clean up their emissions. Another advantage of electrics and plug-in hybrids is the ability to use alternative energy sources that aren't practical to produce in a vehicle, such as solar, wind, and good old hydroelectric plants. The third advantage I can see for electrics and plug-in hybrids is economic. Even in areas that exclusively use coal and oil fired power plants, it's cheaper to distribute electricity than fuel. You may not get much more power per gallon of oil used, but the price to the consumer is lower.

I haven't looked that closely at my overflow tank, but I assume it's open to the atmosphere already. Most overflow tanks have an outlet to spill off excess.

Wow. I take a quick break from the forum to go do some actual work, and when I get back, replies are waiting! Thanks, guys.

I'm replacing the water pump on my '92 Loyale, and it's turned out to be a bigger job than I thought. I'll soldier through, but I ran into one problem I've only seen partially addressed when I searched through the forum. The metal inserts that the lower timing cover nuts screw into are just spinning in their holes when I try to remove the nuts. In Miles' excellent writeup (thanks, Miles!) on changing timing belts, it mentions that you can gently persuade them out by prying with a screwdriver. So what do I do when I'm putting things back together? Just press the insterts back into their holes? Should I secure them somehow?

Yesterday (Thursday, July 21), just before noon, I was behind a green Legacy wagon headed east on 188th at the south end of Sea-Tac Airport, and I noticed it had several soob stickers in the back window, including one from WCSS7. I was just curious if it was someone from USMB.

My girlfriend went to Western Washington University in Bellingham, so I've spent a lot of time up there over the last three years. Lots of progressives, hippies, and Subarus up there.

This is exactly the point I wanted to make. The clutch only wears for a second or two for each shift, whereas the breaks are wearing the entire time you use them. From my '91 Loyale manual*: Page 6-7: "Never coast in neutral." Page 6-8: "On steep downgrades, downshift the transmission to '4th,' '3rd,' or '2nd,' as necessary; this helps to maintain a safe speed and to extend brake pad life. In this way, the engine provides a braking effect. Remember, if you "ride" (over use) the brakes while descending a hill, they may overheat and not work properly." Fuji Heavy Industries said it, I believe it, and that's that. It also says, "When it is necessary to reduce vehicle speed due to slow traffic, turning corners, or driving up steep hills, downshift to a lower gear before the engine starts to labor," and "When driving speed is reduced, downshift through the gears to avoid placing unnecessary strain on the engine." I think these two are really talking about matching engine speed as opposed to engine braking, though. *For some reason the previous owner of my '92 Loyale had a '91 owners manual.

I set the timing to 20º. At least that's what I thought it said. the marks were kind of hard to make out. I still get some pinging when the engine's working hard at freeway speed, ie. at around 70MPH or trying to maintain speed up a steep hill. The plugs, wires, coil and timing did smooth out the idle quite a bit. One thing I wonder about is my gas cap. When I pull into a gas station after a long drive and take off the cap, it sucks in a bunch of air. Shouldn't the cap be letting in air to relieve the vacuum? Does vacuum in the tank make the pumps work harder and lean out the mixture?

Hmmm... I just got my '92 Loyale with 145,000 miles on it a few weeks ago, and I'm not getting nearly that kind of mileage. On the night I got it, I took it on a mini-roadtrip and got about 26 MPG on purely highway driving. Since setting the timing and changing the plugs, wires, and coil, I'm getting about 23.5 MPG on everyday driving. Of course that's mostly with the AC running, but it can't make that big a difference, can it? Of course it's still a big step up from the 12.5/16 I get with my '93 Dakota.

Actually, I believe that's 1.21GW.

The grill reminds me of an Edsel.

Hi everyone. I've been snooping around here for a while while I researched Subarus, and last week I finally got one. It's a '92 Loyale with 144k miles on it. It has everything I wanted except cruise control. Would it be possible/feasible to retrofit a factory cruise control system? I was happy to find out that there's a Subaru-only wrecking yard near by (Aaron's Auto Wrecking in Seattle), so I'm hoping to find the parts there.