97 Impreza saga...

[bluegrasssboy]

The last time we spoke the little Brighton coupe was still acting badly off and on. And it still is. Will run fine for 1 minute, five minutes...whatever, then run bad for however long it decides to, then run fine.

 

Remember, I bought it off the wife's sister a couple of years ago. She'd had it about 6 years I think. It's been a steller little beater until two weeks ago. I had a little conversation with the father-in-law and he remembered it had something about the wiring plug that connects to the fuel pump messing up a few years back and it was acting like it wasn't getting fuel and that he "rigged" it up. He figured that was what it was. The father in law is a decent mechanic albeit a hillbilly mechanic.

 

So I clean out the trunk, pull the carpet and take the left cover near the seat loose and figure that down in there doesn't look like anything I'm looking for(this is all new to me) so I take the right cover off and this looks like the business end alright, but nothing looks "rigged". So I unplug the little white wiring connector and sure enough, on the end of the plug there's a connector that's all weird looking, the plastic's brown and it looks larger than the surrounding ones.... What he did to rig it I'm not sure. He didn't say exactly and I haven't talked to him since. I was expecting to find a little ball of wires all taped up, but apparently he did neat work.

 

So, I unplug it. And start the car. It ran for about seconds and died. No surpise. Plug it back in and starts and idles fine. I walk around to the back and push around on the plug and the wires a bit. Hoping it would have cause something to happen, die, run rough or something so I could confirm the plug or not. It idled just fine. I drive it down the street, turned around and on the way back it's starts bucking it stalled. When I'm in the gas it'll run, it acts up but it'll run. When I let off it has a tendency to die and be hard to start.

 

I don't suppose there's no where I could get one of these connectors besides cutting one off at a junk yard? Which would be like winning the lottery for me to find a subaru in the parts yard around here.

 

Todd in KY

[edrach]

Brown plastic! The universal tip-off to a bad electrical connection. I think you found your problem. Fix is easy. Ideally it would be nice to find a connector set on a wreck but that's actually harder (how many wires in that connector?). The brown spot marks the ONE connection that is bad. Go down to your local hardware store (or Radio Shack for that matter) and pick up a short length of wire sufficient to carry the current along with a couple of butt splices. Cut the wires on both sides of the offending connection and butt splice around the connector. If you still want it to be separated you can add a quick disconnect pair in the middle. Tape off everything that might ground out and you should be good to go. If you're handy with a soldering iron, that would be a more secure connection. Thanks for the tip, we have a '97 Impreza with 118K miles on it and if it starts mis-behaving in a similar fashion, I'll know where to look.

The last time we spoke the little Brighton coupe was still acting badly off and on. And it still is. Will run fine for 1 minute, five minutes...whatever, then run bad for however long it decides to, then run fine.

 

Remember, I bought it off the wife's sister a couple of years ago. She'd had it about 6 years I think. It's been a steller little beater until two weeks ago. I had a little conversation with the father-in-law and he remembered it had something about the wiring plug that connects to the fuel pump messing up a few years back and it was acting like it wasn't getting fuel and that he "rigged" it up. He figured that was what it was. The father in law is a decent mechanic albeit a hillbilly mechanic.

 

So I clean out the trunk, pull the carpet and take the left cover near the seat loose and figure that down in there doesn't look like anything I'm looking for(this is all new to me) so I take the right cover off and this looks like the business end alright, but nothing looks "rigged". So I unplug the little white wiring connector and sure enough, on the end of the plug there's a connector that's all weird looking, the plastic's brown and it looks larger than the surrounding ones.... What he did to rig it I'm not sure. He didn't say exactly and I haven't talked to him since. I was expecting to find a little ball of wires all taped up, but apparently he did neat work.

 

So, I unplug it. And start the car. It ran for about seconds and died. No surpise. Plug it back in and starts and idles fine. I walk around to the back and push around on the plug and the wires a bit. Hoping it would have cause something to happen, die, run rough or something so I could confirm the plug or not. It idled just fine. I drive it down the street, turned around and on the way back it's starts bucking it stalled. When I'm in the gas it'll run, it acts up but it'll run. When I let off it has a tendency to die and be hard to start.

 

I don't suppose there's no where I could get one of these connectors besides cutting one off at a junk yard? Which would be like winning the lottery for me to find a subaru in the parts yard around here.

 

Todd in KY

[bluegrasssboy]

Cut the wires on both sides of the offending connection and butt splice around the connector. .

 

Here's the problem with that... There's only wires on one side.

That connector plugs into the top of what I assume is the fuel pump. There are no wires on the left side. And, the way it's turned, I can't see the in the female side of the of it to see what it looks like. I'm not exactly sure how that thing comes out.

[idosubaru]

there are thousands of used cars across the country at yards that will mail this part to you. find a PA, CO, WV, NY yard that has a zillion subaru's and they'll mail it to you for a couple dollars. they're more than willing to mail parts, done it plenty of times.

 

or splice like mentioned earlier.

 

if you're still having issues, posting a picture sometimes helps if you can do that. a picture is worth a thousand words and noone feels like typing or reading that much!

[edrach]

Here's the problem with that... There's only wires on one side.

That connector plugs into the top of what I assume is the fuel pump. There are no wires on the left side. And, the way it's turned, I can't see the in the female side of the of it to see what it looks like. I'm not exactly sure how that thing comes out.

Understood. What your father-in-law likely did when he fixed it was to unplug the connector and use a long skinny tool of some sort to squeeze the female pin smaller to get better contact. You can also get a spray can of contact cleaner to further reduce the resistance of the contact. This should get you working again so you have time to find a plug or harness to replace the existing one; also, if the female pin is in the fuel pump, I suspect you'll need to replace it too in the future to get a permanent fix.

[bluegrasssboy]

Anyone have any recommendations for junk yards with Subarus????

[the_bard]

I'd suggest seein' if one of the guys located in PA could hop on over to Harry's U Pull It, grab one for you, and then mail it out, figuring out payment as appropriate.

 

I haven't seen any of their locations, but from what I've heard, they should have it if anybody does. They're "U Pull It", not "We Pull It For You", so you'd need someone to grab the part and mail it down to you.