Gnuman Posted July 23, 2006 Share Posted July 23, 2006 Well, this week I was supposed to diagnose and repair a 97 OBW with "transmission problems". When bought, it was thought that someone had put gear oil in the tranny. When it arrived, I was able to push it around the shop to position it while it was in park. OK, we have confirmed transmission trouble. I jacked it up, put it on stands and slid undewr for a look-see (it was dripping fluid fairly bad, so I wanted to see where it was coming from. I was under there for 10 sec before i had to get back out and walk away from the car for a bit. The axel stubs on the front diff had been smashed out of the treanny from the inside, and the diff case was smashed as well. Not a good start. Also this car had come from snow country, and there was copious corrosion on the underside of the car. I had already been paid for the job, so I went ahead with the transmission swap that the owner had agreed on. To pull the transmission, you need to pull the halfshafts, drain the transmission, pull the exaust, seperate the transmission from the engine, and pull the propeller shaft (driveshaft). Pulling the exaust turned out to be a problem as the exaust nuts were seized to the studs so bad that two of them broke on one side. This made pulling the engine a requirement as i had to take the head off and either replace it, or take it to a machine shop to have the siezed studs extracted. We have an engine of the same type that has a good head on it, so I swapped it out when the time came. There have been several threads here that have mentioned problems removing the balljoints from new gen Subarus. I have always wondered what the problem was, as I had never had trouble with them. I now ask forgiveness for myt arrogance. Until this car, I had never seen so many siezed components on the underside of a car. All told, it took me two days, and a can and a half of PB Blaster, as well as a MAPP torch to get the engine out of the car (the tranny took a further 20 mins, after). At the same time, I was doing a 200K mile maint on Emily. it took me a mere two hours to get her engine out and into a stand. That versus two days for a car that is 5 years younger. Granted Emily's engine was filthy, due to the seals (all of them) being hardened to the consistancy of plastic. When dropped, these rubber gaskets would go "tick tick tick' as they hit. My guess is that they were not sealing a damn thing, which led to lots of leaks. Now that I have discovered what seals look like at 200K, I will be replacing them every time I change the timing belt. in 100K miles, they should still be fairly good (pre leakage anyway), so this should make the engine not leak for a lot longer. I also changed the headgaskets (even though they did not need to be changed) so I could have a look inside the combustion chambers. I was quite impressed that I could still clearly see the crosshatching from the factory boring. I also noted that there was not much in the way of carbon in the combustion area at all. Granted, I did put a can of Seafoam through it, but that has been over 50K miles ago. I had been using about 1/2 quart to 1 quart of oil every 3K miles recently, and with the condition of the combustion chamber, and the condition of the seals, My guess it was lost to leakage, and not in the combustion area (rings). From my experiences last weekend, I figure I'll have to double my estimates for snow country cars, over my usual California cars. . . I will also be advocating reseals with every timing belt change, as the seals will not go 200K miles, but 100K miles is no problem for them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tcspeer Posted July 23, 2006 Share Posted July 23, 2006 I understand what you are saying I have a 97 Legacy wagon that I have taken care of and it is easy to work on, but I recently bought a 98 Legacy wagon that has not been taken care of and somethings are really tough just to take off. I think those ball joints are easy if they are taken apart often. I know on my mail Legacy I have them off so often they never have time to seize. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gnuman Posted July 23, 2006 Author Share Posted July 23, 2006 I understand what you are saying I have a 97 Legacy wagon that I have taken care of and it is easy to work on, but I recently bought a 98 Legacy wagon that has not been taken care of and somethings are really tough just to take off. I think those ball joints are easy if they are taken apart often. I know on my mail Legacy I have them off so often they never have time to seize. Yeah, mail delivery is hard on cars. That is why Subarus are so good at it. They hold up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Commuter Posted July 23, 2006 Share Posted July 23, 2006 Once I learned about the seal leak issues on these cars, I decided to have the crank and cam seals changed with every timing belt. So far, (knock wood) no leaks. I'm approaching 10 yrs old and have just past 500,000 km on the car. Commuter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gnuman Posted July 26, 2006 Author Share Posted July 26, 2006 Once I learned about the seal leak issues on these cars, I decided to have the crank and cam seals changed with every timing belt. So far, (knock wood) no leaks. I'm approaching 10 yrs old and have just past 500,000 km on the car. Commuter Well, I'm at about 320,000 km on my car, and it is 15 years old. After driving it a bit, the clutch and release fork settled into place and now work quite well. I can even break traction in first for a good solid "chirp" on dry pavement! I seem to have quite a bit more responsiveness to throttle with the drilled flywheel as well. I also seem to be getting a bit better milage, as i need a lot less throttle to get the same "oomph" out of her. I had replaced the WP as I suspected it as the constricting element in the cooling system. Now my biggest suspect is the radiator. I will also re-burp the system, as I did not have the fuel to comfortably burp the system when I added coolant. I do not hear any bubbles in the system, but if I'm stuck in traffic, the temp goes up (but as soon as I bring the RPMs over 2K, the temp drops like a rock right back to where it is supposed to be). This is with a new WP. I did spin the WP before putting it in, and there was no binding on the berrings at all. I also used an OEM thermostat (of course), so I suspect the problem is not there. forcing the fans on (turning the AC on. The compressor is disconnected) does nothing, so I suspect this is not a fan issue. It has been really hot here, but I don't think that is much of a contributing factor, as bringing up the RPMs would not correct it in that case. Nothing corrects this but an increase in RPMs. That spells constriction to me. . . Oh, and it has "eaten" about 8oz of coolant from the overflow as well. In other news, I got the car washed the other day, and was drenched by spillage from inside the sunroof. It looks like the headliner has to come out for a look-see. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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