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i find that interesting, because we rented from Advance... basicly, they way their system works, is you "pay" for the set as if purchasing.. but if you bring it back in XX number of days, you get your money back - or most of it anyway. that way, if it does not come back, they are not out anything. We checked All the vehicles when we rented.. found the problem with his car (bad hose - had a small split) and found the cap on mine was shot

I'd remove aftermarket remote start systems when I got them on used cars. They were nothing but junk. I'm sure there are good ones out there, pay for a good one.

Thanks. For now I'm just finishing three more of the STI 6MT low ranges and two of them will have homes. It has been working great but I do want to take it out and look over it before we put them in a few other cars. Maybe with a little more testing and a few on the shelf I will need some help getting the word out. We've been discussing making center diff low ranges for other Subaru transmissions. The most marketable one might actually be for the CVTs but since I'm a terrible businessman, I keep thinking about what I can make for my friends so they have a decent low range. From that perspective the 5MT is the next transmission to fix. There is room in the case for the low range itself but not much room for shift shafts/levers. It seems like the only way might be to use the old 5MT cases with the inspection cover on top, which would make converting most of the 5MTs more complicated and expensive. We also discussed doing the split case 6MT but it's actually not used in as many cars as I'd thought. If you're talking about these guys: They are eastern red backed salamanders, definitely the most common type of salamander around here. They do have little legs. Fun fact, they have no lungs or gills and breathe through their skin. A few weeks ago we pulled B's dual range trans out of his Forester because it's been stuck in high range since our last trip. We took it apart and the high range synchro was melted to the input shaft again. B decided we should just try removing it. I'd thought about doing this before but always figured it'd make it a lot harder to shift. We sealed up the trans and put it back in and replaced an inner tie rod. B said it's been shifting and driving about the same as with the synchro. Maybe it will stay in his car for a few years now. It would be really nice to have proper low range transmissions in a few more of our cars though. Especially after riding in and following slammo's Lexus I really appreciate the low center of gravity of the Subarus.

Amsoil. It helped my 2004 Impreza.

No CANBUS for 2004. They started with a half implementation of it on the 2005 Legacy chassis, but really full implementation of CANBUS wasn't till about 2006 - later for some models. GD

It's extremely frustrating. You can go down the path of fixing every poor connection and ground only to arrive at no solution and have to throw computers at it because of course there's no way to actually test anything when it comes to the CANBUS - you can look at waveforms on a scope and potentially see something that's being pulled high or low - but if the problem is intermittent - lotsa luck with that noise. And since the packet data is considered intellectual property and not published you would have to spend literally 100's (if not thousands) of hours sniffing the packets on a known good chassis to reverse engineer the CANBUS signaling and then build a data logger that could identify an intermittent bad packet and who sent it, etc. Who's going to pay for this? Currently I have no takers. And yes I have people at my disposal that can do it. The tools and expertise and the hours it would take FAR exceed the value of a 10+ year old Subaru. In consumer products there is not enough redundancy, not enough pre-release testing, insufficient on-board diagnostic equipment and software, and then on top of all that the manufacturer is actively trying to thwart your repair efforts by hiding how it works behind the curtain of "intellectual property". Basically they expect us to repair something that is essentially "PFM" (Pure F*cking Magic)..... what the really want is the car off the road so they can sell someone a new one. I'm entirely over it - why continue to fight this fight? It's one thing to fix something that's broken with proper documentation - it's another to have to HACK your car and play reverse engineer against a team of engineers that are paid to thwart your efforts...... yeah screw all that. GD

Radiator fan is ECU controlled and will not come on till 204. Temp sensor is a 3-wire and is actually two sensors in one housing. One for the ECU and one for the gauge cluster. Sounds like possibly a wiring short. A short to ground in the gauge circuit will peg the gauge all the way to hot. Resistance of the sensor drops as it is heated so a short to ground (0 ohms or close to it) will cause the gauge to read full tilt. Unplug the sensor while it's running - should drop the gauge to zero and the ECU should throw a circuit code for it's side of the sensor and will kick on the fans till the circuit is restored and the code cleared. GD

Plastic radiators have a useful lifespan of 8 years. After that they should be replaced. We are already seeing 2014's fail. Usually the upper radiator nipples get soft and shear away from the tank. Seems to be a shorter life with the new blue OAT coolant than the green stuff. There's obviously some chemistry going on between the plastic and the coolant and the heat cycling. Meanwhile my '69 GMC C2500 still has it's factory 4 row heavy duty radiator. Copper/brass FTW. GD

B and I drove my 99 Subaru Outback to Vegas last week. We entered and completed the Vegas to Reno, the longest off road race in the US, in 17 hours 40 minutes. It was great to see most people cheering us on before, during, and after the race. Coming around a corner in the dark to a broken down buggy and our lights lighting up the three hairy butts of the guys who mooned us was hilarious. We were guessing a lot of the course workers near the end of the race may have been cheering since they finally got to go home more than cheering us on. Only 165 of the 294 trucks and buggies that entered finished. One flat tire and a shifter cable issue were the only mechanical issues we had. The course was consistently rougher than when we tried it in 2016 and 2017. There were very few sections, I'd say 10-20%, where we could go 40+mph without worrying about breaking the car. We have averaged 35-40 in past desert races and could have done that for a while on this course but probably not for 500 miles. Our average with stops was 27mph. We switched driving and refueled about every third pit or 100 miles (which at our pace was 3-4 hours). Baja pits fueled us and had tires at those pits for us. Thanks again to slammo for coming out and helping us. We did replace a CV axle and hose clamped the loose end of the steering rack back in place for the ride home. which wagon is more beat? Then we did a little sightseeing and trail riding and drove it back home.