edrach

I was driving on my way to work on Wednesday morning. Since the interstate traveling south is normally a disaster of parked and stop-and-go traffic, I've found a series of parallel roads southbound to get to work. As I was approaching one of them, my cellphone rang and it was my wife telling me that the Police had a report that my car was found. It's at 167xx Brickyard Road; as she said that I was turning south onto Brickyard Road! About a mile up the road there was the Impreza sitting in someone's driveway. Even without the phonecall I would have seen the car; funny how I've been looking into every sidestreet, driveway and parking lot thinking I'll run across the car even though the chances of that are pretty unlikely. Anyway, I pulled over and parked my car to get out and look. I met the folks who had called the Police since they couldn't get out to work and we chatted a while until an officer arrived. It seems that the thief had hit a curb hard enough to bend the right front wheel and suspension leaving the car undriveable for any distance. He just pulled into the driveway and abandoned the car and everything in it. The officer started looking for fingerprints and removing things that I identified as not belonging to us.....a teen's pocketbook, sunglasses, a small dog collar chain, bolt cutters (!), and more weird stuff. After he collected enough evidence, I got in and moved the car out of the driveway to the street and waited for the tow truck. The CD player I had installed was gone, some of my wife's personnel stuff (gymbag and contents) was gone, 10 of 12 bottles of beer were gone (we had bought a case for Thanksgiving and had not brought it into the house on Sunday night). Damage to the car was relatively light considering; scuff marks on the front bumper, hood and fender....bashed in area under the right-side doors....and bent up exhaust pipe. The car seemed to run okay and aside from the torn up console where the radio had been, I didn't see any other obvious damage. The ignition lock was not punched out and no windows were broken; they must have had some type of key for the car. I had the car towed to the auto body place I use in Bothell and left it there, called my wife and our insurance company. All of this occurred within 8 miles of our home. I'll be at the body shop on Friday and empty out the other little "presents" that the thief and his friends left behind. Judging from what was left and recovered by the police, I would think they might be able to find the culprit. I was surprised at how much apparent effort went into collecting evidence. We were fortunate since I think the car is repairable and insurance will cover almost all the cost; the only downside is the inconvenience and how vulnerable we feel now. I'll be looking into some kind of alarm system for our two primary cars and moving some of the junk in our garage into storage so I can park one or two of my Brats in the garage. I'm glad the thief couldn't drive worth a **** and forced him to abandon the car before he could do some real damage that would have made our "keeper" junk....also, we didn't have to wait the three weeks before the insurance company declared the car gone and we could have then started looking for another around Christmas time.

It can't hurt; I'll take anything I can get.

Besides play in the distributor shaft bushing make sure all your ignition wires are on good and tight.

Good news, the Impreza was recovered this morning. Some minor damage and the radio is missing (of course); but nothing that can't be fixed. Details to follow.

As far as a site for rallycross this would be great. A few years back ORG used to do one/year at the county fairgrounds near St. Helens so I'm sure the entry would be okay with it. I'd like it since it would be about 50 miles closer for me than Hillsboro.

This looks like it would be a great place to have some of the ORG rallycrosses at too. (Sorry to hi-jack the thread).

I have the same problem currently on my Legacy wagon. Same symptoms and happens mostly in first 5 minutes after starting; doesn't happen at all during the day, but only after starting first time in the morning. But I'm convinced it's the PCV since the problem started after I installed a new PCV on my car (genuine OEM also!). White smoke can be massive amounts of oil getting into the intake but you can smell it; oil smoke smells acrid, coolent smoke smells sweet; also, oil smoke feels greasy on your hand if you hold it in front of the exhaust.

Thanks a lot Geoff. And to all who called and wrote. We'll survive, but it was a nice impreza!! Lots worse things could have happened.

I put this here instead of off topic since I didn't want to deal with the posting delay. Sometime between 9PM Sunday night and 7AM this Monday morning my wife's '97 Impreza wagon was taken from our driveway. It is dark blue in color, WA tag number 892-TEV. Nothing exotic about the car, no fancy tires/wheels or such. If anyone in the area spots it, please notify the local police or call 911. I've filed a stolen car report. Thanks.

Just took a pic at your new Brat. I can understand why it is no longer a parts Brat. It couldn't have gone to a nicer person. ---ed---

Glad to hear of your good fortune. Funny, I bought a Brat recently to replace the old brat since there's some body issues I wasn't happy with. I decided the new brat was too nice to turn into a "working, playing" truck so it'll be stored and cherished and polished. My older brat is now up and running again and I'll be addressing the body issues with it some other way. Best wishes with it and good luck too.

Try ShawnW on the the Board.

Eric, sorry, I wasn't paying attention to toyota trucks; I'll ty to remember next time I'm there. By the way my "old" '84 Brat is running again. I finished it up last night. Need to send it to Smart to let them do the hydraulic valves and then it just needs a minor tuneup. I snagged a brand new radiator yesterday for it from the '85 Hatch that was in the yard.

I haven't been there for a couple weeks due to the new winter hours; hard to get there before 5pm closing time. However, a number of new cars in the yard. Three EA82 and about a half dozen EA81s including a '85 and '87 Hatch with hydraulic engines (sorry, I pulled the better of the two today with Matt's help), but the '87 is still there engine and all. No EJ22 vehicles that I could see.

Went to Lynnwood today to pull a replacement engine out of an '85 Hatch. Serial number was high enough to make me think it wasn't the original engine. It was too clean compared to the transimission also. Superrallyroo happened to arrive at the same time I did and help me with the removal. I couldn't have done it without you; thanks a bunch Matt. Your new turbo Legacy is awesome too.

John, I'm glad to hear you sold your car, but sorry that we won't see you at future events. You are correct about SCCA; I've always felt that the rally group (and the rallycross group by extension) were the step children of SCCA. This feeling goes back to my early days of rallying in the 70's and 80's. I pretty much quick "cold turkey" in 1988 when we moved west. I didn't really get back into it until I met the Subaru crowd, attended WCSS3 and ran my first rallycross there. Be well and with luck Jeanne and I will visit Hood River again next summer. ---ed---

No I haven't.

King5 is doing it's annual food drive collection for the Christmas season. I thought we had a great time last year meeting at Redmond Town Center Mall and having an extended lunch at Claimjumper; do we want to do it again this year?

Welcome back. Sorry about the car, but your best bet is to take it to my favorite emissions guru next to the 6th Ave. South emissions testing place in South Seattle (just south of Spokane St.). $40 plus tax if he can adjust it to pass; no charge if it doesn't pass. Plus if it needs a part he can tell you what it needs and then bring it back to him for "tweaking." You can't go wrong! PM me with a 'phone number if you need more information.

I spoke too soon. The foaming that I saw in the coolent wasn't due to excessive oil but likely residue in the heater box and existing hoses from the original failed engine. The brat is running okay now! I put the radiator cap on it and started it up and let it warm up. As soon as the temp guage was about a 1/4 I took it over to my neighbor's place. He does auto repair in his front yard and we talked a bit. I was watching the brat and the smoke out the exhaust pipe went away after a bit and the fan came on and 20 seconds later switched off; the temp guage was at 1/2 and stayed there. My friend went to his tool case and got a laser temp guage and we measured the temp of the heads at all four cylinders. All of them were at 200 degrees plus or minus about 5 degrees. The back side of the radiator was at 208 degrees. I brought the brat home and loosened up the throttle cable and got the idle back to normal at 800 rpm. The wicked lifter clatter was also gone; actually sounds like a normal engine. A wicked clean up job is all that I have left to do.

Good news, bad news. Junkyard engine is finally in and started right up. Bad news is that it has a blown headgasket so there is more work to be done. Keeps me out of trouble I guess.

Donny's having a heck of a time lately. Let us know where he will be. Thanks for keeping in touch.

Actually, with the traffic jam for the windstorm, it took me 6 hours just to get to Portland. Return trip in four more!

This will pull up realtime data; I haven't been able to pull up codes with it.

It works quite well for displaying realtime info, but I couldn't get it to display CEL codes. http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=46407&page=1&pp=10