zyewdall

I remember that. Got some more subaru stuckage this weekend with the snow making drifts everywhere. Going up to a friends house, I come around the corner ready to floor it, because I know there's going to be a big drift in the middle of the hill -- lo and behold, someone's already got an outback sport jammed in the drift with all four wheels off the ground Bunch of digging and a tow strap pulled it out. There was another drift with a F-250 highboy stuck in it with all four wheels off the ground -- had to lift that truck up with a front end loader to get it out. Drift was only about 4 or 5 feet deep by then. Blowing snow is fun

Well, I've had new gen subaru people make fun of my old EA82 for being a POS. They didn't really seem to be subaru people -- just happened to have a new legacy GT that their daddy bought them though. The Tribeca... well, I'm not into minivans, made by subaru or anyone else, but I can see why subaru wanted to have an offering to court people who need a minivan. I'm not into sedans either. But I don't begrudge them for making sedans.

Is pumping the brakes on an ABS car bad for the ABS system? Because I do that too -- I'm so used to driving on ice without ABS, that I get completely flustered if I hear this wierd buzzing noise and feel the pedal fighting back against me. So I try to avoid hitting it hard enough to activate the ABS. I think the best solution for this, is for me to not drive new cars. But in the rare occasions that I do, I don't really want to damage someone's ABS.

To replace the heads? It's bolted to the heads, so yes. Unless I'm misunderstanding the question.

Come on, if you look under the hood of the D-50 there is a plate that says manufactured by mitsubishi for chrysler corp. How could he have not have known? My D-50 certainly not the reliability of my subaru, but at least it's not a Dodge.

For serious off-roading and rock crawling, you need solid axles, crawling gears, etc. That's not the strong point of subarus. But try rallying down some dirt road at 25mph and power sliding around the corners while hitting bumps and whatnot. You can do stuff with impunity in a subaru that would flip an off-roader. Each has it's niche. Subaru's also handle very well in the snow (except for the annoying tendancy to get high centered easily), as long as the wheels are touching the ground, it still moves. And they're pretty easy to pull out of a sideways skid (compared to my 4x4 truck -- I don't like driving that unless there's deep snow that needs bashing through).

Yup, Chevy LUV was wholely designed and built by Isuzu for GM. I think that they were built completely in Japan too. Same deal as the Dodge D-50's were actually Mitsubishi trucks, and the Ford Courier's were actually Mazda trucks. The big three needed something to compete against Toyota and Datsun, and it was faster to import stuff than try to design one themselves to begin with. To bad they stopped just importing japanese trucks in the mid 80's, because I've never liked the Rangers, Dakotas, or S-10's that replaced the rebadged imports.

Aww. A little wax and it'll be as good as new. I've actually seen worse than that on the doors and quarter panels (the first one I owned -- drove it 10k miles before it gave in). But the rusted through floor, and rusty air cleaner are pretty bad.... I like the wooden tailgate.

Do I trust the voltmeter -- yes. Not numerically, but as an indicator, yes. It usually sits just a little above the 12. That's good. If it goes a little below the 12, that means the alternator isn't working (usually because I've gotten too much water on the belt). If it goes much higher than about 13 on the guage, something's wrong. Your's may be different, but it probably has a 'normal' place it should sit. Dunno about the temp gauges. 190 to 210 is where my VW rabbit runs. My suby sits right at 1/4 guage, but my friends almost identical car sits at 1/2 guage. Either way, it tends to always sit the same place. For example, if mine gets to 1/2, that's bad, because it's not normal for mine. Sooo..... I guess my conclusion is that the OEM gauges are pretty good indicators, once you figure out what's normal, but you can't just go from one suby to another and expect to be able to tell anything from them.

Do I trust the voltmeter -- yes. Not numerically, but as an indicator, yes. It usually sits just a little above the 12. That's good. If it goes a little below the 12, that means the alternator isn't working (usually because I've gotten too much water on the belt). If it goes much higher than about 13 on the guage, something's wrong. Your's may be different, but it probably has a 'normal' place it should sit. Dunno about the temp gauges. 190 to 210 is where my VW rabbit runs. My suby sits right at 1/4 guage, but my friends almost identical car sits at 1/2 guage. Either way, it tends to always sit the same place. For example, if mine gets to 1/2, that's bad, because it's not normal for mine. Sooo..... I guess my conclusion is that the OEM gauges are pretty good indicators, once you figure out what's normal, but you can't just go from one suby to another and expect to be able to tell anything from them.

The legacies are pretty nice -- way more power than most of the EA82 cars, and they sure handle nice on the highway. For off-roading and deep snow I greatly prefer the locked 4wd and low range that the EA82's have. To some extent, the greater horsepower of the EJ22 can overcome lack of low range, but not in all cases. The legacy is a bigger heavier car too, which is bad offroad.

Another vote for a stuck thermostat. Mine takes less than 5 minutes to reach operating temp most of the time, unless I am going downhill engine braking the whole time. I borrowed a friend's pickup earlier this winter which took 25 miles to finally heat up though -- going uphill. New thermostat fixed it.

Seems like a driveshaft shop should be able to make whatever length axle you want. At least with driveshafts you just take them the two ends, and tell them the length, and it's easy. I doubt you could get anything stock though.

I disagree. I've done both, and I think the EA81 is easier myself. A little less standing on my head under the dash But either isn't that bad, compared to a friend's volvo -- have to get it up on the lift to even find the clutch end of the cable underneath.

Nice pics. Thanks for putting them up Z

I assume these are power windows? If so, I'd pop the switch unit off the drivers door and start measuring with the voltmeter, see what's getting power. Did you check the fuse? It's sometime helpful to start hotwiring stuff if you aren't getting power out there, to see if it works when it actually gets power, or if it's completely dead. If it won't work even when the motor has power, it could be just all gummed up -- a good cleaning and re-lubricating of the window mechanism could be in order.

My dad's 96OBW has 163k on the original clutch. Slipping a little bit but still driveable. My '89GL had the clutch replaced at 140k, and I'm up to 219k on the replacement now. Depends on how and where you drive.

Yeah, all the old gen owners already suffer from not being able to get any aftermarket wheels or non-subaru wheels. The subaru 4 bolt pattern is only shared by peugot. You are so lucky to have a 5 bolt pattern -- go to 15" wheels -- lots of options from the later legacies there. My pickup truck had the same problem -- 14" wheels were OEM which was fine with me, but you can't get decent 14" radial truck tires any more. So I just went to 15" wheels, and a lower aspect tire (high aspect tires apparently went out of vogue along time ago too)

Yeah, you'll find that on subaru's it's really easy to pull the engine compared to alot of cars, but it's really hard to do the head gaskets in the car -- I did it on an '85 GL wagon, and I wish now that I'd just pulled the engine out to do it instead of leaning over and fumbling with bolts I couldn't see for so long...

If it's only on grooved pavement, it's not your car, IMO. They grove alot of the concrete highways around here, and it makes it feel like you are driving in a turbulent wind, pulling from one side the other. Every vehical I own does the same thing. Perhaps some tires are worse than others, and you could alleviate it by choosing a different tire. First time it happened to me, I thought I had a loose wheel or something (on my old subaru, that wouldn't be out of the question), but it was fine on any non-grooved highway. If it happens on smooth roads, then it's probably the car though.

Don't do it. It's worth the $10. I tried to dismount a 15" tubeless truck tire, and was with a guy who had been dismounting his own tires for years (since the 30's when tires were a little different). We had a specially modified hilift jack that locked under the bumper of his truck to break the bead. And the two tire irons. Took us 30 minutes just to break the bead, and then after another 45 minutes with the tire irons, we gave up and took it to a tire shop. Modern radial tires are just not the same as old tires used to be. My experience...

No, not necessarily. I usually get the wrong parts for my subaru, and that's buying alot of them from a subaru-only shop.... Funny how so many major things are interchangeable on subarus, yet the simple things get you. It took me three tries to get the right fan belt last week -- there are three different length alternator belts within an inch of each other, that an '89 wagon might have depending on what model air condition it had.

Yeah, beautiful day. Sun coming through, fresh snow. Could have been little more snow, but we found plenty to get stuck a few times. Z

That looks pretty darn good for an east coast car. My first subaru you could see through the doors is was so bad. And it was a mostly Utah and Colorado car even.

Sorry, but what's MS? Z