zyewdall

Haha. It's mostly driving them in the mountains I don't like. To be fair, I've never actually driven an automatic subaru. Honda's and Ford (Explorer) mostly. It also annoyed me when I went to sell my Honda accord that no one here would buy an automatic.

I don't know exactly how the subaru auto tranny software is designed, but I thought it would automatically upshift at a certain RPM, which is determined by the throttle position and the transmission software. I would think that the software would be written to cause an upshift before the engine hit redline even at maximum throttle position, and will probably upshift at significantly lower RPM at a lower throttle position if it's written for decent fuel economy with a lighter foot. Can you select which shift points to use? I know on some you can select a performance shifting map with higher shift points or an economy shifting map. Maybe I'm just making up BS, I hate auto trannies and have swore to never own another one. But that's my understanding of how the new computer controlled ones work.

How was the temperature and oil pressure guages? Is the oil from the engine or the tranny? If it was still running okay without making horrible noises, I'd suspect you blew a tranny cooler line and lost the fluid in the torque converter, rather than loosing the engine oil.

Yeah. Well, you live in Indiana.... Sorry, but I think that's the least favorite US state I've been to. No, wait. Nebraska and Kansas are worse, or at least more boring. Come out here to CO. I live in a sort of rich town, so alot of people have $40,000 SUV's (and are either still scared to drive in the snow, or think they're invincible in the snow and end up upside down in the ditch). But I've also gotten in conversations with people crossing in front of me at crosswalks about how cool my '89 GL wagon is.

EA 82 station wagons have a whole separate bottle and pump inside the rear fender for the back window. I am fairly certain the next gen cars do too, but not sure since I don't have one handy to look at right now.

I got around 26-29mpg in properly tuned wagons with this engine and tranny. Little less around town or in cold weather. These numbers are in US gallons. Imperial gallons will be 20% higher.

My '89 GL does this when it's really cold. Speedometer will appear to almost stick sometimes -- not move when you accellerate, then 10 seconds later, finally catch up. And you can come to a dead stop, and it'll read 15mph for a few seconds. Sounds like cold grease to me.

Sorry, off topic. But a possible reason they will warrantee B100 in europe is the different quality certification that european biodiesel must meet. Soy bio diesel found mostly here in the US has a higher iodine number which apparently increases danger of polymerization of engine oil. The European standards won't allow soy biodiesel, and they use canola biodiesel instead, with a lower iodine number. I've used both with no trouble yet, but my truck's 21 years old too. Obviously not still under warantee. Zeke '89 Subaru GL touring wagon '84 Mitsubishi turbo biodiesel truck '90 VW biodiesel rabbit (in progress)

Someone across the street had a rusted out '82 GL wagon for sale for $50. I was a broke carless college student then, and bought it to get out of town and go camping on the weekends. I didn't even know that it was a subaru when I first saw it, but I soon learned that with 4wd and lo range, I could take it up jeep trails that my friends with nice new ford explorers were scared to get their trucks dirty or dented on. And it got twice the gas mileage too. I was sold, and I've owned 6 of them now.

Affordable 4wd (mine is an '89 so it's stil 4wd instead of AWD) that's easy to repair, and almost unstoppable in the snow. I can haul lumber and stuff in the wagon and it still gets better gas mileage than all the other SUV's and trucks, not to mention loads better handling in the snow. If there were a new one available that had dual range and a diesel engine, I would go out and buy it today. Those are the two things stopping me from getting a newer one. Well, that and the fact that I enjoy not having a car payment, but I could afford one if I liked the car enough.

Wow. I am down from 3 earlier this summer (2 running at any one time) to only one subaru now, and it runs. I still have a non-running VW rabbit in the driveway though...

Well, they all wonder why I have such an old car and make fun of it a bit, but they all also think it's something special if they get a ride in my car. And on a road trip this fall, the girls both decided to ride with me, instead of in the brand new dodge or toyota pickups that the other guys were driving... And after seeing my $50 subaru, my dad bought a subaru outback instead of a pickup that he's always had before...

Yeah.. I know what you mean. I was thinking about working on some of the fuel connections for the VW rabbit in my driveway after work, and trying to finally get it started, but then I realized it's 5 degrees, and snowing.... Oh well. It's been sitting there 6 months, another week isn't going to hurt... Sorry about the thread hijack.

Well, you've got a 5.9 liter diesel, vs my 2.3 liter diesel, and the 1.8 in a subaru. So I suspect the subaru one draws less.... Perhaps someone with the factory subaru block heater should just measure it and stop the arguing And now that you mention it, my '82 subaru that wouldn't idle because the carb was so bad, still started up fine in cold weather.... Hmmm....... I retract my statement that fuel injected vehicals categorically start better in cold weather.

Yeah. Two vehicals is always safer. But the problem is that whenever I'm with someone else, they don't want to push it. Especially in the spring when the roads are mostly melted off, except for last drifts. You can often plow through em, but only if you have a second vehical to pull the first out after you jam it into the snowbank. We had a toyota pickup and 4 runner, and I was all for charging the pickup into a 2' deep x 20' wide snowbank across the road but he wouldn't commit to pulling me out after I got stuck. I bet if it had been two subarus, I bet we would have gotten through.

Legacy777 has a good point. Modern fuel injected cars that are running properly will usually not have trouble starting at low temps, unless the combination of cold battery and thick oil keeps it from turning over fast enough. I was thinking more of old carbureated cars and diesels which just won't fire if the carbureator or ignition chamers are too cold. I run synthetic in the winter to allow it to still turn over, and my subaru has started in subzero just fine. The diesel truck turns over fine, but has no motivation to actually fire, which is what warming the block could help with.

If you're into fabrication, you can take 1/2" or 3/4" EMT electrical conduit, and a little brazing or welding, and make yourself a nice custom rack that's fairly strong but not too heavy. Probably have to bolt it through the roof though. I did this for my old '82 wagon, and I carried canoes, 12' wooden fence posts, etc, on there. I'm going to make a new one for my '89 touring wagon sometime.... Sorry. Don't know if I can find a picture of it.

It'll also depend on how big of tires you have. If you've got 44" monster tires on a jeep, you'll obviously need a higher crawl ratio for a given land speed than a suby with 28" tires.

It won't heat it up to operating temp, but I thought the main idea was to make it warm enough to start when it might not start otherwise (like keeping it 20 degrees instead of -20 degrees), even if it was not actually cold enough to freeze the block -- more a starting aid than a preventing-engine-destruction device. Not that preventing engine destruction isn't good, but it has to get awfully cold before antifreeze freezes, compared to how cold it has to get to make it difficult to start. You can actually get heaters that do bring the engine up to operating temp before starting it. They run on diesel fuel, and cost about $1200, and include auxiliary pumps for the coolant and such. I guess school busses and such run them sometimes. That's a whole nother animal though. I'll defer to the alaskans and north dakotans, who actually use these more than us southerners in CO and NY.

I have alot more respect for someone driving something older than 15 years than anything new. Anyone can go buy a new car, pay big payments and high insurance, and pretend to be cool, but to keep an old subaru going requires a certain amount of mechanical aptitude, and the knowledge that sometimes newer isn't better. If you think a new car will give you respect, you are just trying to buy respect, which means all they are respecting is your money and not you. People always make fun of me and my series of old dying suby wagons I've owned. But then I lead them up little dirt roads camping, and their ford explorers barely make it and I didn't even think twice about it.... Plus, I paid as much for the whole car as they pay each month for their new one. They can laugh at me all they want, but I know I'm getting the better end of the deal. Oh, I do also own a 'dodge' truck, but at least it was made entirely by Mitsubishi, in Japan, for dodge. It's also 21 years old, and no one gives me respect for it either. On the last road trip I was in a caravan of all big chevy trucks, and they were certain my little mitsubishi was going to get stuck, but I actually got through some of the obstacles better because it wasn't so big and galumphalous. IMO, most people who own big trucks are just trying to compensate for other parts of their anatomy which are inadequate. Edit: Hey, is this the '85 wagon in your sig? If so, the question is does it still work as the chick magnet? If so, then who cares what anyone else thinks. A new toyota corolla sedan or such certainly won't be. I can tell you that....

Not sure. 3 or 4 hours depending on temperature and when it was last run I'd think? I've actually never used the one on my truck (although I should have last night -- had to use ether to get it to fire this morning, 7 degrees and 40mph wind last night). Most people just plug em in over night, but maybe you could save power if you knew exactly when to turn it on instead of leaving it on all night. Another option is a battery heater -- a sort of plastic pad that wraps around the battery and keeps it warm so it can crank the cold engine. Alot easier to install, but doesn't do as much as a real block heater.

I think they're much less than that. The one on my diesel truck (2.3 liter engine) only draws about 4 amps, or 480 watts. I've never had one on a subaru, but I'd suspect they'd be the same size or smaller.

You can run the belts without the covers. Alot of people do. You will need the new idler pully though......

This translates into an overall ratio of Dual range high 1st 13.47 5th 3.218 Dual range low 1st 16.11 5th 3.849 Single range 1st 14.57 5th 3.580 So by switching to a dual range you get a little lower 1st gear, and a little higher 5th gear. But would you have to swap out the rear diff with a 3.9? But I thought the US spec outbacks came with a 3.9 rear diff already, not the 4.11 rear that fnlyfnd quoted. I still want a 1.82 low range like the older gen subaru's dual range had...

Well, the EA82's blow head gaskets if you overheat them badly enough several times Is that an endemic problem, or should I just stop doing that....?