zyewdall

I have always used studded snows, but I got a set of Blizzaks for the GL this year. I'll give you a report in May..... Around here, winter driving is 90% bare and dry, 5% ice/slush mix, and 5% deep snow. I always wore the studs off mine by the end of the season. My dad got studless snows on his OBW last year, and was suprised by how well they did in the snow, so I decided to give them a try this year. Zeke

I've done 19" of light powder in my GL wagon. But I've also gotten it stuck in 8" of slimey wet slush. The worst is when it's powdery on top, but wet underneath, or with glazed ice underneath. Second worse is the grainy sugar powder that's heavy, but won't hold still -- common on windblown drifts around here. I've found that what usually stops subaru's is ground clearance -- becoming a whole body plow or resting on the frame. I tried a road with about 14" of new powdery snow (and probably 4" old underneath) last spring, warmed by 45 degree sunshine so it was wet on top -- decided it was a no go before I got to the steep section, and backed into a field to turn around -- haha, no wheels touching the ground any more... Keep a shovel handy. In any deep snow, you won't really be able to steer very well, especially if you're spinning wheels or have wheels locking up. I've found that rapidly turning the wheel side to side, about from 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock can actually help somewhat. Especially if you are in ruts from other vehicals that have plowed through. If you are in really cold snow, spinning the wheels doesn't seem to hurt. If it's in warmer snow, spinning the wheels can often just lubricate them and you'd be way better off going slower. You don't want to stop on hills -- it's alot easier to keep going up a hill, than to try to start on a hill. Sometimes if you get stuck from plowing too much snow, you can back down to the bottom again, and charge it. Speed will be much higher the second time since you've already made a trough through it. Then again, you could just park at the bottom and walk up to your house... I always turn around when I arrive somewhere, so I'm pointing down the hill ready to leave. Often I get stuck turning around, and I'd rather dig sooner, rather than be ready to leave, with another 4" of snow on the ground, and find I am stuck. One problem with drift charging in subaru's is that they're light and can ride up on top of it instead of plowing through if the drift is too hard. Then the wheels sink in, and you're sitting on the frame. I've seen toyota pickups have the same problem, although they obviously have a little better clearance, and a little more weight. For one of the windblown drifts, an old 4wd international pickup (about 8,000 lbs) was the only thing that could break through. Now we own a backhoe... I don't have chains for mine, and I've never used cable chains. The old chains I'm used to only work well at low speeds (like 1st or 2nd gear low range), so I question if they'd be much good on a legacy since they can't crawl well at 5mph. 20mph was just about self destruct speed for those. At low speeds, they make an immense difference over just snow tires -- we lived with a 2 wheel drive pickup for years, and it would make it up steep hills in 6" of snow no problem with chains on. The landrover with chains on all four wheels could usually make it up a 26% grade hill with a foot or more of snow on it. Unless it was too wet, then nothing makes it. Cable chains may work better at higher speeds -- don't know. Just about all of this applies to dirt roads covered with snow -- like driveways and logging roads. My two cents (or maybe about 25 cents by the looks of the length), from driving in snow in Colorado and Washington (and getting stuck many times....)

ABS helps you stop faster on slippery surfaces while maintaining a straight (or controlled) line in rain or ice. And it does help here, due ABS's ability to control each wheel separately instead of all at once like pumping the brakes. For highway driving in the winter, the ABS on my dad's OBW is nice. Snow, gravel, mud, grass, etc, isn't really a surface so much as a 3 dimensional interface between the earth and the tire, and here, locking up the wheels is often better because you can dig into the matrix, and plow piles of gravel with the wheels instead of just floating over the surface like ABS tries to make you do. I like my old GL wagon better in these situations. Most the time I am accerating around corners on dirt roads anyway -- brake on the straightaway, then gun it (okay, its a NA EA82 so "gun it" is relative) into the corner, but not quite to the point of breaking the rear wheels loose....

Are there any trouble codes on the ECU? I think on this car you connect the two white plugs by the wiper motor in the engine compartment together, and look for a blinking light on the ECU under the steering wheel. At least that's how it is on my '87 If no codes, try a little ether in the throttle body and see if it kicks over then. If you can smell ether coming out of the tail pipe, but still no sputtering, it seems like its some spark/ecu problem, not a fuel problem then.

True. My old landrover has one of these -- factory equipment on them. On the connections, I just redid the starter and ground wires on my diesel truck with stainless steel star washers and anti-corrosion grease on all of the bolted terminals. Helped alot, and only cost about $10. Electricity is one of those things that if it's not supposed to get through, a single frayed wire touching where it shouldn't will short it out, but if it is supposed to get through, just a little dirt in what you think is a solidly bolted connection is enough to stop it. Go figure...

Yeah, sounds like BS to me. Unless the broken distributor and valve are unrelated to the timing belt and just happen to be broken too... possible but unlikely. Unless maybe the disty broke and jammed the right camshaft, which then stripped the timing belt? Seems a little far fetched. I would do a timing belt replacement. When you've got it apart, you can check to see that the disty turns nicely and verify that it is only the timing belt. If it is, put it back together and start it up. If more really is broken, you haven't invested much time yet. Zeke

Easier way to to do it is to run a new wire from the proper fuse (and relay if appropriate) back to the fuel pump. Disconnect the end of the old one in case it is shorted somewhere, and put a tape label on it so you don't confuse yourself again later...

I'd sell it. '80's brats in good condition are going for over $2k here now because of rarity. I bet you could get $1k even for a beater brat, and you'd probably be pressed to get $300 parting it out.

I get alot of used parts from Superrupair. I think they might ship too, although having them right in town sure is convenient. Usually $25 for whatever... New parts I usually get from Checker auto, and at least 50% of the time, have to return them because they got the wrong one the first time. But they're pretty fast and cheap otherwise. I've actually never tried a dealer for parts...

A subaru engine is light enough and small enough to fit in most cars. Less gas. I had a VW engine (330 lbs crated) shipped from North carolina to Denver by a company called Forward Air, for $150. You have to go to their terminal to pick it up.

I've had this happen before. It usually makes an awful noise when the stripped front hub turns though.

I had figured out the clutch setup -- it was the adaptor for the subaru bell housing to the VW engine that finally stumped me (for lack of proper tools). What I did for the clutch was take the pressure plate for the VW apart. On the VW the pressure plate bolts to the crankshaft, not the flyweel, and the clutch release fork is actually a shaft that sticks out of the center of the tranny input shaft. Wacko setup that is more like a motorcycle clutch than any other car clutch I know of. Anyway, I then tapped and threaded holes in the subaru flyweel and bolted the VW pressure plate piece to it, the same piece that also bolts to the VW crankshaft. After that, the clutch/starter/etc is easy because you've got a stock subaru flyweel to work with. I never ran it with this on, so I don't know if it would have thrown off the balance, but the concept seemed to work well. I figured the engine has to be tilted over as far as it will go to the passenger side in order to clear the hood -- just like the diesel vanagons have it tilted over. The radiator might need to be moved forward because of the longer length of the VW engine, an since the VW doesn's have a fan on the engine, you might need two electric fans. One snag you do run into with this is you loose your timing marks on the VW engine when you switch flyweels, so you can't time the injector pump any more. I'm sure you could transfer them to the new flywheel if you were careful. If you had a good milling machine and a blank subaru flyweel you could also do it by milling out the pilot bearing hole of the subaru flywheel a little bigger to match the VW crankshaft centering thing, adding a bushing to install the subaru pilot bearing in the VW crankshaft, and drilling the VW bolt pattern on it (6 instead of 8 bolts) and bolt the subaru flywheel directly to the VW crankshaft without the piece of the pressure plate in between. This would save you about and inch and a half of length, which since the engine is already a little too long, would help. It might just barely clear the radiator if you did this. Zeke

Yeah, you've got to cover every possible opening with wire mesh. I've never actually had the problem with mice, but living up in the mountains we tend to get pack rats in engines. Completely disabled my truck one summer (ate through the ignition coil wire, two spark plug wires, fuel pump relay wires, tach wire, halfway through the fan belt, and one radiator hose). And filled the whole engine compartment with grass and bark. )((**&&^$^%. The latest thing is that a few people have discovered they like the taste of biodiesel, and will chew through the fuel lines for that. Disadvantage of using non-toxic fuel I guess... The only solution to keep them out that I've found (since it's hard to surround the whole engine in mesh) is to keep a couple tins of poison in there, and check regularly. Also keeping a couple rat traps set in there. Basically, make it an unhospitable place to set up housekeeping, especially in the autumn when they go looking for a winter home. It's a constant battle for any vehical not used every regularly.....

If the oil got foamed up, it should just go down by itself after sitting a while. I am trying to figure out why it would have stalled with too much oil though. If it got foamed and the oil pump stopped pumping it, you could have damaged bearings from not having oil, but that wouldn't cause it to not start I don't think. Unless it seized a bearing. I don't know if that could happen in only a few minutes with no load though. Did it put out blue smoke by any chance? If oil got in to the back of the pistons, it can get into the cylinders past the back of the rings and burn (subaru's do this if tilted severely to one side or the other). Perhaps so much got in there that it fouled the plugs really bad? Have you looked at the plugs yet? Zeke

My '85 with the digital dash had a button next to the A and B trip counters that changed it. If I still had the car, I could tell you exactly where, but I don't any more... I think that was still before the US decided to completely bail on switching to metric, so they may have made it less easy later. The owner's manual doesn't say?

Around here, ones with around 200k sell for $800 to $1500 -- more for the newer ones, with less rust. As cheap as $300 if they need some serious work. I picked up my '89 GL for $500 with a burned up rear wheel bearing, 189k miles, and everything else really nice condition --all the maintenance records back to 40k. I considered it a steal at that price and would have paid $800 even with the bad wheel bearing. I've seen them as high as $3,000, for a Loyale with only 50k miles and no rust. SPFI is better that carbed IMO, but oddly I haven't really seen the pricing reflect that. No noticeable difference between DL and GL pricing either -- although it seems that all of them I've seen are GL or the Loyales.

Sorry to hear about the layoff. I'm glad I've got work again, but on the other hand, I had a heck of a lot more free time to tinker with vehicles and other projects last year when I was, well... um.. underemployed. And yes, the new version of the brat like thing is called the baja. Right now I'm buying commercial biodiesel. We've got a Colorado company that is trying to work with farmers to grow feedstock locally. We just got the first crop of locally (about 250 miles away, in SE colorado) grown canola based biodiesel last week at the distributor. Still $3.05/gal, which I thought was bad earlier this summer, but is 30 cents less than diesel now. Eventually, I want to make my own -- just don't have money for building the processor yet. Or I might convert the vehicles to run on straight veggie oil instead. Haven't decided... I've got a Mitsubishi pickup, and a (dissasembled) VW rabbit. I was going to put a VW diesel engine in an EA82 wagon, to have the only biodiesel powered subaru in existence, but finally decided that I just don't have the machine shop for doing that yet. It's not cancelled though, just postponed... Zeke

On the manual/auto issue, have you driven both? I guess the older subies really sucked with automatic transmissions, but the new ones (90's and later) are almost as zippy with the auto as with the 5 speed. The clutches in the manuals (at least the '96) aren't quite as strong as they should be and you can make them slip when trying to plow through deep snow or off roading. The automatics are supposed to be more durable. But replacing the clutch isn't that bad really. I personally can't stand driving an automatic in the mountains, so that settles it for me.

I'm wondering if anyone has ever had the power steering pump suddenly start leaking badly. It went from full, to barely working, and howling like crazy on turns like it will just before it's empty, in about 80 miles. And you can see it dripping on the ground underneath -- at first I thought I was losing engine oil through the oil pump based on where the drips were, but no, it was power steering fluid. I've had the racks and hoses and such leak, but this seems to be somewhere right in the pump this time... Maybe time to pull the pump of the parts car and put it on there? '87 GL wagon with 1991 Loyale SPFI engine. Zeke

Well, I was going to suggest a replacement starter, but sounds like you've tried that. I've had to replace the starter on all of mine, around 200k miles. The symptom I was getting was a loud click (presumably from the relay), but nothing more. Started out giving me the click every 10th try, and progressed to giving my just a click nine times out of ten. A new starter, and it worked fine. I actually just get used starters for $25 each. Never tried the rebuilt ones. At least subaru's push start easily.... I had an old '85 wagon that had a similar idling (or lack of such) issue. It would just stall when you put the clutch in without your foot on the gas --fun when making turns -- put the clutch in and slow down, then slowly let it back out to retart the engine after making the turn, before you stopped. Still had good power and ran nice and smooth when driving or accelerating though. Is yours carburated or SPFI? The problem with mine was internal vacuum leaks in the carbureator which would syphon the gas out of the idle circuit. It helped when I turned the throttle stop up so it could run at 1200rpms or so on the power circuit (basically setting it as if you foot was always on the gas a little bit). Still stalled sometimes though... A mechanic told me I needed a rebuild on the carburator, but that was $300, so I never did it. It could also be a clogged idle circuit on the carb, but if you clean it out, you run the risk of cleaning out the gunk that's holding old gaskets together and creating the internal vacuum leaks. That's what I did to mine....

My dad has a '96 outback legacy with the 2.2 and the manual tranny, and gets about 27mpg average (he drives pretty conservatively). He's had it for 3 years and has about 160k on it now, and hasn't had any major repairs come up yet (other than replacing timing belt as scheduled, and brad pad replacements, all of which he did himself). He is meticulous about preventative maintenance, and bought one with complete maintenance records back to birth.

Yeah, it's supposed to leak there to let you know that the seals have failed. I've replaced them when you still couldn't feel any other play in the shaft but I guess it was on its way out. The toyota pickusp will keep running till the shaft is so loose that the radiator fan bounces around and starts bumping stuff before it starts leaking. Not sure if that is better design or not...:-\

Depends on how good the body is. If the body isn't rusted badly, or mushed up, I think it's well worth fixing the engine because you've got a nice old classic here. Especially since it sounds like it's not even that bad compared to the running gear on most old cars people restore. If the body's marginal, then it's probably not worth it.

I'm not from Santa Clara, but I've found that my local Checker auto (also known as Shucks auto in some parts of the country) has a good selection of Chiltons, for around $25 each. Just make sure he gets the one that applies to subaru's from 1986, and it should cover the Leone. I believe that was the same as the GL in the US. Edit: this isn't the factory service manual for your specific car, but the Chiltons for probably a 10 year range of subarus (mine is '85 to '96 subarus)

On my EA82, the thermostat hose is on the top of the radiator, not the bottom... It's the EJ22's that it goes to the bottom of the radiator