Subaru Jim Maple Ridge

Before you get too involved blaming your stereo, you might want to first check your battery. I,m taking care of a lot of subies, and a few alts go out starting with noise and feedback on the dash. Sometimes the main power cable from the alt needs to be replaced. The only chronic alt killers have all turned out to be broken and shorting plates in the batteries. This starts destroying your alt every time you hit a bump. They don't make an affordable rough service battery for a car, so about all you can do is make sure that your battery is securely fastened. If you do not, or haven't off-roaded, this is probably not your bother, but if you do, swap the battery and see what happens. It's hard to test for a broken plate because, as long as it is contacting, the voltage and load tests will read normal.

Thank you Dominical1. In as much as I would love to have a clean XT6, I don't want one that badly. I will just wait for a local one. I have a rusty one now that I'm parting out so no rush anyway. Thanks again for the info. Jim

I live in B.C. and am interested in an XT in California. Would anyone who lives there know what I would have to do get plates and insurance to drive the car home? Thanx Jim.

Before tearing anything apart, try to eliminate the possibility that it is not the starter. You could have a piston coming up hard on coolant. You can find out by loosening the spark plugs and turning the motor over with a ratchet and socket. If fluid pushes out then check the intake gaskets.

The smoke does sound like coolant, either getting into a cylinder or the exhaust. This could be a weeping head gasket, a cracked head or a bad exhaust bolt. If you haven't touched the exhaust, you can probably rule out the bolt. The pressure in the cooling system is pushing coolant into the cylinder or the exhaust after the engine is shut off, Hence the big smoke when you first start up, then it clears. If you were to run till it clears, shut it off then restart it; no smoke, because the coolant hasn't had time to push in yet. The same will happen if you take your rad cap off (very carefully) when you shut down for the night. No pressure means no coolant weep and no smoke in the morning. You can remove the small rubber from your rad cap to solve your problem temporarily as this will eliminate the coolant pressure. Bear in mind that you do have a problem that you have to correct, even if you get rid of the symptoms. Your suby cannot be expected to be reliable until properly repaired.

Check to make sure that the large nut is tight. If it is loose, the compression cone will wear and the wheel will wobble. Allowed to continue, will wear the spline section of the brake drum, which is softer therefore sacrificial to the shaft. If the shaft does't wiggle when the drum is removed, then you should be able to just replace the compression cone. Be sure to tighten the nut as tight as you can. If there is any looseness after all of this, or you hear any bearing noise, then yes, you need to do the bearing. The price is about right. You would usually take the arm to a machine shop to have the bearing changed. It can be a bit of nastiness. I usually just replace the arm with another used one. Much faster and a lot cheaper than playing with bearings. If you have a rear anti-sway bar you would have to get an arm from a 4WD turbo car.

Where are you in Canada? Any locksmith can cut you a factory key, usually for $20, from the code # stamped on your passenger doorlock. Failing that, I have a couple of hundred keys but you would have to be local.

Check to make sure that your tire pressures are at the max and even, presuming that you have all matched tires.

Check all of your fuses and maybe spray your panel.

The one little trick you should do is to remove all of your fuses and spray the panel with WD40 or electromotive spray. You will never know the miseries you are avoiding. I recently forgot and spent a day and a half trying to track downa headlight that intermittently went dim, yet all the wires checked out OK. After replacing the entire circuit, it ended up being a corroded tip on the fuse.

Hi. I am in Maple Ridge, BC just east of Vancouver. I have had a Suby shop at my place since 1995. I currently have about 30 Subies here.2 Brats, 3 Justies, 5 XT's, 1 Loyale sedan, 2 Chasers and the rest are Loyale wagons. Some are projects, the rest are for parts. I want to get into building custom off-road Subie-buggies from scratch. My last major project was a 4wd 56x60 ft, each wheel having an independent 4 ft screw type lift system. It was for a bridge reno outside of Van. Not too fast, but did the job. Apply the same idea to any job. Like Wyatt Earp said, "Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything."

Hi. Check out the message board re posting by Deerhunter. That Legacy light bugged us for days. We were finally able to find all of the wires and use the thread to fix the problem.