fishy

The honda-tech clan seems to like the "Hondata" phenolic intake manifold spacer. They claim it keeps the manifold considerably cooler which keeps the incoming air charge cooler and more dense. I think the same would would on one of our 'spider' intakes but the benifit is one of those small fiddly differences and probably not worth the money unless you have loads ot tinkering money to spare. I don't think a thermal spacer would do jack sh*t on just the throttle body. and to that end an aluminum tornado one would do even less on a real fuel injected motor.

^^^What he said. Plus give the thing a boost off another car and it'll probably go just fine that way he can get it to somewhere to test the battery for him and once it's warmed up it'll probably start again until it gets nice and cold again.

I'm going to be the poor-boy here and suggest re-treaded winter tires. I'm running a set of no-name retreads on my subie and they're fantastic. Not to mention they're cheap! I think the full set only cost $340cad after tax/mounting/balancing. I've observed that retreads seem to be about 75% the price of other cheap snowtires.

We just got our second snow of the winter and last night I spent nearly an hour just bombing around sideways everywhere in the wagon. By the time I got home I was grinning like a drunken fool I told the Mrs that I had a hard time getting the car to stop at home and it took me several tries. She didn't understand untill she saw my goofy grin

I'm not sure where they'd be in a sedan but in my 94 wagon there are access panels under the carpet behind the rear seats that give you access to the pump and it's hose fittings. Yours would probably be in the front part of the trunk. I would think you could just get some high pressure fuel line, attach it to the pump end and then fish it down over the side of the tank and attach it to the hardline. That would bypass the broken part. You could drop the tank to do this as well and since you're FWD it's about 1/3 the ammount of work to do so without a driveshaft and rear diff to deal with!

I find the same but with snow. The problem with snow is that it's usually hiding something like a rock or broken glass under it :-\

Was the other stuff "Seafoam"? That gets a LOT of discussion over at honda-tech. Apparently it's very close to GM top engine cleaner and is for the same purpose. It seems to be quite popular.

I had an old grand am that acted sort of like this. Turned out it was the fuel pump starting to flake out on me. It would work great for a week and then not start for 3 days. My wife got scared of being stranded by it as well so we sold it's rump roast for $450 and bought her a turbo legacy instead now she complains about how much gas it burns. sometimes you just can't win

I'm certainly no expert but I would think IF any such ice formed anywhere near the clutch and the clutch slipped the heat generated would melt said ice and evaporate any remaining water quite quickly. As for how long it'll last that's a crap-shoot. You might make 3000miles on it. you might make 30miles. :-\ Prolonging life would be a matter of low-revs operation overall the less slipping it does the better off it'll be. I can't imagine snow or ice bothering the clutch assembly itself (could be wrong on this one) BUT what if you got a chunk of ice in your clutch linkage or you cable (?) got full of snow or ice and was not letter the clutch travel the same as it did before? just a thought

I'd have to check again but I'm fairly certain my 94turbo wagon has a resevoir in the drivers side rear fender/taillight area.

Actually one recent subaru commercial that I really enjoyed was all of the cars running around on 2 wheels except the subarus. "if you've got 4 wheels why not use them all?" or something like that. Since it's a slow day at work I just had another commercial idea come to me: Fade in on some wrc footage of an impreza booting around through a nice dirt and/or snow stage somewhere with a voice-over explaining what the AWD system does for you in low-traction conditions, etc, etc. Then at almost the end of the commercial have the wrc car pull off of the rally stage and around the corner to a school where his kids get on board for the trip home. Maybe as the camera pans.fades away one of the kids could ask if they have time to take the long way home. aw Damnit. I just had another idea: Show a snow plow driver making his/her rounds clearing streets untill he gets to a long windy looking road. He/She changes their mind and doesn't clear that road. Later at the end of his/her shift he/she jumps into their subaru and heads home up the long windy, snow-filled road with a huge grin on his/her face. Okay, so how do I get a job making this stuff up? haha!

Here's a simple charging system check I like: stick a voltmeter on the battery while the car is idling. it should be making more than 14 volts. I believe my high-mileage, emergency backup alternator made about 14.3 when I checked it like this. The failing original was making 13.5 under the same test circumstances. It's a quick and easy test though.

In theory it's the warranty department that sticks a rev limiter because they don't want to have to pay out for a bunch of grenaded engines. You _could_ ding it off the limiter with some regularity if you took good care of the engine otherwise but I certainly wouldn't advise wringing it out like that as a habit. I'm not sure how the newer 2.5's are like but my 2.2 turbo feels like it doesn't actually do much above 5500rpm so running it harder to redline or fuel cut just burns more fuel and burns more transmission

Since Canada has so much wilderness per capita maybe subaru could feature an ad campaign along the lines of "Subaru with standard symetrical AWD: brings the wilderness to you." You could probably have some animals steal a subaru to get out of suburbia and back to their forest homes Or "Subaru: all-weather performance" (this would be a great visual commercial: upper-middle class baby boomer couple comes out of a nice restaurant in a ski-resort town like Banff and hops into their new legacy GT. They give each other a frisky wink and head off straight up a skislope to their romantic, secluded cabin on the mountain) well anyway it makes sense to me

I've been finding that sometimes I get really lazy with pronouncing WRX and it comes out more like "dubbleyareks". Weird that I was just thinking about that before I saw this thread. Maybe even weirder that I was thinking about it at all... :-\

Great googly moogly! there must be a zillion pounds of stuff on your roof rack!

Great pictures! Like some of the other guys here I find myself nervous about heading out off the road with only one vehicle. I guess you had "recovery team" with you. (pushers). Do you have any type of recovery gear onboard or in that coffin on the roof there? :-p:D

When we bought our Legacy it had one of the rear seatbelts fully wound out and locked. It simply will not retract no matter what words I use on it. Luckily I have a replacement from a same-interiored car... now I need an afternoon to pull the damned seats and everything else out to replace it. Maybe subaru makes crappy seatbelts or something?

What he said ^ also if you grab the tire at 12 and 6 and try to push/pull it that way it might rattle a loose balljoint. Some cars have to be nearly falling apart for that one to work though and others will rattle regardless if anything is loose or not (especially american cars ).

YOU FOOL! Where's the video?!! :-p On a slightly serious note, you should be wearing your seatbelt at least for stunts like that! possibly a helmet but definately a seatbelt

attaboy!

Is this slight noise something like a clunk? Try this: next time you park on a hill use your parking/emergency brake to hold the car in place and THEN shift into park. When you come back to the car and start it shift it out of park FIRST and listen for the noise. Let us know what happens. I've heard some sick noises from autos on that have been parked on a hill with just the transmission holding them.

That's a fine looking legacy! How much lift did you get from the outback struts? and/or what is your ground clearance like now? And you should share a closeup picture of the hella light mounts with us!

As far as I know any undercoater worth their salt(haha!) will drill holes. It's the only way to get the goo where it needs to go. In fact I drilled my own civic and undercoated it myself last year. Anyone with access to a lift and a compressor should do their own undercoating and save TONNES OF CA$H. I bought a 5gal bucket of dripless, clear undercoat through Napa and it was about $80cad. if you don't already have one of those stepped drillbits and a 'shots' (undercoating) gun that'll set you back another $30cad. Now here's the kicker. I SOAKED the whiz out of my civic everywhere I could find to put undercoating. and it used about 1/4 of my bucket of snot. Now do a little math and for ~$110cad you can undercoat 4 cars very well or do your car for 4 years.

I'm a little short on advice but fairly long on opinion. If you want to keep your lifted rig as a daily driver I think the forester would be the clear choice. It would have the creature comforts, be quiet, etc, etc. If you wanted to get really hairy offroading the old school approach is probably the way to go because it affords you transfer case options, etc. but will cost you a third car