blitz

I've only had the chance to look under the hood of an H-6 motored Outback once, but it appeared to me that engine compartment is a lot more cramped than the 4.

You'll need to be concerned with the resulting compression ratio because the larger displacement motors have greater combustion chamber volume. I think that if you swap a set of 2.5 heads onto a 2.2 you'll drop the compression and up the flow - great for a F/I buildup, but not good for a N/A buildup.

As far as I know, only the 2.5 has the slap. My 2.2 is silent.

Motors oils have gotten a lot better (and continue to do so), but IMHO, a quantum leap came when it became standard practice to press dedicated liners into aluminum castings, the benefit being the increased hardness of the liner alloy. It was pretty much impossible to get the same level of wear hardness back when the bores were cut directly into the the iron block casting. During that era it was generally recognized that Mopar had the most durable iron, Ford the worst, and GM in the middle. This carried over to the head castings as well since the valve seats were cut-in directly rather than using a hardened stellite insert. Ford engines manufactured prior to '75 suffered burned valve seats through the late 70's when running "leaded" regular that contained very little lead anymore at that point.

I had a conspiratorial awakening a few years back. No, not some bogus, self-righteous religious awakening or anything ...screw that, but rather a primal, "Oh S**t!" instinctive awakening. Pure animal survival-instinct in it's finest form. I now see the hidden power structure that works silently behind the scenes, creating terror for the purpose of installing global tyranny (hint: follow the BIG money). I have this dream that a critical-mass of consciousness will grab hold as more people arrive at the same state of horror that I have. I know my cynical nature grates on peoples nerves, and I'm sorry for that. It's one of my many shortcomings, so I try not to let it get in the way of prodding folks into actually researching the validity of some of the salty quotes that comprise my sig line. I really want people's eyes to bug out a little when they read them, because the quotes shed a lot of light.

Say what? Hey, who kidnapped Gnuman? Next you'll try and convince me that you actually SAVED money today by buying a whole bunch of stuff you didn't need (but it was on sale).

Detroit News 8/26/05 'BLACK BOXES' KEEP EYE ON BAD DRIVERS http://www.detnews.com/2005/commuting/0508/26/A01-294070.htm Oakland court program, first of its kind, monitors moves of repeat traffic offenders. ---------------------------------------------- "The black box tracks how fast a car accelerates and how hard drivers slam on the brakes. IT RECORDS WHETHER THE DRIVERS GO AROUND A CORNER TOO FAST. The devices ultimately will be outfitted with equipment so they can be tracked by satellite. All of that information is retrieved every month and sent to the driver's probation officer."

It's definately plausible, the knock sensor signal can prod the ECU to yank 10 or more degrees of timing. That's gonna knock the wind out of the midrange torque and give you molasses-like throttle response. Have you done a compression check? Also what is the cause of the screech noise? I'm not certain about refreshing the bottom-end ...from the bottom-end.

Cookie, any chance you could snap & post a photo of the front of the 15W-50 Hi-Mileage bottle? It doesn't have to be in focus or anything, I'm just curious as to what the "Hi-Mileage" package looks like.

Actually my concern was for going back to a non-swell oil after letting the seals soak up the swell chemistry ...but I guess your expierience actually proved my theory wrong. Oh, well...

Setright, there's a chance that the seals may retract back and maybe leak a little worse than before. Myself, I'd be reluctant to bounce back and forth between the two chemistries for fear of inducing some permanent change/deterioration in the seal material. No facts here really, just a gut thing, y'know. I don't think Mobil 1 Hi-Mileage is available here in the US. We do have a Mobil 1 "EP" available with higher levels of A/W additives. Hi-Mileage might be one of those products that everyone outside of North America gets. EP = extended protection I think?

Someone backed into my '02 while it was parked ...then drove away. I came out to find the tailgate sheetmetal caved in. If I didn't know better, I'd swear there was an E.M. mental-fogger beam being aimed at the peasants (general population) . I'm observing people doing bizzare things. I dunno, maybe it's the mercury in the fish, the air, and the vaccines. I'm beggining to feel a little foggy myself.

I also would've thought that the temp gauge would've been climbing into the danger zone too. It was for fear of this happening that I never made that move to putting an EZ-drain fumoto thingy on my car, but it wasn't until now that I'd encountered someone who actually had it happen. My fear was that snow and ice would shear the entire valve completely off. Like Tom says, maybe it'll still run fine. Motor oils have amazing add packs that can "heal" to some extent any scuffing wear on piston & cylinder wall. Compression might be down a tad afterwards. Is it seized? If so you might be able to break it loose with a gigandimundo breaker bar.

Cory, The oil pressure light didn't illuminate prior to the failure? I'm not sure I understand. Should the EZ drain never have been installed in the first place?

Yes, but probably by an amount so small that the price of the pulley and the amount of work to install it would never pay itself off. The best reason to install it would be to help your acceleration by reducing the rotating inertia of the engine/accessories through each gear run-up (even then the gain is small). Any measurable fuel mileage gains you'd see would be during city driving because of the abundance of rising RPM'S during shifting. Steady-state highway cruising would show almost no mileage gains. If you live in a cold climate, the underdrive pulley could allow a battery discharge when you have a lot of accessories on at a stoplight or during slow driving.

You might wanna try cleaning the MAF wire and verifying the operation (resistance curve) of the IAT sensor, before going further. These two are as important as the O2 sensor for getting the part-throttle fuel mix and spark curve in the happy zone. When you tromp the gas you move a lot of real-time parameters over to a WOT fixed map for the duration of the WOT event.

If it scoots when you boots, then it's not a plugged exhaust. It's almost certainly gotta be something with either fuel or spark. Have you got MAF or MAP style fuel injection?

It's done this as long as you've owned it?

I have. It stopped the engine from turning. ...and in BOTH directions I might add! Some screwdriver-looking thingy I had laying around. Just search around for something with the length and strength, then gingerly wedge it in there.

probe, when you squeeze the top hose, is the system building pressure?

I have no issues with that, but you asked the question: So I answered it ...at least the rough cuts involved in getting a reasonably close CFM figure.

Since it's a four stroke, it would pump that much air in TWO revolutions, so divide the airflow figure by two. Next, estimate a rough best volumetric efficiency of 85% (includes intercooler and exhaust system/turbo losses). Multiply airflow by .85. Finally like jamal mentions, you'd need to factor in the blower pressure over atmospheric. Assuming .7 bar, multiply the airflow by 1.7 (.8 bar = x 1.8, etc). The resulting figure would be rough, but close enough for rock n roll. Volumetric efficiency is greatest at peak torque. Then with increasing RPM, airflow continues to increase against a falling volumetric efficiency up to the point at which peak HP is reached. Above that, power, torque, and VE all fall off sharply.

With a passive filtration system, there's only two ways to decrease the resistance to flow: 1. Increase the media area (larger filter). 2. Make the holes in the media bigger. Finally realize that the factory cams, exhaust system, and port configuration are far and away the biggest determinants of volumetric efficiency, not the paper air filter. Once you've actually got the engine flowing 20-30% more air, then it would be beneficial to get the filter to accomodate the increased flow.

Pete is right. The Pennzoil is dirty because it's doing a good job of cleaning up what your previous oils left behind.

Some of the best mileage I've ever gotten was driving through the Rockies. My best guess is that WOT in the thin air means no pumping losses climbing the uphill grades, coasting downhill W/injectors off means no fuel expenditure on the downgrades. Never got as high as 35 tho. More like 29-30 IIRC.