porcupine73

Oh man good point Setright! If it's an AT they may have drained either your front diff and/or the AT. Check all fluid levels ASAP. My understanding is that's one of the reasons Subaru switched to the large Torx socket.

Hm...interesting thought Skip I will definitely check it. The pads remained ni the caliper support when I removed it. I didn't yet try to remove them. The shims or whatever those metal things in there with the pads are a little rusty looking. I'll have a look see tonight. These brakes are what was on the vehicle when I bought it used about 15k miles ago last year. When I heard that raspy gritty noise I thought it might be wheel bearing, but it's dead silent and smooth and no freeplay with the rotor off. The rotor has rust on the back and the backing plate has rust and they rub together a little bit making the raspy sound.

Ok thanks for the advice guys. I'll have another look see tonight. The caliper seemed to slide pretty freely on the mount, but I haven't worked on brakes before. So I'll pull the other rear wheel and compare. For the bearing, with the rotor and wheel off I hear no noise at all when I spin the hub and it seems to spin as freely as the other side. There is no noticeable freeplay. Maybe I'll flush the whole assembly with brake cleaner, regrease everything, put it back together and go for a short test drive. If the wheel stays cool I'll hope I'm golden. Can I maybe bend back the backing plates a little bit and/or clean off some of the rust? I know the rotor is rubbing against the backing plate and I think that was the little bit of drag and raspy sound I heard.

Well that's good news. Good thing I didn't place any bets on this one.

If it does turn out to be the timing belt, do some compression and/or cylinder leakdown tests before going further (I'm assuming you have the 2.5L) since some valves may have gotten bent.

Your timing belt is probably busted.

What oil change place are you going to? Usually they fill from their bulk tanks by 'dings', like each ding = 1/4 quart or something so say 4 quarts=16 dings. That's all it takes is for the kid to be on say ding 11 and his buddy just coming on shift yells 'HEEYY WWWAAAAASSSUUUUUPPPPPPP' and well you can guess it he loses count. I mean some of these places are scary.

Anyone have any advice? I got the rotor off (after about a half hour combination of hammer, torch, air hammer, bigger hammer, etc). With the rotor off, there is no noise; the wheel turns pretty smoothly and freely. The raspy noise I heard is the rotor rubbing against the back plate. The driver's side rear makes this noise too but not as bad. The backing plates are kind of rusty but not horridly so. So what should I do/check? I'm a little puzzled as to what was making the wheel hot? It doesn't seem like the rotor rubbing against the backing plate would be enough to make the setup cooking hot. There was no noticable difference when I pulled off the caliper. It seems the most likely suspect is the e-brake sticking on a little bit; maybe I should just clean everything up (I backed off the adjuster before removing rotor) and give 'er a drive?

Well not sure if these pics will help but here they are:

So I get home with green ('00obw 2.5L n/a at 4 wheel disc brakes) and I seem to think I can smell hot brakes. A quick check around the vehicle reveals the right rear wheel is like cooking hot. I jack up the rear. Left rear wheel turns pretty smoothly. Right rear wheel turns OK, seems like a little bit of drag, and there's this raspy kind of sound like there's grit or gravel in there somewhere. I pull off the caliper and the sound is still there. At this point I start to take the caliper mount off but figure I don't have the time or parts to fix it tonight so I put it back together. So I'm guessing this is either the emergency brake guzzed up somehow or maybe the wheel bearing? I shook the wheel before pulling it off and everything seemed tight; no noted freeplay. But maybe if this wheel has been getting hot for sometime from sticky e-brake it took the wheel bearing with it...hopefully cv joint is ok. edit: forgot to mention, shook e-brake cable and yanked e-brake on and off a dozen or so times; no change. Unfortunately red ('96 brighton) was up on jackstands with all the wheels off awaiting it's debrightonization, so I had to put red all back together so I can get to work tomorrow.

Good article nipper thanks for sharing it. This article seems to list known causes of various issues which is very helpful.

Were the rear drums swapped to discs?

Did similar job myself last summer on '00obw. Also consider replacing the geared idler near the water pump. You'll also need a new gasket for the water pump. You can reuse the tensioner; some people simply replace with a new one but of course it's near $100. Search out one of the online Subaru dealers who wholesales parts; will almost certainly be less than what the local dealer wants. Some people say reseal the oil pump at this time and replace it's o-ring.

Is the front sway bar intact? The '00obw's like to crack 'em at the LH (driver's) bushing. When this happened on mine, I was getting a clunking because the busted end of the sway bar was flopping around and on turns it was hitting the inside of the tire.

That's true; you can order from them just put some company name in the box they don't really care but do require a company name. Sometimes you can find Kroil retail at mom&pop tractor places and stuff. I bought the gallon of Kroil and use the do-it-yourself spray cans from Harbor Freight, that's the cheapest route.

The 5eat's may run synthetic (idemistu), not sure if it's full synthetic or just partial synthetic, probably similar to nissan-j. But it is not the same as dexron iii, synthetic or dino. Different dynamic frictional characteristics no doubt.

Yah if it's AWD and a 2.2 sounds good. I've a '96 2.2L Legacy and it's been great. You should be able to peak under the rear end and see if there's half shafts/rear diff there to see about AWD. I'd check for torque bind. sohc/dohc should be notable by looking at the timing belt covers. Should be able to find the engine code or see the model # on the block, ie EJ22 something or EJ25 something.

Ahoy! any idea how long it's been like that? Some people have posted running like 50kmiles on the OEM joints in a case like this without failure, noise yes, but not failure. I doubt putting any grease in there would help since it'll just spew back out. I'd use redline cv-2 but that's going to be expensive if consuming rapidly. If you're going to use anything it should at least be a CV grease (not just a wheel bearing grease). But it'll probaby just spew onto the exhaust. If you eventually get the half shaft(s) replaced some number of people have noted vibration when in gear but stopped after having aftermarket rebuilt half shafts installed.

Synthetic engine oils were available back in the 70's. Not sure when syn atf's became available. There was some endwrench article saying subaru doesn't recommend synthetic oils. It doesn't say the recommend not using them though. Some of the manuf's pushes toward better 'cold flow' and thinner fluids are for better mileage/cafe reasons.

Welcome to the board! Did you try the water bottle spray in the dark method? Pulling the plug wires from the coil pack, soaking the coil pack with silicone spray, then reconnecting plug wires might help (it did for me once). You're going to fit in just fine here..

Dude that is very bad for the AT, it will shred the clutches very quickly.

Hm, not sure, I will have to measure and compare. I do know that KYB struts do have different part numbers for the Legacy and the Outback for '96, and different OEM spring part #'s too. On the brake lines yep, on the rears I just chopped out the little bracket with a dremel. The drums still have that little coupler at that point. I might try harder to break those loose this time as I'm considering a change to the braided stainless brake lines and maybe to rear disc if I can figure out exactly what parts I need, like do I have to change the hubs/spindles.

Excellent thanks for the advice njdrsubaru. I replaced the rear struts on this '96 a couple years ago with aftermarkets and like you said those bolts were tight but I pounded them off with an impact wrench. I didn't know at the time the positioning of those bolts was important for alignment and that's probably why I ruined this set of tires. I'll find a trust local alignment shop from my local bud Nile. The boots are in OK shape, a little cracked like old rubber; I could maybe have all the half shafts rebuilt by that place that works with ccrengines; not sure how much that'd cost. This vehicle needs timing belt, water pump, seals, etc., anyway so it'll be down for awhile. A 3" rise would be sweet. I was a little upset with myself that I didn't get the scorpion/king lift springs but that might be overkill for this project. Definitely do want to get stainless brake flex lines, but there are different part nos. for rear disc and rear drum, and of course this brighton has rear drum, but maybe I want to convert to rear disc first?

Outbackifiaction in process on this '96 legacy brighton. Purchased '96 Outback KYB GR2 struts from performancepeddler on eBay (rec'd one wrong part # hope they will make it right). Bought OEM '96 outback springs and all components (strut mounts, spring seats, rubber parts, nuts, bolts, etc) (except the struts) from subaru-parts-dealer. Will probably run the rims/tires from me '00obw on the '96 after this changeout and get some closeout rims and tires for the '00 from tirerack.