porcupine73

Congratulations, hope it goes well. Right just going to a narrower tire is not at all a guarantee of increased economy. A narrower tire of one model/brand might have more rolling resistance than a wider tire of a another brand/model. Running higher tire pressure would probably make more difference. Or if that's really your bag getting some sort of 'low rolling resistance tire' like is made for hybrids. Whether it would actually save enough in fuel to justify the extra tire cost would be a good question.

You might be able to get the switch online for a bit less than a local dealer, but yes I've priced that switch out and it's always $100+ at least for genuine. Replacing it on the auto sounds like a bit of a pain if you have to unhook the shift cable. It's just a weeeee bit tight fitting ape hands between the exhaust to work up in there. I remember seeing in some Subaru documentation that they claimed anyway you needed a special tool to adjust the position of that switch after replacing, like so that it was in just the right position. My '96's is flaky, it makes it idle funny sometimes like it is thinking I'm in gear, no I'm in neutral, nope in gear, neutral, in gear in gear ok I'm in gear, no I'm in neutral alright, it gets very confused. Most of the time it wouldn't even start anymore unless you held the key in start and moved the shifter between park and neutral half a dozen times and even then it was a fight sometimes, so I put a pushbutton right to the starter solenoid. Reverse lights still work fine though thankfully. That is always a good question, I remember when I got my '94 the brake lights weren't working, and so I was asking all kinds of questions about what to look at, and someone asked if the bulbs were burned out -- so I checked -- and lo and behold yes, all the brake lights were burned out. Weird. Replaced the bulbs and it worked fine.

I haven't had the mid 90's style split on me yet but I just replaced mine pre-emptively. I did have something in the end tank or gasket fail on 2000 Outback though. I used Vistapro rads for the '94 and '96 from rockauto. They were about $90 each. Except rockauto lists the same rad for both '94 and '96 and they of course are not the same. So the late 90's rad will fit in the early 90's soob but the pin spacing on the bottom is different, the radiator mounts on top are different, and the fans are different. It will fit you just have to get creative in securing the fans to the rad and securing the bottom of the rad so it doesn't ever slide forward and right into the accessory belts.

Ultra grey does seem to work pretty well. That said some members strongly suggest an anaerobic sealant. There is a chart of recommendations from Subaru somewhere, I'm sure i can find it, one moment....

Alright good news! We expect to seem some video of you rocking down the street to Dr Dre.

Is it an auto trans? Something I was thinking about today is the autos change the idle depending on whether they're in gear or in park/neutral. On my '96 that switch is really flaky and intermittent, so much so I had to put a pushbutton right to the starter solenoid. Anyway I can tell when I start it if that switch is not making park/neutral because the idle will be really low right from the start, rather than how starting cold usually you're up at 1000 rpm maybe. It causes other slightly strange idling things it seems like too.

Or if you can get a normal refillable helium cylinder, it looks like they make those in small sizes too, that would probably work with the right CGA fitting to NPT adapter. Harbor Freight sometimes has their portable air tanks on sale, I think sometimes for less than $30 depending on the size. You know one time maybe 10 years ago I was at Sears, and those 10 gallon portable air tanks they had, normally like $59 maybe I don't remember, they had them listed for $19.95 on closeout. Or it might have been a Black Friday special. I think I have seen them sell 5 gallon air tanks at that price on sale in recent years.

Oh ok, hm check this out, it came up when I was looking at what pressure they run, he shows how he modified it to be refillable: http://www.instructables.com/id/Reusing-a-Disposable-Helium-Tank/ Looks like 260psig is what they supposedly run. Being that they say its disposable though I wonder if the metal and welds are really high enough quality to handle many pressure cycles without fatiguing?

Oh that should be able to take it, I think those tanks run 1600psi+ full. So that probably has whatever style CGA connector a helium tank has I don't know what that is offhand i.e. CGA580 for nitrogen CGA540 or oxygen and so on. So mcmaster or any welding place would have so you could adapt that to say 1/4" NPT, and then you could thread on your tee/quick connectors/etc.

It would fit out the drain hole yes. I think pretty much anything you could fit through the fill hole would fit out the drain hole. Well I drove it today and I didn't hear any crunching or have speedo problems so hopefully it's OK. It is possible this white plastic thing didn't actually go in the diff, the fact that even after turning the tires and it not ending up at the bottom makes me think maybe it fell somewhere else and I just didn't see it.

Hm most portable air tanks I've seen have a schraeder valve so you can plug on a normal tire filling chuck thing to fill, but it's kind of a pain to have to hold the chuck on there for several minutes to fill it. Then to plug a hose on, probably use a quick disconnect fitting that has a shutoff in the fitting. I think even Walmart probably sells those fittings. The 1/4" size is what most home things use. Some different quick connect fittings are compatible, but some are a little tricky. I've noticed the Harbor Freight ones don't seem to work with fittings from Sears as an example. So most of that stuff will have 1/4" NPT thread on it. I'm sure you already checked this out but it really needs of course to be a true air tank because if the thing has 100 psi in it and it explodes or fast fractures obviously that's going to be a bad day.

Hm yah if it was deep cycled that is not good for starter batteries, they don't like that at all and it drastically reduces their life. I'd say keep the jump pack with you fully charged and hopefully that will keep it running. In a crisis I'd say if going out somewhere for short periods, just leave her running, if you have a club or something could attach that to the wheel just as a deterrent. Hope things get better soon, seeing it on the news it looks pretty rough. We were supposed to get power outages and downed trees here but Sandy fizzled out over this area anyway really didn't get much of anything.

I think that would be just a typical single DIN location. If you remove the pocket you should be able to fit a double DIN unit. By far the easiest hookup is going to be a premade adapter harness like Crutchfield offers.

If you're pretty sure it is the keyless module, maybe if you can figure out which wire out of it is activating the parking lights, just cut that wire. Unless you really like/need the parking lights to flash with the remote or alarm for some reason.

Ok great thanks. Would mine have a speedo gear in the diff? This is an AT, I thought maybe the MT's had the cable driven speedo? Hm that $15 USB boroscope is interesting. It doesn't look like it has the semi rigid style cable like a normal boroscope but for $15 it's hard to go wrong. Ah I'd probably stick it in there and get it stuck up in the gears somehow and when I pulled the cable out, the cable would come out and the camera part would get lodged in there. While it stares right at the plastic part that fell in haa.

Hm interesting I remember some TSB or Endwrench article about no injector pulses on cylinder #1, I thought it said something about it would do that if it thought it could not control the idle. Though I would think they meant because the idle was too high.

Thanks, it was that white hardish pvc type of plastic. Unless it didn't end up in the diff maybe, but I didn't see it on the ground or trapped anywhere near where the hose was under the hood. Ah blowing some air in there, that seems like a good idea to try to push it through. I think I will let it go for now, since it's plastic it sounds like those big hard steel gears would probably crunch it for a snack if it gets in the way. If it were something metal I think I'd have to probably work harder to get it out. I tried having someone turn the wheel while I looked in the drain hole but I didn't see or hear anything but I realized whatever gear I was looking at wasn't turning, so I put the FWD fuse in and just let it spin the wheels for a few seconds itself, hoping it would dislodge or crunch it up if it were a problem but I still didn't see it. I'm pretty sure it didn't drop to the bottom because I think I'd of heard/felt it with the copper wire.

Hm changing the front diff gear oil on '96 Legacy AT today ... and I was using this gear oil pump to pump in the new oil ... and it had this roughly 1" long hose barb to barb white plastic connector on the end ... and for some reason without thinking I left that hooked to the vinyl tube, stuck it in the dipstick hole, and started pumping. Then when I pulled the vinyl tube out of course the white plastic connector wasn't there ... I'm 95% sure it went into the front diff. So I drained the oil again, and felt around through the drain plug hole, and even stuck a piece of copper wire in there to feel around, but couldn't feel it. So I jacked the front up, set the parking brake hard, put in the FWD fuse, started it up, and let it turn the front wheels for maybe 20 seconds, thinking that might make the plastic thing fall down to be accessible through the drain hole. But no dice, no sign of it anywhere in the drain. So I put the plug back in, filled it back up, and went up and down the driveway a couple times. I didn't hear anything odd and it seemed ok... So either this plastic thing isn't in the diff, or it is and as least yet hasn't caused a problem ... Hm how should i proceed?

Hm ok well it's probably the later two then, I think it plays some games to sense baro pressure or EGR backpressure (if EGR equipped).

I will jump in on 2 and 3 2. How long should I vacuum down and to what level? 3. Once I achieve appropriate vacuum. Is some drop the vacuum level OK so long as it maintains "vacuum" or should it stay pegged? How long you need to vacuum depends on the vacuum level (i.e. using a refrigeration vacuum pump) and mostly the temperature. There's charts out there that will estimate how long you need vacuum. If it's say 70F I think overnight is more than adequate. If it's much below 60F it can become much harder to get the moisture to boil out. It takes so long because even if you get the moisture to boil, it travels toward the vacuum pump only extremely slowly, so it takes a long time. So you can't just pull a vacuum, close it off and think that is going to do anything. The vacuum pump must remain connected and turned on.

Hi, hm, if it's the spot I'm thinking of, it's probably the AT dropping resistor, pressure sources switching solenoid and possibly barometric pressure sensor.

I've never done it, but just some notes I remember from similar posts.... Will definitely need ECU from old engine; your engine is speed density airflow based - those older engines you listed will be MAF based. You're probably going to want the wiring harness then too. Not sure if there will be any communication issues to the TCU if it's an AT, since you have a phase II 4EAT if it's an auto, and those would've all had a phase I. Emissions charcoal canister stuff, you may have to play around with that a bit to get it working. Additional note on ECU's: if you have to pass ODBII emissions inspection, you might not make it with the '95, since ODBII startd in '96. Subaru did have ODBII in their '95 ECU's though I understand it might have been a bit quirky. Ditto issue on '96 ECU, it resets all I/M's every time the engine is started. So for your 2003 for example if they're going to require no more than one not ready, that '96 ECU might be a problem to pass with? Possible issues with EGR vs. non-EGR.

Yes the filler pipe is definitely a likely suspect. However, there are probably 37894 different emmissions/charcoal canister/solenoid pipes running under the vehicle too that could rust out. I had that same smell, and I did sniffing through some plastic tubing to find where it was on the filler pipe on my '96, and it pretty much fixed it, but I can still smell fuel around it from somewhere if it's in the garage, definitely from one of those many many emmissions lines. Fortunately on '96 you only have to be able to get it to start without the CEL on to pass, since it has a convenient flaw about the I/M's resetting on every start.

Yah the genuine NTN seem to be the shiznit. I haven't tried rebooting. I have used only Marshall or the genuine Subaru remans. I have been slightly dissapointed in Marhsall's because I have had had several of them bust the boots in only about a year of service.

Any amount of rust between the hub and axle splines make the thing just about impossible to get out. I tried using a cheapie HF puller to yank the hub, forget about it, would not do it, and I think I got nerve damage in my wrists from it. I was able to put two 10lb barbell weights onto it and damn it YANKED the hub right out, but it completely ruined the threads on the hub puller, so it's garbage now.