porcupine73

Thanks for the help. Well finally got a round 'tuit of replacing the radiator. It's nice that Subaru's are pretty straightfoward to work on. I installed a new OEM Subaru radiator. It seems to have solved the problem.....I hope! An intersting thing I noted is that the front of the old radiator had a lot of what looked like dust mixed with grease on it, covering probably a good 50% of the surface area. This could not be seen trying to look in between the a/c condensor and the radiator. I have some pics but haven't gotten them saved off the camera yet. The engine coolant temp now stays lower longer in stop and go traffic with the new clean radiator in there.

Nice little Justy. I always have a soft spot for the Justy, especially the salt flast land speed record holder for 1.0 Production class

Not sure if this helps but here's a couple pics from my jobs. Hm I forgot to put the part # on this one but this is the earlier style tensioner

I put a tach in my '96 brighton. I just removed the gauge cluster, traced the wire back from where the tach would normally be to the connector, and tapped that wire for the signal to the tach and it worked great. I can't remember the wire color....seems like it was green with blue stripe or blue with green stripe maybe. The other place to tap pretty easily would be at the ignitor or coil. However since soob sparks to plugs at the same time, not sure if the tach might read double actual rpm or something? I imagine connecting to 1, 2, 5, or 6 on the ignitor or to 1 or 3 on the coil might work?

I kind of suspect it is a oat/dexcool type coolant just based on the long service life claimed. If it is oat/dexcool type that is intesting since previously Subaru said on endwrench not to use that type of coolant in soobs. Trying to determine the new super coolant type is difficult since the ingredients are 'trade secret', as opposed to the older soob coolant. new super coolant (thanks to Joe at cars101.com): old Subaru coolant:

techinfo.subaru.com is top notch; it has all the official service info, TSB's, and other stuff right from Subaru. If you have ever seen the printed Subaru shop manuals, this is the same info in PDF format. You can generally buy the service manuals for a particular year/model soob on CD for $199 from that site. Or if you do the 3 day subscription over a weekend or something you can download the portions you are interested in. Note they limit your number of files per hour.

hehe that makes two of us! I have noticed no overheating previously. When it gets to 202F the fans come on and then the temp starts dropping. Even in hot weather with a/c max I have maybe seen it get to 206F a few times. This appears to be a related thread, my radiator failure mode sounds the same as this one: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=52558

Strakes, thanks for the info. The all metal $160 radiator was tempting. I decided to go OEM. Since I had $100 Subaru Bucks that cut the price down quite a bit. Rooster2, head gaskets??? !! What year/model soob was that on? The '00obw phase II 2.5L/sohc failure mode (if it fails) is typically the external leak as opposed to the earlier phase I's, which failure mode (if it fails) is typically the exhaust blowing into coolant leak. I do see a slight bit of moistness on the HG's at the rear/firewall side of the engine.

So what say ye gurus regarding radiators for '00obw 129k miles..... replace with a new OEM? Some aftermarket with aluminum tanks that is more durable? There's probably already threads dealing with this issue but hey what's one more! I smelled coolant the other day and she was a few quarts low. Today I checked it out and I could visibly see coolant peeping from the right (passenger) side of the radiator bottom, I assume probably where the plastic tank meets up. Unfortunately I also notice a slight bit of moistness at the tell tale areas of for the head gasket external peeping leak for this early phase II 2.5L. Hopefully those will hold out!

The Select monitor can communicate with the ABS controller on that vehicle. I don't know, I had no issues reading codes from my '00obw using the method in the service manual to flash out the codes. My issue turned out to be a poor ground from the ABS module on one of the power steering reserviour bolts.

Fuel fill pipe is in the RH (passenger) wheel well then goes to the tank. There's some rubber type hoses down in there too that could be leaking. Here's the filler pipe after you remove the plastic cover from it:

Hm that's a good question. I just assumed it meant the ebay timing belt kits but the thread doesn't actually say.

That's not true unless it's a 'blend'. Group I and II basestocks are petroleum based 'dino' 'conventional' (as is group III, except it can be called synthetic in the US anyway). Group IV PAO is made from a reaction of chemicals and is truly synthetic. Group V esters and others are synthetic. If only group IV and V are used you have a nice true synthetic oil with no 'conventional' basestock in it.

Yes, it can be a bit more complicated when you are moving. The ECU has a control chart for the fans. This one should be close to yours:

If the ECTS is starting to get flaky, i.e. inaccurate, it could cause the fans to run like you say. When stopped/slow with a/c off the fans will come on above 202F. Suppose the engine coolant is actually around normal operating temperature ~180F, but the ECTS (being inaccurate) indicates the engine coolant temp is say 205F. The fans will come on and stay on. Some scantools can tell you what the ECU thinks the engine coolant temp is.

Are you sure no air pockets are trapped in the cooling system? There is a different coolant temp sensor for the ECU and a different sensor for the temp gauge, so if the ECU sensor is reading incorrectly you won't see it in the temp gauge, plus the temp gauge is not linear and has a bit of deadband around normal operating temp as someone already pointed out.

I wouldn't worry about it. I have switched all three of my soobs over to synthetic at around 100k miles and it works great. Sometimes if the rear main seal is worn and there is dirt around it keeping it from leaking, synthetic oil may start to clean away these deposits and then it starts leaking. This isn't really the oil's fault; the seal was bad to begin with. Also note that not all synthetic oils are created equal. Group III basestock can be advertised as synthetic in the U.S. anyway, though they are actually highly refined petroleum.

I've been running just the amsoil syn atf in an '00 outback since 96k now has 123k. It hasn't had the delayed engage issue (yet!). The trans-x might be helping out too, I used that in an old '88 lincoln when the trans started to act funny and it did help for a while.

Sounds good and glad it's working. All vehicle makes and models have various TSB's and technical notes issued. A saavy independent shop will be aware of these for the vehicle makes they service and the type of work they do.

The water pumps afiak are interchangeable (fit wise; maybe not spec wise though); one of them I think is called a 'high velocity' type. There is the stamped impeller and the cast impeller. There are a few threads comparing the two.

hehe yes I just got new wheels&tires and was considering buying a fifth full size spare to rotate in. However, the tires had directional tread so I decided against the 5th tire.

I think it's mainly for monitoring catalyst efficiency. I forget the user's name but he is a subaru tech and he said some time back the ECU has a fuel trim #3 or something you can view on the Select monitor that is based on the rear o2 sensor output.

Hi. I'm running the amsoil syn atf in all my soobs and it works great. I have run mobil1 syn atf in the past and it worked great too. I would suggest the pump and dump method for changing the atf. If you just drain via the pan drain plug you are only going to get like half the fluid out, and then your amsoil atf is going to be mixed with whatever was in there before. Here's that shrinking seal pic for the delayed engagement:

I just kept twisting and wiggling it by hand it came out. If you pry, do it only a little evenly on each side at a time. It fits in there fairly snugly.

I forget what soob this chart was for, I think it was my '96: