CNY_Dave

Seated: Seated:

A great tip. I bent up a little piece of metal to look like the factory tool, bolts to one of the starter bolt holes. It took a weight off my mind, I can tell you.

Only does this under load, or revving in neutral too?

One real hazard of the switch- (I had one for awhile after learning after a trans swap that in 2004 the transfer solenoid operation was reversed) When going down a slick hill with the TCU in control, with the throttle at idle the rear engagement is very low. With the front/rear locked together, braking force from the front wheels will be 'sent' through to the rears, breaking the rears loose surprisingly easily. The rear will swing out. The ABS will seemingly not kick in as the rears aren't quite locking up. When this happened to me I did quite a bit of experimenting with the effect.

I can say on snow and ice it wouldn't help if the AWD is working properly. Hardcore offroaders say they see some benefit, I haven't gone that far offroad myself.

The home-made version of the puller is pretty easy to make. Northeast US, pinchbolt best tackled with an acetylene torch.

For me cutting the trace was easier, and not hard to repair with a small wire. Pulling the resistor requires getting 2 joints hot at the same time, or completely desoldering one then heating the other. I am not 100% sure there is not a via under the right-hand pad of the resistor, if so pulling the resistor would disconnect the trace to the right and whatever the other possible connection would go to (and leaving the other branch connected to whatever the trace on the right goes to).

The wiper stalk mod was the same on my 03 outback LL bean and my 2005 forester. I don't think the wiper stalk was different for regular outback or legacy, unless on a car with no rear wiper. The forester stalk does one thing the OBW didn't- it has a 'stay on' position for the rear wiper. I do have my outback stalk kicking around, but it's only about a half hour job total.

No idea how many other years it would work on. For all I know on a 2017 the wiper switch goes through the ECU! The PCB is stuck to the side of the switch, under a clear cover. For a 2017 you might be better off wiring the washer motor through a diode then after the diode connect a pushbutton. *Note* No idea if it's got +12V all the time and then grounded to work, or if it's switched on the +12V side.

Just my yearly anyone-want-instructions, personally I hate the fact that I cannot spritz the windshield without the wipers starting (especially when I've accidentally run it out of fluid), and that I get a perfect wipe after spritzing and then they go ONE MORE TIME WRECKING MY VIEW. Easy as pulling the switch and cutting a surface track on the exposed circuit board.

All you need is a 200lb weight on a motorized track behind the front seats, and some way to have it automatically move to the inside of the turn...

If both front wheels aren't solidly connected via the axles, yeah, park won't hold.

If it happens 4 times for every time a wheel turns once, almost certainly a U joint.

Sometimes it does keep making noise as you speed up but road noise drowns it out.

A mildy bad wheel bearing can get swamped by road noise as you speed up. Goes around once for every wheel revolution. A wheel bearing will change in pitch at the same rate you speed up, a driveshaft component will 'change pitch' about 4x as fast as the speed change. Goes around about 4 times for every wheel revolution.

There are plenty of laws with good intentions that seem/are a bit silly and rarely get enforced, but are driven by past experience. Illegal to drive with fogs and no headlights I would guess is driven by the need to be able to stop people who drive at night, with no fog, with fog lights and no head lights. In general conditions that would give the driver really crappy visibility, and a slight dip in the road and someone might not see them coming.

Well, I haven't cleaned the grease from a number of bearings, and have driven hundreds of thousands of miles on them, did 4 on my outback alone, about 200,000 miles on just the first front bearing I replaced on that one, often over 75mph on a 50 mile each way commute, over 100mph for fun once in awhile, if you want to attribute that to blind good luck running on packing grease no amount of other information is going to sway you. But I will re-iterate, I don't think any wheel bearings are shipped with a grease that is intended to be removed. I've seen thick sticky oil, and I can see some bearings coming with cheap to-the-point-of-useless-grease (how to tell? not by looks), but if it's genuinely packed into the bearings, it's intended to stay there. The grease in all the bearings from subaru I put in looked like slightly whiter vaseline, made me worry a bit, but to my mind has proven to be more than adequate.

I am not getting the same thing from that, that you are. I see it saying to lube the seals with the type of grease already in the bearings, and if that grease is not available you must remove and repack to avoid mixing greases, and the 2nd part to grease the bearing if you are not changing the outer race.

You two. table. Ruler. Now.

I specifically asked subaru, and packing grease would not last over 100,000 miles. I would not have gotten lucky, I think it's 5 times? 6 times? Bearings from elsewhere maybe it is 'packing' (really cheap useless but intended to be service) grease. Maybe some bearings come from other suppliers with really crappy grease, but myself (my opinion) I doubt that packing a bearing with grease just to keep it from rusting, and expecting the bearing to be fully cleaned and repacked, isn't even a thing. I've heard it said many times but have yet to see a single posted piece of info from a manufacturer stating their grease is packing grease only. I remember when wheel bearings would come loose with both races, there was some sticky oil on them, but no grease. There are much better ways to keep a bearing from rusting than by putting grease on some of it. Now people repacking bearings and using too much grease and causing a failure- that's a thing. If you choose repack, don't use too much!

Have you connected a light to the output from the TCU that indicates the trans is overheating, to see if it's flashing? Maybe it's 'smart' enough to look for a mis-compare between the electrical switch and the valve body sensors? (If it even has such) When you drive in D and slow down or floor it, does it downshift? No dents, even slight, in the pan? Spin-on filter remoted?

As far as I know subaru bearings from subaru come packed with good grease. It was whitish, looked a bit like vaseline, but was good grease. I have put at least 150k on some fronts and rears, all lasted longer than the rest of the car, never had one start to make noise.

That sounds like limp mode, you get 3rd and reverse. Often an electrical problem between the trans and the TCU and power/gnd. (subaru powered porsche? you gotta post pics!)

Ah, one of those. I have done a couple, removed them by pounding the crap out of the backside of the hub flange. I have always been leery of using the blue wrench on the knuckle, other than the pinch bolt area.