CNY_Dave

In my case, I was going down a steep hill covered with snow and some slightly more slushy stuff. The ABS kept me from stopping on the hill (low speed). How do I know? 1)In my non-abs truck, in conditions like that, locking the brakes was the optimal solution- the wheels lock, and dig through the crud, and you stop. Same hill, same test conditions. Of course your tires have to have a fairly aggressive tread for this to work. 2) to stop on that hill with the subie, I yanked the e-brake and stopped in very short order. For slowing on the hill, ABS was better. For stopping on the hill, ABS was a recipe for collision. ABS is great, but repeat after me: the car is not smarter than me, and the primary safety system in the vehicle is... me. Dave

No camera, no one to take pics anyway! Yeah, its only 3 inches so far, well 4.5-6 this morning, did a lap around the house, no sweat. I do indeed need more snow to truly test the limits. Dave

Does anyone have a quick hack for turning the ABS on and off? I suspected there were situations where it was bad, and indeed found one last night. Dave

3-4 inches of the white stuff, couldn't find anything in the yard that'd stop me! These tires grip very well, even later on when it was warming up and the snow was packing under the tires. BTW, my yard makes a great proving ground- lots of steep hills, they just don't go on for very long. Long enough to stop and restart on the grade, though! The tires worked great in a big open unplowed lot, too. No 4x4's came in for a quick drag race, though. Dave

As a datapoint, my '03 outback with the LLBean package (has the 3.0 motor, but not the fancy VDC drivetrain) was $15.5K with 55,000 miles on it. Damn car weighs as much as my '67 GTO did, though. Dave

I could see how that'd work- the "anti-bind but otherwise full-lock" signal could be sent out at all times, with a "modify the torque split to whatever's relevant" signal overlaid on top of that. Or, it could be 'always send out this square wave' and then 'add this square wave on top but vary the phase to vary the pulse width' (and would at the same time vary the pulse spacing). Either should be something you could tell what it was with a scope. But I agree with the sentiment that building a controller for this is overkill, cats meaow is just something that will give you the 'full lock but just enough release to keep it from binding', combined with a way of not accidently leaving it on. Dave

I only mentioned I was an EE because I thought it'd add fuel to the fire, naughty of me. For me, it'd be a switch-of-last-resort, so yeah, a controller is of limited usefulness I think. Something to just blip the sol. enough to prevent serious bind would be nice, as nipper mentioned. There has to be some signal somewhere that varies nicely with speed and a comparator can be put on it to dump a relay when a threshold is reached. How about a nice simple +12V timed relay that you have to keep hitting a button every minute/2-minutes/5-minutes to keep the relay energized? That should be avail. COTS from somewhere. Dave

If I understand the system correctly, you could make the computer think the rear is slipping relative to the front, or to put it more correctly, that the front was slipping so more power needs to be diverted to the rear. Under those cases, the rear would indeed be going slower than the front. You can never feed the rear with more power (torque) than the front, though. Does anyone know what the rear or front speed sensor is, and where its located? Dave

OK, so when you're saying 50/50 'like the tcu does it', its 50/50, solenoid generally off, but with a (likely) occaisional blip to release any variance. I've heard its likely pulse-width modulation, it could also be pulses of a fixed size but with a varying amount of time between the pulses (pulse-position modulation). Interesting to note the only reason there's any variance (assuming all 4 tires exactly the same circumference) is because the rear tires don't take the same path as the front. They tend to take a shorter path, and so tend to push the front. If they took a longer path, the front would tend to drag the rears, and torque bind would likely be much less violent. Dave

I looked at the pics on the other thread, and unless there's a control module in the trans, it looks like the wire goes straight to the solenoid. If I had any spare scratch, I'd get a USB-port oscilliscope for my laptop and go record traces under various conditions. Ideal weather coming up for that just about now... Easy way to do it is to put a 0.1-ohm resistor in series in the wire and look at the voltage difference on the 2 sides of the resistor- if you look at the +12V side of a feed going to a solenoid, it can sometimes be tough to see what's going on. Using a resistor and taking Vdiff also lets you measure the current through the wire. Dave

Oh, that is really easy. You want a locking relay, made from an ordinary relay. You take a normal relay that has double-pole double-throw contacts, connect the transmission magic wire through the normally-closed (NC) contacts on one set of the contacts. You connect a pushbutton to activate the coil and close the relay, such that when you push the button the relay closes, when you let go the relay opens. Now, take +12V from a source switched with the key to activate that pushbutton, and also wire that +12V through the normally-open (NO) contacts, and connect this switched-through-the-relay 12V to the coil. Voila, when you push the button, the relay closes, breaking the magic-wire circuit, but also keeping the relay coil energized. When you turn the key off, the coil will de-energize, and the relay will open. Just add a normally-closed pushbutton in the feed from the +12V to the NO contacts to turn off the relay without turning off the ignition. Dave

OK, now I'm confusdeded- I thought 50/50 torque split was with the clutch pack fully engaged which is what occurs when no signal is sent down the magic wire to the duty C solenoid (soln. fully closed, dumping no pressure)? 100/0 being solenoid C fully engaged (dumping all pressure possible), clutch pack fully disengaged (slipping, spinning free), rear driveshaft essentially disconnected from the engine. To follow up on something else you said, there is a specific action when you're at full throttle? Dave

OK, gents, I understand this now, don't need to kick off another 'explanation war' jusy for me- What I didn't see, has anyone located the magic wire for an '03 OBW, and is that wire going to be the same for the H6 3.0 4-speed automatic? I'm only looking for 'normal mode' and 'front-rear clutchpack locked', just as a worst-case-scenario fallback. Can't believe no one has scoped this signal yet, though! (Probably should not mention I'm an electrical engineer, heh.) To add to the melee, has anyone determined if this wire goes directly to the solenoid coil, or does it go through a power transistor/solid-state relay somewhere down at the solenoid? Wasn't sure on that from the thread. Sounds like 12V gets sent down this lead (pulses), but could the trans end of this wire have +12V on it, and it gets grounded through a pulsing circuit? Dave (ducking)

In other words, TB causes it to become old-school four-wheel-drive. Snow cannot stop my '92 ranger, but if you want to turn when its slick, you better ease off the gas! Not really dangerous if you expect it, but if you apply traditional subie or FWD driving techniques in that situation, you will indeed find yourself out of control. Dave

Now if it would just snow, I could test 'em out! 225-60R16 Dave

Gasohol down near NYC, eh? Bummer. Still have the real thing up here- for now. If they switch, my XR650L will be spitten and farten and I'll be swearin'! Ethanol contains less energy per volume than gasoline, so the effect might be slight, but gas mileage will go down a skosh. The effect is much worse though on non-closed-loop engines, like older cars and motorcycles. Dave

A few weeks ago was over/down there in hippietown with my '03 LLBean outback, and spotted my cars twin. Went to school there, its much the same, but oy! the traffic! Dave

Similar results here in Central NY. I think I just missed getting to some real mileage testing before they switched over to winter-blend (I'm guessing. Got the car in Oct.). I know in CT a few years back they switched over to 10% ethanol, if they did that in mass that will be a mileage hit. I heard 10%ethanol (gasohol) is not always labeled as such. There are quick&easy ways (google for it) to check if it has ethanol in the gas. I managed to hit 23.7 or 23.8 at my best, on mostly highway. Dave

I'm liking my '03 H6 3 liter, 55Kmiles, had it a month so far. Only downer so far is the mileage- hard to break 24MPG on it (in fact, haven't yet). I do mostly freeway driving, and hear this mileage is lower than it should be. On mine, pickup and mileage are noticeably worse on 87 compared to 93 octane, 89 octane has no noticeable power loss, but I'm unsure if the gas mileage is as good as on 93. Dave

This is what I do, have to do it once on the way to work, 3x on the way home. Dave

Def. downshifting to 3rd in my case. I can see the converter unlock as a small increase in revs. Its really frustrating with the 3L 6 because it will sail up those same hills if you don't use the cruise. It'd be nice if there were a magic wire from the cruise logic to the trans logic. Do these haver a seperate computer for the transmission, or all-in-one computer? Dave

When I'm going up a moderate hill on cruise control, freeway, 75-85mph, the car seems to downshift when it really doesn't need to. I can cancel the cruise, use my foot, and maintain whatever speed I want with it in top gear, maybe having the converter unlock. If I 'follow' the gas pedal with my foot with the cruise on, get into the hill, it downshifts, I hold the pedal in the same spot and kill the cruise, and the trans upshifts right back up. So it seems when the cruise is on, its more sensitive to thinking it needs a downshift. It'd be nice to find the magic wire to cut to make that stop! Is there a clymer manual with full schematics for an '03 outback? Love to get a full shop manual, but I'm sure that's pricey... Dave

I need to give the whole fuel system a good stiff cleaning- my mileage is not what it should be (yet to break 24), supposedly the dlr put new plugs in it before I bought it (they did the 60k service). I'm going to reset the computer, too. Dave

Make sure the steering lock is off, car on ground, wheels straight, engine off, have someone rock the wheel back and forth just to where the wheels want to turn. This will highlight a bad steering U-joint or sliding joint. Is there as much play with the engine off vs engine on? BTW, this could be a prelude to total steering failure, so until you determine its not a failing joint, I wouldn't drive it (much or fast, anyway). Dave

I've serached and found that '90s subies tend to have a nutty gas guage issue (corrosion), did that also occurr in later years? My fuel gauge sometimes reads 1/2-tank low, sometimes its OK though. Dave