WoodsWagon

Brake fluid doesn't circulate through the lines. So it's highly unlikely that any dust in the lines would make it back to the ABS pump and valves. If you read my posts you'd see that I've mentioned that sand-packing isn't needed for brake tubing, but it is accepted practice for bending tubing in general. It's not a safety risk. Using compression fittings on a brake line is a safety risk. Using hose clamps to splice brake lines together with fuel injection hose is a safety risk. Putting a flat head nail in a brake line to block off the fitting when you tighten it is a safety risk. It's perfectly OK to mention that you believe it might be a safety concern, but campaining against it in a hostile manner, telling people that they're criminals and idiots, all based on you're initial reaction to the technique isn't wise. The retarded thing is that I don't agree with a lot of the advise Nipper gives, but on something as insignificant as this, I've chosen to stand up for it. Hey, mabe I choose the wrong battles, but I'd say the reason I went with it was mostly because of your hostility. If your first post was "Sand-packing isn't necessary and could be a safety concern because of X." I probably would have let it lie. But "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard" is the wrong approach. Social conduct... mabe they don't teach it under the bridge? My fragile ego is so hurt I've resorted to: User CP- edit ignore list- add member- naru Kinda sad, but I hold minding manners in high regard. Otherwise the board would end up like Hondatech, TTORA, VWvortex or any number of other boards. There's good information to be found but you have to seach through all the petty arguments, hate, and cockfighting to find it.

I'm usually in favor of replacing a failed resonator with a cherrybomb glasspack of the right diameter. If you put a straight pipe on it makes the exhaust a fair bit more rumbly. The cherry bomb helps to quiet it down.

It has everything to do with bending tubing. Brake line is nothing more than steel tubing. So, a technique that works for bending tubing includes brake line. As long as the line is clear when you install it, it's fine. The fine dust, if you didn't get it out by flushing with alcohol or brake fluid, isn't going to cause problems. It's no worse than the rust particles floating around in the fluid. While you may think it "criminal" or "negligent" it's a well known practice for bending tubing, and it hasn't caused problems yet. So rather than being a blowhard about it, why not sit back and learn something rather than having a knee-jerk loudmouth reaction? You're coming across as an rump roast, and it's hard for me to keep it civil but I try in the interest of keeping the board a positive atmosphere. Mabe you should try too?

A 2000 legacy has a different rear suspension design, it's multi-link rather than strut type, so lifting it is not the same as an impreza or earlier legacy. It's not covered in the FAQ. In fact, it's not really covered anywhere. I've seen more threads on lowering 2000-04 outbacks than I have on lifting the same gen legacys. Seems most of them are still worth enough that people won't beat them offroad. It would be helpful to have a writup on lifing them.

The only switches that turn on the brake light are the parking brake switch and the resevoir level switch. When you take the lid off of the resevoir, look down into it. There should be a bobber floating in the opening. Give it a couple pokes if it's stuck at the bottom. Make sure the filter thingy that goes in isn't blocking it from coming up. Or the bobber might be part of the lid, if it has a bobber that hangs off of it and 2 wires going to the lid. Naru: Go grab some 1/2" copper tubing. Try and bend it. After you've kinked it, go get another piece, cap one end, pack it with sand, cap the other end. Bend it to whatever shape you need, uncap it, blow the sand out and it's good. It's not criminal to do that for brake lines, however it is unneccesary. Small diameter tubing is less likely to kink, so it's easier to bend.

Go to the "Retrofitting" forum and use the search for EJ22. It's an involved swap, the EA82 was the end of the line for the EA series engine, and there was a big jump to the EJ series.

All the wires are there for cruise control. You need the pump, the actuator, the cable with nuts, the vacuum hoses and pipe that goes across the engine bay, the cruise control computer, the cruise control brake switch, the dash switch, and the steering wheel switch. If you pull it all out of a donor car, you'll know where it goes back in to your car.

In larger diameter lines, like 3/8" and bigger, packing them with sand or a low melting point metal turns the pipe into a solid rod. You can bend solid rod without kinking it, unlike tubing. So using sand is a legitimate method. Brake lines are usually small enough that the kink point is at a lot tighter bend.

Yup, exacly like the line subaru used. Some of the really tight bends you can't reproduce with commercially available bending tools, like the bend where the line hooks to the rear flex hose by the wheel. So you do an approximation. I can get lines a lot better bent by hand than I can with a bender. I reuse the lines run inside the body of the subaru's I strip out and send to the junkyard. They bend just as easy as the aftermarket poly coated lines do. Using sand isn't needed for brake lines. The diameter of the tubing is so small that it won't kink unless you're trying something stupid, like a 1" 180 degree bend like the factory did in the aformentioned location. Bigger tubing yes, it helps a lot. So does melting bizmuth sp? into the tube and melting it out later. I use the spring sleeves that help support the wall of the tube.

Yes, tweeters and rear speakers will plug in. You will need to cut out the holes in the rear door panels and put on the speaker covers. I've done it, it takes careful work with a box cutter to get the holes right. Or, you could replace the whole door panel with one out of a donor car, but finding one with rear speakers and crank windows is harder. A tach cluster will plug in, however your odometer milage will be wrong, you will need to get a milage certified sticker put on the door post and the car will be difficult to sell. OR, you can take your cluster apart, and the donor cluster, and take out the blank tach hole cover and put the tach in. It's 3 screws through the PCB on the back that provide power, ground and signal to the tach. It's easy to do, nothing more than a phillips screwdriver required. One note about working on the cluster... there's a switch on top of the steering column. You may not have noticed it. It turns on the parking lights. When you do bump it while working on the dash, don't come back saying there's an electrical problem and you can't turn off the lights. I've de-Brightonized my dad's 95 legacy. Tach, tweeters, cd player, rear speakers, rear wiper, cruise control, outback struts, outback sized tires and alloy wheels, and a skidplate off of an older subaru. It all bolts in, plugs in, and works great.

The fluid changes are only for cars that the TB goes away with the FWD fuse installed. If the TB is still there, no amount of fluid will fix that. The fluid has a fresh additive package, which changes how the clutch friction disks grab the steels in the transfer clutch. You get smooth slipping instead of grab, release, grab, release, which is the vibration felt in the car during tight turns. In my personal experience with my mom's 98 outback, 3 drains and fills has fixed the car from bad TB when we got it to being fine for the last 3 years. The AWD gets used in that car too- we have a 1/2 mile long dirt driveway back in the woods and we only plow when it gets really deep.

The endlink bushings are not affected by the sway bar diameter. So the diameter of the shaft has no bearing on the swaybar links. You were asking about replacing the links, so the whole part about the bar size was irrelevant. If you're replacing the swaybar to crossmember bushings, then it does matter. Easiest way to find out is by measureing, because any swaybar could have been swapped onto any car at any point...

But if the lift struts can no longer hold the door up... they have failed, no? So trashing the rod and seal surface isn't really going to change the fact that they can't hold up the door. I'd be afraid of a broom handle just because the door would unexpectadly drop on you head if you bumped it while loading/unloading the car. Or your kid's head, if they were helping you. Seems safer to run a pair of vice grips. If they've got a good bite on the strut rod, it's not coming down.

Better to use a pair of vice-grips on the hatch strut rod to keep it up. I would think you bent the hinge, hatch, or body with the excess leverge you concentrated there. Might be time to use a hammer to ajust things back.

Yes, the brakelines go above the gas tank. If you want to replace them so they're the same as factory, you need to drop the rear diff, subframe, and tank. OR, you get yourself some bend it yourself brake line, get the poly coated stuff rather than the plain steel or galvanized line, it lasts way longer. There is a junction block under the right rear side of the car, right under the seat pretty much. If you can get the lines undone here without breaking the lines that go up into the body under the seat, that makes it easier. If you do break them off, you need to take the back seat bottom off and splice into the lines there. You need a double flaring tool to do this. DO NOT USE COMPRESSION FITTINGS. Lots of parts stores will sell you them, they are not rated for the pressures generated in a braking system during a panic stop, so you will think they work great right up till when you really need the brakes. Bend the new lines so that you can secure them to non-moving parts of the body and they don't come too close to the exhaust pipe. They must be secured, otherwise vibration will snap the lines off at the fittings. Make an estimation on the length of lines you will need with string, then get lines longer than that that are pre-flared with the right thread nuts on the end of them. Gently bend them to fit, using your thumb to support the inside of the bend as you do. Brake lines are easy to kink if you don't bend them carefully. They also metal fatiuge quickly and snap, so don't try to straighten and rebend the same area of the line if you can help it. Use zipty's to hold the lines tight to the body and bleed the brakes.

I'd be suspect of the choke not coming all the way off. If the heater coil for the choke is getting tired, cold weather will put more of a strain on it and it may not pull the choke plate all the way open. Once the car is warmed up, take the cover off of the air cleaner. You should see the choke plate in the top of the carb, and it should be near verticle. If it isn't, and it's still like / in the carb opening, you may need to adjust or replace the heated coil on the side of the carb.

Honestly, if you're pulling the motor out to do headgaskets, get a 2.5l that needs headgaskets. Do the headgasket job, drop it in instead of the 2.2 and you'll get a 30hp boost right there. DOHC heads on a 2.2 will DROP the compression ratio... good for more boost if you're running a turbo, not good if you're not. So, if you're putting a homebuilt turbo setup on it, it's a good thing. If you're not, don't. Putting 2.2l SOHC heads on a 2.5l block will raise the compression, to the point that you need to run premium all the time. But, it does pull way harder on the bottom end, which is where most motors spend their time. Your butt-dyno will be very pleased with this combo. There are lots of 2.5l engines out there with blown headgaskets. I got my last shortblock for $20. The guy I bought it off of wanted to keep the heads so he could send them out to be machined. That way, the next blown 2.5 he gets he has a set of heads ready to go.

The new style tensioner is very sensitive to being re-compressed when you do a T-belt job. If it's done wrong, which is any way other than in a verticle press with some pathetically slow rate of compression, the seals blow out of it. It still has the spring tension, so it looks like it's working, but it can't hold that tension. Easiest way to check is to turn the crank with the belt installed. Turn it back and forth and see if the tensioner moves up and down. It shouldn't. If it can move pretty easy it's blown. The old style was much more forgiving, you could use a vice to compress it and it worked fine. If you get the bracket that bolts to the block, you can put the old style piston and separate pully on as a retrofit.

That's the 4wd low switch, the 4wd switch is on the transfer housing. I'd say either the engine or transmission mounts are torn, or some one bent the lever so it's too far down and touching the console. If someone was getting agressive trying to get it out of 4wd when it was bound up it could happen. Check the mounts, and try removing the shifter surround. You need to unthread the 5spd shift knob but I think it's just plastic clips that hold the base into the console. I had the same problem with my loyale, I had to shave off some of the rubber padding on the shift lever where it was touching the console. There's like a 1/4" of padding before you get to the actual rod.

Yup, typical DOHC aftermarket spark plug wires. They get baked into the head down there and are a whore to get out. Put some dielectric grease on the end of the new wires, smear it around that boot at the end and on the inside where it touches the porcelin of the plug, it makes a huge difference when you need to pull them in the future. Judging by the fact you got a camera in there to take a picture I guess you have the engine out on a stand? When they're in the framerail makes this job that much harder, you have to use needle nose pliers that are bent to fit.

While the dealerships making lots of money off of service may still be true, the two parts I bolded are not. Shops are usually divided into "teams" Team leaders make 16-20 an hour, The other guys make 11-17. So, when you're 35 years old you can be looking at making 60k a year if times are good or 45k when, like now, customers aren't coming into the shops for service. So, the dealerships try to push costs down further and hire absolute morons (about all you can get for those rates). After a few big comebacks, they fire and replace with another moron.

Yes, Yes, and Yes. However, the key should be stabilized in the location where it origionaly was, which is why a bit of JB weld to hold it there doesn't hurt. Once it's set up it's plenty to keep the key indexed. Toni995 When you replace the front main seal, remove the oil pump from the front of the block, tighten the phillips screws that hold the pump backing plate on, and reseal where it attaches to the block with Fugibond or a similar RTV. Putting a mild locktite, I forget which color it is, there's red an blue and another permenant locktite, on the phillips screws will prevent them from backing out again.

The steering coupler can definiately be a culprit for this. If the U-joints are siezed, the steering effort will be much greater no matter how well the power steering is working. My mom's 98 outback wouldn't return to center after a turn. The steering felt smooth, just woudn't return on it's own. I replaced the coupler ($70) because the U-joints had stiffend up. Steering has been fine since then.

The key and keyway don't need shear strength. The crank snout has a shoulder that the t-belt sprocket goes up against, the pully stacks against the end of the sprocket and the bolt presses them all together. So, the key and keyway have no load on them once the bolt is tightened. It's the static friction of the surfaces of the crank shoulder, sprocket faces, and pully face that transfer the power. That's the reason that the keyway self destructs as soon as the bolt loosens at all. It's not designed to transfer power, it's only an allignment device so that the sprocket is installed in the right position relative to cylinder top dead center. That's also why the condition of the faces of the crank sprocket and pully are more important than the condition of the crank and keyway. All the JB weld is doing is holding the key where it used to be in the keyway. That lets you accurately line up the sprocket on the crank. As soon as the bolt is tight, the key and the JB weld will never see a load again untill you loosen the bolt. As long as you lined up the sproket on the crank in the right spot, you could theoretically run it without a key. This isn't practical because the sprocket has a tendancy to rotate on the crank as you tighten the bolt. Hence the key to keep it lined up untill the bolt is tight.

Yup, easy to do in a day. The fronts will bolt right in, the rear strut tops are different. You can go two ways on that, one is redrill the holes in the body so the 3 studs fit through, the other is to use a spring compressor and swap the strut cap from the 94 onto the outback strut. You will probably need a small spacer washer under the nut that holds the strut to the strut cap, as the outback struts aren't threaded as far down as the older legacy ones. If you don't you will hear a clunk in the back. Outback front brakes are bigger than yours, though you may need to run bigger wheels. When you swap the struts, instead of removing the brake hoses and bleeding brakes, take off the clip that holds the hose to the strut, move the brake hose back a bit, and use a pair of diagonal cutters to cut the bracket. Bend the bracket back so that you can get the hose out of the hole it goes through. Then, when everything is installed, put the hose in, bend the bracket back so the cut lines up, and put the clip back on. Depending on the condition of the Outback, it may make more sense to do the headgaskets in it rather than part it out.