jseabolt

The other day my Subaru's check engine light came on after startup then went out on the way home. I hooked up my code reader and it threw a "air idle control valve" code. Any correlation between the bucking after fill up and this valve? This car sometimes throws missfire codes during warmup. Then the light goes out. It may throw a missfire code then I can clear the code and it won't happen for 2 years. I changed the fuel filter the other day and drove it this morning to work. It seems to be running much smoother. I won't know until I top the tank off on the way home to work to see if the new filter fixed the problem. This was the original filter and had 72,000 miles on it. I probably should have changed it sooner but didn't realize that there was more trash in gasoline than I suspected. I have a 1981 Trabant 601 (as well as other vehicles) with a gravity feed fuel system and a 1/4" fuel line. I used a small stone type fuel filter from a lawnmower and after 500 miles, the filter became restricted to the point the car wouldn't run at full throttle and started backfiring. So I found a filter at Autozone 5 times as large and it runs much better now and no backfiring or loosing power. http://s222.photobucket.com/user/turbofiat/library/#/user/turbofiat/library/Trabant?sort=6&page=0&_suid=140456040222605783692592038441 By the way. If you let your Subaru sit overnight, the fuel pressure will bleed off to nothing. So there is no reason to pull the fuse and let the engine run or do anything special before changing the filter. I'll see how it goes and report back.

I'll check that. I'm not one of those people that try to overload the fuel tank, but here has been times when the pump would kick off 10 tens trying to fill the tank and I'd have no idea if the tank was even full. I suppose a better method would be to look at the fuel guage before I filled it up and if it was at half a tank, not put anymore than 8 gallons in it. Or 7 at the most. We don't have an inspection system where I live. If the canister is bad, can I just remove it and replace with a piece of hose? Or will this cause the check engine light to kick on? Any way to get around this?

Actually about a couple of years ago the check engine light kicked on and my OBD II code reader says the front O2 sensor was bad. I replaced it and reset the code and it hasn't kicked on since.

I have a 2003 Baja, 5 speed, 72K miles. This all started about 2 or 3 years ago. I first thought it had something do with this E10 garbage but I'm starting to wonder if it has something to do with the fuel evaporative system. Sometimes the car will starting bucking slightly between 2K to 3K RPMs under part throttle. Under full throttle or idle, it runs smooth. Sometimes this happens if the car has sat for a couple of weeks in my garage at half a tank. Then after about 30 minutes of driving it starts running smooth. As if the fuel being sent back to the tank stirs up any E10/water that might have sank to the bottom. I tried running the tank down to where the light kicks on in an attempt to get rid of any "bad gas" then topping off with fresh gas but this doesn't seem to do any good. I also tried topping the last couple of tanks off with pure gas so I'm not sure if E10 really has anything to do with it. When the bucking is at it's worst is after topping off the fuel tank. Then once I drive the car for about 5 miles, the bucking goes away. Once again, the car idles smooth and runs fine under full throttle. It's part throttle when the bucking occurs. One day when the bucking was occuring at half a tank, I loosened the fuel cap and drove around. The bucking seemed to have went away. The check engine light that is suppose to remind you that the fuel cap was off never came on! Also when removing the fuel cap, I never hear a swoosh sound like there is either too much positive or negative pressure. And the OBD II system is not picking up any codes. Otherwise the car seems to run fine 95% of the time. Any ideas?

No I have not but once I get a chance I'll swap it out. This may sound crazy but I didn't really think changing fuel filters frequently was all that nessessary these days. With plastic or lined fuel tanks and assuming there is less trash in fuel these days. On the other hand, people didn't have to deal with ethanol years ago either. Another thing I should check is the throttle cable. I can recreate the condition by simply taking my foot off the accelerator under cruise. Maybe the throttle cable has stretched and I need to take some slack out of the cable.

The car: 2003 Baja 5 speed, non turbo , 69K miles The problem: Feels like a misfire or bucking under cruise. Mostly near 3K rpms. Otherwise seems to idle OK and runs fine under acceleration. Check engine light does not kick on. Problem seems to get worse at below 1/4 tank or oddly enough right after topping the tank off. This started about 2 years ago. I initially thought the E10 in the tank had absorbed some water. Since then I've been using ethanol treatment and even tried running the tank near empty before topping the tank off which hasn't seemed to help. Just something quick to test, I loosened the gas cap at 1/4 tank when the bucking started today. I did not heard a swoosh but the car seems to run just fine with the fuel cap loosened. And the check engine light never kicked on. Just wondering what might cause this. Because I did not hear negative or positive pressure when I loosened the fuel cap, does that mean there is nothing wrong with the fuel evaporative system? Am I even on the right track?

2003 Subaru Baja, 70K miles, pads worn halfway down. So I am at the dump yesterday unloading some trash when the attendant points out I have a cracked rear rotor. HUH? Sure enough there is what appears to be something on the rotors but I can't tell if they are actually cracked or it's some imperfection in the metal. If it is a crack then it's not all the way through the rotor but just on the surface. These marks are on both rear rotors but not the fronts. Some marks appear to be the same shape and size of the brake pad. Such as if the car was parked inside when wet and sat for awhile and the pads stuck to the rotors which has happened. Take a look at these pics. Would these marks indicate a cracked rotor? Notice in the first pic the mark does not run along the entire surface of the rotor. It's more of a gouge.

I tried some Sylvania Silverstars in my 03 Baja. I liked the white light they produced but they would only last about three months then blow. After replacing about 3 bulbs at $20 a pop, I put the original bulbs back in. About a month or two ago, the PS low beam finally blew. The Silverstar high beams are still in there though. I figured since they were not used as much as the low beams they should last longer than 3 months. I handled the bulbs by the metal portion, not touching the glass. Is it OK to handle the bulbs as long as you don't touch the glass? Or do I need to be wearing rubber gloves even if handling the metal portion of the bulb? I've installed many H4 headlamps in my other cars by simply handling the metal portion and they have been in those cars for years.

There's no slop in the shifter nor does the engine shake when revved up. The gear shifter does shake a bit, moves just a hair if I let off the gas and I can feel some vibrations through the shifter. But it has done this since I bought it new. The only reason I ever even paid attention to this was, I was reading a review some idiot from a car magazine wrote about the Baja when it first came out and he criticized the amount of vibration/shakiness in the gear shifter. Which is minimal to my other cars. If it were not for his remark, I would have never even checked to see if this was true. He needs to ride in my Fiat 124 Spider. The engine and transmission mounts are in good shape but the gear shifter shakes like mad going down the road. Nothing compared to my Subaru.

I've put about 200 miles on this car after this incident. Yesterday I was doing a lot of shifting through the mountains and experienced no shifting issues whatsoever. Everytime seems normal now. It seems to be related to driving in slushy snow. I just can't see how snow could be thrown up until the engine compartment and accumulate and pack around on the shifter linkage. I've never had this happen before. I am running the front splash shield. Granted we don't get a lot of snow down here in the low lands of East Tennessee but this isn't the first time I've had to drive in snow like this in my Subaru. I just can't remember if I had ever driven the car 20 miles at one time on the main highway through slush before. Most of the time It's either been going to work just 8 miles or coming home from work driving through dry packed snow.

Yeah after it sat there idling in the parking lot for a couple of minutes I was about to put the car in reverse and was then able to shift it into 2nd and 4th. I let out in 2nd just to see if the clutch would catch this time and it did.

Not really. Just driving about 30 miles per hour in 3rd gear for about 5 miles. But I was hitting a lot of slush.

My Baja is a 5 speed.

2003 Subaru Baja, 5 speed. So we get out first major (6") snowstorm in three years. So I am driving at around 30 to 40 mph in 3rd gear for about 5 miles or so. Not really going above 3000 rpms. Not anymore than I would be going at 70 mph in 5th gear. So I come to a red light and try to gear down into 2nd. The shifter doesn't want to go into 2nd gear!! WTF!! Nor does it act like it want to go into 4th either. So I drop off my passenger at a grocery store. While idling, I try put the car in 2nd gear and let out on the clutch and it just revs up. It feels like it's in a bind. So after a few minutes of idling, I try to put the car into reverse. Now it seems to be OK and will go into 2nd and 4th without any binding. What would cause this? I have driven this car in snow several times and never seen this happen. Is it even snow related? I thought I burned my transmission up somehow. The only thing I can think of is snow had somehow got packed around the linkage preventing the shifter from going into the even gears. Is this even possible? This was the real slushy snow by the way. 32 to 33F.

Sorry for the thread mining but I finally got around to checking the pad thickness on my 2003 Baja. The other day the brakes would squeel slightly when applied so I was afraid the squeelers might be getting near the rotors. So I pulled the front and rear calipers on the passenger side. ASSuming because the car stops straight I am going to say there was no need in checking the driver's side. And because I've done tons of brake jobs in the past pads usually wear out the same on both sides. Using one of those slide calipers that has the pocket clip on it: I measured the actual thickness from the backing plate to the media. Not from the groove cut into the center of the media. The front pad thickness was 5.5mm and the rears was 4mm. The thickness of the new pads I got from Advance Auto were fronts: 10 mm and 8 mm rears. Does that sound right? Or is my cheap slight ruler marked incorrectly? So that leads me to believe after 70,000 miles the pads have only worn down half and if my driving habits don't change I shouldn't need to install new pads until 140,000 miles. Is this a good assumption? I use my engine as a brake instead of riding my brakes when going down steep hills and even on flat land tend to gear down to 3rd then to 2nd and then hit my brakes at around 20 mph before coming to a stop.

Yes 65K miles, original brakes. I bought the car new about two weeks before Christmas in 2002. It's been one of the best cars I've ever owned. So far the only two issues have been a bad O2 sensor ($200 expensive yet took me 30 minutes), and a blown inner CV joint boot ($20 but took me 6 hours to fix it). I printed this conversation off and will inspect the pads when I get a chance and take some measurements. And yes it's probably not a bad idea to change them before winter. My Subaru get's driven mostly during the winter months. Living in Tennessee, it can be 70 degrees in January one day and 6" of snow the next. I tend to drive my Mustang GT in the summer as well as some of my other collector cars. And I'm a blue collar worker at a chemical plant so I can't just bail out like management does when the weatherman is calling for a big snowstorm like back in 2009. It started snowing around 3 pm that day and I didn't get off until 6:30. Management bailed out and went home while all the worker bees had to stay behind. My Subaru got me home without incident but it took forever having to wait on people trying to make it up hills. Or having to take detours because of all the abandoned cars parked in the road (on hills). I hate to have a chip on my shoulder but I finally got so pissed off at these people I just started driving around them while they were spinning out. I mean, I love my Mustang and all my other rear wheel drive cars but when the conditions are right for a snowstorm, those cars stay in the garage. Here are some shots I took the day after. Notice the abandoned Mustang on the interstate (photo 19 of 43). http://s222.photobucket.com/albums/dd148/turbofiat/Blizzard%20of%202009/

Just got through replacing the brake pads on my wifes '07 Buick with four wheel disc brakes. After pulling the calipers on both ends I found both sets needed replacing. So I glanced at the pads through the wheels on my '03 Baja and they look like they are going to need replacing soon. Best I can tell. The car only has 65K miles on it and I'm not hard on brakes and the car is a 5 speed so I tend to gear the car down on hills rather than riding the brakes like most people do especially with automatics. So I can't understand why the car would need pads this early. Unless that's just normal wear on a Subaru. I'm going to pull the wheels off and see if I can measure the thickness with a slide ruler without pulling the calipers. Any idea what the minimum thickness of the brake media is which would merit replacing the pads? Since this is MY car and not my wife's car and I have plenty others to drive if the brakes start squeeling, I thought about just waiting until the squeelers got down to the rotors before replacing the pads. Also when I hit the brakes I can feel some vibration in the steering wheel. The rotors are smooth and ordinarily I would not have the rotors turned but I'm wondering if the vibration is from warpage. Either from a tire store using an air impact wrench to put the wheels back on or they got hot and lost their temper. I'm concerned if I have them turned, if they have lost their temper, the vibration will come right back. Just curious.

Other than my '03 Subaru Baja, I don't know much about these engines. A co-worker has a VW bug without an engine he is willing to sell me. The question is, which engine would be an easy transplant? My plan is to use a Weber 32 DFTA, mainly because I have several of these carbs laying about and know how to work on Webers because I have been into Fiats for years. If the engine is/was fuel injected, I could easily fabricate an adapter to bolt the carb in place of the throttle body. Second I'd rather use a distributor with a vacuum advance than a coil pack/computer that adjusts the timing. That maybe harder to do that the carb. Unless this is independant of the fuel injection computer and is just a matter of hooking it to power and ground. One idea might be to use a Bosch distributor and mount it in place of the power steering pump and drive it off the crankshaft. If possible. I don't know when Subaru started using coil packs. How far back do I have to go to find a Subaru engine that uses a distributor with a vacuum advance? I know this sounds "old school" but that's the way I want to build it. Also I've looked a photos of Bugs with Subaru engines but so far have found no photos of where these people are mounting the radiators. Where are they putting them?

Yep that thing already crapped out a year ago. $200.

Thanks the suggestion about misting the wires with water. I got home and did that and my #1 plug wire looked like a Tesla coil! I could even see blue lines from the boot at the coil pack. Now the car starts idling really rough and the check engine light started flashing! I looked at the number on the coil pack and sure enough it was the #1. I went to Advance and got a new set of NGK plug wires for $47. Installed them in 15 minutes, cranked it up and it idles like a new car. I cleared the code and all seems fine now. Now why did the #1 plug wire crapped out but the others seemed to be OK? Well I discovered that the boot had popped off the spark plug or I did not get it on very well when I pulled the plugs 3000 miles ago. So juice must have been was jumping from the boot to the spark plug. Could that have cased this wire to go bad? By the way, you mention Subarus use NGK plug wires? Well just like Subaru oil filters are made by Purolater , Advance auto sells both Purolator and NGK plug wires. For what it's worth.

Funny that you should mention this. The same boot busted on my 2003 Baja about a year ago. Mine busted after pulling a trailer with a lawnmower on it. I was not pulling more than 1000 lbs. I've never seen an inner boot bust before. It's always been the outers on other cars that bust because they see more movement. I was able to fix mine in about 6 hours. Driving that stupid roll pin out of the axle at the transmision was the biggest headache. There is no room to swing a hammer in there. Is that pin really nessessary? I mean it's a splined shaft and even if the axle nut came off, the axle can't go anywhere. The Chilton's manual says this pin was deleted after 2004 or around that time. Maybe Subaru figured it was useless? Here's some pics of what to expect: http://s222.photobucket.com/albums/dd148/turbofiat/Subaru/

Can some one explain how the misfire monitor works on a 2003 Baja? I mean does it actually monitor the ignition system or can an issue with a fuel injector cause this to also set off the monitor? I have a 2003 Baja 2.5 non turbo, 5 speed with 62,000 miles on it and all of a sudden within the last couple of days I noticed the engine idles rough on a cold start. Then at times even after the engine has reached normal operating temperature, I can feel it misfiring at idle and even see the RPMS drop when this happens. And I can feel it under slight accelaration sometimes. This morning after getting off work I started the car and allowed it to warm up because it was so humid my windows kept fogging up on the inside. After a couple of mnutes the check engine light came on. When I got home, I plugged my code reader in and it said the engine monitor detected a #1 misfire. I cleared the code and restarted the engine. The check engine light never came back on. This afternoon, I started the engine and it started rough again and was around 75F instead of 40F this morning and it misfired at redlights on the way to Wal-Mart even after the engine had already warmed up. But the check engine light never came on. After leaving Wal-Mart and onto work it I never noticed anymore misfires. It seems to be a randomly occuring event with no particular pattern. But this isn't the first time this has happened. This time four years ago the check engine light kicked on as I was driving down my driveway. Then before pulling out onto the road, all of a sudden it went off. Highly unusual that the check engine light would go off on it's own. With other cars I've always had to disconnect the battery for 30 minutes or have Autozone reset the ECU to get the light to turn off. And usually it comes back on with 30 seconds. I took it to the dealer to get it's 30K mile checkup and told them about it. They said the ECU stored a #2 misfire code and they said they cleaned some corrosion off the plug wire. Supposably they also installed new spark plugs but not new wires. Are new plugs part of the 30K mile checkup? A few months ago at 60K miles I pulled the plugs and they looked good. I beadblasted and regapped them anyway and put them back in. Maybe the cheap way of doing it but I've done it on other cars and lawnmowers I've owned. I'm just curious is it common for an 8 year old Subaru to need new plugs or plug wires this soon? Usually a set of plug wires are good for about 100K miles. I think the cheapest thing to start out with are new plugs, see what happens before installing new plug wires. Since they are not standard plug wires (extra long boots) they can't be resonable. What I don't understand is the engine is obviously misfiring but the monitor has only detected it once in this latest eposide. Looks like if it's misfiring every 15 to 30 seconds, it would detect it more often. Just wondering what my plan of attack should be. I guess if the plugs don't fix it, then try new plug wires and if that doesn't fix it, then suspect the coil pack perhaps? Anybody have any experiences or opinions with this same issue? Thanks.

Yeah I know the difference between a DOHC and SOHC engine. I did not know there was 2 variations in 2.5 liter Subaru engines... This is the first Subaru I've ever owned so please forgive me.

I didn't know the timing belt interval changes were listed in the owner's manual. Sorry about that. I was just curious and Googled it while working the night shift. Yeah my Baja is the non-turbo 2003 model. I think the door stickers says it was built in July or August of 2002 so it's probably one of the first ones to roll off the assembly line. If that matters. I did not know that the turbo models were DOHCs. I thought it was just a bullet proof version of the same 2.5 liter that was in my Baja. Actually I thought Subaru was only using three engines during that period. 2.0 liter in the Impreza, 2.5 liter in the Legacy, Baja and Forester, and the 6 cylinder in the Outbacks and Foresters. Well since my belt doesn't need to be changed until 105K miles, I see no reason not to change the water pump as well. I just figured 60K miles was a bit early for a water pump. That's why I asked if they were prone to failure around 60K miles. That's all I need to know. Thanks.

Got a few questions regarding timing belt changes. First all is the 2.5 liter engines used in the Bajas an interference engine? This website says some Subaru 2.5 liter engines are DOHC and some are SOHC. http://autorepair.about.com/od/glossary/ss/timin-belt-inf2_6.htm I figured all Boxer engines were DOHC wheather is be Porsche, Subaru, etc. That would be a given. Also I've never heard of a 2.7 liter Subaru engine. I know there is a 2.0 , 2.5 and a 6 cyliner. That leads me to believe this website is not correct on anything. Next question. My Baja has 61K miles on it so is it time to change the timing belt? I've changed timing belts before on old Fiats and it's pretty straight forward so because there is plenty of room to work and nothing major to remove, I plan on doing it myself. The next question is some "kits" on Ebay include a water pump as well. I know the importance of changing the tensioner bearing (I suppose Subaru has three of them) but is it nessessary to change the waterpump everytime you do a belt change? I realize if the water pump fails you'll have to change the belt anyway because it's driven off the timing belt but what is the life span of a Subaru waterpump? Or is this one of those deals, "While your down there...." I thought about just changing the waterpump at the next belt change. Any change the waterpump will make it to 120,000 miles? What is the typical life span of a Subaru waterpump? On the other hand I've had cases where I've replaced a 15 year old "good" part with a newer part just because they were old (e.g. Fiat driveshaft couplings) only to have the new part fail in 5 years because most of the replacement parts for Fiats are substandard because they come from Russia or Turkey or plants in Italy with no quality control. Also had issues with my Jeep Wrangler where I'd get a recall on a part and they would replace it with a so called better part only to have it fail (cat converter). Just wanted some opinions from Subaru mechanics if changing the waterpump at 60,000 miles is a crap shoot or a worth while thing.