99obw

Thanks to everyone for the help. porcupine73: That gasket looks just like the one that came with the midpipe. I assume that the rounded end goes toward the rounded flange on the midpipe. Thanks for the pics. RallyKeith: Thanks, very good info. Can you describe in detail the flange that you welded? Was it just flat with an appropriately sized center hole and appropriately spaced mounting bolt holes? It looks like I'll have to throw the plates back on the ULSD-leaking TD Jetta and run around looking for this flange today. The suby is WAY too loud to drive. I'll take the cat off and take it to work and weld it with the MIG. Thanks again, :cool:

While out of the country recently I got the news that the exhaust had fallen off of the outback. I'd bought an aftermarket midpipe before leaving for Sweden as I knew the midpipe was in sad shape, but I hadn't had a chance to put on yet. Upon inspecting the damage I found the midpipe was broken in half, not a surprise, but I also found that the flange on the rear of the cat was completely gone. The cat itself is in good shape, so I hate to replace it ($$$$), but I can't mount the replacement midpipe as it is. The front of the midpipe has what looks like the socket part of a ball and socket flex joint. I would like to find the matching flange to weld to the cat. Normally I would just weld the pipe to the cat but like I said it looks like a flex joint. Any ideas, pics, suggestions that may help me in my quest are greatly appreciated.

Safe travels! And it's not camping unless it's on the ground, everything else is just "sleeping outside". I know how you must feel, my wife won't go camping anymore either.

I used to order all of my parts from 1stsubaruparts. Apparently they have changed owners and some of the people that I had pleasantly dealt with no longer work there. I sent a friend of mine there to get parts for a project we are doing in a couple of weeks and they treated him like total crapola!!! Canceled his order, didn't reply to emails, never contacted him, never answered questions. Treating my friend badly based on my recommendation is equivalent to treating me badly, and I will never order from them again. From now on it's http://www.subarugenuineparts.com/ for my Subaru and the Subarus I work on.

DON'T DISCONNECT THE AC!!!!!!! Just unbolt the compressor and bungee it to the left strut tower. The power steering can be unbolted and bungeed to the right strut tower. The lines for both can be left connected. The oil separator plate is cheap, just replace it. They don't always leak, I've found them not leaking before, but they usually leak, and it's easy and cheap to fix permanently. Clean both surfaces with acetone and carefully apply RTV.

Magnefine makes a highly regarded external filter FWIW. http://www.emergingent.com/subpage1Magnefine.htm

I'm getting ready to do this same project to my friend's '97 so I have the spreadsheet handy. Oil separator plate part number 11831AA150. Don't forget the exhaust gaskets and probably studs and nuts as well. Pinion bearing should be added to your list of clutch related parts if you haven't already, some kits come with it, others don't. I opted for an Exedy kit which includes it.

I had about 115k on the one that I replaced a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, MAX lab. I don't know the people that you listed, though Greg now works at a facility in Australia at which we recently commissioned another large machine. Happy New Year!!

I think I'll stick with my current plan, OEM parts and machined flywheel. To me it stands to reason that this should put the clutch function back very close to when the car was new. Thanks for the link nipper.

I was at the synchrotron at the university. If remember, the next time I go to Lund I'll drop you a PM to see if you need any small parts. My next trip is to Taiwan for two months.

I'm exceptionally happy with the Yokohama Avid TRZ as a three-season tire. If I were looking for a four-season tire I would start with the Nokian WR, knowing what I know about their snow tires.

Interesting about the machining of Subaru flywheels. Conventional wisdom states that flywheels should be machined. I'm preparing to put a clutch in my good friends '97 legacy, and I was planning on buying a machined used flywheel, and returning the current one for the core. I'm wondering, should we skip the machining? His clutch is in fairly rough shape right now, slipping in the higher gears. About 175k on the car and clutch. We were planning on using OEM components, as is my custom with Subarus. I suppose we could buy the flywheel and return it if we decide not to use it. I think he'll be disappointed if he gets chatter, as the car has never done it.

http://www.rockauto.com says that they do international shipping. You may want to check them out. They do have caliper kits for subarus, though I don't know if they will fit your car. I spent 7 weeks in Lund for work this fall, a very nice city. I just ate some pepparkakor and singoalla. I brought my wife home some hjortronsylt, good stuff! I don't anticipate traveling to Lund in the near future, or I could bring the caliper kits with me.

I hear you, the key is subtly convincing her that she wants another suby. Not helping my case is the fact that she just rode in her friend's new Toyota Sienna AWD. I really hate every aspect of minivans, driving them, putting gas in them, and especially working on them.

Any make of car at that mileage will start to nickel and dime you. I wouldn't buy a car like that unless you know how to turn a wrench or you have a high tolerance for paying someone to do it for you. If you want to own cars in this price range learning to do it yourself is a good idea. The USMB can go a long way toward teaching you what you need to know. Our '99, which we bought new, is at something like 210-215k miles, impossible to say due to 2 years of intermittent speedometer. I just did the timing belt for the second time, and I did the head gasket at 118k. The engine has been really solid overall, we just took it to Indiana and back and I beat the tar out of it, like I always do. The engine needs to come out soon, it needs two new timing belt idlers and a new tensioner, I should probably replace the water pump again, valve adjustment, rear main seal, and the oil pan is leaking due to rust. I'm also planning to finally do the front struts, they're getting a little soft. I hope to get another 2 years out of this car, my wife has already started in with the I'm tired of my car BS. She wants a minivan, still hoping for a turbo forester or outback.

Some people put a jacket or blanket over the center of the tow strap to dampen it somewhat if it were to break loose. I don't know how well this works.

I used to drive through snow like that somewhat often when we lived on a road that was rarely plowed. These cars really aren't very good in deep snow without snow tires. With snow tires on the other hand they will plow through powder up to the bumper. BTDT. I've smacked the grill on the snow at the end of the driveway from the snowplow a few times. At the risk of being flamed and called names( ), it's all about the tires, they are the only thing touching the ground/road/snow/ice. It doesn't look like you were in a position to take advantage of rocking or using the momentum to carry you through a tough spot, so you would need pure traction. I've been stuck too many times to count, just never in the suby. Haven't gotten the jeep stuck yet, but I'm sure its day will come. I've gotten most every other car I've owned stuck though, as I always like to push the envelope. I've had a few of them high-centered in snow or mud. Only had to get towed once, @#$%! FWD! Getting stuck is kind of fun IMHO, if you have the time to deal with it and you aren't in a life-threatening situation. It can be a bit of a fun problem solving exercise. A shovel and a bag of rock salt can be very helpful. EDIT: Many off-road clubs won't allow the use of straps with metal hooks at their events, and there is a very good reason, which you gave. I don't currently own a recovery strap, but when I do buy one it won't have hooks.

What I think would be the easiest approach is to initially connect the microcontroller just to take data, monitoring the speed sensors and the solenoid drive and displaying the data on an LCD. That would eliminate the mess associated with running a scope in a moving car. The board could be built in a modular fashion where the solenoid drive stuff could be added later. An onboard memory, say a serial EEPROM or FLASH, or maybe SRAM, could be used to record the entire driving session. Then it could be pulled out using an old-fashioned serial port. I have the c source for most of this stuff already. I could whip something like this up in a short time after the holidays.

Sure, the microcontroller I used for the last one has a built in quadrature port and four built in PWM controllers. There are plenty of analog ways to generate PWM, but I prefer microcontrollers for a number of reasons. Here's what I would use. I would be willing to fund acquisition of prototype quantities of the components needed. I prefer to use an external crystal or XO for processor clock rather than the low-accuracy oscillator built-in to the micro. We would also need a voltage regulator and a few caps and resistors. This chip running at 40MHz could probably also be used to close the loop with the wheel speed sensors, but that's a huge increase in software complexity. Let's just try open-loop at first. I'd use an n-channel FET in a TO-220 or TO-247 package. In addition a clamp diode in a similar package will be necessary when driving an inductive load. I'm assuming that subaru supplies 12V to the solenoid and PWM's the ground, but I haven't looked at the wiring diagram. I don't know. I'd say that assuming linearity is a good starting point. I think it will be difficult to prevent messing with the TCU's trims, but honestly I don't know much about it.

What you propose doing is relatively easy from an engineering standpoint. I might be willing to contribute my EE skills, but my free time is somewhat limited. I have access to 'scopes and EE tools. Rather than a pot I used a quadrature output rotary encoder for the last PWM controller I built. That allowed me to implement menus with an LCD and have digital repeatability, worked like a charm. One thing that comes to mind is a semi-auto mode, where the computer still controls the torque split but said device allows adjustment of bias.

Honestly, with 450k miles of driving experience without leaving the road I don't need you to assess my level of ignorance. The suby understeers, potenzas suck, end of story. Bragging about running bald tires in the snow doesn't add credibility BTW. I don't have the patience with you for a more detailed reply right now, perhaps tomorrow.

If one is going to solder and crimp, which is fine, the soldering MUST be done after the crimping. This is actually code somewhere, can't remember where for sure. If you crimp after the solder the solder will give over time and the crimp will loosen up. I have a hard time believing this will improve anything, though it might mask other problems. Most mods where one assumes that they can engineer better than the OEM engineers are wishful thinking at best.

I can't commend based on actual experience, as our old '99 came from the factory with michelins (which sucked), but I have heard nothing but bad things about the potenzas. Most OEM tires are borderline dangerous on any make, as they tend to be the cheapest thing the OEM can buy that has a "good" name. If you want decent performance buy better tires. If you want to get the most from the suby in the winter buy winter tires. I think that your experience illustrates an opinion I've held since we first got our subaru. AWD does not make a car safer, it doesn't make it handle better, nope sorry. I actually think that the AWD gives a false sense of security, and certainly when we bought our subaru my expectations were far too high. I think our subaru has an understeer quality that is dangerous, it pushes through the turns too much in the slop. With that said I have avoided several accidents in the car that I couldn't have in other cars due to excellent braking and handling, but I'm not sure that AWD had anything to do with it, as I wasn't accelerating in these situations. AWD might have some advantages in extremely aggressive driving, but for the most part it just makes the car capable of better straight-line acceleration in the slippery stuff. I think that regardless of drivetrain the tires are the most important thing on a car, everything else is pointless if the tires suck. Paying a premium for an AWD car and running anything but excellent tires is silly IMHO. I say this knowing that the AWD and subaru fundamentalists may disagree with me. FWIW we're currently running Yokohama Avid TRZ in the summer and Nokian Hakkepeliita in the winter.

Shoot, it's too late for me to say "run away"! Good luck! BTW I always leave the TC with the tranny. That's what a really good engine builder taught me many moons ago, has always served me well.