Scoobywagon

BEHOLD! The mighty (and awesome) Demotorvator! <insert evil cackle here>. Bonus points for those who get the geeky color reference. It started off as a Harbor Freight 2-ton engine hoist. I swapped the manual hydraulic jack for a pneumatic one. Spent a few minutes with the PPG color swatch book. Spent a few more minutes sanding and cleaning. Finally spent a few minutes painting. Took a few hours to get it right. Also, I need to touch up a few spots...but hey...its still awesome.

If you're working on dirt, wet the ground first. Once you've got the whole area good and wet, then put down your plastic sheet and wet everything down again. Then pull the car in. As for drive away time, that really depends on the paint you're spraying, how heavily you're applying it and ambient temperature. I'm not familiar with the PPG Omni product, but the shop where you buy it should be able to advise you. I will tell you this... I've shot a LOT of things with Nason Fast Dry. It is a cheap paint that is intended for use on heavy equipment. It dries REALLY fast. As a matter of fact, if you don't set your gun properly, it is possible to apply it as a powder. It basically comes out of the gun and dries in the air at which point it doesn't stick to anything. But, if I shoot it with my siphon feed gun, it takes a good 4-6 hours to dry properly. On the other hand, I've also shot with Centari. That stuff takes a little while to dry. Takes at least 30 minutes between coats for sanding. AT LEAST 24 hours to dry hard enough to drive. I certainly would not plan on driving the car for AT LEAST 24 - 36 hours. I'd let it go at least a full 2 days if possible.

A car canopy isn't a bad idea. The biggest thing is surface prep. After that, its all about keeping the air clean while you spray. What kind of surface will you be working on? Dirt? Concrete? Asphalt?

I wear black nitrile gloves. For the rest of me, I find that a combination of Dawn and Snap-On's hand cleaner works really well. I'm not sure who makes the hand cleaner for Snap-On, but it is GOOD STUFF. Not too expensive, either.

I don't know what anyone in particular is charging for labor, but I can tell you what alldata has to say on the matter. For a 2001 Forester, book time is 10.2 hours for headgaskets not including any machine time. For clarity, that would be 10.2 hours to remove the engine, tear it down, clean, reassemble, reinstall. Again, that does NOT include any time required for machine work.

POR15 is good stuff, but it has a hard time sticking to anything that ISN'T rust. Their prep products help with that. Stuff is expensive, but I feel that it is so expensive because it is worth every penny.

The early legacy's call for 2 lbs of R12. you'll need a conversion chart to determine how much of your new refrigerant you'll need. As for the "safety" of 134a...well.... R134a is flammable and, when burned, becomes a neurotoxin. It is not environmentally friendly. Not even kinda. Oddly, some of the best, most eco-friendly refrigerants are not legal for use in the US.

Leathering up the whole car is likely to cost you about $650-700 plus labor. That's both front seats, the rear bench seat and all 4 door cards. For reference, I'm using seats from an 05 Outback with side airbags for the pricing example. More specific pricing will depend on what kind of car you get the seats from. This depends on your car and whether or not it is already wired for power seats. In the case of the car we converted, power seats were never offered as an option, so we had to build harnesses from scratch. In your case, I think power seats were an option for the 98 Outbacks (though I could be wrong). If so, its possible that the harnesses are all there and you just have to swap in the proper seats. IN some cases, all of the controls are mounted on the seat itself. In that case, all you have to do is mount the seat and give it power and ground. No big deal. Some cars, though, have off-board controls or rely on the BCM for control. That can be not fun.

without the proper AC tools and machines, it is difficult to tell you what to expect. What gage(s) are you using? This is a job that gets MUCH easier when you have the nicer tools. A decent set of manifold gages is a MUST have. These will let you accurately and safely check pressures on both sides. Having said that, lets see what we can do about getting you going.... If the low side shows no pressure, then you are probably fairly safe in venting that side. Leave it open for a while before you try opening the high side. Replace all of the o-rings you can find. If you added R-134A using the sight glass, you've likely severely over-filled the system. Should be 4-6 on the compressor, 2 each on the inlets and outlets of the evaporator core and condenser core, 2 each on the inlets and outlets of the reciever/drier. You'll want to replace the receiver/drier while you're at it. Think of it as $30 worth of really GOOD insurance. Make sure that you put a little oil on each of those o-rings. After you put everything back together, you really need to pull a vacuum on the system and make sure that it holds for at least 20-30 minutes. Now you can charge the system. The SVX's all call for 1.43lbs of R134A. You should probably also add about 2 oz of oil since you're replacing the receiver/drier. Having accomplished all of this, you should be able to run the A/C and get nice and chilly. Good luck.

Yes, you can wire up power seats. Its kind of a PITA, though. We did it in our shop once and it was nearly $1200 at $58/hr. Why not just reupholster your seats? It really isn't all that hard to do. Just eats up lots of time. If you want leather, I can probably find you a good price on a leather kit. That kind of assumes that the foam in your seats isn't all beat.

The upgraded factory speakers are decent, but they aren't great. They want $130 for that set, but you can get an aftermarket set with a lifetime warranty and more linear response for the same money. As for the sub, it is NOT just plug and play. Especially since you're adding an aftermarket head unit. Since you're going that way, an aftermarket sub would be better. There are a number of companies that make very compact subwoofer systems.

Being the A/C guy.... Yes, you can drain the oil from both compressors, compare them and add oil as necessary. But that doesn't tell you how much old oil is still in the system. It has been my experience that most compressors come with approximately 2 oz of oil in them (at least from the distributor I use). Your car calls for 4.9 oz total. Most of the oil in the system lives in the compressor and the receiver drier. Since you're replacing both of those components, make sure that you add 3.9 oz to the system and you should be golden. I'd check with the distributor you got your compressor from and see how much oil they put in when they ship.

Your window regulator is shot. Napa usually carries decent ones, but the best ones are had at the dealer.

There are 2 things you will need to install this. You'll need a dash kit (just a pocket in this case) and a wiring harness. This will likely take you 45 minutes start to finish even if you have ZERO experience (unless you break something). Talk to your local stereo shop. They can supply both parts and most places will sell you the kit and harness right over the counter. If they carry American International kits and harnesses, you'll want a UPK-800 (pocket) and an SWH-924 (harness). Metra's lookup tool is currently offline. The Scosche parts are SU2026B (pocket) and SU03B (harness). That's pretty much the big three. Pull your stereo out, disconnect the block connector at the back as well as the antenna. Pull the brackets off of the side of the radio. Attach the factory brackets to the new radio and your pocket. Take the harness for the radio and the harness you purchased and match the wires up color for color. The small red butt connectors are just fine for this. Connect the block connector on the harness you purchased to the vehicle. Connect the radio's harness to the radio. Attach the antenna. Reassemble. Done. No sweat.

Well, they're effing me over. The warranty is 12 months, 12,000 miles. I'm way past any of that and they aren't working with me. The dealership is Mike Scarff Subaru in Auburn. I'm going to end up having the head gaskets re-done. I'm very disappointed in the way they are handling this. I had a very good experience on the sales side of things, but their service department leave a LOT to be desired.

The amp is likely dead, so I wouldn't worry about the DIN cable. I'd disconnect the amp and splice into the speaker outputs there.

I'm pulling this from alldata. The diagrams are a little ambiguous. Looking in the doors for connectors won't help. There will DEFINITELY be connectors unless a previous owner cut them for new speakers and pulled the speakers when they sold the car. I doubt that. To get something else to work, I'd probably just pull some fresh wire from the stereo down to the amp's location and cut in there. Should work just fine. Just make sure to NOT get the factory sub while you're at it. That could cook your deck.

Ok...after a bit more digging.... There should be a 20-amp fuse in the fuse block just for the amp. Not sure what location, so you'll have to rely on the cover. Just make sure that fuse isn't popped. This looks like a fairly weird system. The diagram I have shows that the speaker output leads are present at the radio connector. However, it also shows that those leads simply go to open connectors at the far end of the harness. The wiring is otherwise identical whether the car is a MacIntosh car or not. So it may be that the deck runs the front 2 speakers directly and the amp runs the subwoofer off of the rears. Get yourself a test speaker and some wire. The connector you'll go hunting for looks like it is probably in the psgr kick panel. It'll be a blue 16-pin connector. Check for audio on pins 6 & 15 (should be left rear) and on pins 7 & 16 (should be right rear). The pins on this one are kind of odd. Looks like it has a very large pin on each end of the connector. Those will be pins 1 and 8. Pins 2 through 7 are the top row. Pins 9 through 16 are the bottom row. Pin 8 will be the large pin all the way to the right. 7 and 16 are the pair immediately to the left of 8. 6 and 15 are immediately left of that. If you get audio there, then you should be able to bypass the amp altogether.

What year is your WRX radio from?

Ok...just looked. 2 things spring immediately to mind (thanks largely to the a-hole technician on my left). If you look at the large block connector on the amplifier, pins 1 and 7 will be power. Pins 10 and 11 will be ground. The pin-out for this connector is as follows. 1 2 3 XXXX 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Make sure that there is power on both 1 and 7 and that you have good ground on both 10 and 11. It strikes us as possible (if not terribly likely) that there are 2 discrete amplifiers in that case. If so, it is possible that a solder joint has failed or that a pin has backed out and only one of the amplifiers is actually working. The other thing to check is that the DIN cable is plugged in securely. If all of this looks good, then your amp has died. It looks like you'll need to either find a replacement amp or pull wire from the amp up to the dash and wire the speakers to your new headunit that way.

I'm guessing on this one, but I suspect they are. Factory amplified systems usually come in one of two flavors. They tend to either have a single amp that runs everything or each speaker gets its own little amp. Subaru generally uses a single amp and, in cases where the car gets the factory sub, simply runs the rear pair of channels in mixed mode. If half of the amp is toast, then you lose pretty much the whole thing. what year and model is your car? I can look through the wiring diagrams and see if something pops out at me.

Ok, folks... I'm going to try very hard to not throw anyone under any buses. I've run into some trouble with the dealership I bought my wife's Forester. We bought the car in January of last year. At the time, I told them I'd buy the car so long as there was some evidence that the head gaskets had been dealt with. They said no problem, they'd look into it. When they inspected the car, they found coolant snail tracks on the heads and decided that, in fact, the gaskets were in the initial stages of failure. They said they would take care of it under warranty with Subaru. Great. Problem solved. Fast forward to last week. Car has almost 160k and I was getting nervous about the timing belt because that was NOT done originally. So I scheduled an appointment with the Subaru dealership nearest me. I was going to have them do the timing belt, idler, tensioner and water pump. They got it up on the lift and found oil leaking out of the head gaskets . Grabbed the sniffer and found exhaust gases in the coolant. Head gaskets are fried. I called the dealership that originally did the work and had them fax over their invoice for the work they did. It does, in fact, show that head gaskets were done. However, it does NOT show that any machine work was done. It looks as though the heads were simply pulled off, new gaskets put on, heads reinstalled. I'm hardly an expert, but not machining the heads sounds like a recipe for problems. I'm currently waiting for their GM to call me back and let me know what, if anything, they will do about this. I'll keep this updated for those who may be interested. Once everything gets settled out, I'll post up the dealerships involved as well as the outcome.

Let me know if that wrecking yard axle works out for you. NOW I've posted in your thread! It was nice meeting you today.

There's a fair chance that your amp is kabroked. Been a while since I looked at one, but if I recall correctly, there are two block connectors on that amp and one can be plugged into the other. This bypasses the amp. I could be wrong though. As I said...its been a long while since I looked into one of those. Also, I suspect that your MacIntosh Head probably does require an amp, but there are some cases where they don't. How's that for unhelpful?

Thought about it. But nobody else is going to care, so it seems a bit non-useful. Either way...as I said before. Its your car. Do what you want. Install a windshield with duct tape if you want. Have fun with that.