scoobiedubie

Here are the TK7 Gen 3 pics. https://www.dropbox.com/s/uwdd6zsc6vybbx0/DSC_0027a.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/egqnk8n2l4abfku/DSC_0028a.jpg?dl=0

You could just find another subaru owner in Bend, and have him visit you. Park them next to each other and pop the hoods. Then compare. About the only vacuum hose that will prevent the car from starting is the vent tube coming out of the top of the camshaft tower covers. An electrical issue is the most likely problem. Check for spark to the plugs first. Coils go out in 260,000 miles. Distributors go out on the 85 and 86 models, a lot. Distributor wires corrode. The rotor contacts inside of the distributor cap, need cleaning every 5000 miles max. Swap in working parts from your buddy that just pulled up next to you. You better know how to set a distributor in an engine, and adjust the timing. If the battery was dead when it quit, the alternator wasn't charging it or the battery is shot. The black fusible link wire gets hard and breaks in 260,000 miles, easy. The wire from the bottom of the fusible link box to the hot battery terminal, loses it's conductivity at the connector at the battery terminal. The engine ground wire loses conductivity at the connection to the body. These wires get hard and lose their flexibility, when they have lost a significant portion of their conductivity. A clue for a bad battery terminal wire is that the car ran poorly with headlights on, just before it stopped running altogether. If you were getting a lot of static in the radio, just before it stopped running, then the condensor with a wire from the +coil connector, and mounts to the body at the coil mount, has gone bad and will prevent the car from starting. A worn out ignition switch in the steering column, will also prevent the car from starting. If the left side cambelt is broken, then the distributor won't spin and there will be no spark. Crank the engine with the distributor cap off, to see if the rotor is spinning.

You should always have a spare distributor and spare coil on hand or in your car. They are still available at Pic-N-Pull in old cars. By substituting in your good spares, you can tell whether the original was bad. I had a coil go out the other day. I already changed out my spare distributor and that made no difference. I changed the black wire in the fusible link box with the spare I always carry, and that made no difference. That then narrowed down to the coil. I bought a new one ($45) and it now goes like a bat out of hell with 425,000 miles. At 250,000 miles or more, you should be changing the engine ground wire to a low mileage or a new one. Old ground wires get hot at the connection to the body, in front of the battery. That heat indicates that the conductivity is not what it used to be. The wire also gets stiff when it is breaking down. Look for similar breaking down of the wire at the connection to the battery hot terminal, to the fusible link box. And also a break down of the wire at the alternator hot terminal. All of these are very important wires.

You don't replace clutches, until they go out completely. You can get 125,000 miles out of a clutch. You don't replace struts until your car gets bouncy in a corner that the strut has gone out on. You will notice this while driving. They do not all go out at the same time. You measure how many bounces you get after pushing down on a corner of the car. If one has noticeably more bounces that that strut is bad. By jacking up each corner and removing the tire, you can look at the strut for leaking oil, or a lot of dirt buildup from an oil leak. You should be able to get 200,000 miles out of your factory struts. How many miles do you have on the vehicle? A mechanic will have no problem in finding an endless number of items to replace on an older subaru. If he gave you the list all at one time, you might realize that your car was already a total loss. So they give you one item at a time, that does not necessarily need replacing. Some people will sell their car before being caught in this scam.

Add a TK7 Gen 3 to this list. I have it sitting right in front of me.

You are confusing us. The head stud is usually the cylinder head bolt. The camshaft head bolts are different and much smaller diameter. Just take one of those bolts to the auto parts store and they will measure it and set you up with the right size helicoil kit. And then you will need a drill bit of the exact size printed on the helicoil kit face. Putting some thread locker in the hole before you finally set the helicoil, is not a bad idea.

It is not that bad if you lose syncromesh. All you do is hold the clutch pedal to the floor, about 1/2 second longer than if you had syncromesh. There is no syncro in 1st gear. The syncro going into second gear is the most likely to go out first, and that is probably what the pieces were on your magnetic drain plug. The gear shift can get sloppy when you have over a couple hundred thousand miles. "Subarule" did not state how many miles the car had. The best thing is to have another Subaru GL stick shift owner, take a look at the car and compare to his or her own car.

In 425,000 miles, I only had two problems with the fusible link area. First problem is the Black link wire that carries the power from the alternator, gets hard and broke inside the box. The engine suddenly and without warning, decided to not start when I was out in the sticks in a foreign country. I figured it out after an hour, and rotated one of the other wires into that slot as an emergency. Second problem, was with the black lead wire coming out of the bottom of the fusible link box, that leads to the battery hot terminal. The engine could barely run when the headlights were on and any other accessory. The black lead wire had become hard for about 2 inches from the battery connector end. I spliced in a new lead wire using a standard butt splice connector and the engine then ran even worse, most likely due to the limited contact surface inside of the standard butt connector. So I then removed about 3/4" of wire cover from each joining wire piece, splayed them out and then interwove those splays but pushing end to end. Then I twisted them in opposite directions and applied electrical tape to secure. A similar third problem, I also discovered that the engine ground wire to body, had similar hardening at both ends next to the connectors. This wire is just in front of the battery. I replaced the entire wire with a much lower mileage ground wire and everything now works as it should, with no reduction in rpm's when headlights and accessories are turned on. I am happy as a clam right now. I should have done this a 100,000 miles ago.

It probably runs rough because vaccuum lines have been broken off of critical components on top of the engine, or the cylinder heads are cracked between the intake and exhaust valves, or the cylinder head bolts are loose, or the timing is off, or corrosion has built up on the distributor cap poles, or there is corrosion of the spark plug wire ends, or the coil is weak, or you are running too many accessories while the headlights are on. The list is endless.

If you are going to take out a distributor and may have to put another one in, line up the flywheel mark on the center of three tick marks on the flywheel. That is where you start when you are replacing timing belts, which may happen. Then do the marking that others mentioned. Or, you just leave 10 minutes early to every place that you go.

You can remove the camtower covers and do some retightening of the cylinder head bolts with a 17mm shorty x 3/8" socket. Nothing is as good as removing the camtowers and retightening the cylinger head bolts. At the radiator cap, if there is an accumulation of disintegrated head gasket material on the bottom side, then you have a head gasket leak. You will probably also have black soot in the overflow bottle if you have leaky head gaskets. If the exhaust blows white, then you either have an intake or exhaust port coolant leak.

You are wasting your money until you narrow down the cause of your current problem. 1. Does the radio work? If not, then battery may be dead or corroded battery terminals. If yes, then move on. 2. Does the motor spin? If not, then starter or black fusible link. If yes, then move on. 3. Does the rotor spin? Take off the distributor cap and see if it spins when you crank the engine. If it does not spin, then you have a broken left side timing belt. If it does spin then either distributor, cap, coil or coil lead wire. 4. Are you getting spark to the plugs? With a timing light, you can see if it lights up when you crank the engine. If no light, then either distributor, coil, distributor cap, or coil lead wire. Change to a different distributor that you know is good. Always carry a spare. If still no spark then change the distributor cap. If still no spark then change the coil lead wire. If still no spark then change the coil. 5. If you have a spark but does not start, then you may have fuel problem. Check for wet plugs. If dry plugs then look at fuel pump. An experienced mechanic will be able to point out a hundred more things that may have inexplicably gone bad. I am just pointing to what I think is the most likely things to go bad.

How do you know if the engine you want to buy, does not have the same or even more problems than the engine you already have. The seller would not be parting out the car if it worked properly. Until you figure out how to fix the TOD, then you are not going to be able to fix the same TOD on the next engine. And you are not going to find that out until you install it. By the time that you need another engine, you will probably have lost interest in keeping your current subaru, unless it's interior and exterior is in tip top condition. Engine interiors will rust unless you store them in a warm dry place. Which takes space. Fix the one that you got first. Oil leaks are normally camshaft cover seals, front camshaft seals, and loose oil pan bolts. TOD can be fixed by reinstalling the camtower properly. Others have different solutions like new mickey mouse gasket on oil pump.

Not the original engine. Not much rust in Oregon, as long as you garage it. Eventually you need rust repair work below windshield. Most everything has been changed out for lesser mileage parts and/or better parts.

86 GL10 4WDTurbo Original owner 425,000 miles

The hot wire to the alternator, tends to get hot, brittle and it breaks near the alternator. You cut out that brittle section and add a pigtail that you can change out every 10,000 miles. Also, the points in the distributor build up corrosion and need to be cleaned every few thousand miles. The capacitor that runs a wire to the coil, can go bad and the engine won't start. The radio usually gets a lot of static, just before the capacitor goes out. The black wire in the fusible links box, gets brittle and loses conductivity. The alternator loses it's punch and cannot run all of the accessories at the same time without causing the engine to run badly. This is also symptomatic of a bad alternator wire.

That is the plug hole for the thermister switch that tells the auxiliary fan when to go on and off. Overheating may be because someone did not install that switch in so that your auxiliary fan never runs, unless it has been hot wired. Overheating is also the symptom of cylinder head bolts getting loose enough for a cylinder head gasket to allow hot combustion air to be pushed into the cooling system.

The car has Oregon plates. They don't use salt on the roads in either Oregon or Washington.

A thing of beauty.

60,000 miles is not uncommon for head gasket life. The black residue is likely the expanding gases pushing past the head gaskets, taking a little bit with them and depositing in the coolant. Loose cylinder head bolts will help cause this. But since the gaskets are now disintegrating, you are likely going to have to replace them since simply tightening the bolts will not stop them from coming apart. As far as the exhaust gasket bolts threads getting stripped, either the mechanic overtightened the nuts or somebody got under your car and cranked on the nuts enough to strip them out the thread inside of the block. This tends to happen when you park outside and have acquired some criminal enemies who have basic understanding of subarus. Coil inserts will fix the problem the first time. Replacement cylinder heads will fix it after that. Then it would be a good time to upgrade to Gen 3 heads. A good fix is those keyed end threaded studs where you can't get enough torque on the stud to strip the cylinder head threads.

The coolant bottle was empty. Meaning the heads are possibly cracked. Other than that, it looks like the exception rather than the rule.

Those two cylinders head cost more that the car that you would install them in.

As you can see in Gloyales world, he is always right and everyone else is always wrong. As I recall, he is one of those lunatics who believes that you don't need to add a little sealant to the oil distribution holes between the camtower and the cylinder head, in order to quiet the engine. Even though I have tried it both ways and concluded that you need the sealant, he claims that I am wrong, in his infinite wisdom. Same with this 4WD, problem. Since his superego does not permit himself to be wrong, he claims that since the particular "thingamajig" that I am referring to and has vacuum hoses plugged into it, "DON'T OFTEN HAVE ISSUES", therefore they could not possibly have gone bad. And yet from my own personal experience of replacing that "thingamajig" that was attached to the transmission with what appeared to be vacuum lines, THAT FIXED THE PROBLEM IMMEDIATELY. I think that I paid no more than about $10 for the used "thingamajig" at the junk yard, and I saved myself a pile of ripoff mechanics fees, from some creative mechanic who can't keep track of his own time.

That would be the engine side. Just follow the tubes from the round disc attached to the transmission.

I experienced that problem. In my case, the indicator would go on an off because the 4wd did not engage. It did not engage because the vacuum pump that run the 4WD switches in the transmission, WERE SHOT. So I replaced the vacuum pump and the problem was solved. To find it, you just follow the lines from the transmission. It sits in front of the driver, next to the firewall.