gbhrps

Search the archives here for threads on RedLine MT 90 transmission fluid helping just the problem that you are experiencing.

I have several cars for which I follow individual internet forums for each. The forum for my Nissan 300ZX (TwinTurbo.net) has literally hundreds of recommendations for Redline MT 90 used in the 5 speed transmissions. Owners having troubles with grinding gears upshifting and downshifting in the upper gears, have raved about how their problems, for the most part, disappeared. Most were amazed. I haven't had the need to putany in my car as yet. I don't recall if the same product was used in the rearend. My 1954 MG TF forum again has many people giving good claims for its use in the transmission. I put some in mine last week, but have not put enough miles on the car to give an opinion as of yet. I was hoping it would help cure a bad synchro on the 4th to 3rd downshift. It hasn't as of yet. The same forum warns not to use it in the rear end of the MG. My own Sub is an automatic ,so no help there. My recommendation would be that it certainly is a good choice for your tranny, but I would do more research before I put it in your rear end.

I put an OEM deflector on my 02 OBW, not so much for taking out the bugs as much as for taking out the stone chips on the hood leading edge. Yes it does deflect some of the bugs...but not all. It does deflect the stones. It was well engineered and fit perfectly with no drilling using the already installed fasteners. Looks good and sets off the front of car, in my view. Now, if there was some way to do the same thing for the bumper, the mirrors and the A pillars??? I know......don't drive the car!

I may well get ganged up on for my views on this, but here goes. Why spend very good money, and from the numbers that were quoted here, very BIG money for an extended warranty that you may never use? I've owned a pile of vehicles , new and used, over 34 years and have never bought an extended warranty for any of them. In that same time period, I've never had a major repair, such as a motor or tranny replacement, on any of them either. Maybe I was just lucky, but then again I'm very fanatical about oil changes, tire pressures and routine maintenance being done on time, and never abusing my rides. Perhaps the largest expense in all of that time was the replacement of a torque converter in my wife's Toyota Cressida (229 000 km at the time) at somewhere around $600 Canadian in 1995 dollars. It seems a far better idea to me to check out what that extended warranty costs at purchase time, and bank the money in a separate bank account until its needed for major repairs. If you need it for major repairs outside of the regular warranty period, then use it. If you don't need it, so much the better. Use the money or save it for the next car purchase. Another point...what happens to your extended warranty money if some fool runs a red light 2 weeks after you purchase the car and they total it on you? No thanks! I'll take my chances without the extended warranty programs, particularly when you hear so many horror stories about car companies not honouring them using their own interpretation of the fault of the repair. If the extended warranty gives you peace of mind, go for it. I'll pass.

The front clip and hood are aligned on any car as follows...The doors are fitted to the body to ensure an even door gap at top, bottom and at the rear. The front fenders are then fitted to gap properly with the front of the doors, and loosely with the gaps of the hood and front bumper cover. It can take quite a bit of fiddling and shimming to get everything correctly fitting, before bolts are all tightened down. Your best bet is to find a good body shop and have them align everything for you, because they are used to doing it and can analyze where shims are needed, how many, and do it in very short order. If you try it on your own, you could spend a whole day and get nowhere, or even damage an edge of a fender or the hood. I'd pay to have the professionals do it. As far as shocks behing the bumper cover...I'm not sure. Maybe some else has the answer to that one. The best of luck!

There is a separate seal that goes around the 2 spark plug holes on each valve cover. Yours have obviously aged and are leaking. I had a similar problem with one plug on my 97 OBW a few years back, but not to the same extent that yours is. I chose not to do anything about mine, since I was 9 months away from replacing the car. In your case you may want to have them replace the seals. It won't cause any real problems other than make a slight mess, or gather sand and dirt in the spark plug hole that could work its way into the clyinder when you change spark plugs next. Would I make the dealer change it now? Probably not, but I would make him aware of the problem, and get it in writing that they will replace the seals when my next major service (timing belt replacement, for instance) arrives. Its your call. Good luck!

Don't know your year or model you have, but I'd be looking for a used seat belt from a Junk Yard before I paid the dealer for a new one. Check around and you might even find one that's the correct colour. Be sure to buy both ends of the belt assembly to be sure that they will lock together, on the off chance that the used belt you buy won't fit your anchor clasp on the right side of your seat.

On my old 98 OBW I had to use a pair of pliers to squeeze together the nylon bushing/lock that kept the actuator rod in place. The rod had a detent just after it goes through the metal finger, that the nylon bushing clicked into. Squeezing the nylon bushing/lock forces the nylon lock into the detent further, giving enough clearance for you to wiggle the rod and the bushing out of the metal finger it is attached to. Whenyou want to reinstall it, you just push the nylon bushing back onto the rod and push the entire unit through the hole in the metal finger. Hope this all makes sense.

Commercially there is a power bleeder/flush unit that garages use to replace the entire fluid in a system every 3 years or so, depending on manufacturer's recommendations. It is not an expensive procedure to have a dealer do for you at a regular service. It can be a do it yourselfer if you have the time, and a friend to help, or a bleeder tool that eliminates needing the friend to open and close the bleeder nipple for you, while you pump the brake pedal slowly up and down. You first remove most of the fluid from your master cylinder with a turkey baster or like tool, and fill it with fresh fluid. From there you bleed each wheel until fresh fluid and no air bubbles appears at the wheel, checking frequently to top the fluid reservoir in the master cylinder, as it's level drops. Usually you start with the wheel farthest from the master cylinder and do each in turn until you finish at the closest. Having no access to a Subaru manual, I can't say for certain if there are bleed screws to do the same thing to on the ABS actuator/pump of your car, but I've not seen them on my 02. My Nissan 300ZX has to be bled at 2 bleed screws on the ABS actuator/pump. My wife's Lexus does not. Go figure. Anyway, its an easy, if time consuming procedure, if you have the confidence in your abilities to be messing with your brakes in the first place. It certainly isn't rocket science. If in doubt,though, leave it to the professionals.

Add work gloves, jumper cables, a tow strap, a tire guage, spare fuses, a spare tail light bulb, a spare headlight bulb (if your beast uses them instead of a sealed beam unit), a small first aid kit, and a cell phone, even if you buy a cheapie and use a phone card with it.

For those of you who may have a seat belt retractor that doesn't do its job like it used to, and sometimes doesn't retract the belt fully, only to have it get slammed into the door jam when you shut the door, this one is for you. (Whew...I finally got to take a breath.) Now , I'm not referring to the power seat belts that are motorized in a track along the top of the door, but the standard seat belts that simply roll up into a slot in the B pillar. My wife's Lexus developed this problem slowly over the last couple of years, and I discovered the fix on the Lexus ES 300 Forum. The top anchor loop of the seat belt on the B pillar, right opposite your ear when you are sitting in the seat, will fill up with grunge/dirt over years of use. Where the seat belt rubs on the anchor loop the built up dirt will add so much friction that the belt will no longer slip easily when retracting. If you lift the belt up above the anchor loop and scrape the dirt off with a thin bladed screw driver or dull knife, being sure to do both sides of the loop, you'll be amazed at how well your seat belt retracts afterwards. I did my wife's car last night, and I couldn't believe how something so simple could make such a difference.

You don't say whether you're talking about a standard or an automatic transmission, year of the car, or how many miles are on it. I'll assume its a standard tranny and pass on the following, even though I've never had a reason to use the product myself. I follow the TwinTurbo.net Forum for the 1990 - 96 Nissan 300ZX, since one sits in my garage along with several other toys. From time to time someone will ask how to fix a hard shifting or grinding 5 speed tranny, and everytime 8 or 10 people hop onto the thread to sing the praises of RedLine MT90 that they've added to their transmissions to fix, or dramatically reduce the problems with hard shifting or grinding noises. There must be something to it from the sheer number of responses that I've seen over the last several years. You have nothing to lose but the cost of the fluid and your time to put it in. It is not available everywhere, but usually is found in auto performance suppliers, according to what I recall from the forum. Hope this is of some help. By the way, if you choose to try it, will you get back to this thread and let us know how you made out?

This one takes patience. You need to get someone into the trunk with a light. I don't know if your rear seats fold down or not, or if you can remove them from the car and still have access to the trunk, but that's where to start. Then you need someone outside the car to run a garden hose over the rear of the car, starting down low. Start with the tail lights and run the water over just one side for a few minutes while the person inside trains a light on it to watch for the leak. Then do the other tail light, then down low on the trunk seal, then higher up both sides, one at a time, the the rear glass down low then up one side, then the other, then the top of the glass, then down low on the rear quarter glass and up one side, then across the top, and so on. You must take your time and be systematic in order to give the water time to find its way in to where it can be spotted. I'd almost bet its not coming in through the bottom or the wheel wells. I'd put my money on the tail light seals or the glass. Good luck!

I've not had any experience with 5 speed Subaru's (autoboxes here), but previous Toyotas and Nissans I've had have a switch looking much the same shape as a smallish sparkplug socket. It sticks out of the side of the transmission and has only one wire coming from it. It shouldn't be too hard to spot from under the car, and I suspect like others I've replaced, it simply unscrews from the case. Check yours to see if its just loose before you get a new one. Maybe someone else with more direct experience can offer more help. Good Luck!

You are biting off a big chew here. I suspect that there will be no wiring harnesses to any of the 5 doors. There will be no door lock selenoids, or relays. As far as the power windows are concerned, ditto all of the above, plus switches in each door and some sort of cover over the holes left in the door panels from the removed window cranks. As well, there is a spring inside the power window assembly that must be freezed up, usually with a nut and bolt, while the unit is being installed , and removed immediately afterwards, and all of this must be done...after the glass is removed from the door in most cases. I'm a backyard mechanic who has been in the backyard a while, and the thought of this one scares even me. This is not a weekend do it yourselfer unless you have lots of time and patience.

That's a terrific way to turn off the daylight running lights, with the added benefit of using the emergency brake, in order to keep it from seizing up from lack of use. Use it or lose it.

Calipers start to stick because they are corroded on the inside with rust that prevents the piston from moving freely or not at all. Brake fluid absorbs water from the air and inside the brake system it corrodes the calipers and brake lines. The solution is to flush and replace the brake fluid every 3 years. So, if one is sticking, they are all not too far from the same state. It is your decision to make, some would only replace the one, others replace them all. I do my own brake work and I'd pop the pistons out of each caliper and clean the pistons and the bores, and if they cleaned up well with no scoring or leaking seals, I'd not replace any of them. If one or two were scored or corroded past what I felt was marginal for safety, I'd error on the side of safety and replace it without hesitation. As far as ceramic pads are concerned, were you unhappy with the performance or the OEM pads that the car came with? If not, why use something else? If you feel you need more whoa, then try them. Some of these high performance pads squeal, make far more brake dust, and wear down rotors faster. I'd get some more feedback before I changed them over.

Its disappointing, been there, had that. My 97 OBW LTD had a similar problem on the leading edge of the hood, lowest section next to the driver's headlight. In fact the rust bubble, about half a pea size, was just starting to peek its ugly head when I noticed it for the first time. I raised the hood and, with a pump oil can, I flooded the inside seam with motor oil to stop further damage. Up until I sold the car 2 years ago, I reflooded the area every other month with oil, and the rust spot never grew any larger, or broke through.

Back a few years ago my wife's Toyota Cressida did much the same thing. The solution was a new sunroof computer, not cheap as I recall. Before you go that route, I would suspect that you might have a bad switch. If you can pop the switch out from its bezel and disconnect it, I would see if you couldn't spray in some electrical contact cleaner into it and cycle the switch several times to clean its contacts. Give it a few minutes for the cleaner to evaporate before reinstalling it and seeing if that will do the trick. Good Luck.

Do a search for wind noise. You'll find several threads, and one where I found the answer to my problem on my 02 OBW.

The back plug on the driver's side is a *itch to get out for sure, but I found a way that worked well indeed. I have a set of needle nosed pliers that are bent at a 45 degree angle. I closed the pliers, with the tips pointed away from the engine, around the plug rubber gaiter (not the wire!) and using 2 hands on the pliers was able to get it off quite easily. It worked for me.

My 02 OBW LTD drove me crazy for the first 6 months with the wind noise that I could track down to the driver's window. Pushing out on the window seal where the tweeter attaches stopped the noise as long as I held my fingers on it. So I pulled the tweeter off, it just pulls straight out being careful of the very thin and short wiring to it. I then pushed/squeezed the seal with my hands to close up the opening that the glass slides into when fully closed. You'll feel that there is a steel centre to the seal that needs to be pushed towards the outside of the car a very small amount, in order to have the seal press more firmly against the glass. Push the tweeter back in and all done. It worked for me, cost nothing, frustration zero!

Not on a Subaru but years ago I had a vehicle that did much the same thing. What it boiled down to was a cruise control cable to the throttle body that has too much slack in it. Adjusting it to remove most but not all of the slack turned the beast into a dream. Now I had to take several attempts to get it just right (with a test drive in between) because when I took all of the slack out of it, the darn thing wouldn't even set. I suggest that you try something similar IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH DOING IT YOURSELF. If not, let the dealer straighten out the problem. It can't be all that expensive to correct. HINT: I always keep my foot on the gas to stablize the transition to cruise when I set it. You will actually feel the accelerator pedal pull away from your foot (my wife's Lexus, my 300ZX and my 02 OBW LTD all do the same thing). And just before I turn the cruise off, I put my foot back onto the pedal to take up the slack so that the transition is not jerky in any way. It may be anal retentive but the driving experience is much improved.

59 000 km on my 02 OBW LTD and both heads are leaking coolant, one side a little worse than the other. The problem started last week on the COLDEST day recorded this winter. Car goes in for head gasket replacement on this coming Monday. Dealership quotes a day and a half to do the job and I'm getting the owner's Forester XT as a loaner in the meantime, as I live 70 miles from the dealership. (I promised not to put myself on a first name basis with every cop in town while I had it.)

So mast is toast and whip is broken. No big deal. Pull the unit out of the car, buy a new mast as suggested, open the gear box on the side of the motor (one nut) remove broken whip pieces, put gear box back together, and install new mast/whip assembly as already suggested and pop the whole thing back into the car. Total cost, some frustration, some learning curve, $30 or so, and some time = satisfaction of fixing it yourself, the car remains stock, and antenna fixed.