jonathan909

We have two pick-n-pull yards here, and why you'd want to do all that expensive and high-hassle messing with that head - rather than just returning it to them for an exchange - is beyond me. Take it back and get one without the trashed journals.

One can always improvise, but I made a point of mentioning it because the hardware is a bit specific. IIrc, they use big carriage bolts so they'll seat into the slots in the frame from the inside, then you spin the nut on from below. So the square/locking portion of the carriage bolt head has to be the right size. Also, there are little clamping plates that are used to bolt up to the tiedown loops on the frame. I'm assuming from the price (3x what my local self-serve yard charges, as the $30 I quoted is canuck bucks) and your question that you're dealing with a full-service yard, otherwise you could just be sure to get the hardware yourself. If that's the case, they're charging a very hefty premium to yank four bolts, so tell them you're expecting to get ALL the hardware.

What, holes drilled in the frame? If we're talking about one of the aftermarket hitches I mentioned (Curt, Hidden Hitch) or similar, nonsense. The necessary holes are already there; they have plastic plugs in them that just have to be popped out and the attachment bolts fished in. [edit] Oh - and make sure you get all the hardware, including the bolts that have to be fished back out of the frame. Getting them is a little fiddly, but not hard.

As @idosubaru indicated, the Legacy/OBW hitch and Forester hitch are completely different - different frames. I've had excellent luck at the self-serve yards here, and (surprisingly) the big bolts used to attach the hitches have never been frozen/seized/rusted in place (though we don't have salt air...). Always been able to pull them with nothing more than a 1/2" ratchet/breaker bar and flat wrenches, and they set me back about $30. The only annoying part of the job is getting the charcoal box out of the way.

These aftermarkets are about as light as they get - I don't do any heavy towing either - sailboats that are usually no more than 500 lb. total weight. No such thing as a bumper hitch here - there's simply no load bearing structure in there to attach to.

Never used a U-Haul hitch, but I've done lots of Curt and Hidden Hitch on late 90s-early 00s Legacy Wagons, Outbacks, and Foresters and never needed power tools for any part of it. The only tricky bit is fishing the bolt into the frame with the fish-tape-wire-thingy (that's a technical term). I've gotten all my hitches from the boneyard and then gotten the thingies from local hitch shops for nothing.

I'd put yet another junkbox regulator on to see what I got, and it's behaving much like the original one, though the idle has improved. With the return line disconnected and dumping to bucket, there's good flow and 36psi on the rail, which didn't change when I reconnected to the return line to the tank (making a restriction there unlikely to be the problem). So I'm sensing that maybe the problem here is marginal, perhaps from a slightly low manifold vacuum. If the book's calling for 30-34 psi, and I'm seeing 36 (via an admittedly cheap and uncalibrated gauge), would the takeaway be that once one gets much over 36 the ECU can't shorten the injection time enough and it starts to run too rich?

Ah, okay... so the regulated pressure is simply the difference between the unregulated and manifold vacuum. Easiest way to check, I'd guess, is to pull off the return hose and direct it into a bucket. If that's the problem, can I just blow out the return line, or will something at the tank interfere or be damaged?

Hmm... I'm not sure I'm learning anything here. I tried swapping in a fuel pressure regulator from the junkpile - the same style as the one in the car. The result was that the rail pressure actually went up - consistently over 40psi now, though more stable - but it didn't seem to alter the misbehaviour. As soon as the engine warms up and switches out of cold idle, it runs rough. One interpretation of this could be that the problem is that the pressure is still too high, but I'm skeptical about that, since I've never had a regulator problem before. Am I on the right track?

Well, there's also that counterfeit FTDI business. Did the cable come from the guy who supplied the software? If not, you might have a cable that has a counterfeit chip in it - the part that handles the USB-to-serial interface. If this is the case, the software may not communicate with it properly.

I'm finally returning to this problem - I've been able to ignore it all summer, but now I have to run it to ground, as this is one of our winter drivers. Basically, it's running badly at low revs and low load, as described previously. Too lean is easy - almost always a vacuum leak. But too rich is a new one for me. I took a look at live data using one of the freebie android apps and the only thing that looked out of line was the TPS, so I adjusted it. Other than that, obvious stuff like the ambient and manifold air temp readings looked sane, but beyond that I don't have a baseline understanding of what "in whack" (vs. "out of whack") looks like. So I'm going through the whole air/fuel path to try to figure out what might cause it. I replaced the air filter. This thing has no MAF, so nothing to do there. Never messed with Sea Foam, so at the suggestion of the parts store guy I blew a can of their "Top Engine Cleaner & Lube" through it. My expectations were low and I wasn't disappointed. No change so far. Injector rail pressure looks a little high compared to the values given in Haynes, though: They call for 30-34psi at idle, and I'm seeing more like 38. When I rev it, the pressure jumps to 42-43, falls back to 36, then returns to 38-40 - and it appears that the higher the pressure moves within that range, the crappier (lower) the idle sounds. Does this sound out of range enough for the regulator to be the problem, or should I keep looking? Manifold vacuum looks good at 19" Hg - until the rail pressure goes up and the revs drop and it starts running rough - but I get that there's a chicken+egg element here, as the regulator needs vacuum. If not the regulator, about the next thing I'll be looking at is injectors and the O2 sensor (which isn't throwing any errors, but could still conceivably be misbehaving i.e. out of range). Any thoughts?

Don't know this software or cable, but "offline test mode" suggests just that - that it's offline (i.e. not connecting/connected to the ECU) and is running in test mode based on some internally-generated or -stored data that (obviously) has no relation to the true system readings you're looking for. I have no idea why they'd include this or what it's meant to "test".

Kinda figgered it might be something like that.

E14 external Torx? Unless it's unusually skinny, not all that special - I've got a (Snap-on) set of those things. I think the excuse for buying them was a Grand Cherokee hatchback gas shock or something similarly stupid.

I see... it's a ring thing, and the (relevant) difference between the EJ and FB is that with the latter you can actually get at all the rod bolts through the block, so the rods come out with the pistons (rather than unpinning the pistons from the rods). This would seem to be a tractable problem for someone who's ever successfully torqued a rod cap in place. So is there some magic here that I'm missing?

Now I'm just curious: What's the difference between these FB blocks and the EJs that makes it such a can of worms? And what's the actual source of the problem? Rings?

We drive beaters - nothing less than 20 years old. Newest vehicle I own is an '08 Nissan Titan, and it's a POS. I hate new cars. So the reason I'm asking is that I just met a neighbor who has one of these nightmare oil-burning 2013s. I gather this really is a thing, complete with the class-action suit. Owing to circumstances, though, I don't think whatever relief might be available under the suit applies to him. So I'm asking as a wrench-puller: How do you fix it?

Sure, the >50K check will tell you at a glance whether it (or the cable) has suffered a catastrophic failure i.e. short, but that's about all. The problem is that it can also mean that the device/wiring has opened up, so it remains a pretty much meaningless test. Looking back at your original posting, though, I realize that it could have been read as "zero K" or "okay".

I don't have an answer to your question, but would like to point out that taking a resistance measurement of ("ohming out") the knock sensor will give you a meaningless reading. You cannot test it this way, because it's a piezoelectric transducer. It's like your BBQ lighter - a crystal that, when physically shocked, generates a voltage. You might as well check the temperature of your oven with a bathroom scale.

Simplest problem on earth - a scratchy pot. You're going to have to take it out and pop the lid, then spray some electronic contact cleaner/lubricant into that volume control. There's usually a little hole in it to spray into. Should sort you right out.

I haven't really done any stereo swapping (other than just trying to make sure each of my cars has a factory AM/FM/CD) and don't care about subs, so I can't help on that front - I don't even know what the P117 and P121 models are. But as far as the (Alpine) security system goes, you can just unplug that module and the keyless entry will still work (when you get a fob), as it's a separate module. So that will at least remove the security system misbehaving as a variable.

Sure - in that case (just to up the tongue weight) what you're trying to do isn't at all unreasonable.

Without actually looking at the numbers, my suspicion would be that that platform wouldn't have the vehicle weight, suspension, or power to support that extra load, making it unlikely that anyone would have built a hitch for it. What's your problem with the class 2? Just the receiver size, or the capacity? Because we've gone on many family (of four) trips with our '99 OBW with a full load of camping+sailing gear, and towing a boat (less than a 1000 lbs.), and there is no power to spare. It's fantasy to think that it'll work with ten times that towing load.

Then find that the ones who have it either won't ship north of the border, or will do so for two or three times the cost of the part. This is why I have a Montana mailbox.

1. Time. As in, we'd like to solve this problem today. 2. The price you see in USD does not necessarily approximate what we wind up paying, all in, when it's headed for Greater Soviet Canuckistan. The amazon link you provided doesn't even display a price. https://www.amazon.ca/Zhixiang-13021AA141-Crankshaft-Sprocket-2000-2015/dp/B091HX1TLZ/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Subaru+13021AA141&qid=1629850460&sr=8-2 (In case my link won't show you the price, it's almost $100 for a Chinese knockoff.)