jonathan909

I empathize - I'm way out in the country too, but with the advantages of a ridiculous stockpile of stuff to work with and (usually) an extra car to get about in for things like this. If you're CAREFUL, you can run a quick test (that's all you need right now) with that alligator clip on the lower pin (as shown in your photo) and just a piece of wire for the upper. If the wire is something like AWG 16 or heavier, cut the end flush. The insulation will give you reasonable protection from shorting against the clip, but the exposed end will still make contact with the pin. Remember, you only have to make contact for a few seconds so you can hear the pump run (or not), so you don't have to be elaborate about this. As for anything under the dash, yeah, that's how it is. I'm sure it appears in one of Dante's circles of hell.

I have the wagon too, and I still wouldn't chase wires. There's no way you're going to jam two alligator clips of that size in there without shorting them together, so you should definitely snag a couple of the small quick-disconnect crimp connectors. (Photo credit: My daughter Becky)

Sorry, I can't help on the rumoured-wire front - I'd just find a way to connect to those (male) pins. If you can lay your hands on some small (e.g. 1/8") female "quick disconnect" crimp lugs, they may push onto the pump pins. Otherwise, I'd disconnect those three hoses and pull the cover (it's only eight nuts, so you'll have it off in a minute) and lift out the whole fuel pump and sending unit assembly. Then it'll be easier to test "on the bench". Personally, I'd rather do that than start pulling seats and chasing wires.

Looks like the original nut was a predictable 17mm, while the replacements are an annoying 21mm. Also appears I'll use this as an excuse to buy a pass-through socket set. (For the canucks in the audience, Princess Auto has a decent-looking Channellock set on now for $50 that goes up to 22mm.)

The pass-through socket is definitely the way to go - I just did a set of four in August. IIrc, the nut sizes varied between those that were on the car (presumably factory) and the aftermarket replacements I got from Rock. I think I still have the old ones in the scrap bin and can check a little later.

Stands to reason that it'd be carbon, but maybe in some weird annealed state. Not being a carbon chemist, I really can't speculate further, but I remain curious.

No - the valves don't have to come out to pull the shims, but I removed/reinstalled the one I had to grind the stem on. I suppose one could grind it in situ, but I don't think I'd try that myself (for the obvious reasons). But lacking Subaru's (expensive) fancy-shmancy tool, the cam has to come out for each shim change - or at least be loosened off to get the clearance to slide the shim out. Shim grinding strikes me as counterintuitive. Much more material to be removed than just grinding the valve stem, and unless you've got precision machine tools, impossible to grind true.

New question: My exhaust valves (and for some reason, it's a lot worse on one head than the other) have a thick white deposit on their faces that's really hard - the wire wheel barely touched it, and I had to take most of it off using one of those little sintered Dremel burrs. What is it, and why is it there?

Be looking forward to a progress report. Also, please note my edits in paragraph 2 that aren't in your reply.

Okay, go to p.44 of the PDF, titled "13. ENGINE ELECTRICAL SYSTEM LHD model" (it says p.51 at the bottom of the page). There's your fuel pump on the left side of the drawing. Print this page - people who try to debug stuff like this on their phones drive me nuts. As you can see, the connector at the tank is R58. Look at the bottom of the page and they describe it. Pins 1 and 4 are the ones you're interested in, and the drawing says that the positive side (which goes to the relay) is LY (Blue + Yellow) and negative (ground) is B for Black, respectively. Don't ask me why they chose L for Blue; I think it's stupid too. Confirm that those are the wires that correspond to the correct pins. Unplug the connector. Connect pin 1 to the positive (+) side of your battery and pin 4 to the negative (-), and you should hear your pump run. There may be a little spark when you connect it up; as long as the pump is running, don't worry about that. But if you get a spark and the pump doesn't run, the motor may be seized/shorted and you'll start burning wiring if you leave it connected, so unhook it without delay. Be careful. If you short the wires together - even with a battery you don't think is very good - you're going to get some or all of: sparks, heat, melted insulation, burnt fingers, and damaged connector pins that will add to your repair job. I do electronic stuff, so I've got lots of little grabby clippy things around; if I didn't, I'd go to the junkyard and snip off one of those connectors with as much wire as I could manage to give me a "pigtail" connector to do these tests with. How you do it is up to you based on what you have around, how much of a hurry you're in, how close the nearest wrecker is, etc. Follow all that?

Did you get the wiring diagram PDF I linked to in my previous post? Fwiw, my '95 rustbucket has 450K km on it - it got a new motor+gearbox a couple of years ago, but no problems to date in the fuel delivery department.

Don't worry, you're not going to need any electrical theory - or a mechanic. But you will need the diagram, because that's where you're going to see which pins on the fuel tank connector you have to connect power to. Assuming it's like the later ones I'm familiar with (I've never had to mess with the fuel assembly in my '95), there's a single connector that supplies power to the pump and sends the fuel level information back to the dash gauge, and you can mess things up if you power the wrong pins. Next, what is your power supply? Are you just running wires back from the battery, or do you have something else that can provide 12V at the back of the car for this test? [Edit] Here - go get this: http://jdmfsm.info/Auto/Japan/Subaru/Legacy_Outback/1995/1995 Legacy Wiring Diagrams.pdf and I'll walk you through it.

Well, there comes a point at which you either accept enough "jargon" (the actual word is "terminology") to get the job done, or you don't. If the words "connector", "pin", "wire", and "positive" are too intimidating, get a friend who can handle it to help you out. You have a choice of locations where you can feed power to the fuel pump. The best one for testing just the fuel pump is the connector beneath that cover you removed. IIrc, the fuel pump relay is in a nasty spot under the dash where it's a hassle to do this sort of thing (I have a '95 Legacy as well, so I can look if necessary). But first, do you have the correct (meaning the exact model and year) wiring diagram for your car? You're going to need that, and this is a good time to learn to read one.

I can measure the clearance and the shim, but have no way of measuring how much I grind off the stem. I just did that with one of the exhaust valves I replaced, and it went okay, though it was an even more tedious process. I had to take the valve out a couple of times to take more off - then still go through the shim hassle.

Grrrrr.... The EZ include the H6s, right? That's actually what I want to get, and I thought I'd be getting back to the land of adjustable rockers. So my choice is a later SOHC EJ25 or the DOHC EZ30. Bummer.

Sure, but isn't this the only Subaru engine with nonadjustable lifters thanks to the DOHC? Aren't all the others like the EJ251 - SOHC w/ adjustable rockers?

Well, I think I have one head in the right neighborhood, but I know one thing for damn sure: I want to sell this car and never own another D engine. Adjusting clearance with these bucket/shim lifters is a fate nobody should have to suffer.

I get what you mean about there not quite being room to get an offset wrench into there. In the event you don't have an impact driver, another option is a "pass through" socket/ratchet that lets you run the allen key down through it, but they're kinda rare. Still, though, I'm with everyone else here in that I can't see a valid reason for removing that nut while the strut is in the car, and that makes it unnecessarily dangerous.

I don't mind a little extra noise. So you're saying spec +0/-2 on both - that'll certainly help it breathe better. But how much over spec on the clearance can one get away with before it starts to suffer? I'm just trying to get a sense of how nervous I have to be about grinding the stems.

That looks sweet. Still suffers from the sucker problem, but if you say it's the best way to go, it'll get added to my wish list. Trying to get the clearances right on this thing - especially with a very limited set of spare shims - really is a PITA. I'm taking a stab at grinding the stems, and controlling how much I take off doesn't seem to be too bad. But the constant dis/re-assembly with each adjust/measure iteration is something else. I'm working to the .008 intake, .010 exhaust spec, but what it doesn't tell me is what the tolerance is. What say you?

We briefly had some transient vibration problems with our '98 Legacy - turned out we were losing a CV joint. But it didn't smell like it at first, so I was digging around a little in discussions that may apply to your newer ride. I didn't get far into it, but the upshot seemed to be that Subaru didn't get the damping right the first time around, so there's a field upgrade that includes adding a weight to the column. I'm sure there are those here who are familiar with it - perhaps there was a recall notice.

No - too hard to find. Probably have better luck using Faraday cages to make Forester grilles.

Ummm... sorry about that. If you think that got OT, you should join my pals and me for coffee tomorrow morning! Short version: A Faraday cage is why I could stand inside a ball made from rings of stainless tubing and radiating a couple of million volts of RF energy without getting zorched - what's outside doesn't get inside. Pretty cool, huh? Now, back to our regular scheduled programming...

1. I don't have any direct experience with that sort of design, but I expect with an excess of specialized circuitry meant to absorb/dissipate the pulse energy, and/or circuits that slam the door shut (i.e. isolate the antenna from the input stage) for the duration of the pulse - really fast stuff. Also, there's that whole 1/r^3 thing that helps out a lot at altitude. And on the ground, well, EMP is about their last concern. 2. Surprisingly, they're probably rather more immune than you might think, since high-power RF transmitter output stages are still to a large extent the province of vacuum tubes. Of course, just because the transmitter still works doesn't mean you're going to hear anything, because it's the most rugged component in the signal chain. The STL (Studio-Transmitter Link) is usually solid-state microwave, so it probably won't survive. Nor will your radio's input stages. So it's all going to be a scattershot mess of stuff that's working and not.

Sure... I'm pretty familiar with Faraday cages. The photo below is me inside the discharge electrode (that sphere is about 2m in diameter) of a 10m-tall, multi-megavolt Tesla coil, taking measurements. The coil now lives in New Zealand. But you're a little off wrt the EMP stuff. First, the IC package size isn't actually much of a factor; if anything, a larger package (with a bigger lead frame and longer interconnects) provides a greater length conductor for the pulse to induce a current in, which is worse than a smaller one. But the issue is less the interconnect and packaging than it is the size of the junction on the die. The smaller it is, the less voltage is needed to destroy it, CMOS traditionally being the most susceptible because you just have to punch a hole in the oxide - or, for that matter, induce latchup (and then the heat from the short-circuit will burn it out for you). But I was talking about a radio, which you can't put in a Faraday cage - at least, not if you want to listen to anything - because the input signal has gotta get in, and that antenna is gonna carry the pulse directly to your high-gain front end. And if it's a semiconductor junction - even a normal bipolar one - BOINK!