jonathan909

I'm a total tool queen, so if I can get even a cheapie to add to my permanent reserve (in this case it was a pressure tester from Princess Auto, which is sort of like our Harbor Freight), I'll do it regardless of how seldom I think I'll use it. It's about having as broad a range of tools in the arsenal as possible. Aside from the differences I mentioned above, consider that looking for the leak with the engine stopped and/or cold also means the fans won't be blowing drips, drops, and steam away from the actual source of the problem, and that you may be able to hear a hiss you wouldn't otherwise. An array of diagnostic tools means you're not relying on just one to contain all the necessary magic, as that's rarely the case. A different tool allows a different perspective on the problem.

Noting @azdave's caveat, it may not be the best way to go, but it's another way to go. The (obvious) problem is that there's only so much poking around you can do with a hot/running engine without risk of getting burned, your leg sucked into a spinning belt, etc. Looking while hot gives you the advantage of spotting steam, but a cold pressure test lets you get in closer. First see if it holds pressure. If not, the next questions are why and where.

Do you have a pressure tester?

Man, you're killing me. An old J-head with a motor drive on the table, and I'd be as happy as a baby in a barrel of tits. We don't need no steenkin' CNC. I did nine years (part-time) in a shop in SF where that mill was the centerpiece. I didn't get to use it much myself, and we didn't send anything into space, but the work we did blew minds (very weird story). I loved every minute I spent in front of it and can't wait to find the right one.

Assuming you mean "no coolant on the floor of the garage", how about on the passenger side floor pan i.e. a leaky heater core?

But really great milling machines.

Yes, I actually meant that - and while we're not Winnipeg aka Winterpeg, we do get spells of -40, where C and F converge. That's why we're so pleased with Subi performance overall in that respect - with a not-terrible battery in the car, we can usually start down to -30C without plugging in the block heater. It's not happy about it, but it starts. Trivia: I'm from a town a couple of hours south of here called Pincher Creek - it's just north of the Montana border. This is the sort of thing we get in the winter - record-setting slew rates: https://globalnews.ca/news/4835093/temperature-change-swing-canada-january-10-pincher-creek/

That's helpful. Can you offer a seat-of-the-pants estimate of the mileage on an engine that would begin to qualify it for the heavier oil? Aside from my just being a stingy and sloppy sumbitch who's fine with whatever 5W30 or 10W30 is cheapest on any given day, I'd be concerned about the heavier oil making very cold weather (-30C and below) starting a lot harder. One of the terrific features of these engines is that they're easy to start consistently at low temperatures without plugging in, a far cry from the Detroit iron 8s of my misspent yout.

Thanks for the pointer to BAS and mentioning the tooling. PO had replaced the battery terminal on our Forester with the usual parts-store lead clamp - with the 1/2" nut - and that annoyed the crap out of me until I replaced it with a junkyard harness to restore it to 10mm.

Yup, it's the fat one, straight from the battery to the starter. The other one branches over to the fuse box and powers the rest of the car.

I constantly amaze myself by finding the simplest answers to the problems that seemed so complicated and bewildering.

Based on the description and comments, I'd say "MIL SPEC my @ss" (like Ford trucks and their "military grade aluminum" - humph). But they do look a little chunkier and more robust than the usual. But yeah, most of the above suggestions cover it. There's a very short high-current path between battery and starter and not that many parts to go wrong. If it isn't the battery, it may be the starter (or just the solenoid), or a bad termination/connection between. With a fully-charged new battery, do you see any voltage drop (at the battery) when you attempt cranking? And do you see +12 at the starter's control input (from the starter relay) when you try to crank?

Fwiw, I'm not picky about the oil I use in my '95-'01 cars, but have switched to Wix filters on GD's recommendation.

Isn't that the lake in Scotland with the most distilleries around it?

That doesn't scan. You're putting steel bolts into an aluminum hole. That means that it's the aluminum threads that stripped, and all the tapping in the world isn't going to replace the lost metal. So I assume you mean you put in helicoils.

Not correcting, just offering a data point. That seems awfully fussy to me. I've never had to replace a water pump in an EJ22 or 25, but it needs to be pulled in the course of removing the timing cover on the H6 3.0 . I just used whatever gasket was in the kit; I don't think either was metal, just fiber, and I always give those a coat of gasket goo (it's the only place I use that stuff routinely). The first of those two engines now has at least 5000 fresh km on it with no leaks. Much of that was in hot weather, and this morning we woke up to -30, so it's safe to say that it's getting stressed.

A little OT here, but I should add that I pressed these into service this summer while doing the two H6 HG jobs. In both cases at least a few of the 60+ timing cover bolts (small Allen cap screws) were messed up, and after trying and failing with an assortment of internal extractors, these were the ones that worked.

I'll vigorously second that! I have a set of the Craftsman version (red box). This is the "base set", which is five sizes in a case that holds ten. You get the other five in an "expansion set". I had the base set for years, and they were the only extractors that worked for me really consistently. Just this last summer I snagged the expansion set on ebay.

Please choose between not being able to see because dirt's falling in your eyes or not being able to see because the visor's fogged. Fun^2.

Lemme read you a list of my least favourite places to work, starting with "under dashboards".

I had one instance of severe corrosion in the connector behind the driver's kick panel in the '02 Forester. What made that particularly miserable to deal with was that it - as a US-market car (rather than Canadian) - it used a different connector housing than anything I could find up here. I've run into that "different connector between the US and Canada" thing a few times, and it's a real PITA.

Not enough info to speculate. It may have been the pump that was acting up - intermittent, a dead spot in the motor, etc. Behaviour like this is always difficult to debug (and unnerving for the drivers). If it were me, I'd install the new pump and see how it behaves. If it does the same thing again, it probably wasn't the pump.

We don't get those kind of cold+damp conditions here often (it's generally too dry), but I've occasionally had the problem with condensation and consistently solved it with a fresh coat. Also, do take the time to thoroughly clean wherever arcing has been noted, because it'll usually create carbon tracks that reinforce the problem.

Have you done your due diligence with dielectric grease?

No experience with US retailers; only observation is that they're one of the few things I don't buy from Rock because shipping that weight wipes out the price saving vs. local parts store (e.g. Auto Value). I do have consistently good luck with junkyard rotors, though.