jonathan909

Damn straight, bubba.

1. Kids these days. Why, when I was a boy... I wasn't "a great kid". I was kind of an @sshole. My dad gave me a '64 Rambler Classic (287ci) that had a very funny story attached to it that I won't get into here. But it was safe because I was wrapped in so much Detroit iron that I could have spent a day on the demo derby track and the paint would barely have been scratched. It's long gone, but I'm (gradually) restoring another one now and plan to put an (AMC) 327 in. My ultimate goal is to find an old tube car radio for it. If I can, it'll get the vanity plate "EMP HARD". 2. When my girls turned 16 (just under four years ago), the plan was to give them the '99 Forester that a friend had given me (it had been his dad's and the AT was funky). I replaced the tranny and cleaned it up and it gave us great service for a few years, then a deer wiped it out. We got more insurance money for it than expected, so I got a really nice '02 Forester (blown motor, but all mod cons) for $500 from a country junkyard. Put in a new motor, got everything cleaned up and dialed in, and then a deer wiped it out - just prior to their birthday. So with the insurance money we got another Forester ('01) for about $500, and other than it getting a little banged up when a moose ran them off the road on the way to school (them, not the moose, and it sounds funny, but that's actually very serious sh!t), they're still driving it (though it's seen a HG job, and later a full engine rebuild (spun rod bearing)). They're also on their second ragtop Mustang, but I won't get into that other than to say we jam econo. 3. A few years ago I drove by a used car dealer that had one of those portable fluorescent-moveable-letters signs out by the road. It said "30 CARS UNDER $15,000!" I did the mental math and thought, "yeah, that's about right." The moral of this story is: I'm really fsck'ing long-winded. No, not that, the other moral: New drivers, regardless of how "good" they are, need cheap cars that'll take a beating and keep them as safe as possible. 4WD good. $13K USD bad. Turbo bad - I don't have (and haven't had) one, but I'm surrounded by horror stories. I'm with you - I think he should start out with something more modest... and learn to pull a wrench so that if he wants to "graduate" into something sportier later it won't be a money pit.

Nothing obvious, and it had OEM HGs, so I suspect this is the first time it was pulled apart. I would tend toward GD's suggestion that they simply loosened the tolerances. If the shims had been juggled it'd be more likely that there'd be a random mix of clearances under and over spec, where what I'm seeing is pretty consistently over.

No - first place I looked. I did find what appears to be a cheaper ($275) version from Japan, though.

Wow - that's a lot of range. I feel much better about things now. Thanks a ton.

I can't honestly answer the question. It's a kit car I got a couple of years ago; bad HGs and a PO who'd started to pull it apart before realizing he was in over his head. So I jammed things back together just enough to get it to move around under its own steam, but as it was a severe coolant leak to the great outdoors, haven't run it more than a few miles. Didn't notice any noise, though. I just don't know what the limits are. Intake spec is 9.5 thou. What can I live with? 12? More? Btw, weird stuff found in the block's coolant passages. In addition to quite a bit of rust, this odd fibrous/powdery residue. I'm guessing it was some sort of panic sealant that didn't.

On an EZ30 ?!?! I've done it with EJ25s, but the timing cover on this thing is special, and it has to come off (front and back), along with all of the timing kit, before the front bearing cap can come off, before the cam can come off.

(nonquoting post deleted/replaced for clarity)

Now I'm a little weirded out. I just measured the other head, and most of the intake valves have excessive clearance (most by a couple of thou, but one by nearly 50%). This doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Other than the (obvious possibility) that the last person who worked on this thing screwed up the clearances, what would cause them to be consistently higher than spec? Lower is easy to understand - wear. But higher? I'm confused. One possibility that struck me is that my feeler gauges are NFG, but they mike out to exactly what they should be.

Not in this case - the gap is a little too great, so I need a thicker shim. I'm doing the other head today, so I'll see what the extent of the problem is.

Is there an affordable (the Subaru tool lists for about $1100) approach to depressing the lifters for shim removal? Otherwise I can't see getting these things in the yard without taking an entire engine - it's just not practical to disassemble the timing cover in order to remove the cams - or even the heads.

Poop. I've got a couple of intakes whose clearance is a little greater than spec. I was hoping for an easy interchange to solve it without adding a lot of time and hassle. There's an EZ30 (still) in the junkyard. That might be my only hope.

Does the early (e.g. '01) H6 use the same shims as the EJ25D?

Living out in the woods, I've never run across one of these things in the wild. Seems like a solution in search of a problem. I mean, how much oil will it actually recover in an engine that still has half-decent compression?

Yeah, I know what I'm doing. Engineer accustomed to working on and around dangerous things, etc. Jig it up so it's not going to be inclined to exit in any direction, and only for the purposes of compressing a couple of inches and seeing if the readings that come back make any sense. In this case absolute accuracy isn't even important, as the measurement will tell me whether I can expect a relative improvement between one spring and the next.

My question as well - the number is meaningless without one from a known-good injector to compare it to. I was thinking about this. If an ECU output driver is blown (i.e. shorted) and turns on the injector full-time, will exceeding the injector coil's duty cycle burn it out? If one doesn't mind sacrificing a junkbox injector, it could be lashed to a 12V supply (or whatever it's supposed to run at), then wait and see.

Interesting, thanks. But I quickly note that the springs for the three models we're actually talking about: '01 OBW, Baja, and Forester (all stock) aren't included! I can't imagine Subaru burying the spring specs in the service manual under a testing procedure, but I suppose it's possible and worth a look. I was actually thinking about gathering some empirical data - putting a spring in the hydraulic press and seeing if I can get any meaningful readings out of it. Easily enough done with the spring from my car and a Forester spring from the junkyard, but I don't think my pal with a Baja is going to want to let me yank one of his out just for fun and games...

Remember, we had this whole conversation over whether the rear coil-over-spring qualifies as a "strut" at all. This OBW has a single bolt through the knuckle. But that shouldn't matter, because the shocks are new and all I want (hope?) to do is replace the springs.

Okay, but now we're going in circles. I originally asked about Forester springs because that's what I recall having been previously discussed. Then someone said "Baja", and now we're going back to the Foresters. From a cost perspective, I'd prefer Foresters because right now there are half a dozen of them in the local P'n'P yards, and as I said above, Bajas would have to be bought new. So is one taller and/or stiffer than the other? Which is preferable from the performance (load) standpoint? The good news (at least for my trailer) is that the tongue weight is spot on - 158 lb., right where it should be.

I'm glad you were able to solve your problem, but what you did can only be described as a "cargo cult" repair. Baking soda does not contain electrical repair magic. It's used to clean BATTERY contacts because batteries contain acid, and the acid creeps out to the post and causes corrosion. There is no acid in an alternator (H4 or H6), and thus no acid to neutralize with an alkali such as sodium bicarbonate. You might as well have cleaned that connector with snot, because it was probably the act of cleaning the toothpaste out of it that restored the contact's functionality. Granted, baking soda toothpaste is probably a little more abrasive than non-baking soda types, so that may have helped, but that still doesn't make it appropriate for this application, any more than it would be for relighting a burned-out headlight. Go get a can of electronic contact/control cleaner/lube. In a pinch even brake cleaner is okay, because the combination of aerosol spray and degreaser will help free up crap from the contacts and not leave residue.

Sure, it's the first in line for fuel, but a tube is a tube and I don't think that's going to make much difference. If the injector in the same position keeps giving you trouble despite trying a bunch of different injectors, I'd be inclined to look at the wiring to that injector.

About the turbo thing: Dealer says same spring for NA and turbo. Or maybe that's why there are two part numbers, but they can't confirm. Why the Forester springs rather than Baja?

Unsurprisingly (since a local full-serve wrecker said there's nothing on the continent) not. Surprisingly, not much by way of listings in their parts chooser pulldown for springs at all.

Yeah, it's a hack. Appropriate? I dunno... $141 USD (the starting price for Subaru applications) is $188 canuck, plus shipping, and I'm sure it'll be more than the dealer just quoted me for the Baja springs - which I'm sure are the better way to do it.

Availability: The dealer tells me that Baja parts are being discontinued fast, but they do have a few pieces of the 20380AE50A spring at a reasonable price - $104 canuck. Curiously, they also have one piece of the 20380AE52A for a little more ($114) but have no indication what the difference is, if any. As far as the wreckers go, the local full-service yard I spoke to says there are no Bajas listed on the entire continent.