jonathan909

Wow. Just... wow. I'm dying to see how long the next one lasts. First data point 300, second 78. Is it a straight line? Is it an asymptotic curve? We need a third data point to fit it!

Lots of Pick'n'Pulls in CA (i.e. 19). Any near you? https://www.picknpull.com/locations

The topic naturally moved from location to basic testing, so we haven't suffered much drift. You're contradicting yourself. You say that you "understand plenty about electricity", but if you don't get Ohm's law (which is all we're talking about here), then you haven't the most basic grasp of the subject. This is not about "little nuances" or my unreasonably lofty expectations. It's the first thing a ten-year-old interested in playing around with batteries and lights learns, so it certainly falls within what one can reasonably be expected to know in order to competently troubleshoot problems of this nature.

This is an important point, because it extends well beyond this case and the (admittedly relatively modest) 80 bucks we're talking about. If you don't know enough about electricity to understand how to put a load resistor in a circuit - and when, and why, and what its rating should be - then you're not going to understand what the Loadpro is doing. And if you don't understand why it's telling you what it is, then you're simply relying on magic to solve your problems for you. And at that point, you're not only demonstrating questionable competence in what you're doing, but showing that you're vulnerable to any slick sales pitch offering to sell you solutions to problems that you just don't understand. This is not a recipe for a well-informed populace. Again, I want to stress that I don't have a problem with this product. $80 isn't an outrageous price to pay for a well-designed, useful tool, though my guess is that you'd get much greater value out of the "Fundamental Electrical Troubleshooting" book that they sell, packaged with the probe, for an additional $35. Hell, I might even find it handy myself... but that's because I understand it and why it's useful, and would not just be buying it out of fear that without it I'm not smart enough to conjure the magic that it contains. I've seen much worse cases. In the electronics biz, there's a very successful line of products named "Tracker" from a company called "Huntron". It's a little benchtop box with a little video screen, a couple of pushbuttons, and a pair of probes that promises to find the faults in your circuits. When they appeared on the market about 45 years ago they offered magic to people who didn't (and don't) understand electronics (well enough). At the time an engineer friend dubbed them a symptom of "the new charlatanism"; I agreed then and still do. But the company has persisted and the product line grown, from the original Tracker at around $1000 to models much more expensive, e.g. $10K-$15K. What is it? A ridiculously oversimplified version of the oscilloscope that any competent technician has on his/her bench - and treats like an extension of their body - with a low-voltage ("filament") transformer added. If you search "diy huntron tracker" (or similar) you'll find out how trivial it is - a five-buck addition to your existing 'scope, assuming you don't already have the transformer in your junk box. Are there cases in which it can be useful? Yeah, a few - many years ago a friend gave me one, because I'm an incurable pack rat I didn't just throw it out, and there have been a couple of unusual cases over the years in which it's helped a bit, if only because I would have had to walk further to get to the shelf where I keep transformers (Hint: Ever use a unijunction transistor? Probably not). But I've had epic arguments with guys who dropped that $10K+ and had convinced themselves that they were now the Exhalted Possessors of the Magic when it was clear that they didn't have a goddamn clue in a carload what they were doing. So I've got no beef with the Loadpro. If someone gave me one I'd probably even use it. But please don't buy one if you don't understand exactly what it's doing, because it really doesn't contain any magic.

Yeah, but it's a lot more expensive than having a few old power resistors lying around - and a clue what the hell you're doing.

Not necessarily. The point is that you have to draw enough current to reveal the kind of faults that this gimmick is designed to spot, and a simple light may not do so.

I know you're a fan of these things, and I'm not saying that it's a bad tool. I'm saying that $80+ is a lot of money to pay for a resistor.

I can't find any confirmation of this. I haven't read through the Clean Air Act (and I'm not even sure that the whole thing is available online), but best I can figure, it depends on the purpose for which it's being sold. If it's being sold for re-use, it has to first be tested to make sure that its performance complies with the standard, and since (presumably) nobody is going to go to that trouble, it's effectively a prohibition. But if I want to buy one to put on the mantelpiece next to my Hummel hedgehog figurines, ain't no law against that. Any other strictures are basically pawn-shop laws intended to discourage traffic in stolen cats by requiring proper and thorough maintenance of records - but that's probably more local law (e.g. state) than federal. catcvrts-1.pdf

Interesting. Wonder if we have similar laws (regulations) here. But what on earth is the rationale behind such a law?

They're usually the view into the "business end" of the connector shell, that is, of the pins themselves and not the wires where they enter the connector body. If you look closely, you may also find the pin letters/numbers molded into the shell.

Oh - this was before they switched to the plastic quick-connect couplings for the fuel lines. That simplifies things. The connector: The place you get pin numbering is in the electrical schematics. At the bottom of each page they give you a picture of the connectors referenced on that page and what the pin numbers are. Also, if you figure you have the right pins, put a meter on them, power it up, and you should see your +12V. And yeah, there are some dopey colour codes. CH for brown? Did some smartypants think that CHocolate was a good mnemonic?

Worth noting that I switched to Wix on your recommendation.

You might think so, but as you may have sussed by now: There are idiots. If you followed the recent discussion of the '01 H6 I just finished doing the head gaskets on, this is the car that, when I started driving it last summer, surprised me by running out of gas halfway through its first tank. When I lifted that cover I found a dog's breakfast of "improvised repair" that included hardware store brass plumbing fittings, epoxy, rubber hoses, and hose clamps, none of which (I suspect) you see on yours. Why? Because a PO had bottomed out that gas tank on something big, hard, and sharp, and punched a dent up in the tank - exactly beneath the gauge float (which is why it read "half full" when, in fact, it was "totally fuggin' empty"), but outside of a baffle so I couldn't reach it to try to pound it back down. Presumably, at that same moment, the fittings on top of the sender were all smashed against the cover you're missing, which, now that I think about it, is a compelling argument for omitting the cover. I wound up replacing the tank and the entire pump/sender assembly, a very unpleasant task since you have to drop the entire rear suspension to do it. Yes, There are idiots.

Hmm. Maybe the problem is that you haven't placed "No Fire" signs near the working area as directed. Seriously, though, sounds like you're just missing that cover plate. And though this may make me sound like a bit of a slob, I relieve fuel pressure by disconnecting the fuel line. There's only so much overblown ritual I can stand, even though I hate getting gas on my hands.

I think the earliest fuel pump I've had occasion to have to get at was a '99, so I don't know if/how that differs from yours. Have you gone through the drawings at http://jdmfsm.info/Auto/Japan/Subaru/Legacy_Outback/1997/Service Manual/ ? Answer should be in there.

When a rod bearing went south on my first '99 EJ25D Outback it was run for at least another hour before giving up and getting towed home. The result was an undersized crank and oversized rod, so bad that they couldn't be rescued. Even with all that abuse and punishment, nothing hit a valve and I went on to bolt those heads onto a used short block and run for many more years and miles. I think your odds are good.

Depends on the nature of the failure. If it failed at 300 miles, presumably there was some kind of component/assembly defect that wouldn't be reproduced in a fresh short block. Obviously if you rebuild a block after a failure like this you do it right and with a full set of fresh bearings (e.g. the one I did winter before last - our '01 Forester - was transplanting the old crank in to a good junkpile block), so no reason to think it won't run like new.

Sure, but I would think that the filter would catch bits big enough to matter before they got pumped out to the cam journals. Does anyone disagree? Is this a meaningful function of filter quality? If your specific concern is metal damaging the cams and/or journals (the latter more likely, since it's just Al), sure, you can pull off the cams for inspection without removing the heads from the block.

Though there is one other thing I wanted to mention - on the subject line's advertised topic. As I said, I ordered the Mahle head gaskets (which turned out to be Subaru OEM) and the Fel-Pro kit for the other bits. The other choice for a kit was the Ultra-Power - $15 more than the Fel-Pro, and a lot more parts (except, strangely, the spark plug cover seals). I went for the Fel-Pro. But what I received was the Ultra-Power (though they charged me for the cheaper Fel-Pro), and when I looked back at Rock, I discovered that the two different kits have the same part number. No point in asking Rock about it; their "customer service" is "what you see on the site is what we have, if you don't like what you got send it back". In balance, it was probably better that I received the Ultra-Power kit because that gave me the water pump, oil pump, and crankshaft seals that aren't in the Fel-Pro. But it had me scrambling around to find some good used EJ25D spark plug seals around my garage, as I wasn't about to pay the dealer $13 each for them. Still, though, kinda weird.

Of course, another (probably cheaper yet) option is to find a junkyard exhaust system w/o rust. Yes, it'll be missing its cat too, but see above under "reuse yours or fork out the few hundreds for a new one".

I've had a few rod bearings go bad and the answer was transplanting my existing heads onto a new (used) short block. So unless you have specific concerns about the heads, should be okay. And if you do, have them checked.

First, afaIk, nobody's "forbidden" from selling cats. They just won't because they get more for them on the metal recovery market. I just took a quick look at Rock, and you can get an entire (prob. minus cat) exhaust system for $500. If you can transplant your old cat onto it, you win. Otherwise, that adds $300 to the tab. Last time I had my slide rule (yes, I still have it and remember how to use it!), $800 < $6000. So unless there's something I grossly misunderstand about this, I see your path.

Please. We're going in circles - and you're misquoting me. What I actually said was "just 'put the floor jack under the shock to compress the spring enough to get the knuckle bolt to line up'. " Yes, there actually is a top hat there (I mispoke when I said that the top of the spring is in contact with the body), but it's a "passive" part (i.e. no bearings) and its replacement is optional. A MacPherson strut is a self-contained assembly in which the spring is captive to the shock portion, and special tooling (a spring compressor) and a separate operation are needed to assemble the two parts into a single component prior to installation in the car. This is completely different from replacing the rear shock (as I just did with this pair of KYBs, which did not come with new tophats), in which the new shock is poked up into the spring from beneath, and a floor jack is used to slightly compress the spring (i.e. a inch or two) in order to align the shock's bottom mount with the knuckle, not to significantly compress the spring. Yes, some come with new tophats and are replaced as a (slightly) precompressed unit, but again, that does not significantly alter the fundamental difference, which is that in the case of the MacPherson strut the spring is seriously compressed and the tophat bearings form part of the steering gear. So we should now be clear that the rears are not MacPherson struts. If you still want to claim that they are a different type of strut (e.g. Chapman), perhaps you can offer a citation or reference clearly indicating what type it is. Otherwise, can we please kill this thread?

Well, since I've never formally studied the matter... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPherson_strut According to this, a MacPherson strut is a steering component, so it applies only to the front end. What Subaru's doing in the rear is another question. Does it qualify as a Chapman strut or similar? Not sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapman_strut Are there others? Dunno. I'd just call it a coilover shock unless someone can point to something more definitive.

Sure, but this is nitpicking. It's not a "strut" in the sense that the fronts are, with the tophat and taking the form of a single assembly in which a compressor is needed to swap an old spring onto a new shock. It's just a shock with a support for the bottom of the spring, as the top of the spring presses up against the body, not a tophat.