parapants

Maybe on the dirty fliud. The previous owner was pretty fastidious about the engine oil, can't speak to his care of the trans tho. A friend who does a lot of motorcycle work just told me it looks like the synchro rings are dying, and now that I ponder it I can't remember if maybe I did have a hard time putting it into 4th once or twice and just didn't know what it meant, or if I'm just making up memories cause I have an idea to latch onto. Prop shaft is all out and all the joins move seemingly smoothly, except the tiny click I can produce at the front one. Dunno if that's a problem, I don't feel any significant false movement, just a click, but driving loads will be far tiger than hand loads. Didn't make noise while driving tho. Center bearing is also nice and smooth. Think I'm gonna go ahead and pull the trans out tomorrow and open it, what better way to learn eh? I'll post what I find out.

First pic is the black chunks in my oil catch pan, they range in size from grains of sand to maybe 3mm. Second is one of the bigger chunks stuck to my pickup magnet, with a groove visible where I pressed my thumbnail through it.

Acquired the above vehicle from local craigslist with some oil loss externally from the driver side HG area, intended to spend a few weekends learning to throw in new gaskets and use for my winter driver. When driving on the freeway there was some wheel shake that felt to me like an off balance wheel. No problem, I thought. Then I noticed the shifter was also shaking side to side pretty hard over ~55 mph, as in it will move my hand if I try to keep it still. On closer attention I noticed there is still some side to side pull at lower speeds, unlike the wheel shake which resolves. All I can find from web search on the shifter shake is that it may just be more apparent than I'm used to because of the direct linkage to the gearbox vs. the cable linkage I'm used to in my FWD corolla, but the shaking seems a little too extreme to me to be normal. I went ahead and pulled the engine and heads and worked on that while trying to research the above issue. Then the other day I drained the gearbox and much to my dismay found all these little black chunks in the oil. Yuck. Additionally there was about a teaspoon worth of "magnetic goop" I was able to wipe from the drain plug magnet. The black chunks were very weakly magnetic, but maybe just from the other particles in the oil. They were hard, but didn't seem like metal fragments as I was able to press my fingernail through them with firm pressure. Gasket material maybe? I'll get some pictures up soon as I can. As for the shaking, anyone heard of this before? -All the U joints in the propshaft seem tight with no give (by hand) except the front joint from which I can elicit a barely detectable "click" with just the right twist. I'd rather this be the problem than the trans, but don't want to buy a new one just to test this theory. -CV shafts and boots are in good shape and low speed driving, turning, hard accelerating are all good with no clicks or thumps. -Despite the shake when in gear, all up and down shifts were smooth through all the gears. Sorry for the long post, wanted to get descriptions up here. Pics soon.

Hey y'all, first post here. Been referencing the boards for a while now, thought it about time to join up. Why now? Well let me tell you: I bought a house with a garage... What a sucker. Everyone knows when you get a garage you gotta put something in it. And am I gonna park my car in there like some reasonable person? No no no. I'm gonna go tell myself I want AWD on the cheap for the winter, and an old subie seems the way to go. After all, I've done a clutch before, how hard can some head gaskets be? It'll be a learning experience I told myself, it'll be fun I told myself... Well, a few weeks and a paycheck's worth of new tools later and here I am with an old turn of the century forester up on jacks, engine on a stand, valve springs lined up along the back of my bench, propshaft leaning in a corner, and nasty black mystery chunks in my gearbox oil... Guess it's about time I actually join the forum.