Mr. Carb

Update: There was three left in the entire county when I talked to the parts department. I picked up two of them so I have a spare in case one breaks later. I'll try to get manufacture information to see who makes them for aftermarket purposes.

I'll have to check with my favorite parts guy and find out. :-)

I had a one year old cable snap on the pedal end. Last time I checked you can't get OEM new cables anymore for the ea81, is that incorrect?

I've recently come across a 1984 Brat, after not having one for nearly 10 years. I spent all summer putting it all back together, looking for parts, and making it run good. I've got that all taken care of now apart from a feel details, it runs, drives, and is road worthy. Now that, that is out of the way, I've been playing with the idea of putting some bigger tires on it. I have 15" alloy pugs on the car right now with 195/55R15 winter tires. This keeps the speedometer and millage more or less accurate. I was thinking of going with some 215/75R15 (diameter ~27.6") BF Goodrich All terrains KO2's at some point and a 3" lift. However I want to keep the speedo, and odometer accurate. I've been playing with the idea of maybe changing the gear ratios of the front & rear diff, or looking for some kind of little gear box that attaches to the speed cable and corrects it for the difference in tire size. I've heard rumors you can cram a 4.11 gear set into these diff cases with some heavy modifications? The car right now still has all stock drive train in it, ea81, with a 4spd d/r transmission, 3.9 diff ratios. I have a healthy weber on top of the ea81 which is fun. I'm probably going to do the 5spd swap if/when I lift the car. Just thoughts and brain storming right now, this project is probably a year or two out yet. Car has significant under body damage and some rust, so that's why I'm considering just using it as a lifted custom rig.

Had a difficult time finding any information by searching. Does anyone happen to know how the circuit for the electric radiator fan in the 86 XT Turbo works? There is a 2 pin connector and 2 pin radiator fan switch, which was replaced but still doesn't work. Trying to figure out how to test the circuit, since the switch is 2 prongs, instead of a single prong grounding switch ea81's have. I know it's more complicated because there is A/C which also is supposed to turn on the cooling fan, correct?

Yeah, I hear oil consumption is a normal problem however, and clearly with the short block being replaced and the noise going away afterwords, I suspect somehow the two issues are related. I'm glad it's all better. I've got about 8k on the new short block now and it's running good now. Car has about 36k on it now. Amazingly the brakes are still at 80% front, 90% rear, I'm used to the old heavy Chrysler where it would eat a set of front brakes every 30k miles.

I had forgotten about this thread. I think I should post an update on what ended up getting this issue resolved. The car always kept having the pre-detonation sounds, I had several techs go on test drives with me so I could demonstrate the sound. Finally got the car to do it with a tech in the car and they called it valve noise and said it was normal. 1-2 months later the oil consumption in the engine is getting worse and worse. I finally convinced them to do an oil consumption test when I mentioned I've read online that there is a recall and class action law suit in progress over the oil issue. We did the oil test, it was burning double the amount of oil allowed per their specification. The dealership replaced the short block under warranty and not only is the car not consuming any oil anymore after break in, it also doesn't have that pre-detonation noise anymore. Since it still has the same valve train and heads, I bet that noise wasn't valve noise after all. I suppose bad compression could confuse sensors and the computer enough to cause pre-detonation. That's the best theory I have on what might have caused the noise. It's been problem free since the short block was replaced.

For the record, even the 2014 has the oil consumption problem, as mine does. Ended up getting a new long block under warranty at 29k miles.

I found out it's just intentionally bad by design, to encourage people to upgrade to the HD radio for the car. the 2015 comes with it stock and sounds a heck of a lot better, I wonder how much it would cost to just get the radio and swap it out. I too have a 2014 with the bad radio quality and given it's worse than pulling teeth to get Carter Subaru in Shoreline to aknowledge any defect in the car, I gave up and started taking it to a third party shop and paying to fix it the issues I had (except the radio).

So I have a new Subaru Crosstrek, 2014 model, manual transmission. Shortly after I got the car I've noticed that it has a lot of pre detonation during steep hills or heavy accelleration. Another thing I don't like is that the engine compression on down shifting to slow the car down seems none-existant, and there is about a 2 second delay from when I let off the gas pedal to when the engine throttle actually releases. Is this all normal behavour for these new subarus or is this unique to my car?

The idle issue I had was the coil pack, found it was cracked on the underside and arching to ground. Replaced the coil pack and the car ran like it was brand new. Gas milliage was still low, around 20-23mpg depending on freeway/around town. I think it may have just been an automatic transmission being old and starting to add resistance to it at that point. Also the engine probably had some blowby, at anyrate, I sold the car with that fuel economy so I don't know how it's doing now. If you're's is rough and doing that bad at gas milliage I would check for a engine code light. Try the obvious if that shows nothing (plugs, wires, coil, timing belt, etc.)

It's a bummer this isn't even in the car manual, I have the same problem, will be trying this now to see if it fixes. Mostly I noticed the highs are greatly suppressed. Edit: I had to watch the youtube video, you have to press one and 4 and the tuner knob when the deck is turned off, with key in accessory position.

I checked for vacuum leaks again, found none. Decided that maybe it is the coil pack gone bad. Spent the big $$ on a new coil pack from Carter Subaru, put it in (took me about 3 minutes) last night. Test drove the car and it had no more misfires. All day today same thing, no misfire. I would have to say apparently it is possible for the coil pack to fail in such a way that 2/4 misfire when 1/3 do not. I think it was an insulation issue because the old coil pack was very crusty feeling underneath and had several cracks in it from old age, probably the original on a car with 235k miles on it.

I was wondering if anyone else has had any experience or been able to find any information on if you can get a 2001-2002 forester headlamp assembly to bolt into a 1998 Forester. They look the same as far as mounting goes in photos I've been able to find, but was curious if anyone's tried it?

Oh, gotchya. When I did the back light conversion I found some sites that sold the faces, they kind of just slid over the top of the old faces though and would have a slit that you would have to hide to go around the needles without removing them. Trust me, you don't want to remove those needles.

Pulled spark plugs, they were the quad fire platinum's apparently. Only one still had some electrode left. Replaced with single fire iridium's. There was no oil in any spark plug well, no oil on any of the plug wires. Got the car warmed up, it's running better at all RPM's except after a drive. Once it's driven it is back to the same old misfire on cylinder's 2 and 4. I'll check again for vacuum leaks, but did not find any last time I checked, I still hear the intermittent lifter or knocking sound faintly on that side of the engine as well.

I have a 2003 Guage cluster from an outback that is now white, I removed all the green from it. so it will be any color you want it to be with colored led's for dash lighting.

My normal camera is currently broken, so the cell phone had to do, these were the three good shots I got this year.

Ah ha. Well then, I will attempt to change them without removing the engine, it looks tricky. I thought they were platinum's not copper as they were supposed to be the 60k mile ones for the DOHC, don't remember if single or double. I will report back after that work is done.

Single OEM Pre-gapped. I know better than to re-gap platinum plugs. Throttle position sensor, I was looking at that, the scanning tool I have isn't showing me any signal from it at all very consistently. Wouldn't it throw a code if it was intermittently reporting a signal though?

TPS? Tire pressure system? 98, doesn't have that. Plug are newish, NGK platinums. They were put in about 15k miles ago. On valves I was noting that because both cams on 2,4 side are in a loaded position when at set timing marks, makes it possible I read for an exhaust valve to collide with an intake valve if the cam spins from the loaded timing marked position. At this point short of a vacuum leak, it is probably a serious cause, involving taking things apart to find out, not sure the car is really worth that much work after just doing all that work to it already.

I know the oil pump is in there too, that also may need a re-seal. When cam seals go, it drips out at the ends of the timing covers, I know from experience :-)

I have an ODB II live scanner that I can plug in, that's how I found out 2, and 4 were misfiring. Not enough to apparently throw a check engine light, they are only pending codes. However everything else looked normal. Given that the driver's side head is also the head that the cams are loaded when installing the timing belt, I couldn't help but wonder if the valves might have gotten slightly tweaked if one of the cams sprung to a neutral state during timing belt installation. Slight collision between an intake and exhaust valve maybe? I'll have to get it to start to misfire again and start spraying for a vacuum leak, though I find it odd that a leak would only affect one side of the engine. I'll also check the crank and cam sensor and see if something is getting flaky there. Sometimes I wonder if these ecu's are way too forgiving since I can tell there's a problem long before a check light ever comes on.

Well, after a second more extensive look, belt is fine, timing is fine. So much for that theory. The belt, tensioner, and all other idlers/water pump was replaced about 10k miles ago. No oil leak at the spark plugs, so at this point I'm not sure what causes the 2 and 4 misfire at 900 rpms (only after a freeway drive) or the intermittent knock or per-detonation sound that comes from that side of the engine. Silly problem-matic EJ25D's. I'm looking at possibly trading the car in for an impreza.

Timing it is, at least the lower cam has slippsed 1-2 teeth, I didn't even compare them to the crank. Bought a new timing belt because I suspect this one was stretched at this point, will be replacing it tomorrow and see how it runs afterwords.