Hank Roberts

Just to close this thread out, it was "all of the above" --- the guys who replaced the front axles and put the engine back in after its 2nd trip back to the rebuilders under warranty kept telling me the vibration was uneven compression on the engine. After a while they also told me they really didn't want to work on any car older than 10 years, and the lack of enthusiasm was real obvious. After a year, and about 800 miles -- two standard camping trips ---- on the axles and engine, vibration continuing, I found an oldtime Subaru guy working in a little shop on the far end of town (by asking everyone I saw driving a GL-series, over the year). It was both. The axles ("new from China") wore out in 800 miles, they were made of soft steel, barely heat treated enough to look good on the surface. And the engine compression? It blew another head gasket while the mechanic was test-driving it to diagnose the vibration. It's in the hands of the mechanic and rebuilder warranty at this point (and getting used original Subaru axles he can inspect). The 'new' axle company's out of business already, no recourse there. Watch out for 'new' replacement front axles off the shelf, they may still be out there. Get your warranty from the seller not the manufacturer, or make sure what you're getting. Ah, so it goes. End of thread.

Might be in town, I'll check back.

> I've been told you MUST mill aluminum heads every time they are removed. Well, it's a puzzle. Edited: Okay, on Monday the engine rebuilder is going to talk to the mechanic here about their warranty, and what they'll allow for repairs at this point. The rebuilder isn't defending the way the engine was done two years ago as best practice ---they don't do them with a rotary grinder any more, they use something called a 'Rolock' disk now they told me. So I hope they can both agree, it's old history, I just need a repair done, and agree on how. Note I bought the engine myself 2 years ago -- that's why I'm caught in the middle. --- It leaked in multiple places on delivery (the first local mechanic never got it down off the rack); --- the rebuilder took it back and fixed it (agreeing the grinding hadn't been done right on the left head, blaming a bad employee); --- it ran a year --- about a thousand miles --- and oil and coolant seals failed again; --- the rebuilder took it back and fixed it; it ran about 800 miles the second year --- this time, the new mechanic I found who really knows these spotted a leak ("more than a drip, a leak") and called the rebuilder; a few weeks later he was driving the car and it let go on the freeway, big cloud out the tailpipe and from underneath. --- rebuilder authorized pulling the head and replacing the gasket that had leaked, instead of taking the engine back to fix it themselves this time; --- mechanic found the rotary wheel marks in the pictures on the head, and also on the block and manifold, and said it needs more than just the head milled to be good; --- rebuilder authorized milling just the head. I've tried to talk to rebuilder and mechanic; they'll talk to each other Monday and I hope agree. Since it's leaked three times, with the metal the way it is, I think the mechanic's right to doubt that milling just the head will make it reliable. With one year left on the original warranty, I dunno what to ask for. But I use the car to take three kids and my wife on 2-week summer botany field trips --- if it's reliable. So far it's failed to be reliable enough to trust, because of the engine leaking. I don't think it's too much to ask, that the rebuilt engine not leak --- I don't just want "to be back on the road" in a hurry. I want to be able to stay there, this time. I want something different done than was done twice before to 'fix' the problem. Something that will stay fixed, not fail out in the woods. Hoping they work it out. The rebuilder doesn't use that grinding tool any longer -- they use something now called a "Rolock"(?) per phone call. So -- my engine's probably one of the last ones still under warranty that wasn't done with the newer tool. Whether this Rolock is something the mechanic here has and could use on the block, rather than pulling the engine and having the scrapes milled, I don't know. Might ask. So I'm hoping, but I don't quite know for what. Relief.

Thanks! Here's how mine looked at the mechanic's today. Those lines you can see are significant grooves; same pattern of parallel grooves was apparent on the surface of the block and on the manifold too. The brighter area is where the gasket held. http://www.flickr.com/photos/wossname/491774179/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/wossname/491774131/ My mechanic said he does see this sometimes when people come in with failures on rebuilts done elsewhere. YMMV as they say; I think this one lasted 800 miles. uthorized him to redo this. Thanks for the comparison pics, this helps understand what's going on.

Do you mean it can look rough and still be flat enough to be good? I'd guessed that a properly flat surface would also look smooth to the eye. But I'm no expert. Just hoped someone had a photograph that would give me a basis for comparison. Well, I'll go look. Thanks.

Reviving the most pertinent old thread; my rebuild's still getting warranty repairs. Good rebuilder, they stand by their warranty. Apparently they had a bad employee for a while. I got his work before they figured that out. The other head gasket failed this time; this time they're having a good local mechanic who they've authorized to do the warranty work here deal with it. (Man, I sure wish I'd found this guy two years ago, he really does know the old Subarus, and cares about the work.) He called today, said he got the leaky head off, and he can see that a rotary grinder was used to resurface the metal, at least on this head and on the cam tower (the other head, and some other gaskets, leaked and went back to the rebuilder a year or so ago for warranty repair. I thought they'd checked both. I guess opinions vary about what's good work, but I hear heads ought to be planar surfaces and I don't think a rotary grinder can do that, not if it leaves visible marks. I'll get some pictures tomorrow. Has anyone got pictures of a properly resurfaced head and block, pictures that show how smooth and flat the metal surfaces ought to look?

And on mine (19mpg); that's the last 180 or so miles on the odometer, and it's miles accumulated on the previous mechanic's work ---- before I found the current mechanic; so it would have been on 30btdc (and it was pinging), and on the clogged and melted front cat. That's been corrected, it's on a new oxygen sensor, and reset the odometer on a fillup of 87 octane. It takes me two or three winter months, or one summer weekend trip, to go through a tank of gas. So I'll report back sometime around who knows. Watching meanwhile.

Chuckle. Flamewars get the lowest mileage of any fuel-burning activity. I'll join ... My '88 GL 5-speed 4wd is still ... a challenge. I'm on my 4th mechanic, finally found the quiet little guy on the far side of town who actually knows older Subarus. The rebuilt engine's been back to the rebuilder and re-rebuilt twice now, in less than two years, and it's now dripping from a third spot (the right head gasket), after they fixed the first two loose/leaky seals. I can certainly recommend their warranty, and I do know some people get the string of bad luck, that's statistics (grin -- not calculus ...). Waiting to decide if it needs a fourth rebuild to hold oil. But the mileage has been awful -- about 19 around town. Can this bad gas mileage be caused by a clogged catalytic converter maybe? The front one was both melted and half clogged, and I had the guts of it replaced, welded back into the old case because that was good. Rear cat is partly melted but not clogged so was left alone this time. (I gather some of the mess the leaky engine put through the system may have clogged up the cats?) SPFI, stock wheels, standard tires, newish wires and plugs, all the things that ought to be done with a rebuilt engine, and it's now just passed California smog. The first three soi-disant "mechanics" had left the timing set to 30 BTDC. The latest guy set it to 20, he said; smogcheck says it's at 22 BTDC a week later (can it be slipping?) I'll try a freeway trip after I top up the oil. Just for the record: smog report was good, way below the average. And here, particularly kids living near the freeways are really hurting from the bad air. It's my personal choice to do the best I can on smog control, and losing some mileage for best air quality. Your air may be different, no argument about that from me. But -- 19 mpg??

I went through all this stuff (search for |"goes to floor" -- that ought to find the old thread) and finally fixed it by insisting the mechanic replace the vacuum booster. (Can't do much mechanical work myself). Three mechanics had worked on the brakes over several years, it'd had repeated bleeds, three master cylinders one after another, etc. etc. and never fixed the intermittent weak pedal. It'd be fine after pumping a few times, then I'd drive half a block and apply the brake, and most of the time it'd slowly lose pressure and go down to the stop at the floor. No problem at all since the vacuum booster was replaced. What I heard is they can inhale a little bit of dirt and it can partially block a valve internal to the booster, and the dirt may move around varying how much it lets the pressure leak. Dunno, that's what I was told by a rebuilder. Now I don't recommend doing this, because I think there are only two or three people in the world for whom this might fix the problem and you're probably not them. But, it worked for me. 1988 GL 5-speed dual range wagon. Still trying to get it reliable enough to take to the woods, coming up on 2 years after I bought it -- but that's one fix that's held up.

Do you have to take it apart for an engine swap? Or a brake rebuild? Both of those have been done, but at different times and by different people. So maybe it's an older problem after all.

One last question, while Don's Tire is working on getting replacement steering knuckles. The tire shop showed me the bottom end of the strut, visible at the bottom of the steering knuckle, and showed me it's wiggling side to side, even with the tightening screw on the steering knuckle socket tightened down fully. I saw a bump in the grease go back and forth as he wiggled the strut. They concluded it's the steering knuckle that had worn out. Last question -- is there a chance it's the bottom of the _strut_ that's worn out? I just realized, since the tire shop didn't take the thing apart, there may be some judgment involved here -- they're telling me, looking at the end of the strut showing, through the grease, and moving -- that it's the hole in the steering knuckle that's gotten too big, since they can't adjust it any tighter. Should I ask them to pop the strut out and make sure the bottom of the strut isn't what's gotten worn too small to fit, first? Can that happen? Elsewhere in a topic specific to steering knuckles I've learned they should never wear out. So now I'm wondering, is this diagnosis right? I'm posting this in the general thread where I've tried all sorts of ideas about what might've been causing the shaking -- just going a little farther in the generaly "what could it be" here.

GD wrote: "... they NEVER wear out (not really possible since they have no moving parts), and so no one keeps them around for spares. Your's are only bad due to improper installation. " Well, damn. That tells me what happened. The shaking started the day I got the car back from Autometrics in Berkeley -- they installed my rebuilt engine, and at the same time replaced both front axles telling me they were clicking and it'd be cheaper to do it while the engine was out. And they blamed the shaking on 'uneven compression' in the rebuilt engine, and told me to drive the car a thousand miles and the problem ought to go away -- or else they'd tell the rebuilder to take the engine back and redo it. And they rechecked the car several times over the next few months. Seems likely in hindsight that Autometrics left the right front knuckle adjustment loose the day they put the engine back in. The shaking was obvious the first day I took the car out after that. And it took months ('vibration' is in the header of one of the old topics) to figure out what the problem was, as Autometrics kept taking compression measurements and saying the shaking was uneven compression, and I thought it had to be one of the new axles they put in at the same time as the engine -- and Emily finally suggested maybe Autometrics had never got the alignment right, I took it to Don's Tire, who spotted the problem in the first few minutes as being a worn out steering knuckle on right front side. So, steering knucles don't just wear out, huh? Damndamndamn.

Yes to both -- TO Emily -- Tony at Don's Tire got a fax and should have called the supplier you found who has the parts in Colorado -- and I've got to bug him Friday. Assuming he handles getting parts from them, he'll just call me when it's time to roll the Subaru down the hill! I told Tony to ask them for both left and right, and committed to him. Just waiting on that. I've kept asking because -- I did get handed a couple of front end parts by a local fellow who was cleaning out his garage, and -- figured I ought to identify what I got (since these things appear scarce!) and learn something, and -- just in case Tony and your Colorado contact didn't decide they're good to go .... TO Roo yes also, I'll drive over to Marin, see what I can learn comparing these garage cleanout pieces after I clean them up -- maybe they are a backup for me, or can be identified and be usable for someone else, or as boat anchors. Heck, maybe I'll find a second Subaru GL, isn't that the way this addiction works? Uh, oh ...

Ok, the search for a way to make the 1988 GL wagon useful continues. Steering knuckle (right front) is worn so bad the adjustment screw can't tighten the bottom of the strut, so it shimmies; can't align the wheels. (Three mechamics' shops missed this, the tire place found it in five minutes.) On the car, the steering knuckles -- these are big hunks of what I guess is cast iron? Have these raised letters/numbers on them Right: R 8C 12 Left: L 8C 12 A friend gave me some parts from his junkpile, saying they came from a different model Subaru but 'might fit' These have these letters/numbers on them: R 2L 17 4 (the last almost illegible under the cruft, think it's a '4') L 2L 17 6 (maybe the're both 6, I'll get the wire brush .....) Mean anything to anyone? I assume R - right and L - left, but whether the others mean just which year they poured the iron to cast the thing, or mean they're for one model Subaru but not another -- I can't tell. The only parts person who's offered to look hasn't come back. And unfortunately -- no shop and bad carpal tunnel -- it's the tire shop that will take the GL apart and fix it, so I don't want to give them junkyard "try and see if this fits" parts and they don't have time to mess around, without knowing they've got good parts to put in.

Did the recently replaced catalytic converter come with a heat shield? Some third party ones supposedly do not have the heat shield. If no heat shield -- That'd be 2 steps toward the fire right there -- too much direct radiant heat, cooks the boot, dumps grease directly on the hot metal ....

I think having it done is a good idea (ducking ...). I just pulled and reinstalled the rear window on my GL wagon -- the previous owner thought a body shop had replaced his dinged rear hatch. Surprise, they'd banged out dents and repainted and stuffed a lot of goop into the leaky window, which leaked again first year I had it. There were rusty spots to clean up, primer and paint after scraping out lots of that black urethane. Messy to clean up (I used some hexane, the 'label remover' stuff now available, Goo-Gone brand). Now I'm waiting for the new sealant to dry before I spraypaint that in the groove between glass and metal. And it's not like I care how the car looks, it's just while I'm waiting to see if I can get a steering knuckle, I may as well try to make it quit leaking when it rains. And for a front window? Naaah. Have it done. Trust me.

I had to get that done on my old 1983 Tercel quite a few years ago, when it got really loose, and I'm starting to hear a little groaning from my 1988 GL wagon power steering and the local mechanic tells me it's the steering rack wearing. I'll get a second opinion on that, or several. Had to get the PS pump rebuilt and steel hoses replaced on my 1969 Dodge van recently too, and with only 98k miles on it.

Um. Wobble as the vehicle's shaking? Dunno. Mine ('88) is coming up to 1000 miles since rebuild and is doing that on acceleration but in the front end -- the local mechanic blames the rebuilder for uneven compression, but the local tire shop found a front end problem --steering knuckle worn far past what the adjustment could take up so it's worn a large hole, getting ready to fall out. Three Subaru shops missed that problem. Tire shop's hunting for the part now. I've still got, intermittently, a sewing-machine-gun (loud sharp) rattle for 10-20 min after starting, some of the time; I'm assuming it's one lifter sticky and will eventually wear in; don't know if the rebuilder I used touches those or not, hope they were refurbished. I've been told 1000 miles for breakin. I'm hoping (sigh). Rear end -- I had a noise like that and it was half of the brake backing plate touching the rim partway around each wheel rotation (the other half is somewhere on the freeway). Lesson learned -- these old Su's are inventing new failure modes nowadays that nobody ever saw before, as they pass 200k miles; things begin to fail all over the vehicle. Scary.

anyone have this June 2006 bulletin -- or know what the local dealer ought to know about it? Engine Cooling System Flush and Refill (1619.92kb) WWY-09

Cars101's Subaru page recommends adding a transmission cooler for serious towing with an AT Forester. Does Subaru make one? I'm about to go in for the 30-month service on a 2003 and this would be the time to get one added, before I put on a trailer hitch at all.

>who ... would steal ...? Kids joyriding hereabouts carry master keys, the local police tell me, and they said around here those are widely available now for most cars and there are only a dozen or so needed. For newer cars, Tasers are being used -- they momentarily scramble a computer and the car doors pop right open.

Can one find 17" Forester wheels for sale used? (to replace 16" on a 2003) (I noted the huge list of possibles in the "replace 4 tires" thread, but new these are very expensive; steel would be fine if anyone makes such, for me)

I know I want to add a tow hitch. Subaru's official part is, I guess, a Class 1 hitch. What's that mean? My 4x4 truck friends all have third party hitches that mount to the frame instead of the bumper. Better idea? I'm wondering what else is a good idea to add to the basic Forester X model (2003, for the one we just bought). Looking at allsubaru, I see: tow hitch about $183 What else is worth adding? ( which can I get out of a junkyard, with luck?) Splash guard/mudflaps? $100 Do they just hold mud in and make it rust like the old Subarus did, or are they useful these days? Certainly the mud thrown from the tires is a nuisance on the side of the vehicle. Rear sway bar $145 does it really help handling over stock? Security upgrade $134 More than just blinkenlights? Do the 'bug deflectors' for the front of the hood do any real good? Does the 'back window' deflector actually help keep it cleaner?

OK, I bought the 2003 Forester; one tire has several sidewall cuts, one of the white rubber -- not down to the sidewall cords and not bulging but risky once anything else happened to poke at that spot. I drove it 250 miles of Highway 5 in 100 degree weather uneventfully. Off to the local tire store after the 4th. If they can find me one matching used (Yokohama, likely the tires that came on the Subaru 20k miles ago? -- the spare has never been used at all) I'll delay and hope for suggestions. The '03 Forester glovebox manual says use a 4=tire "rotation" -- tires always kept on same side, just back to front each time. That means any spare's always going to be the wrong size. We always carry two full size spares and break one (both tread and steel belts) a few times a decade, before we wear the tires out -- sharp rocks on our nasty road. Never had AWD before -- with AWD I'd like a six-tire rotation, starting with six new tires -- that's theory, but this may be the time, on this car, to start that way. Consumer Reports has recent tire recommendations for car tires. I'd prefer 'Light Truck' for better sidewalls if I can get them in 16" -- most likely not? Next idea is go to 17" wheels -- QUESTION: Did Subaru ever made 17" wheels in steel == the Forester XS comes with 17" aluminum, but I gather aluminum wheels crack in rough use. EDIT: found this link in the "rear disk brake swap" thread: http://wac.addr.com/auto/obs/wheels.html big list of wheels and sources I guess they'd fit any Forester. Wonder if Subaru has a shim or adjustment for the speedometer, like the old 1960s Dodge trucks, for changing tire sizes?