Hank Roberts

I'd been wondering about that placement, to add a second battery (do a lot of backcountry car camping, native plant botany restoration in the summers). So heat's no problem? Guess not!

Bravo! Hey, pm me if you have thoughts about adding a cat to a dinosaur (grin). My 1969 Dodge A-100 camper van, V-8, of course never had a cat. But on that engine, oil leaks past the loose rings whenever it sits more than a week). The blast of black carbon as it burns up that oil is ... well, this was made the year Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon. It's no smokier than a Saturn V launch. I'd be happy to add a cat to it, even though I don't drive it 400 miles a year, just to be a good neighbor (and not have to wait til the neighbors leave to start it up). If not, I guess it's a garage-type exhaust hose leading into a big box made o' furnace filters to catch the worst of it.

I'd also suspect the Throttle Position Sensor. Had to have mine replaced (and there's a test procedure in the manuals worth following both on your current one and anything you get from a junkyard -- not all that hard, reprinted in other threads hereabouts). My car did the same thing, slowly got worse, and at the end the engine light would come on with the TPS code until the car warmed up! It was also boggy at odd other times.

Arc welding or gas welding?? If you're arc welding, isolate the computer completely. It's a computer!

Are you getting any engine codes? I'm not sure how you check an '85, but assume it has a computer since it's fuel injected. I know it can take a while for the computer to figure out what model vehicle it's in after it's been unpowered and lost track of things.

Even my '83 Toyota Tercel had those -- notice how many parts are identical on cars from thereabouts? Sometimes I wonder ....

Hey, I could use the little rubbery bumper thing that's on the post that meets the corner of the hood near the headlight. My '88 came back from the shop last week missing that piece! Wanta part it out there? You are right, the whole thing would look good bolted to the side of a wall somewhere. Or maybe laid flat poking up from the surface of some deep sand pit on a backcountry OHV trail, with a hat and gloves sticking out of the window opening .... it'd wake up some of the motorcyclists.

I'm going to show this to my wife. She thinks I've been crazy the whole past year. I think so too. But ..... I AM NOT ALONE. Hahahahahahah.....

Bump ... in case anyone made progress finding these things. Not sure I need them yet but I've needed everything ELSE I thought of that the mechanic hadn't imagined anyone would care about fixing ....

Mine turned out to be a hairline crack in a valve cover that was just about invisible -- except when the engine was hot and oil pressure was high, at which time it opened up enough to be dripping steadily, losing a quart in 300 miles. -- "gee, I never thought of looking for that, I never saw that happen before" said the mechanic from hell, after his boss found the problem.

I'd be conservative and change all the fluids, assuming you don't know how long since it's had proper maintenance. But make sure you get someone who knows the right lubricants to use. And replace the belts. I bought a 1988 GL 4x4 with about 230k miles, nearly a year ago, my first-ever Subaru -- and have been finding trouble ever since. Mechanics just quit doing stuff after a car gets to a certain age if the owner doesn't know to insist on maintaining it like they want it to run forever.

Brake fluid will VERY quickly absorb moisture out of the air and become unsafe. Moisture in brake fluid makes brakes fail to work (brakes heat up, water boils, and makes bubbles -- causing the same problem as if you had air inside the system). Never reuse brake fluid that's been bled out. Never use an old container, if there's any chance the cap was ever left loose-- get a new sealed container.

Check the actual passageways the gas is supposed to flow through, on both sides of the valve -- on the 1988 I bought, both of them were packed solid with carbon. Took two different mechanics to realize it had two passages that needed checking. And using 12 volts from the battery gives a far stronger signal to the solenoid than the current sent from the engine computer, I remember reading, so you won't get a fair test by direct wiring 12 volts to it (besides the chance of blowing the ECU, which the first mechanic to work on my car did by trying this test method). Wish I'd known more about Subarus a year ago, oh, in many many ways.

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=39459&highlight=brake+pedal+goes+to+the+floor

Dunno if they sell parts, sorry. My mechanic's checking and completing work that the previous mechanic didn't do. There are some other threads in the forums from people at Subaru parts suppliers who might help you out.

Thanks! CCRinc just reordered the bushings (everyone there has had the flu! which I find a very good reason for things to be a bit slow coming). So when those get put in, I'll ask the new mechanic to look harder at the mounts again. I expect some of the mounts are worn out, car has about 230k miles on it. Transmission, engine, both.

Hey, could problems with the mounts also explain popping out of first gear? I had my transmission rebuilt (CCRinc) after the mechanics from hell tried four different 'used' transmissions unsuccessfully for various reasons (wrong model, wrong number of wires, wrong splines). If you're ever in Berkeley and need a good Subaru mechanic, do not think "SOS" -- can't recommend them. I took the car to a different mechanic, Autometrics, a shop CCRinc recommended because they'd worked with him in the past. They've had it off and on for three months now. It's still popping out of first gear, but intermittently -- seems to be after an hour on the freeway, when slowed down, going a short distance in first, and pop. I asked the mechanic to put the wagon up on the lift and get a couple of husky guys to wale on the tailpiece and see if they could make it move around. What other way is there to tell if the mounts are worn out? I also suspect the bushings -- CCRInc sent "blue" bushings but the mechanic from hell never put them in. The new mechanic is getting another set of those to put in. But I wonder -- seems to me if the transmission is moving just slightly that could cause this problem. Diagnosis? How do you tell the mounts are bad? (I'm coming up on a year now trying to get this 1988 GL 4wd dual range working -- I've had bad carpal tunnel, can't hold onto tools myself any more so I"m relying on mechanics -- hate it like hell, too, but I wore out, banged on my hands too many years)

One bit of advice from experience --- look up the serial number range for your particular vehicle. Write it down. Make sure the long thin metal tag -- with the original serial number -- is still on the case of the transmission you buy. Make sure you have looked up the Technical Service Bulletin about grinding into second gear (it's mentioned in an earlier thread, try "TSB") so you know which numbers were built after the change (older ones may have been fixed, no way to tell). Count the number and location of the electrical connectors on the outside of the case and make sure they are correct for your particular vehicle, if you have one wire more or less the engine computer won't function right. Count the number of teeth on the whatchamacallit that drives the connection to the rear wheels so you know whether or not you have a turbo. These are the things the first shop I took my '88 to failed to check, when they tried four different used transmissions -- and the sources they used also didn't care to check those details. All of the four were close enough to be installed in the vehicle, none of them were correct. There are only a few different models, but from my experience, there is not a lot of knowledge left among current repair people about these old vehicles. Oh, and if you're looking for Subaru mechanics in Berkeley, don't think "SOS" -- it doesn't mean "help" in my experience. Fortunately I had taken my old tranmsission, they'd told me they were going to junk it -- and I ended up shipping mine to CCRinc in Colorado, who rebuilds these things.

1988 GL 4wd 5-speed with less than 500 miles yet on a rebuilt engine from CCRinc. I'll be back after I have a few months' numbers to take a decent average. I'm hoping.

Mine's light blue -- and I and three guys from the Berkeley Subaru parts desk looked all over under the hood and inside the driver's door and never found anything they recognized as a paint type tag. But they said they couldn't supply touch-up paint anyhow, get it from a custom body shop mix. That the best way? I just have a few rock chips by now, the previous owner spent all of his attention on the outside of the car. I'm sad to be finding out. Sure is pretty though.

My story's here, I won't repeat myself. http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=39459&highlight=brakes+sink I can confirm bad brake hoses can balloon and be part of the problem. But read the stuff about the brake booster and also the comments I quoted from other places as I found them. Took me 8 months. May you be luckier.

I'm having the exact same problem with the 1988 GL. Only with light pressure on the gas pedal; if I give it a lot of gas it zooms, after a moment or two hesitating. But if I'm trying to creep along in first, it bucks. Feels like an old mechanical linkage would with rust or crud. Lord, I miss the old days before electronics got into cars sooooo bad. And I got a code 31 yesterday AM -- yep, Throttle Sensor. Still available but without images, here: http://web.archive.org/web/20030718140757/pub110.ezboard.com/fultimatesubarumessageboardsfrm6.showMessage?topicID=36.topic

A year ago when I was first starting to try to get my 1988 GL running, I found a place in Great Britan somewhere that will take, check/diagnose, and if needed repair ECUs. I didn't contact them, and I'm afraid I've lost track of it, but it's got a web page somewhere. I have a "spare" -- the '88 didn't pass smog 'til the mechanic replaced the ECU (this was before I bought the car). It supposedly had a 'bad internal ground in the ECU connection to the EGR' but I doubt it. The code came back, after I bought the car; they'd left one of the two EGR ports plugged solid with carbon. I suppose sometime I should swap them again just to see if it works. After I redo all the ground wire connections ....