heartless

still not a problem - I have parts cars available, a sawsall and a welder. We can rebuild it - we have the technology!

i tell ya what - since you dont want her anymore, you just send her up here to me. We have taken in a few that nobody wanted anymore. what little rust you are dealing with i can guarantee is nothing compared to what Brumhilda has and that little dink in the door piller - no problem, would just give me the excuse i need to get a slide hammer set...be good as new in no time. inspections? - bah, we dont have inspections here...your little Dragonfly would live on - i could even send you pics from time to time if you wanted...

fiberglass is an option, but you want to make DARN sure you remove ALL traces of rust, and treat exposed metal with something like the por15 before glassing - trust me on this one! you dont want it to continue rusting underneath the fiberglass.

posted 1/11/07 currently at: 255,705 11,600 miles in 5 months...damn, i need to work closer to home!!

bummer on the bumpstop - but neither one of our GL wagons have them anymore! and never tried to re-attach, so not real sure what you would use. thinking maybe contact adhesive might be best - the kind you put on both pieces, let it get tacky, then stick the pieces together...just have to be sure you have them lined up right with that stuff, once contact is made, there is no moving it.

just an FYI - the 90 (wagon & sedan) & 91 (sedan) access plates look pretty much like the one pictured by porcupine. thinking they didnt do much changing in that area.

EJ22 1. more torque at lower RPM 2. Single coil setup costs less at tuneup time 3. Parts are more readily available (and cheaper) 4. durability / reliability the dual range is just icing on the cake.

jacking up the car and running it has NOTHING to do with your airstruts not working correctly - the system is 16 yrs old and starting to fail. Most folks that had the factory air suspension have converted to standard coilover struts, a fairly easy job if you are mechanically inclined and have the space and tools available. to do the conversion you would need to get complete strut assemblies from a donor car - including the springs, tophats, rubber spring seats (the rubber bits that go between the springs and other metal parts) and struts (or purchase new struts if you prefer)

first off - unplug the fans from the harness and jump power to them to make sure thay are even functional - replacing a relay wont help if the fan motors are toast. IF they are functional, then go to the next step of finding/replacing the relay(s) or whatever you are going to do.

well damm - closer than daeron, but still too far away, or i'd be all over it too! just my two cents...find a donor that has a good front end, cut off the damaged portion, cut off the donor at the same points, weld in the donor front and off ya go! just be sure that the body hasnt been tweeked too far out of whack - otherwise alignment might be impossible...

if i recall correctly from doing the 89 GL's - i know the backing plates themselves were differnet between the 2wd & 4wd (larger center hole) - pretty much everything else was the same - but i could be wrong, it has been a while. not sure what the "manual adjust" setup is off of, the 89's both had the self adjusters, but the bottom looked more like the manual setup you have pictured... curiouser and curiouser....

only thing i can add to all of this stuff is make sure you get the Hardware kit for your brake job - do NOT reuse the springs or other bits. other half put new shoes on his car and reused the springs & stuff (thinking he would save a couple of bucks - unknowingly had a spring break and it has trashed the inside of the drum - lesson learned the hard way... oh yeah - we have one of those silly spring tools - didnt use it...

have seen a LOT worse - on my own car. the rust you are seeing doesnt look that bad to me, and the body of the car looks to be in good shape (hard to really tell from the angle of the pic tho) I would fix it and drive it till it drops - which could be a while!!

yup, around $500 tops brake lines are not that hard - plenty of PB Blaster, a small wire brush to remove excess rust, and a good set of metric flare wrenches are your freinds. a brake line tubing bender can be very useful as well - prevents kinking the new line when bending it.

i have only used 5W30 in my Subie once, and only once - the oil pressure was ridiculously low & caused the TOD and it came out after only about 300 miles on it. My normal oil is 10W40. the only time i get TOD these days is if the oil level gets a low, or i go way beyond my normal oil change interval (BAD heartless! ) I put around 100 miles a day on my car & get around 32-33 MPG average (have gotten as high as 35.5 on one fill up) - and I don't baby it either. now keep in mind this is with an 89 GL wagon, 5 spd, FWD that has 254,000 miles on the clock - your mileage may vary.

i guess it would depend on what year car you are working on - on my 89 wagon, the pieces are glued on.

we have both MIG and ARC welders - the one that gets used the most = MIG, hands down. just used it yesterday to weld up some new exhaust parts. very versatile & easy to use. for really heavy stuff, the other half will use the big 220 unit his boss has at work.

The older ones do not have a "code port" - all code reading is done via the LED on the ECU. someone correct me if i am wrong, but i dont think they did the plug in ports until around the mid 90's - even my 90 Legacy (not Loyale) doesnt have a port to plug in to - they just moved the location of the test connectors from under the hood to under the dash...

oh man - that sucks! just my .02 cents - find yourself another one for the time being - leave this one alone until the insurance co's are done and everything is settled. also - dont sign ANYTHING without the advice of a good attorney. after all is said & done - then look into wether or not she may be fixable - with the amount of damage on the left side it may be iffy...bleeding oil? not good what a shame, she was a nice looking one.

yupper - them wagons are great for haulin stuff! but the XT was made more for "lookin cool & goin fast" than hauling stuff (just MHO) Good luck with getting everything in - you might need to apply some creative packing ideas here...

good pair of gloves, heat gun (a real one, not a hair dryer) and a stiff putty knife. the heat gun will soften the adhesive enough to scrape it off with the putty knife. would recommend removing/moving any plastic trim pieces that are close to the area you will be working - melted plastic is not a good thing...

ok, there IS a way to repair it, but it would depend on just how bad it really is - if it is structural - not the best idea, but can be gotten away with for a time. here is what my car looked like after getting a cracked widshield pulled: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=67677&highlight=ditch+witch i did most of the repair work with fiberglass, altho there was one spot that did get a patch of metal welded in, then fibrglass laid over it - the finished repair can be seen here:http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=68811&highlight=ditch+witch go pick up a fiberglass repair kit - has the resin, hardener and a package of the fiberglass mat in one package. also pick up some of the small tinfoil loaf pans from the grocery, some sort of mixing stick, and a mess of the elcheapo "chip" paint brushes (they normally sell for about 25-30 cents a piece for the 1" size. DO NOT try using the foam brushes - they melt). carefully read the directions on the fiberglass resin. either remove the windshield yourself, or have your local autoglass place do it for you. remove as much of the nasty rust as you can. cut your fiberglass mat patch to the approx size you need BEFORE mixing the resin. sand the area with a coarse sandpaper to give the resin something to stick/grab to. mix only enough resin to set that patch in place. let cure. you may need to do this several times to build up the area you are repairing - if so, be sure to scuff the cured area good with coarse sandpaper so the next layer has something to bite into. once you have the area built up enough, give it a good sanding (a file can be used, as can a "cheesegrater" type tool for rough shaping),it doesnt need to be perfect, but get it as close to the proper shape as you can, prime it and paint it (make sure there is NO bare metal showing anywhere), and get the new windshield installed. when i did mine, i unbolted the dash at the top and pryed it back a little so i could cover it completely. used a tarp over the dash and front seats to keep the sanding mess down/easier to clean up. also removed the A pillar trim and the trim piece at the front of the headliner. Good luck. any questions, just ask.

that was too funny!

yup, sounds like the ignition amplifier - had one go bad on my car a couple of years ago (also an 89 SPFI) - took a while to figure it out. didnt kill the spark completely, but it was very weak. swapped out the bracket - made sure it was grounded good - had to tap out the mounting hole and put in a slightly larger bolt, old one was loose - and it fired up no problem. a special thanks goes to Skip for all the help he gave me while trying to diagnose the problem.

learned from a small local exhaust shop run by an older gentleman: heat with torch cool by spraying water from spray bottle heat cool heat cool continue as many times as necessary to clean off the "crud" and break the nut loose might take a while, but it does work