ScottFW

Finally decided to tackle some issues with the rear suspension. The inner bushings in the upper links were shot for some time, which I periodically quieted with a squirt of white lithium grease, but with the car also needing new tires I decided to properly repair it first. The nut & bolt at the trailing arm zipped right off with an impact wrench, but that inner mounting bolt for the upper link is in a tight enough spot that I couldn't get a good angle on it with an impact & wobble or with a breaker bar, so I had to bust out the sawzall and cut through the bushing & bolt, on both sides of the car. Toe adjuster cam bolts were also rust-frozen inside the lateral links. Last time I had it in for an alignment the tech couldn't get them to budge, so I was expecting that headache from the outset. Sawzall to the rescue again. Had to cut both sides of those bolts to pull the lateral links. Strategic application of anti-seize on reassembly to maybe prevent the issue for next time, if there is a next time (car has >300K miles). Yesterday I had new Conti DWS-06+ mounted and got it aligned. First set of DWS-06 for me, after multiple sets of Michelin AS3/AS3+ and Pirelli P-Zero AS, which were pretty good, just figured I'd give the Contis a shot this time and the $110 rebate was a nice sweetener.

I did a clutch replacement a few weeks ago. Had been running the TSK3 kit for the past 200K miles that I piled onto the old clutch (lots of highway driving, not a ton of shifting) and the PDM bearing lasted that long without issue, so I just decided to eat the cost and buy the bearing from smartqualityparts. However, I see there are sleeve & bearing kits on Amazon now that I would guess are probably similarly/identically sized. If you search PDM TSK3, the first result is a ClutchMax branded sleeve & bearing kit for $40. If anyone wants to buy one of those and take measurements, I saved my old TSK3 bearing and we could compare. But off the top of my head, the main difference is just that the ID is about 2 mm larger to fit over the sleeve. An OEM style throwout bearing has a 33 mm ID whereas the TSK3 bearing is 35 mm (might be 34.9x mm). Aside from the measurements, bearing quality might be a bit of an unknown. That's the main reason I just ate the cost of a new PDM bearing. Known good, and I'm NOT doing this job again. But the PDM bearing is definitely on the exploitative end of the price spectrum, so I'm sure some intrepid individuals will guinea pig that ClutchMax bearing.

Yes, on the 5-spd they're located on the driver's side about half-way up the transmission case. There are two switches mounted in that general area, the other being the neutral safety switch. The backup light switch is the one towards the front/bellhousing end, mine had a blue and a white wire. A box wrench is the only tool you need to replace it.

Currently at 302K and some change. Not breaking records yet but I've gotta be up there on the leader board. Original engine and trans. Turbo replaced when the original started blowing some oil at 182K, but the replacement has been fine since.

I recently joined the 300K club. That was actually a few weeks ago. Currently at 302K. Been slacking on posting here. Clutch is about dead, been babying it for a few thousand miles but it doesn't want to accelerate uphill in 5th anymore so I'm shopping for a new one. The Clutchmasters FX300 lasted 11 years and a smidge over 200K miles. Hard to complain about lifespan but this time I'll be going with something that will engage a bit smoother in traffic.

Mine flickered due to the reverse switch in the 5-spd. Started happening around 250K miles I would guess. There were no broken wires. It seems possible that it failed due to gradual ingress of gear oil. Not sure, but I took it out and flushed it out real good with MAF sensor cleaner while working the switch in & out, let it dry then reinstalled. The reverse lights then worked flicker free for about a month, but then got flickery again and eventually completely failed to come on. At least my little experiment confirmed the switch was the culprit, and it's pretty easy to access for replacement so no major effort was expended. I went with a new OEM switch and it has worked normally since.

Passed the quarter million mile mark on the way into work this morning.

I took out a groundhog last week on a highway onramp. Even if I'd had time to react there was nowhere else to go. I was hoping it would pause mid-way and keep its head down, but alas it was not to be. My oil filter access panel is a replacement that I made using a sheet of ABS plastic and small layers of coroplast so it fits smoothly with the depressions in the undertray. It has four different types of pop-its holding it on. It ain't pretty but it's still easier & faster to deal with than dropping the whole undertray.

Friday evening coming home from work I heard a new rattle/clunk from underneath the car when going over small bumps at low speed. Sounds like mid to rear of the car, definitely not front end. Gave a quick look underneath, and the driver's side plastic undertray was hanging down a bit because it was missing most of the pop-its on the outboard edge. I pulled the rest of the pop-its and the two central mounting bolts to drop it down enough to snake a vacuum hose in there to extract >200K miles worth of accumulated gravel, then buttoned it back up with a pop-it in every spot. Thankfully I had a crap-ton of Honda/Acura pop-its on hand that are the same size. The Hondacura ones just pull out with trim clip pliers, versus the Subaru ones that are Philips head (which I've never really cared for). Still have the low speed rattle/clunk though. Further pondering has me thinking rear sway bar end links and/or bushings, which I think may still be the original >15-y.o. parts. Plus the low speed & mild bump conditions when it occurs are basically the same conditions as what would cause my front end links to rattle when they were toast.

Found a reman'ed driver's front brake caliper in stock at NAPA yesterday and swapped it on last night. The old one required a good bit of pry bar action to work it off due to the seized piston. To my pleasant surprise the brake pads were still flat & parallel (no wonky tapered wear) so I was able to reuse those. Car brakes about like it should now, and after lunch I'll head over to get my core charge back. And FWIW the NAPA reman looked identical to the original caliper- TOKICO branded, with identical casting marks. For those of you looking to re-clear your headlights, I've gotten semi-decent longevity by coating them with a bit of spar urethane that's thinned just a touch with mineral spirits. It lasts about a year on my car before it starts looking ratty again (22K mostly highway miles a year) and it lasts a little longer on wifey's car that isn't driven nearly as much. Surely not as nice as new clear Depos, but much longer lasting than those wipes or the typical thin coat of plastic polish/sealant type stuff.

On the way to her pre-school this morning, my 3-y.o. puked all over herself. Some little drops here and there got on the leather, which thankfully is pretty easy to clean. The bigger concern is that on the way back home, the car developed a pronounced shaking in the steering wheel at 40+ mph, which got progressively worse with time (not necessarily with increased vehicle speed). When I came to the stoplight at the end of my off-ramp, I detected the familiar odor (one loved by track guys) of hot brakes. Pulled into my driveway, driver's front wheel was quite noticeably hotter than the other three. Got the puke-covered kid extracted from the vehicle and handed her off to wifey, who already had a bath prepared. Took the kid's seat out, wiped off some vomit, drove 45 mostly highway miles into work and the car behaved fine. So it seems the car has an intermittently sticking driver's front caliper. I had rebuilt all four calipers with fresh seals & boots around 112K miles ago (currently at 228K) and even back then the pistons were looking a bit gnarly on the outside (internal surfaces were fine). Thinking I might go with reman'ed calipers this time versus rebuilding them again. Not sure.

Is it a manual transmission car? I sell little kits to defeat the clutch starter interlock switch on MT cars, so the car can be started without stepping on the clutch. Some people wire that defeat to a switch, and that little driver's side fuse box would be the logical location for one. If you connect the wires and can then start the car without stepping on the clutch, but cannot do so with the wires unconnected, that's what it is.

I'm fairly certain the '06-09 part numbers just supersede the '05 numbers. I can specifically confirm that the driver's side one I ordered was ...G27A and it was a perfect drop-in fit on my '05 (Sept. '04 manufacture date).

When I pulled my OEM VF40 it had a bit of red silicone sealant, pretty sure that was between the CHRA and the compressor housing (?). It has been a couple years and my memory is hazy. I did use a bit of sealant when rebuilding my blown VF40 with the new CHRA from Mellett, seemed like a good idea. I doubt that red vs. copper would matter in that spot so use what you've got. And just FYI, it's possible for a VF40 to not have any significant shaft play or any evidence of wheels contacting the housings, but still blow oil out the exhaust to the tune of a quart in 90 miles. Anytime you swap in a different turbo, whether used or new or rebuilt, watch your oil level like a hawk for a little while.

"Following" or "drafting?" The Goo Gone citrus degreaser type stuff is fairly gentle so I'd try that first.

Are you doing HPDEs or autocross or what? Get another set of wheels and a dedicated tire that you use only for events. HPDEs up in the PNW I would pick the Toyo RA1 because it's not slow in the dry and still grips well enough to be pretty quick in the wet. Legit proven tire that likely won't scare you into leaving the car parked when it rains. They are streetable enough to drive to the track on them (if you don't have a tire trailer) and it's no big deal if you hit rain on the way to/from. I would not say the same for the R888. Fine tire, was the spec tire in Spec Miata for a while IIRC, but less streetable in weather. If you're going to be tracking at all during the 9 months of the year when rain is possible/likely, I would skip the 40 to 100 TW slicks unless you view your car's sheet metal as a consumable. I'm not current on which are the hot 200 TW tires for autocross AND will also not fall off towards the end of a 30 minute hot lapping HPDE session in the middle of summer. After my second kid I let my GRM subscription lapse. <sniffle> I run Hankook RS3v2 on the Miata during summer and they fit the bill for that car. RS4 should be even better. Michelin PSS or P4S can do all of the above with slight compromises in performance versus the more dedicated tires, but won't last long if they're the only set of tires on the vehicle and you're putting street miles on as a daily. Of course there are plenty of daily driven Porches around here with Super Sports that have never seen the track, just have owners with enough money to not care about tread life. Sadly not a problem I face at the moment.

Stupid odometer tricks!

Last I heard, the OE blue oil filters (which have had various sources over the years OEM'ing them for Subaru) had a lower bypass psi than our cars were originally designed for. The OE filter you want is the Tokyo Roki manufactured version you can buy at Mazda dealers, for an RX-8, part no. N3R1-14-302. They're about $7.

At just shy of 100K I had idle roughness that was ultimately solved by having the injectors cleaned (I used Deatschwerks that time). Idle stayed smooth for about another 90-100K miles before I noticed it getting slightly lumpy again. It wasn't as blatantly rough as the first time around so I lived with it for a while. Also did the IM/TGV o-rings at 186K to eliminate that possibility. I sourced another set of good used injectors that I could send out for cleaning (I used Witch Hunter this time) and have ready for direct swap to minimize downtime, which I did at 216K. Smooth idle again. It seems reasonable to plan for injector cleaning every 80-100K. Idle quality is where dirty injector symptoms are most likely to show up first, since any dribbly quality to the spray pattern will have a proportionally bigger effect on fuel delivery when pulse widths are short. FWIW I never noticed the dirty injectors (slightly varnished, not plugged up or otherwise damaged) affecting my AF learning values though. A high learned A value on mine has always been a vacuum leak, which will likely exacerbate any injector related issues.

Did a tire rotation and changed the rear diff oil last night.

On a street car, maybe not much difference. On track cars, ducting & sealing around the radiator makes a huge difference, and in any case there's no benefit in allowing air to bypass the core. I took my old rotted trim to the weather stripping section at Home Depot and picked up new stuff of comparable size.

Coolant fill level good? Coolant temp gauge on the dash coming up to normal temp? With the dual automatic climate controls, can you get warmer air out of one side than the other once the engine is up to operating temp? If so, you may have a dead blend door actuator. See this thread.

Looking at OP's pics I was marveling at how rust-free everything looks in there. Looks like a PNW car. They do salt the roads here, not with New England type frequency, but that coolant pipe is in a great location to get hit with salty road spray, and to then get baked by the exhuast piping to accelerate corrosion. Mine was nasty enough that I replaced it when I did the oil cooler o-ring. Also did the little rubber elbows and clamps to that hardpipe, and the coolant hose between the oil cooler & block. It was only slightly fiddly, not too bad but not something I'd trust to a kwik-e-lube type place.

Dab a little ATF on a paper towel and give the hoses a bit of a wiping. That will remove the white stuff without harming the rubber. I've often thought that the white residue was related to the Subaru coolant conditioner, that 4 oz bottle of stop-leak type stuff. I haven't used a product like that in the cooling system of any of my other vehicles, and none of those have developed any chalky residue on coolant hoses. Furthermore, it develops on the thinnest-walled hoses faster than on the thicker-walled hoses, which would be consistent with something seeping through the porous rubber from the inside.

You have driver's blend/temp, mode (defrost/vent/floor output), and passenger blend/temp in the order you posted them. The 4th one is the one that controls fresh/recirc. Pretty sure that one is mounted to the blower assembly, not the heater core, so it would be on a different parts diagram than the other three. I think it's 72131AG23A but don't take that as gospel. I bought the other three actuators, but not the fresh/recirc one, because it doesn't really seem to be failing on people's cars.