covertrussian

Gauge: Any name brand gauge will work. I don't know that I would buy another summit one though, it turned brown (fuel leaking into it).

Connectors: I didn't mind cutting up up stock fuel lines AND bend the hard line, a lot of people do, so the connectors are need to avoid that.

My first real mod in a while! One of the cars, my old SR20 Sentra, I recently scrapped (had to stop procrastinating, since I'm tearing up the driveway) had Redline hood struts on it. Figured I could re-purpose them on the Legacy.

At first I wanted to use the existing fender mount, would need some custom hood brackets then, this is how my G20 kit does it. But our fenders mounts are really flimsy and I could see it also bending/failing overtime.

Since that didn't work out, started to do more permanent modifications, drilled and riveted (after breaking my first rivet gun), but I failed at my geometry and it would bind:

At this point I started looking up how proper LGT hood struts are installed and I noticed that the body side mount is much further back. The hood mount was still binding too, so had to move that one forward too.

Here's the other side completed, with less screwups

Finally done! Sadly they don't open as high as even the hood prop, but it's worth it for me since I freaking hate that prop. Topping off the oil is gonna be so much easier now!

I would check the oil valves too, easiest with Tactrix cable and Romraider, or Access Port. Mine died around 130k, the CEL didn't come up with it for about 30 miles, but I was data logging and saw the AVCS values jumping around for that specific valve.

AVCS cam gear it self might be the culprit too, debris might have gotten into both the oil valves and cam gears.

Oh, yeah, I now remember you were talking about that project. That's a lot of work.

Yup, it's kept me pretty busy, I've been doing the bare minimum to keep the cars running while I'm busy with this...

I did install the 190F thermstat last November and was actively testing MPG with it, unfortunately the stay at home order put it all on a stand still since it takes me now months to get a 100 miles in .

On a flip side I did stretch the cars legs on a highway MPG base run, I need to waste a little more gas joy riding before I can do some tune adjustments and see if 190F thermostat helped

Glad you found time to make a post, you have been kind of quiet lately.

 

It's not that I don't have time to post, all the house projects & physical labor have been stealing all of my dopamine, thus the car's have gotten no love at all. I did have a productive day on the Outback yesterday, and did some more work on the legacy today (more to come).

As for house projects, I'm still digging & moving earth, chainsawing old trees and started jackhammering my existing driveway to recycle it as new driveway's baselayer.

Here's what it's looking like so far:

After my last year's post, I had some major scope creep and decided to add a front parking area. I really didn't have plans for doing this much work, but figured do it right the first time. Unfortunately I hit a ton of rocks, which took me all February to jackhammer then I hand moved them all around. I should have rented a skid loader afterall .

On a bright side, while gyms were closed I still had my personal gym outside and my core, back, and arm strength is now awesome, on a bad side with added muscle I gained a lot of fat too.

I did a full clay bar wash and wax on my civic one time and I was surprised how much difference it made. It wasn't even really in bad shape. It took a lot of time though. I'll be getting some sort of buffer or buffer attachment for my wagon.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think I have some some place, will need to find some time when my arms are not sore to claybar the car. With all the jackhammering/stump digging that I'm doing arms need plenty of rest.

My 2012 Outback definitely has it and it's VERY annoying when your using cruise control up a mountain and have to downshift (ECU revs the engine to 5k rpm sometimes!).

The 05 LGT doesn't have it though, I figured it was a new stick driver assist over emissions, so good lesson. Now I'm not sure I wanna bother deactivating it.

I'm coming out of the woodwork a little, I'm still pretty busy with my house projects but lately cars have been needing some attention too. With office closures, I'm barely driving now so it's harder to justify spending money on the cars .

My rear lip has been getting a bit loose, not too surprising for a $30 eBay lip that's been on for 7 years!

With the lip off I saw how nice and rich the paint used to be. I'm told that clay barring the car might being it mostly back. Sadly bumpers are too far gone now.

Used some good old 3m double sided tape, had to hand cut it since I didn't have any of the thin stuff around.

All done, lets see how long this lasts.

I've been a bit of a hermit when it comes to car work, digging my new driveway/planning a house expansion stole all my motivation from touching the cars.

What got me out of the woodwork? A bunch of maintenance things on the Legacy and Outback .

Up first is the Rear Right Wheel bearing, its been about 20k miles since I replaced the left one, well now it's rear rights turn.

I was tempted to try SKF rear bearings for $20 more, but figured since I know Timken worked fine just continue on with it:

I got all the bolts loose but was having a hard time separating hub assembly from the knuckle, tried the slide hammer:

This broke the wheel bearing apart but the rest of the assembly was still rusted into place. Since I couldn't wedge anything between the knuckle and drum brake baking, had to try to beat it out with slide hammer again. With enough persistence it finally walked out enough to stick a big enough flathead between the knuckle and drum brake back plate:

Hes the offending part, same failure as before. It's hard to say if my reground kit helped or not because this bearing was probably starting to fail when other one failed. Guess we'll see how long the Timkens last (~20k on the left one so far)

Next up is my front tire shoulder wear. Ive been driving the outback a lot more then my wife, and I think my aggressive turn taking is showing .

The wagon is already a bit tail happy in inclement weather, so I really didn't want to give it too much more front grip, but oh well. I maxed the camber out (to 10, not 11 like on my legacy).

Finally, with close to 130k miles on the clock, its time for coolant swap. I went with Valvoline Zerex Asian vehicle coolant (had it sitting in my garage for 2-3 years!) This process is more or less self explanatory, but I did mod the plastic molding to allow for easier coolant swaps:

So which is better? A more consistent EGT reading across all cylinders, or 1 & 4 running a little hotter and total temp a bit lower.

 

I've had this mod in a shopping cart for a minute now, but waiting for info.

I believe consistency is better, even when higher, then lower but inconsistent temps. With consistent temps you could adjust fuel or timing to reduce EGT's.

Lets compare this to a more common metric: Air to Fuel Ratios. Is it better to have consistent AFR's across all cylinders or richer AFR's on cylinder 1-3, but cylinder 4 is 1 point leaner?

With inconsistent temps or AFR's, you have to tune per cylinder... Which means you need a wideband and knock sensor on each cylinder then .

Agreed, data and field testing. Until then I'll trust Subaru's engineers.

While I do agree with this typically, since OEM's have lots more money and engineers. With that said, how many of are are running stock turbos, how about even at stock boost?

Heck the factory tune tends to blow up on bone stock motors as is, but that is a different team/department .

My fix to reducing heating/egt stress has been running a much larger turbo with a much larger turbine housing, but at stock boost levels. Coupled with a more efficient Intake, header, downpipes and exhaust. Not many people tend to wanna go this route though . With that said, I still might do this mod though, just need to find time

In my opinion, if you are willing to live with extra NVH, there is no problems with restricting the subframe motion/slop...

Having slop in the subframe adds to camber loss and changing toe during a turn, which leads to instability and loss of traction. Thus there are ton of fully solid subframe mods (from aluminum to poly) out there for other cars and those cars are still safe/fine. Heck I'm going to do that on my G20 here in the near future, but with the front subframe.

I think what traildogck was referring to is, having only the rear be "solid" and the front be stock. But at the same time I'm not sure I agree that it would cause any issues, having even the rear be "solid" would compensate for the front's slop and net overall gain, like you saw .

The avo brackets are probably compressing the rear bushing a bit and thus functioning as void filling inserts.

Though with the tube design ones, for our cars, it shouldn't be too bad:

https://avoturbo.com/suspension-body-brace-liberty-2-5i-ej253-s1104m1ht001t/

I can see these doing a lot more compressing though:

https://avoturbo.com/suspension-body-brace-outback-2-5i-ej253-s2c08g1ht002t/

Also traildogck mentioned the same with the more flat design (perhaps that was the first version of AVO ones for our cars?

This goes back to even 2010 Outbacks. My 3yo, at the time, 2012 outback was already on an a different windshield. Then it cracked again and I had to replace it too.

I honestly blame lack of lateral chassis rigidity in newer wider Subaru's. I installed a strut bar right after getting the new windshield about 2years ago and so far no cracks. I've taking the car off road camping multiple times too, and so far so good.

Last week I uploaded a new tune with a revised timing table to test if 88C thermostat wanted less timing. Well while driving to work and back I noticed the car was going into boost up our hills (typically 0psi is enough throttle). First thought was, jeez my new tune can't suck THAT badly, it's only 2* less timing at 0psi.

Well next came the other symptoms, I started smelling burning rubber or clutch material. Had me real worried that it was the timing belt or clutch going out. After sniffing around the engine, couldn't locate the source, left it be for another day. Well the next day the car was really hesitating, I get home and checked the rotors with my infrared to find this...

Driver side on the left, passenger on the right:

I took it apart that night, one of the pistons was really stuck, couldn't compress it with the channel locks. Had to rotate the piston in place and pump the pedal to knock it loose. The next day the driver side locks up! Over my lunch break, I pulled the caliper to make sure my brake lines weren't swelling internally (I hear that's common).

Even with the caliper off I couldn't compress the piston, so reattached it and pumped the brakes until the piston popped out. Rust inside the boot...

After spending a good half hour trying to wrap the boot around the piston, I finally got it, and the piston moved around like new, so weird! Anyway kind of sucky for these to start failing at 16k miles and 2.3 years... Original install post.

Interesting. I did not know that.

As for me, my concern is the slight raise in EGTs across all other cylinders, as I mentioned in that thread.

I think it's better to have higher, but more consistent EGT's, then having a big disparity between cylinders. One is easy to tune out, one is damn near impossible

I haven't but subscribed. I have to replace my two radiator hoses in the future anyway, so might just do this while I'm in there.

My biggest concern is the use of silicon hoses, silicon hoses tend to slowly leak/evaporate coolant. Leading theory is the membrane size is not small enough to stop coolant from passing through it.