trabbic

If the switches are passing along the correct resistance, then it seems as though the problem is the PAC.

Have you tried to contact PAC tech support and see what they say? I would NOT mention that you have retrofitted these controls.

The other troubleshooting you can do is temporarily plug the stock stereo back in and see if it works, but if the resistance is stepping down as it should at the plug on the stereo side then you did everything right and the PAC is at fault.

Good luck, this one could be difficult to troubleshoot...

Got the buttons to replace my shifter ones. Will install but I need to know which are the color of the cables on the other side of the roll connector. I will use connectors to revert to stock if need be and would even try to make the paddle assembly work now that I have the cables there.

I think the answer to your question is in step 10:

...#’s 6 & 7 (the other side of those holes should have green with red stripe and white wires, heading up the column) then plug in the green stripe and black wires into holes 2 & 8 respectively. (The other sides of those holes are colored Sky Blue and Black with White Stripe)...

Hey guys, I came out of retirement to help this guy out, perhaps some of you can chip in with your experence:

http://www.legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94916

Welll, REM870 came by this evening, and we made a few discoveries.

 

First, while the graphic a few pages back calls for 81 lbs nut and bolt going through the bushing it was not anywhere near that on the car. I'd say it was about 81 BILLION pounds.

 

Second, the bushings in that location are NOT the same as for the rear of the diff. They actually are solid.

 

Third, our Impreza bushings won't fit. They are close, but about 0.2" too small on the OD.

 

So, next up is for someone to take some silicon sheet about 3/16" thick, cut some small squares out of it, and JAM it into the gaps in the bushings in the rear and see what that does to the noise.

Any progress on this?

Does anyone have pics of the install with the 5eat having shift controls on one side and volume on the other? If I understand correctly, I would only need to purchase the new controls and not a whole new wheel, right?

 

I really want to do this mod. Anyone in SoCal that can help?

There might be some complications, read through this thread, they have been discussed...

http://cobbtuning.com/products/Default.asp?id=2444&v=more

 

just another thought.

I considered that about a year ago, when I first got the sound.... But it is NOT the exhaust... So that will not help.

Looks very much like our bushings will fit with a little bit longer crush tube. This is from a quick "slide under the car glance."

 

We're gonna pull the piece this week sometime, and try it out.

Great news, thank you for keeping us informed.

Note to Everyone: I'm an idiot. Make sure you push in those yellow tabs!

 

Eric

So just to clarify for other people, you did not push down the yellow tabs where the airbag connects to the steering wheel?

I have no idea what that connector is, but satellite radio wiring sounds right to me.

Well... I was crawling around under the car today and found what I believe is the source of our noises...

 

The rear prop shaft... between the tranny and the rear differential...... is a two piece unit with a carrier bearing / bushing assembly housed in a rubber doughnut mount. The factory coating on this rubber doughnut was all flaked and coming off... like if you hit a painted rubber bushing hard.... the bushing flexes... but the paint doesn't. Same thing here. The paint was all cracked and peeling off. If I grabbed the prop shaft... I could move it 1/16" back and forth in the carrier assembly... there is that much slop.

 

My money is on that bushing getting cold and hard... thereby transfering the driveshaft vibration up through the floorpan.

 

I'll attach a drawing of the unit I'm talking about....

Thoughts?

There was some discussion about this being the cause of the deep vibration at about 2500-3000 rpm when at Stage 2, if I am thinking of the same part. this happened under full throttle at a higher gear. Pltek discussed making a part to fix this. I think it is different, because the "growling" can still be at higher rpm.

I think the problem we are having is farther back, at the differential. Tonight making a HARD right turn under power, I only got the sound when the rear end stopped sliding and planted. that says to me it is farther back. Remember it is more pronounced, when we have passengers in the back seats.

"That's just the sound or power, baby!"

That's what I try to tell my fiancee!!!!

Good Deal

 

Any special tools needed for the job?

Also, I was thinking of soaking the bolts and bushings with PB Blaster tomorrow to aid in getting them out. Think its needed?

I am not sure exactly what has to be removed, but PB Blaster will not hurt anything, so spray away.

Thanks for doing this, report back so we know how much it helps.

Very Very interesting. Your bushing in that location is different than what's on the outback. I need to get one of the local guys to come over so we can try something.

 

OR - and this serious - if someone wants to try my idea I will send them the parts for free. there are a few conditions -

 

1) You be technically competant

2) You do the work quickly - sorry, gotta complain here for a bit. I HATE when someone begs me to let them test a part and when I send them the part I get "oh, dude. I'm at school and won't be home for 3 weeks." Here's the deal with testing - you test so we can release. Sometimes there's several thousand dollars worth of stuff sitting here waiting for your test results.

3) You're willing to give it a shot.

 

Here's my theory - I agree with the natural harmonic thinking. I think you're just hitting something that's setting up a resonation.

 

Here's the experiment - change a set of the bushings to a different stiffness. Could this make it worse? Maybe. Could it make it better? Maybe. We won't know for sure until we try. Now, here's the good part - that spot on the Outback will fit our GD impreza rear diff bushings perfectly. Not many people know this, and they aren't changed on the wife's outback for the same reason I have a stack of parts in the corner for my own car. I'm HOPING nothing changed in that mount except the bushing. If the dimension are the same then we should be able to pop ours in pretty easy.

Thanks for tackling this, hopefully we can find a solution...

Vimy... where do you get your info?

He pulls it out of his ass.

EDIT: please note the ":lol: "

I was just joking around, I actually do agree with Vimy ( ) that as it warms up this will diminish.

Here are some transmission cross-member bushings, that might (but probably won't) help our problem. Anyone want to try them?

http://www.legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56295

There only 30 dollars, and I guess no extra NVH, I don't have time right now, otherwise I would give them a go.

Keefe may chime in here today....but he thinks it has to do with the engine pulling timing....common issue for most. (currently TDC st.2 93, had same issue with Cobb 1.15 st.2 93) He could feel the vibration in the floor board while in the passenger seat. The noise in the rear could be just the side effect of the engine pulling timing...causing the vibration. We found no suspension issues, car handles fine, no odd noises. No drive train issues either. After about 15-20 minutes the noise became harder and harder to reproduce and eventually we couldn't get it to do it at all. Next step...data log.

 

BTW...drove Keefes car:icon_mrgr

 

Thing sounds mean with that single straight pipe. Handles great!

I don't think it is from pulled timing. I have logged runs where I am no where near pulling timing (so has Casopolis), and we both had the growling still (TDC tunes).

My car has NEVER pulled timing in the low rpms, where I get this growling, the only pulled timing I have ever recorded was @ high rpms. And the only logs I have recorded with pulled timing were Cobb's maps; with my TDC maps (and 94 octane ) I don't' get pulled timing.

Also I am curious how pulled timing would vibrate a floor board.

Please log, I doubt you will find any correlation.

No offense, trabbic... but where?

No offense taken, mccorry... It just seems to me like we are going in circles (or beating a dead horse).

People keep repeating the same thing over and over again. Or not reading the whole thread, and asking questions that have already been answered several times. (my biggest pet peeve on forums )

I think we pretty much have this thing narrowed down. It will be hard or impossible to get more specific than we have without more evidence, or trial and error.

I REALLY like the camera idea, it will help us to maybe prove (without actually replacing bushings) what is causing it.

Not lowered here, but stage 2, noticed it when I started putting more power to the ground than stock. (as I have previously posted)

It is worse when I have people in back (like a lowered car), but I can make it happen even with nobody back there. (as I have previously posted, during hard shifts).

We have already discussed this at LENGTH. It is worse on lowered cars, but can exist with stock springs.

http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i60/munchkin_2/Beat_Dead_HorseSanitysBlog.jpg

This is NOT something that Subaru will fix, I would bet that there are only one or two cars, that have never been modified, that have this problem.

It is most likely the bushings that locate the rear diff, we need a vendor to step up and make a replacement in polyurethane.

Yep. The old ones will def. need pressed out. The new ones, depending on the design, could just slide in.

That should not be a problem for the Front-Rear diff mount, because the part is removable and small. But the Rear-Rear diff mount is the whole rear sub-frame, that could be a problem.

http://www.subaruwrxparts.com/photos/ksb751.jpg

Took me a second, has been YEARS since I last coded in College! :lol:

I also get this, stock springs, under VERY hard acceleration in 1st.

Casopolis gets it to, BAD, with H-Techs.

My feeling is that it has to do with bushings that can't do their job any more when the torque combined with the squat under hard acceleration pushes on them, and what we are feeling/hearing is the vibrating parts of the drivetrain actually touching their mounting points (instead of being isolated by the bushing).

This is worse in a lowered car because you have already gotten the car closer to the point where it touches.

Thanks, Trabbic, for prompt answer. Have the wires been confirmed to be there?

Not that I know of, I replied to a PM from another 2.5i guy who wanted to do the controls, and told him to check, but have not heard back.

Why not pull the stereo and let us know once and for all, if the orange/white and purple/white are there, you should be good to go...

Great thread! I am a new 2.5i AT owner, and very interested to do this conversion. Has anybody here done this on a 2.5i? Trabbic mentioned it might need a new roll connector from GT. I checked and it seems 83116AG02A is for all models. Thanks for the help!

If it is in fact the same part number, then you should be good to go, that is if the stereo will accept the control inputs.

my guess would just be color balancing. It appears the pic was taken by the light of the dome light, which is an incandescent bulb and would yield a yellow cast, but if the camera adjusts the color for white balancing (or if Phoenix did it) then the shift would be blue in nature and and the white gauges would look blue.

 

Or ... it could just be that our eyes adjust for a slightly blue cast anyway and we see the guages as white.

+1

It is color shifting...

trabbic,

Thanks for figuring out how to do this and for the fantastic write up and walk through.

 

I'd like to do this but have no experience with car stereos or electronics. Could you please post a picture of the wire connectors and "taps" you talk about using?

 

Thanks,

-Ian

Here is a picture of a wire tap. you want red ones however not yellow as in the link.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103312&cp=&fbn=Type%2FWire+Tap-ins&f=PAD%2FProduct+Type%2FWire+Tap-ins&fbc=1&kw=wire+tap&parentPage=search

Go to your local hardware store (like true value, NOT Home depot) and they will have the 4 different color wire and red taps you need. Get about 4 feet of each color so you will have extra, and take your time, you should be fine. If you run into trouble post up and we will help you.

Oh yeah, to close the connection of the wire tap you have to push that metal piece down so it cuts the insulation, the best way to do this is with a nice set of pliers, NOT your hands. (learned the hard way the first time I used them )

Ok...so I received the new Roll Connector...and installed everything back together.

 

When I tested, steering wheel controls WORKED and...............

 

NO AIR BAG LIGHT

 

YEAH...anyways...I took a picture of the broken roll connector for those that don't know what one looks like dismantled Noticed the severed connections which is why the air bag light was on as well as no more working steering wheel controls.

Glad you got it figured out man!