csamos

Very cool! I've got an '81 928 with about 200k miles on it that needs a new water pump and timing belt, but I'll likely pull the motor and do a complete tear down on it. But first I have to finish rebuilding the motor on my '96 300zx twin turbo. I've already completed transmission work, and I'm finishing up a complete engine bay overhaul and detailing. I just wish I had lots more time to work on it than I do.

A friend of mine drove his '94 first gen (chassis code BJ, manufactured June 1993, 5-speed, ~190,000 miles) Legacy wagon from San Francisco to Austin last month. When he got here, I was amazed the car made it. He knows absolutely nothing about cars, so I've been helping him take care of various issues. Here's all we've done so far. His headlights were so oxidized I couldn't tell if they were on at night, so we sanded and polished them. http://www.samos.org/HeadlightsBeforeAfter.jpg Next we pulled off the rocker arm assemblies and completely cleaned and refilled the lifters. I'd say about half of them were stuck. His rocker arm assemblies had so much slop in them, and the clatter was so loud. That made a huge difference in how the engine runs. I'm pretty impressed with how easy it is to work on this 2.2L boxer motor. I'm used to working on 928s and 300ZXs. He had a check engine light that some kid told him was probably just an O2 sensor and not to worry about it. So I showed him how to get the actual codes, and the only code that popped up was actually the knock sensor. I found one on Amazon for $15. It took me about 10 minutes to swap it since it's in a pretty inconvenient location. The old one was cracked and nasty. Sure enough, that cleared up the CEL. He had a horrible exhaust leak on the passenger side. He said he had to drive with the windows open since he smelled exhaust in the car. And that side sounded like a Harley. I took off the front half of the exhaust system, and the passenger manifold just flopped around on the pipe only held on by the heat shield. So I cut off the heat shield and found this: http://www.samos.org/ExhaustBroken.jpg It looks like someone tried to repair it with JB Weld or something similar. I took it to a welder to have it evaluated, and he ended up repairing it and only charged me $25. I of course completely cleaned the mating surfaces and used new gaskets. No more leaks, and the car now runs very quietly and smoothly. His windshield wiper arms were rusty and gross, so I took them all off, sanded them down, primered and painted them. They look like new now. I also installed new wiper blades. His floor mats didn't fit right and had zero grip under them, so they would slide around, even occasionally getting stuck under the pedals. No good. So I found a set of new ones that can be trimmed to fit correctly. His stereo system was probably the worst I've ever seen/heard before. Only the front right door speaker generated sound. The left door speaker was silent, and the rears just buzzed. Here's why: http://www.samos.org/RearSpeakers.jpg So we picked up 2 pairs of speakers, and I sold him a nice Alpine head unit out of my 300zx. The left door speaker still didn't work though. We traced it down to one of the speaker wires going to the door, so we ran a new wire, and now it all works great. That should make the return drive to SF much better. His battery terminals were corroded and gross, and the positive terminal actually broke when I was putting it back on. So I bought 2 new terminals and stripped and cleaned up the cables. We also did an oil/filter change and replaced the air filter. The only remaining item is to figure out why there is sometimes a vibration under braking. The front brakes look good. I haven't looked at the rears yet. But it only happens sometimes, so I'm thinking it may be suspension related.