subi noob

[sleepyninja]

So I picked up my first subi yesterday. I have been a honda/acura guy for a good while and I still am. I needed a project car and something that my sister could drive dependably until her car is fixed. The car I picked up is a 90 Legacy AWD sedan (automatic). It has only 112k miles but it definately needs some attention, mainly suspension and exhaust. I have found a lot of good information on this board already and I am very thankful to you all. I will try to post some pics after lunch and lay out my plans a little more, first being the obvious things that need remedied:

1. Figure out what is making the horrible clunking sound from the rear drivers side wheel well.
2. Figure out why the front end shudders when turning (at low speed).
3. Fix the awful exhaust leak

I just got the car last night so I have not had time to really look into #1 and #2, I am hoping to get my hands dirty at lunch and see if I can find anything out.

Some other info about me. I have an 04 Acura TL 6sp (daily driver) and a 01 Ford F-150 super cab (bubba truck). I am a mechanical engineer for a metal fabrication shop in North Florida.

[sleepyninja]

Well I think i found the answer to my clunking problem. Lets take a look

Passenger top hat (good)


Driver rear top hat (not so good)

[sleepyninja]

Here are some other pictures of the car, some good, some bad. It seems as though only one side of the car has really bad rust issues, not sure why that is unless it was parked at the beach with that side facing the ocean for a number of years.

[Legacy777]

Yeah that top mount doesn't look so good.

The front end shudder is probably torque bind. More than likely the trans fluid is nasty and needs to be replaced. That should help, but may not completely eliminate it, depending on how long it's been like that. You can put a fuse in the FWD fuse holder in the engine bay by the passenger strut tower to disable the AWD and see if the binding goes away. If it doesn, then you know the duty c solenoid works and the problem is the fluid which may also have impacted the clutch packs.

[sleepyninja]

Thanks for the info about the binding. I was thinking that it was maybe caused by low differential fluid. Both the power steering fluid and front differential fluid are low. But then again both front cv axle boots are ripped wide open, so I am sure that is not helping. This thing needs more love than I thought. I ordered a new top hat from subarugenuineparts.com today, hopefully that will come in soon. Next I am going to see what I can do about the exhaust cause it just sounds horrible.

[sleepyninja]

Well I found my exhaust leak, turns out its not as bad as I thought. As you can see in the pic below the gasket is missing between the two pipes and the bolts are too rusted to make any sort of adjustment. I could easily pry them apart with my screwdriver. Some small metallic dropplings also fell out. This is the only place where i could feel and visibly see exhaust gasses leaking when I was under the car. The rest of it looks pretty solid except for the heat shield. Guess I will be visiting the muffler shop this week.



screwdriver inserted and prying


exhaust poop

[John Drivesabox]

Once again, welcome.....aboard!
Division Commanders march on the drill deck and join their Divisions.

[John Drivesabox]

That was a test, but seriously, welcome to BBS.

[sleepyninja]

Thanks John, I see you are up on Whidbey Is. I went to school up there when I was in the Navy back in 98/99. Beautiful scenery up there.

[John Drivesabox]

Navy huh, that's what most of us are doing up here. I joined in '99 too, just haven't found my way out yet.

[Legacy777]

Yeah, that center gasket is a doughnut gasket that allows for some movement with the spring bolts. it's gone....