My Hoopte30 Project Attempt #6 - the painless way to earn cash back every day

[AWDBOB]

I seem to remember a garage discussion many a year ago along these lines...It's the natural progression...keep on keepin' on....one of these days you'll have another similar realization when you find yourself upgrading the suspension on your 5 series....

A natural progression indeed. I read through Linda's build thread the other day and never thought all of our garage convos would age as well as they have! Pretty wild to think about how long ago 2016 was......


No hoopty updates, but I got the lift in at the new shop. I completely overlooked bay door track height. I'll have to do a high bay track install eventually, but for now I'm just glad to have the lift here!

Paid for a 4" pour, concrete was almost 6" thick by the lift! Opposite of the deal most women get.

Dreaming of Linda lately..... the one that got away

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

[mjweimer]

My goodness I'm old. Magnaflow 14815 was too loud, and already took it back once to add a Vibrant ultra quiet. Now I'm having it redone again to add a cat.

What is life. I just want to hear the tunes man.

I seem to remember a garage discussion many a year ago along these lines...It's the natural progression...keep on keepin' on....one of these days you'll have another similar realization when you find yourself upgrading the suspension on your 5 series....

[AWDBOB]

This is at least the 4th time I've pulled the dash on OG Hooptie. I've got the whole process down to sub 45mins now on a car I like including beer and entertainment breaks. I forgot the wiper motor had failed which I needed to replace. This realization gave me some extra zest when pulling the wiper linkage for the cowl repair prep.

I'm bringing the car to header guy this week who is going to do the cowl repair and redo the exhaust, adding a cat and placing both the cat and the muffler in the exhaust cavity so I can hopefully stop scraping the exhaust on everything.

My goodness I'm old. Magnaflow 14815 was too loud, and already took it back once to add a Vibrant ultra quiet. Now I'm having it redone again to add a cat.

What is life. I just want to hear the tunes man.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr
Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

[AWDBOB]

I appreciate the subaru fuckery. I had a 2012 Outback 3.6R, which was honestly a great car - the 3.6 flat 6 seems to be bulletproof and makes good power/torque, you miss out on those early year CVTs, which even though the 5EAT is a dog, it's still better.

However, once I replaced it with my XC90, it decided it didn't want to be alive anymore - it kept killing the battery, and then had a CEL for a CAN Communication issue, which like you said, prevents cruise control and some other stuff from working, but also stuck the trans in some sort of limp mode, so it would absolutely fucking kick on every shift when this code was on. Seemed to be some false code related to battery voltage from all I could find online. Left a sour taste in my mouth at the end of ownership.

They can be good DDs and honestly some of the older cars are pretty robust. It seems all Subarus reach a point eventually where they really let go. Once they head over that cliff it takes some serious energy to bring them back. Cue the 27 $1k Subarus on everyones local marketplace.

On the other hand, turbo Subarus are a nightmare. I DD'd a Forester XT for almost a decade and it was fine. But man oh man when it went it needed EVERYTHING despite constant upkeep/maintenance. The guy after me had a hell of a time with it too despite redoing everything before the sale.

I still mostly hate Subarus, but she loves her car and it keeps her from wanting something shiny/newer so I'm happy to oblige.

Also you caught me slippin' on my greater than less than lol

[Northern]

>1% will care about any of this, but I was excited enough to post it here.

I appreciate the subaru fuckery. I had a 2012 Outback 3.6R, which was honestly a great car - the 3.6 flat 6 seems to be bulletproof and makes good power/torque, you miss out on those early year CVTs, which even though the 5EAT is a dog, it's still better.

However, once I replaced it with my XC90, it decided it didn't want to be alive anymore - it kept killing the battery, and then had a CEL for a CAN Communication issue, which like you said, prevents cruise control and some other stuff from working, but also stuck the trans in some sort of limp mode, so it would absolutely fucking kick on every shift when this code was on. Seemed to be some false code related to battery voltage from all I could find online. Left a sour taste in my mouth at the end of ownership.

[AWDBOB]

To me, this sounds even less appetizing than an E39 blower motor… well done Bobert

I certainly don't envy your blower motor endeavors. Once I figured out the pin out differences it was actually kinda fun 😂

today i learned the difference between the Q25 and Z25 EJ25 heads, even after rebuilding dozens, if not hundreds. good to know. nice work!

I was so damn confused when I first put this motor together and held the dual port exhaust mani gaskets up to the single port downpipes 😂

Some old head Subaru guru was the one who shared the knowledge.

Dont buy a cali spec 05 Subaru, folks.

Rephrased for the majority:

Don’t buy a Subaru, folks.

[e30austin]

today i learned the difference between the Q25 and Z25 EJ25 heads, even after rebuilding dozens, if not hundreds. good to know. nice work!

[Matt@EDC]

Japanese wiring stuff…

To me, this sounds even less appetizing than an E39 blower motor… well done Bobert

[AWDBOB]

After finding that cowl rust on OG hooptie I took a week off from E30s and focused on our 05 Outback 2.5i Limited that needed love.

I put a rebuilt engine in the car a few years ago, not realizing the car was a "Cali spec" chassis. In 05 this means that the car was pretty substantially different to adhere to Cali emissions specs.

This means it has different:
-Single port "Z25 cylinder heads" vs standard dual port non AVCS Q25 heads on federal emissions cars
-3 stage intake manifold w different engine harness and extra BS
-5 02 sensors vs 2 on federal cars
-Totally different two bank exhaust with 3 catalysts
-Different ECU

I got the car running with cali spec ancillaries and the federal spec motor a few years ago but it never ran right and had a perma CEL which drove me nuts because that disables cruise control on a Subaru.

I looked into converting the car from cali to federal emissions when I discovered all of this but it was a gray area on whether or not it could be done.

I spent last week diving into wiring diagrams and ecu pinouts for federal vs cali emissions 05 outbacks and found inconclusive data regarding ECU/chassis harness pinouts being the same between both cars.

I bought a $500 federal 05 and decided to put all of the federal stuff on our car sans exhaust to see what codes I got.

I installed the federal intake, engine harness, ecu, and 02 sensors, and the only code I got was a front AF 02 sensor low voltage since the cali AF 02s ran through the engine harness and federal does not. So, without the cali engine harness, there was no 02 sensor plug.

Then I found the motherload, deep in a searchable factory manual, which was an I/O signal chart for both cali and federal ecus.

Much to my surprise, Right Hand Front AF Cali 02 perfectly matched the pins for the Front AF Federal 02, and the 5th Cali Rear 02 perfectly matched the pins for the Rear Federal 02.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr



This meant that all I had to do was find these wires in the chassis harness behind the engine harness connector, chop them and make my own front AF 02 sensor harness.

Got all of that done today and have no codes for the first time in two years after installing a new engine and am STOKED, considering I was swimming in mostly uncharted waters.

<1% will care about any of this, but I was excited enough to post it here.

Before I cleaned it all up.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

[e30austin]

no good deed goes unpunished, brother. do you have a section of decent cowl sheet metal you could panel bond in place as a temporary hack fix? certainly nothing to be proud of, but would get you down the road for a bit.

[varg]

Oof, what a pain. Time to pull out the dash and break out the hammer and dolly to make some replacement windshield channel pieces.

[2mAn]

[AWDBOB]

i had the same issue on my M3 (cam seal folded and leaked out of the distributor housing) after the engine rebuild - also an Elring seal. the replacement seal was a Victor Reinz. installed with Permatex on the outer race, gently tapped into the housing, and has been good ever since. always was able to count on Elring to be worth a shit back in the day. guess not now.

I used to have an internal resistance towards Reinz stuff but at this point it feels like everything is equally hot trash. Glad to hear that Reinz seal held tho especially since I have that project on my horizon!

--------

After I replaced the leaking cam seal on the 4dr pre rust discovery I replaced the windshield with OG Hooptie's unbroken but frosted windshield since I wanted to replace that with new glass.

I then found the 4dr frame rust above, the second cam seal started leaking, the booster failed, and numerous other issues arose, so I am cutting my losses with that project and moving on.

With that project terminated, I shifted gears over to OG hooptie. Installed the MarkD 2.7 chip I bought, car seems to like it.

I got my new windshield and started installing it. Noticed the seal was torn so I removed it, revealing....... some nasty rust.

These cars have been unkind as of late. My long term goal was to reshell OG Hooptie into a nice shell at some point but can't take on that project at this time.

Not sure what I'm going to do yet as there is not enough of a lip to keep the seal from leaking into the cabin, making it hard to patch.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr
Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

[e30austin]

i had the same issue on my M3 (cam seal folded and leaked out of the distributor housing) after the engine rebuild - also an Elring seal. the replacement seal was a Victor Reinz. installed with Permatex on the outer race, gently tapped into the housing, and has been good ever since. always was able to count on Elring to be worth a shit back in the day. guess not now.

[AWDBOB]

I wonder if there's a quality issue with these seals. My E30's oil leak is the same thing, pretty bad and it runs down from behind the timing cover, I have replaced the valve cover gasket and rocker seals so that leaves only the cam seal and seal carrier o ring, both were professionally installed when I had the head rebuilt and new cam installed. Could also be the installer's fault though, my M50 stroker smoked like a 2 stroke from new and was honed and assembled by the same person.

Funny you mention that, the second replacement Elring seal failed as well. I checked the end of the cam over very carefully for a burr or groove that could be causing an issue and it was as clean as can be.

Very carefully installed a new seal and oring in the same manner I’ve done the last 25. Checked to make sure the seal wasn’t bulging or sucked in anywhere after install.

Didn’t leak for 10mi and then started the same leak as before.

Both of these seals were bought around the same time and came from Elring HG kits.

Not saying I can’t mess something up but I’ve been doing these more than the average person since 2013 and have never had one fail. Now that I’ve had two of the same failures back to back it has me questioning the quality