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

[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!

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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

[varg]

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.

[AWDBOB]

Where were you getting the oil coming out for that bad seal? I wonder if that could be some of my leak. I changed that seal last year and it helped but didn't 100% stop the leak.

Front of head above HG but not above the cam seal housing, which ruled out VC.

When cam seals have failed on past E30s they’ve leaked pretty bad and drip down the passenger side of the block which is what this one did, although I’ve never had a seal fail after it was replaced until this time.

Most of the time it’s VC but the pesky cam seal will get ya

[Reichart12]

Where were you getting the oil coming out for that bad seal? I wonder if that could be some of my leak. I changed that seal last year and it helped but didn't 100% stop the leak.

[AWDBOB]

Bend up some sheet metal and rivet it in place? Could also do a combo of rivets and structural adhesive/panel bond or even zip screws to hold until it cures. I don't know how this thing made it down the road with all the Bluetooth drive-line mounts...but now she it looking fine. King of the Hoopte's rides again.

I genuinely don't know either- it only had a vibration on accel. When I tore into it and saw how bad the mounts and driveshaft were I was terrified.

My buddy was on board to do the welding if I dropped the cradle and made the patch panels. I spent a long time at the shop yesterday checking it over to make a decision and really do think it's fine for now.

This car isn't as clean rust-wise as most of the other cars I've saved in this thread so I think it's a fools errand to start grinding.

Still far from a flinstone mobile, though.

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My cam seal groove theory was incorrect. I installed the seal very carefully and it flat spotted somehow, despite my efforts. I don't know if that's a seal failure or installer error, but I installed this the same way I have the last 27 and it felt the same going in.

Oh well, fixed. Fuel pump sounds happier after the fresh fuel filter. I need to string align and then drive to see what else fails.

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

[mjweimer]

Bend up some sheet metal and rivet it in place? Could also do a combo of rivets and structural adhesive/panel bond or even zip screws to hold until it cures. I don't know how this thing made it down the road with all the Bluetooth drive-line mounts...but now she it looking fine. King of the Hoopte's rides again.

[rjmcdermott81]

I respect that. Roll it.

[AWDBOB]

Yikes! It's hard to tell how pervasive that rust is from the one photo, but I would imagine that doing a "good enough" fix wouldn't be terrible for someone with a welder and a shop. The hard work will be stripping the car down to make it easy... (pulling the engine, subframe, etc.).

Of course, I tend to think everything should be saved, so take my thoughts for what they are worth. Good reason to buy a welder?

After further review, the other 3 sides of the rail are solid. I was worried the rust went through the rail and down to the subframe which was not the case.

I risked it all and pulled the subframe bolts and thankfully, they came out with ease and looked great. With the subframe dropped, I cleaned and encapsulated the surface rust that was there and bolted it all back up. I used the eastwood internal frame coating on all of the passages on the frame in an effort to slow it down a bit. I'll add a strut brace and call it good for now.

I think it'll be a while before the terrifying looking spot under the MC becomes problematic.

This car was already a charity mission so opening the can of worms that is dropping the cradle and plating the top section of that frame is out of the question, for now at least.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

[rjmcdermott81]

Yikes! It's hard to tell how pervasive that rust is from the one photo, but I would imagine that doing a "good enough" fix wouldn't be terrible for someone with a welder and a shop. The hard work will be stripping the car down to make it easy... (pulling the engine, subframe, etc.).

Of course, I tend to think everything should be saved, so take my thoughts for what they are worth. Good reason to buy a welder?