Fixins'
Scrap’s log of things that need fixin’
- Motor burns lots of oil. After 137,000+ miles Scrap has started to consume lots of oil, about half a quart every two fillups (say 400 – 600 miles). I drive him a lot, and I drive him hard. I replaced his turbo with a used TD04 (32,000 miles), and it stopped the smoking at idle, but the oil consumption is just as bad as before.
- Vandalized by an emotional child. No not a pissed off toddler, an adult with way too many child-like tendencies. Scrap needs to be repainted in places because of this.
- Windshield wiper play. There is some play in the windshield wiper linkage, I think I have tracked it down to the ball and socket used instead of a spline where the wiper arm connects to the driveshaft of the linkage. This has been resolved. Turns out it is easier to just replace the linkage (think: from a junkyard) than it is to deal with those stupid ball joints.
- Exhaust rattle. One one of the previous owners (not the most recent) had obviously modified the exhaust, when putting the factory exhaust back on the car, they stripped the one hardmount and just left the bolt in sideways. I discovered this about a month after owning the car. When I put the APS exhaust on the car the rattling from the larger 3″ tubing really started to get to me. I’ve got the tap, I’ve got the new bolt, now where did I set my motivation?
- Torn steering rack boot. During my turbo swap I discovered that the boot on the hydraulic arm for the steering is torn on one side. I imagine it is only a matter of time till this starts to give me trouble.
- Cracked windshield. For no particular reason I’ve got a nice crack in my windshield, along with about 3 dings. Time for a new one.
- Broken tape deck. After one particularly long drive to Seattle (3 hrs solid driving), I shut Scrap down only to return the next day and find that the tape player would make an awful noise when trying to play a tape. It almost sounds like a ground issue, but not quite. It’s an odd screaching in the audio output. This will probably be a tedious one to investigate, and I would like to replace the headunit with one of the newer 7″ Kenwood or Pioneer units.
- Adjust wastegate. Obviously, one of the previous owners of Scrap had at least an aftermarket exhaust put on, and obviously (hopefully) some sort of tune. It is common practice on stock turbo tunes on WRXs to adjust (loosen) the wastegate actuator arm a couple turns to help hold the wastegate closed longer. Before my swap to the turbo from the Forester that I bought to replace the factory one with blown seals, the car ran beautifully pushing just shy of 16 psi at WOT in third gear. After the swap I was having trouble pushing more than 8 psi, though I would randomly make more or less. Loosening the WG actuator arm had a great effect on the drivebality of the car, that wow-thats-a-four-cylinder? torque of the turbo-4 is back, as boost is built (or held, rather) a lot quicker. Still not consistently hitting my boost targets, but I am hitting them more often. Time to abuse the charge piping and make sure I don’t have a leak somewhere. No leaks in the charge piping, wastegate arm needed a little more help, it turns out. Regardless, Scrap is now meeting his boost targets.
