What Did You Do with Your 80 This Weekend? (95 Viewers)

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Always has to be one or two out there, that ruin it for everybody else. Oh well, life goes on.

Great pics, @Aloha Jen !

How big is that Sea Turtle?
 
Always has to be one or two out there, that ruin it for everybody else. Oh well, life goes on.

Great pics, @Aloha Jen !

How big is that Sea Turtle?
That one was huge! But there were several different sized turtles that showed up. I was just laying in the sun on the beach and they came out of the water and laid right by me. It was apperently a good spot to sun oneself!
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got a lot done last night. put the 80 up on the lift yesterday morning. drained the trans and and dropped the pan. let it drip for a few hours while i sent a couple of customer cars home. finally got back to the 80 around 1730.

first operation in the trans was to replace the throttle cable. or kick down cable. or, as i now like to call it, so THIS is what this truck is supposed to drive like cable?!?! yes, it's as bitchy a project as you've heard, but so worth it. disco-ing it at the valve body is easy, it's getting the bolt out of the trans, and then back in that sucks. good thing my wife has small hands and is a seasoned subaru tech.

she shoved both arms up in there and had the bolt started in moments. all i could do to help her was hold the flashlight and try to catch the drops of dex III before they landed on her face. my wife rocks.

anywho, got the cable in, gave it an adjust, and moved to the next phase of operation open trans pan. solenoids. shift 1 and shift 2. two short bolts, two wire pigtails, several oz of atf in my hair, done. for the record, these are the two middle ones.

slapped a fresh filter on and prepped the pan for reinstall. this consisted of removing the pan from the parts washer, removing the old sealant, another couple minutes in the washer, a final wipe down of the pan and magnets, cleaning up the mounting flange on the trans, some right stuff rtv, then strapping it back in.

while the rtv cured up a bit, i moved on to the fun portion of the evenings event. slee coil spring spacers front and rear, as well as a new set of OME shocks to replace the (most likely original to the truck) tokico's.

most of you have done lifts and such, so that pretty much went as you'd expect. spring compressors and cussing. but also worth it. i liked the soft riding sagged out springs. i got the spacers to make up for the tiredness. i got the shocks because my wife said i don't care if you spend 200$ or 400$ on them, just get the ones you want. did i mention that my wife is awesome yet?

well, come to find out, whatever i did turned out to be a magic combo for me. the ride with the space'd up stock springs and the new shocks is pretty good. some of it could be the fact that i'm not on the bumps stops any more...

net result for about 6 hours of work, lots of smiles so far. the next two days i also get to fix my wrx. it's been in the garage at the house for the last 5 months with a blown up center differential. since i don't have time to rebuild the 6mt i have for it, i snagged a jdm legacy turbo trans for it to throw in for now. 4.11 final drive... yum! just for fun i'm throwing on a set of brembo brakes and some other goodies that have been waiting.

thanks to my wife for making the impossible bolt possible, cruiseroutfitters for the spacers and shocks(and axle kit and birfs) and thanks to onur for getting me a new kick down cable in time to do this.

be safe this crazy holiday season.

--r

(text edited because spell check)


I pulled the center diff out of the 04 6 spd I swapped into my WRX fearing it was bad and replaced it with a known working one. I think it might have just been the extension housing bearings that I ended up also replacing. My trans swap that was slated for a few weekends took about 3 months, I feel your pain!
 
Finally got round to replacing the weeping rear output seal on the transfer. Put the new inhex bungs in while it was empty. Also tweaked up handbrake and added a tee piece to my aftermarket oil pressure sender so I can chuck a mechanical gauge on at any point. All good fun
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I pulled the center diff out of the 04 6 spd I swapped into my WRX fearing it was bad and replaced it with a known working one. I think it might have just been the extension housing bearings that I ended up also replacing. My trans swap that was slated for a few weekends took about 3 months, I feel your pain!

early or late 04 gearbox? the first year usdm sti boxes are my favorites, right after the early close ratio jdm 6mt's. i've personally never seen a 6mt dccd unit fail, so if the noise you were hearing was a grumbling grinding rattle on decel, you're probably spot on with your presumption that the bearings were the cause.

now, if the center diff was binding and angry, that's a whole other game.

--r
 
early or late 04 gearbox? the first year usdm sti boxes are my favorites, right after the early close ratio jdm 6mt's. i've personally never seen a 6mt dccd unit fail, so if the noise you were hearing was a grumbling grinding rattle on decel, you're probably spot on with your presumption that the bearings were the cause.

now, if the center diff was binding and angry, that's a whole other game.

--r
I believe it is early model year but I don't recall. I found a video on YouTube of a guy with almost the same noise and when he took off the rear extension, the main bearing was in a hundred pieces. Mine wasn't in such shape but wasn't smooth either. So I replaced it ($75) along with new needle bearings and the cone bearing. The center diff looked like it might have overheated and cooked the internals but I didn't break it down. I just picked up another one from a guy who was selling his, so I kind of have a spare.

There's a well known Subaru transmission shop not too far from me that I wanted to bring the diff to and have them take a look at it. It's been over a year and the diff is still on my shelf in the garage.
 
I installed new Magnaflow catalytic convertors along with new oxygen sensors.


I also got into the Christmas spirit early this year and decked out the 80 with some lights.
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Did the winter tire/wheel swap on the white 80. The Dynapro ATM's are great tires but the Yokohama winter ice and snows rock. I'll get more total miles so it's worth it. Took it to town for a wash to get some miles in so I could recheck torque. Ready to resume daughter-driving-to-college duty!
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I already did a RTH thread on this but figured I'd throw it in here as well. Drove to Vegas for Thanksgiving. Uneventful. On the drive home on the other hand...

I was doing about 60 driving behind someone else on the slow lane. Not a ton of traffic but enough to not be able to speed. There is a truck lane on the far right that was unused so I decided to change lanes and maybe stop at Primm to get a Starbucks sugar-free vanilla latte, the drink of champions. Unfortunately there was something in that lane that I didn't notice until I moved into the lane. Quick swerve and my front wheel missed it but my back one nailed it. Hit hard. Decided to get off the frwy to check to see what damage was done. Then I slowed down enough to realize it started to feel like a bad tire blow out. Then about 5ft before stopping...the tire just fell off. :doh:

So that my wife wouldn't panic and bug me, I sent her to Starbucks. Gave her something to do. :p

The Metro truck came over and he knew there was nothing he could do but hung out til the tow truck got there. I called around for a rear hub, wheel studs and nuts. No one. Nothing. No where close. At all. Except for freaking O'Riellys on Rainbow in Vegas. An hour later and we were back in Vegas. It took me exactly two hours to strip everything down, knock out the broken studs and installed the new wheel studs and get back on the road. I had to use the draw-thru method of pulling the wheel studs thru the hub but I was out of options. All good but I think I need to replace the rest of the studs around the truck.

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My 96 LX had the shakes and a noisy driver's side mirror. GP Auto replaced my motor "insulators". Like a new truck!
 
Did the driver's side birf job, new bearings all around, seals and grease. Took our time, watched a little football, learned a thing or two and am now waiting for my back to straighten out. One of these days I'm buying a lift :eek:

I'll get the passenger side in a couple of weekends when time frees up.
 
You don't use impact tools to install your wheels, do you?
yep, that'll cause exactly what is pictured, stretches the studs causing failure. only way to use a rattle gun is with a torque limiting bar, or just nip up and do the final tension by hand
 
@Rob1983 Looks great! ?Do you have a parts list for what you replaced? We need to do this on my son's 92 next month.
Only thing I replaced was the seal, 90311-58008. There is a bearing in there too, but it was fine. Old seal was pretty degraded, probably factory. Would leave a small puddle every week or so, I just got annoyed about it enough to finally replace it! Reused the snap rings and all bolts
 

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