A Subaru Day

 "When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

 I spent a day working on the rebuilt-title Subaru, yet again - with not a lot to show for the effort.  One of the things that has been causing some serious irritation recently is the failure of the automatic transmission to engage immediately when it's put in any forward gear.  If the car is put in reverse, it backs right up.  In forward gears, it takes time to engage.

I watched a few videos on how you can sometimes fix the issue by replacing the transmission fluid and adding fluid that I suspect has a wee bit more viscosity that normal tranny fluid.  I figured it was worth a shot, and it wasn't too expensive... ...and as always, it turned out to be a great deal more complicated and difficult than I had anticipated.

Step 1.  Same as most other days.  I did take the time to put a jack stand under the car.  I can't imagine a worse way of dying than running out of breath under this old rust-bucket.

Removing the drain plug from the transmission reservoir was tough.  I started with the ratchet, and gave up because I was rocking the car enough that it was making me uncomfortable to be underneath.
  

I moved on to the little electric impact tool.  It chugged and rattled, but didn't loosen the bolt.

So I grabbed an adapter and moved the socket over to the bigger 1/2 inch impact gun.

Which snapped the adapter in half

So I did what I should have done in the first place - use an actual impact socket. 

The transmission has a tiny spin-on filter, the last one of which I purchased from the local parts store.

After replacing the old filter and re-installing and impacting down the drain plug, I looked over what had come out.  The fluid looked pretty dark, but that's not really an indicator of how well it's holding up.  The filter had no particles in it.

So now it was time to refill the transmission with special sauce.  Valvoline High mileage transmission fluid and a bottle of Trans-X conditioner.  

You would think that I would know where to add transmission fluid to this car, but I did not.  Had to look it up in the owner's manual - and it still took me 5 minutes to locate. 

I was beginning to be concerned that someone had deleted the fill tube after the car was salvaged...  Then I found the dipstick underneath a bundle of hoses.

Unfortunately, I do not have a funnel that was both long enough, and narrow enough, to go inside the dipstick tube.  So I had to improvise a bit.

Whilst the car was still up in the air, I wanted to look for a sheet-metal rattle that I've been hearing for a while.  I found what I thought was probably the issue.  The heat shield for the catalytic converter was torn off one of the mounts.  The sheet metal is supposed to be sandwiched between the bolt and the stand-off, but the hole in the sheet metal is now huge.

I bent the sheet metal flat again, then found a couple of flat washers to squeeze the sheet metal between.

Unfortunately, I can still hear sheet metal rattling from somewhere under the car - perhaps from the engine compartment.  I'll check under there when I swap to the snow tires this weekend.  I bought some wood stove door sealing fabric and some high temperature silicone recently.  I may still need to use it if some other heat shield is vibrating against something else.

Lastly, I noticed that one of the indicator bulbs on a pushbutton switch had gone out, so I replaced that with an LED bulb. 

Oddly, this switch had two bulbs, but I've only ever seen the ON/OFF bulb glow when the button was pushed.  I replaced both, since both were bad - these come out with a quarter turn of a screwdriver.  At least the indicator works now.  It's the dark time of year again, so these things become much more noticeable.

I also took another shot at locating the EVAP leak, with no better results than previously.  I tried it with the ignition off, with the ignition on, and with the car running.  This was done to ensure the purge and vent valves cycled and no leaks showed up under various conditions.  Nothing!  So I cleaned up the fuel filler opening that the gas cap screws onto with a green scrubbing Scotch-Brite pad.  Then I reset the engine code again.

Below:  Smoke escaping around my paper towel seal during the leak test.

 Today was the first lengthy drive of the Subaru since I replaced the transmission fluid, and when I put the transmission into drive, it definitely engaged more quickly - roughly half the time that it had been taking.  Which is still much too long, but perhaps it will improve.  Still have a sheet metal rattle, no Check Engine Light, and I'm not that thrilled with how the new LED lamp glows in the switch.  It's a bit dim.

Just to say, all of this is a pain in the ass for an old high mileage commuter car.  On the other hand, it's less expensive than a car payment.  It's also cheaper than parts for a newer car, like the wife's.  And to a certain extent it's entertaining, as I always manage to learn something or improve something slightly - even if it doesn't always come out as well as I'd hoped.

UPDATE 18 November.  Evap is still an issue, but the transmission's delayed forward engagement is mostly gone.  Only takes 1-2 seconds to engage!