Clutch stuck?

Kelly I don't know. The clutch has about 5,000 miles on it since new. I don't think I over extended it because I know that's a thing that can happen. The pedal felt "right" when I adjusted it and then changed the cable, etc., which should have been my clue as to what was really happening. I'm not going to pull the pressure plate and take it somewhere to be magnafluxed before reassembly. If I got that wrong, I will pay the price in time, as always.

On a different note, since this comes up every so often: The Subie 2.2 SOHC, fully dressed, including flywheel and pressure plate, but sans exhaust, weighs under 260 pounds.

The front pulley is missing here but the chains are much heavier than that. I can weigh them later if anyone wants the final to-the-ounce figure.

Ed: no magnaflux intended or needed, I'd guess.  When I ran in to this many years go it was just a matter of being aware and taking a close look with a regular eye ball.  Once you know where to look, if there is an issue, you can see if its bad.   At just 5,000 mi and no abuse, I'd not suspect any trouble.   Stay calm and carry on.

So I welded the tunnel shut and folded the rug back over the floor. Getting the driver's seat back in was a hassle, as I had last assembled it with furniture screws which rusted from the bottom nuts, forcing me to use the cutoff wheel to remove them, so I decided to improve things by nut-certing the floor instead of running bolts and trying to reach under and spin the nuts on.

But the rivnut tool refused to pull the rivnuts all the way and I ended up with thee out of four spinning. No way to get the seat base bolted back in with those. So out came the cutoff wheel again, removed the riv-nuts, went back to bolts—this time zinc with washers. Still they were too short. On and on...

At some point last night I decided to just go ahead and start the engine again, just to make sure.

And hallelujah! She started right up. Good oil pressure, no leaks of oil or coolant.

Had a little "wow" in the idle but that's normal after a plug out. She was running about a minute when I revved by grabbing the throttle cable. Good. Maybe adjust, and-

>snik<

She stalls.

Won't restart. Turning on the key also does not bring the all-important fuel pump sound. I check that fuse. Good. Check the 10 amp in the box marked IGN. Broken.

Replace.

>snk<

Broken.

I looked for the dead short for about a half hour before retiring to ponder overnight.

This AM I was able to get the seat bolted in, but no joy in terms of finding the short.

This car's a pisser.

At about 3:30 I threw in the towel and started the blue car, took it for a ride. Not bad. Started right up, ran pretty good, a little rough at low RPM, and just a bit of popping around 2000 RPM after warming up. Needs maybe some carb balancing or an idle jet cleared, which I'll tackle after doing a valve adjustment.

@edsnova posted:

... But the rivnut tool refused to pull the rivnuts all the way and I ended up with thee out of four spinning.

... that's why I advocate for these tools:

They will pull any kind of rivnut you throw at it. People here say you don't need them, but you do.

I also have stopped using anything but these rivnuts on anything that matters at all:

You can buy them at McMaster, but they're cheaper here on Amazon.

I feel for yah, Ed.   Been there, too.  You did the right thing.  Sometimes you just have to walk away for a while, then return to it later with fresher thoughts (or lower blood pressure).

In the words of Curly Howard of The Three Stooges;

“If at first you don’t succeed, keep on suckin’ til you DO succeed.”

I'm a hardhead and I never know when to quit.

When I was a cub pipefitter, my journeyman (who was a fine human being) told me, "Stan, sometimes the best thing you can do for the customer and yourself is to just go have a cup of coffee".

I tell my guys the same thing today. Things often become clear when you take a step back.

Pleased to report an Easter miracle today with Bridget.

Having bought a pack of breakers (instead of fuses), I went out and started looking for my short. Disconnected the front O2 sensor and the VSS pretty much at random, having seen no obvious wire problems.

Stuck the breaker in the fuse hole and turned the key, expecting it to snap like the 20 fuses I'd already blown. The fuel pump came on, I turned the key to start and she started and ran!

Let her run for about 20 seconds, switched back to a fuse. Still good.

Plugged he VSS back in and tried again. Good.

Plugged the O2 back in and turned the key: started up no problem.

So it went. I tied up the wires under the dash, started the car, etc. etc.

Finally I tried the clutch (remember, I pulled the engine because the clutch was suddenly no good).

Clutch works too.

So now it's down to reassembling the back half of the car and taking her out for a test drive.

Wish me luck!

Debbie Downer here.

I'd absolutely leave the breaker in.

In my world, not finding the problem and having it fix itself is the worst possible outcome because you didn't find the problem, you didn't fix the problem, and there's a near 100% probability the problem will be back at a time and place much less convenient to repair.

I believe in the possibility of miracles... but this isn't how I've seen them happen.

One point in isolation is a point. Two points is a line. Three points is a trend. You have how ever many blown fuses you smoked as a super-trend.

YMMV.

^^THAT^^   @edsnova

While I congratulate you, leave the circuit breaker in until you find the actual failure mechanism.

Which will most likely be sometime during your road test.  🤷‍♂️

I would also get it running (with the breaker in there) and then start gently massaging the wiring harness until it dies again or shorts to ground.  It wasn't blowing a fuse just for the Helluvit.

I gotta agree with Gordon and El Presidente.  In the software biz a bug that disappears is a nightmare because you KNOW that it will probably - not always (which is kinda scary), but probably - come back.  Usually at the most inopportune moment.

Nope. Gonna just put it back together and wait for Carlisle.

Ed: Keep the AAA card handy and up to date.  Also: congrats on the clutch thing.  Remind me: the root cause was corrosion??

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I wasn't going to say anything, Stan.

Ed was having such a good day.

I didn't have the heart.

But he knows as well as you know.

It's turning Spring. The good driving weather is here. We need for the car to be ready. That's why he headed into the garage today. It was going to be another annoying day of hidden gremlins, false starts, and blown fuses.

And then, miraculously as he says, the clouds parted. This was one of those days that we are granted by providence just a few times in our lifetime. We dodged the bullet. We shouldn't ask questions, but just accept the gift.

After a whole winter of crappy weather, slush in the streets, and wet socks, we deserve this, dammit.

Stan, what you said needed to be said, in this forum at least, as a sort of public service announcement if nothing else.

But, honestly, they were words Ed didn't need to be hearing.

At least, not just yet.

.

Why worry? Be happy.

Hi, my name is Ed:

Having read all your sage advice, on second thought, I'm canceling the test drive. Now that she's perfect, no point in messing her up. My plan is to let the fuel in her mellow to perfection for six weeks before loading her up and driving 100 miles to Camp Hill.

I can just see us on here after Carlisle when Ed has successfully made his round trip and all he needs to say is:

@edsnova posted:

Having read all your sage advice, on second thought, I'm canceling the test drive. Now that she's perfect, no point in messing her up. My plan is to let the fuel in her mellow to perfection for six weeks before loading her up and driving 100 miles to Camp Hill.

You just love to wind everyone up, don't you 😄

OK it's slow on here so I'mma revive this thread to tell "The Rest Of The story."

As some of you know, Bridget and I made it to Carlisle, in the rain, no problem, and onto the field on Saturday. All this happened after I re-checked every wire I could see or touch on the car, found no signs of shorts, experienced yet more intermittent popping of that one 10 amp fuse in the IGN circuit and, finally (thinking I might have previously downgraded it from a higher amp model) "upgraded" it to a 15.

The wires leading to and from it were all 12s. A 15 amp fuse seemed to do the circuit no harm, and the fuse-blowout issue subsided completely.

So I drove to Carlisle, etc. Had a grand old time with my droogies in the pouring rain as per usual, and loaded the car on Sunday morning for the 70-ish mile trip home when:

Fuse blew. dang.

Replaced with the 15-amp breaker and....

The smoke escaped from the wires.

The car kept running but I shut her down right quick, as one does, reaching for the extinguisher. I could not see easily under and in where the trouble was, but surmised it was an O2 sensor, just by the position of the smoke.

So began a several-hour wait for AAA ("It's Mother's Day, can you wait until tomorrow for pickup?"). Luckily, @El Frazoo and the Drakes were hanging around;

Cory offered to get his hauler and store Bridget at his place before the tow company dispatched a motherless old driver for the gig.

That's Ed. Cool guy, good driver. Once home I rolled her on the lift. The culprit was easy to see then:

That's the proximity switch I'd installed after breaking the old on during the trailing arm job last winter. It's supposed to work as a Vehicle Speed Sensor, sending the ECU a 5v blip of energy five times per wheel revolution. Bench tested fine, the little red indicator flashing as it should.

But internally it appears to have been flawed. Which is why I could not find the trouble.

And the car runs fine without it. In fact, it's apparent to me that the previous iteration was also not working. The symptom: Bridget sometimes stalls out for a second on the highway, when she's been traveling steady for an hour or more. The first time this happened I was in the left lane on the Baltimore Washington Parkway shortly after completing the engine swap, a decade ago. Engine cut out at 70 mph. Just about crapped my pants and frantically sawed the wheel to get over to the breakdown lane. Trucks whizzing by, misery. Then realized she was idling as normal. Revved a couple times. Shrugged and cracked on.

Learned to live with it: every so often, she hiccups. Engine cuts out for about one second, then regains its rhythm and on you crack.

This, apparently, is what happens when the VSS malfunctions in a 1995 Subaru.

And so it goes. I will continue to research a fix for this, but I will not be trying to make this type of proximity switch (which is better suited to 3d printers) work in my application.

Ed, you have chosen the complex, modern engine path with all of the pitfalls that can occur. You should never put an engine with more electronic parts than a phillips screwdriver in one of our cars. They can sense technology developed after 1938 and take subversive actions to reject said tech.

This is obviously what has happened with Bridget. Perhaps placing some random Lucas parts in the engine compartment and burning some sage will provide a temporary solution, but I fear that a major intervention may be required. I'd also recommend brushing up on your German and looking into the exchange rate for euros.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

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I wish I could help, Ed, but the only VSS I'm familiar with is the old school, mechanical one in my Speedster — in the form of a handle mounted to the passenger side of the dash.

The closer you get to critical cornering speed, the closer the passenger's hand draws to the handle. It's something you need to include in your scan along with the other instruments mounted in the dash. I think this one emits some kind of noise, also at about five times per wheel revolution, when the critical speed is reached, but I try to avoid that.

I think Michael is basically right about your car. By forcing a TD over sustained speeds of 60 mph, you're drastically exceeding its design envelope and there's just no telling what might happen. It's responding in the only way it knows how — by releasing smoke from the wires. I think you may even have angered the Ghost of Abingdon.

Be careful there. You'll shoot your eye out.

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Mitch is onto something.  Install a pressure switch on the passenger-side "Oh-$hit!" handle to provide a speed input signal to the ECU.  That should work well - as long as you have a passenger onboard.