Umm... not such a good deal?
 

I picked up my SVX today (see my previous post about PS pump in this forum), and its a little worse off than I realized. I shall list the problems, and await your reactions:
1. When braking, there is a very heavy vibration, but the rotors are not visibly warped. They are a bit rusty, so maybe thats all it is?
2. It won't go into 4th gear, it just hits the rev limiter in third and stays there if I press too hard on the throttle.
3. It doesn't start moving right away, and will actually spin the tires if I try too hard to get it moving quick.
4. The driver side shoulder belt doesn't move.
5. The rear wiper doesn't move, and leaks washer fluid into the car if I try to spray it.
6. The remote for the security system seems to have gotten lost somewhere between the mechanic I bought it from and the woman he sold it for. How much is a replacement, if such a thing is availiable?

Other than that, its in pretty good shape, and on the highways back from CT to NJ it was a very nice ride. Now, I'm assuming the trans is bad, which is quite a painful assumption for me. Then again, I was expecting to replace it sometime, and given the mileage (109000), I was half-expecting this to happen just as it has. Given all this, I guess I won't be selling my Legacy quite as quickly as I thought.

Re: Umm... not such a good deal?
 

1. When braking, there is a very heavy vibration, but the rotors are not visibly warped. They are a bit rusty, so maybe thats all it is?
Could be... drive a little more and see


2. It won't go into 4th gear, it just hits the rev limiter in third and stays there if I press too hard on the throttle.
This is bad. Save money for a new tranny

3. It doesn't start moving right away, and will actually spin the tires if I try too hard to get it moving quick.

See # 2

4. The driver side shoulder belt doesn't move.

Open it up and put some WD 40 and see if that helps

5. The rear wiper doesn't move, and leaks washer fluid into the car if I try to spray it.

Use a pin to open the nozzle. If not you need a new set for that area $$$


6. The remote for the security system seems to have gotten lost somewhere between the mechanic I bought it from and the woman he sold it for. How much is a replacement, if such a thing is availiable?

If it is stock system, you can get it for around 40-60



SVX tranny can last long. I had a 92 with 146k on the clock with the original tranny.

L

First of all, congrats on your SVX. I hope, after you fix the problems it has, that it'll give you years of happy service.

1. I've never been able to tell a warped rotor from a true one, while it was on the car with a wheel in front of it. Very small amounts of warpage cause very big vibrations. It just sounds like your fronts (or even maybe rears) are warped and they need to be replaced. I'm not a big fan of resurfacing - especially since the rotors on the car warped as they are, so how long do you think they'll hold up being even thinner?

2. The tranny doesn't sound good, but there is a troubleshooting process for a tranny that won't shift to 4th. I'll try to look it up tonight. Still, I think you should just be looking at a rebuilt.

3. The rear wiper may be something simple like a fuse or moe involved like a bad wiper motor. Is anything else not working? I doubt that the rear wiper has its own fuse, so any other non-functioning devices would be a clue. Of course, if the rear washer leaks fluid into the car, then that might suggest that there's something wrong with the whole rear wiper assembly.

4. Remotes are available, last I checked, from www.subaruparts.com.

Good luck, man!

Congrats on the car.

Also being that you live in NJ it is quite cold here. How long did you have the car running before you tried to get it to shift into 4th? The transmission will not shift into 4th until it has reached 160 degrees F.

I had the same problem with my rear washer. When I took it apart, I found that the piece that connects to the hose was broken. I needed a new part, or I needed to the hose to attach some other way. It was just squirting into the area above the trunk.

Good luck. :)

Yup, check the hose behind the panel in the trunk on the passenger side of the car. Mine wouldn't squirt at all. Found out the hose was kinked. Works fine now.

OK, since the trans problem makes the car pretty undriveable, what kind of cost am I looking at for a rebuild? There's a transmission shop about 5 minutes away from my house, so I figured I'd get a quote from them, but I might as well get some idea what it will be before I go over there.

Also, any suggestions on what rotors I should get (aftermarket, don't really want to see this happen again any time soon)? I was looking at the ones availiable from Small Car Performance for the SVX, but the ones availiable at Motorsport Warehouse look good too.

there are lot of rotor mods available... personally i got the most affordable of them all, irotors.com i know some members did a group buy on this, maybe they can tell you the details and or how they liked them...

about the tranny.... if anything, get the car to the tranny shop and get an estimate on how much would it be to repair ( or if its repairable ) otherwise, you're looking at either a new auto ( people suggested the level 10 rebuild ) or to go with a 5 speed ( what i'm trying to do now ) cost wise, if you go professional parts (as in ordering stuff from level 10 or small car ) you'll definitely get parts that'll fit with no probs and you're also looking at about 3g for parts plus whatever labor or you can rebuild your current tranny, or try to locate an old legacy / wrx tranny (which should run less than 1000 if you can find the parts yourself, or if you have people source it for you, about 1000-1500) plus labor. problem with that would be fitting it into the svx...

for the tranny, i'd suggest setting aside 2000 to 5000 depending on which fix you're looking for.

For rotors go for the raceconcepts.net ones. I found them to be the most reasonably priced and so far they have survived 2 track days and a whole host of hard driving.

-mike

I'm just sort of curious now: what is causing the problem with engaging the transmission? Through my testing today I determined that it won't seem to "catch" and start spinning the axles until about 1500rpm, higher if I press harder to the point where I can get a nice quick second-long spin of all 4 tires. Is the problem in the transmission, in the torque converter, in the differentials, or what? I assume it has something to do with the connection to the torque converter in the transmission, and some type of clutch drum along the input shaft slipping a bit, but I don't know enough about the problem to know for sure. Same question about the not shifting to 4th, what causes that? Do we know exactly why our transmissions break down, and why Subaru allowed this problem to slip past them during the designing of the transmission?

On a side note, given the similar horsepower output of the WRX to the SVX, would it be possible (with some fancy TCU tweaking perhaps) to put an auto from a WRX into an SVX? Or a turbo-Legacy (JDM, of course)?

Sounds like a failing pump, needs more RPM's to get the pressure up to engage the clutches, ...But "Could" just be the tranny cooler in the radiator is clogged, you might try disconectting the tranny hoses from the radiator, and use a small piece of pipe to run them to each other, clamp them and try it. Not for very long as you're not cooling the tranny, but if it engages better, you might get by with just a new cooler(it's a longshot, but it doesn't cost anything to check it out)

Oh yeah, you might try dissconnecting the resistor behind the battery too.

Good Luck,

Hey, before you fix the problem.... Get a video camera and record a 4 wheel burn out for us:D :D :D Please!!!!!! There are so many of us here on the network that have been wanting to see a SVX spin all 4 wheels!!!!!:D :D :D :cool:

Mike had done that cruelty to his car before ;)
L

If you didn't want to have to change your rotors, but just fix the warp, read this thread for fixing your warp. It's free and it does work for most cases if the rotors haven't been turned.


http://www.subaru-svx.net/forum/show...?threadid=6752

From what I have read (and experienced) what happens is, when the plastic seals inside the tranny get too hot, they expand and allow fluid to leak past so it's not being used for thrust. So, you have to pump more fluid (rev higher) to get it moving; as if pouring water into a leaky bucket- you have to pour more water and pour faster. When the tranny cools down, the seals will shrink back to normal, but after many episodes of overheating, the seals (being plastic) will get hard and once they expand, no longer shrink back.
New materials for the seals are now used that allow for higher temperatures.

So, your problem is not the differentials or the torque converter.