Rebuild Question
 

I know I'm delving into an area few of us have any experience with, but I have to ask the question anyway so I can get this done. Perhaps someone with a Subaru tech friend or a Subaru tech could answer this: I'm part way through the transmission disassembly process now, I've taken out most of the internal components, and the next step in the service manual tells me to apply compressed air to remove the low & reverse piston. Now, I'm fairly certain I've got the right point to apply the pressure to, but I'm not clear on where the piston is going to come out from, and so far I've been unable to get the compressed air to have any effect, it's been blowing off a small amount of air from somewhere in my blowgun. So, what am I missing?

Hey :) You are not that far from where I live. I think you are a brave man to being ripping apart EAT. I would like to see it. :)

Well, I'm taking pictures as I go along, and I intend to document the whole process after I'm finished, so in a week or so, you should be able to find them on my site (fingers crossed, knock on wood, all that stuff).

Its actually not been as bad as I feared so far, but I'm nearing the reassembly point, which is when all the actual rebuilding happens, so we'll see. My greatest fear is that I won't have the tools I need, but so far anything I've been missing I've been able to get locally fairly cheap. The seal insertion tools are probably going to be the hardest things to find, if I even really need them.

I don't know if this will help but I used a faucet washer to seal between the blowgun and brake calipher after removing the blowgun tip. This was to blow out the pistons.

I hope it all goes well for you. :)

Yeah, unfortunately I don't think that's going to work in this case. I finally found the piston, I was staring right at it the whole time. It covers the back-end of the inside of the transmission case, sitting around the ring the one-way clutch is bolted to. I didn't see it at first because the service manual didn't say to remove the clutch plate set on top of it. However, that knowledge doesn't help, because all the compressed air is doing is lifting up one side of the piston, and then allowing all the pressure to pass right past it along the inside wall of the case. I can't see what actually gets replaced beneath it by reading the manual, so I'm tempted to just leave it there and continue on without removing it, even though that's likely a mistake.