Subaru Club Finland had a track day yesterday :-)
A few observations:
The SVX spat coolant twice. I made 100% sure I never exceeded 5000 rpm, but drove at WOT and pressed quite hard at times.
The temp gauge was normal while at the track all the time. First round I did not have a lap top hooked, but second time did - and had a co-driver looking at it. The ECU readings varied between 87 and 96 degrees - lap after lap.
Both times the spikes happened after I returned from cool down lap - into the slow pit lane - maybe 1km long in total.... both vehicle speed and engine revs came down.
I lost almost 2 liters of coolant from the radiator into the expansion tank both times. The spill out (out from the tank) happens thru a small vent hole on the top surface of the tank - it's under the black plastic cover and not visible w/o removing it. I did. So the coolant leaks out thru there.
The ECU temp spiked between 86C and 118C when I kept the car at around 40-50km/h trying to cool everything down. (BTW, the gauge needle starts to move from the normal position at 105C.) The coolant level within the system was way down and that probably caused the spikes.
There was another SVX - completely stock. He drove it to the limit all the time - no problems what so ever. Only minor splashing thru the vent hole while cornering caused by a little bit too full exp tank. He accelerated in manual 2nd and let the rev protector upshift @ 6800 rpm - no drama.
Today I dug into all this a bit. I browsed the net and found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=CHp5E7XnbXo
I ran to the local auto parts store and bought a kit.
I siphoned some coolant out , let the engine idle and run at higher revs for quite a while so that fans kicked in and off a few times. Then tested for a looong time. Nothing.
Then I accelerated in manual 2nd five times on our drive way (100m or so) and retested. It turned green
after a minute or so. It's supposed to turn yellow with a bad case, but green indicates an elevated CO2 - it goes back to dark blue by pumping air thru it.
Has anyone else done this test
?
Other than this the car did well for what it is :-). I could be a lot faster if I had the confidence to push it. Fun stuff !
Kind regards,
Tapani