[svxcess]

After almost a month, Tom completed yet another 4.44 swap. This time into my son's 92 pearlie. svxfiles called me last night to tell me the good news around 10pm, saying "we have transmission!"

I was in WV helping him last weekend put the tranny in and exhaust, etc.. We buttoned it up late last sunday and fired it up. 16 blinks of the POWER light... not good.

Upon test driving, found that we had binding at the rear wheels. Hooked up the Subaru Select Monitor which gave us code 24 (Solenoid C/Transfer Valve). Tried to put it into FWD with the fuse, but the FWD light didn't come on with the fuse in and the binding was still there. Seems it was in permanent four-wheel drive, not all-wheel drive. Even on a short drive on a cool WV night, the tranny temp climbed to 199 degrees. Everything else worked perfectly.

Tom bought a new solenoid C/transfer valve assembly from Subaru. After a full day at work, he spent 3 hours dropping the exhaust and the rear of the tranny and installing it last night. Everything is now fine-- no blinking POWER light at startup, no ABS light, FWD light was on (until he removed the fuse), no more binding issues.

The car pulls strong and hard and is ready to come back to Maryland this weekend. I'm sure he will fill in more of the technical details that I left out.

I just want to thank Tom from the bottom of my heart for all of the very hard and excellent work he did for me. After hard days at work, 6 days a week, a garage that constantly needed attention and bad weather, he nevertheless found the time and energy to do this for me. When the tranny originally went out on September 16, without hesitation he suggested I bring it out to him for a tranny swap, even though he had a lot on his plate at the time.

I also want to thank Diana for her graciousness in letting me use her silver SVX to get back to Maryland and have it for the duration. Add into that her hospitality in making sure we had lunch and dinner and anything we needed. We never ran out of our sense of humor (or Asti for that matter) And the couch was comfortable, as always.

I also want to thank Tom Johnson (Tomsvx) for following me out to WV in the dying pearlie to make sure I made it. It was the longest, least-fun ,100+ mile trip I have ever made in an SVX!

This is what this network is all about, people unselfishly helping people, frequently putting our own personal interests and needs on a back burner to help one another.

I will make a report after the car is back home tomorrow night.
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