More Test Drives

The Subie is getting older and I'd like to have something that tows better. I make it hard on myself because I want that, and I want it to drive like a sports car and I want to spend less than $30k.

It's impossible, but the Cx-5 from Mazda comes close. I've driven the turbo and non-turbo models. I also drove a turbo Ford Ranger. The Ranger is nice, but big and $40k.  The turbo Cx-5 has leather, turbo-lag on top of slush-box lag. I drove it before the Ranger, and I'm sure I like the Ranger because I was ready for it. The Ranger can tow 7000lbs, the Cx5 only 2000. The non-turbo Cx-5 is a great car. Pretty good torque with it's 13:1 compression engine and no turbo-lag. No turbo boost either. It's a little quicker and tighter than the Subie. It's about $29k. The turbo must be bought with every option, so you're looking at $36k+.

Dang. The Cx-5 isn't nice enough an upgrade. The Cx-5 turbo is too much of  a compromise. The Ranger is a truck. With the FX-4 package, it could do real off-road and it can do some real towing.

Screw it, I got the PS working on the Subie. I'm going to get a new windshield and some new struts for it.

Subie Power Steering

After noticing some leakage and jittery steering I thought it was time to pay some attention to the power steering. The experience of replacing the pump on the Integra 15 years ago wasn't so bad, so  I thought "how hard could it be?"

I don't intend to repeat the Haynes manual with this post, but add some pictures. For reference, this is from a 2008 Subaru Outback 2.5i. This post is as much about doing the repair, as getting a better appreciation for getting all the photos for a nice post. Sorry to dissapoint, I could have taken more.

As far as doing the job,  If you don't have the Haynes, get one.  Basic lessons learned on this job are to use the right size torx screws and to have patience when flushing the air out of the system. It takes a little while and the steering feels janky for about 10 miles. And holy crap, burning PS fluid is gross!

I'm serious about the torx screws. The cheap set I had that came with a screw driver set was enough to get me into some trouble. Buy this set. I needed the 40.

Also there are some o-rings around the hoses that go flying. And there was the double washer with the banjo bolt that I dropped and didn't see for a week. I looked everywhere and found it in clear view under the car  the following weekend. The job might have been easier with a bit more space in the garage and more workbench space.

It's mostly just messy. You undo the hoses and a bunch of bolts. Mostly as described in the Hanes manual. Two bolts are underneath the thing and make for a sore back.

 

The front of the car is to the left. The PS pump is above the alternator hidden by a cover over the belts. You remove those first as described in Hanes.

After pulling the top hose, the return hose, off.

This shows the space where the pump sits after it has been removed. It's a pretty useful photo as it shows where some of the more difficult to reach bolts go. In the middle of the picture, you can see a pair of hole that point up. The one on the right holds the back part of the bracket and is pretty easy to see while the pump is in place. To the left, close to where the belts are, are two bolts that point front to back. They are just holes in this photo and are hidden by the pump when it is there. Later I'll mention those bolts again.

Like a donor organ packaged with its native fluids, the new (remanufactured) pump. We need to salvage parts from the old pump first. Mostly the pulley and bracket, but a few more.

The pump comes out attached to a bracket you'll need. This one is a mess from the leaking fluid now caked with dirt.

Pump and bracket attached to a vise. The bottom of the pump is to the left. There is a hole left by a bolt that's been removed that holds this all to the car that the screw driver has been placed in. No.w I can use the breaker bar and a 19mm socket to loosen the pulley's bolt and remove it.  The top left shows a bolt that is pretty well hidden when this in the car that needs to be removed to get it out

Vises and leverage are a good thing.

With the pulley removed you can see the mess that was left. Also two bolts with 40mm torx heads that need to come off and be transferred to the new pump. Also the bracket sticking out to the right. I'm not sure what the y-shaped piece of metal is for. On the left are the deeply buried holes for bolts that make removing this a joy.

These new impact drills are nice, for removing things.

An attempt at artistry of the mess the PS fluid makes.

Some gentle persuasion separates the two. A too-skinny casualty is on the right.

I think PB blaster is kerosene. It makes cleaning that bracket easier. The bracket is up side down here. On the left is the slide that the screws that hold the alternator use. 

The new pump has red seals at the input and output. This one on the back is a third.

The old pump. That bolt looking thing in the lower right is what goes in the seal in the picture above. The lone wire to the pump connects to the skinny piece sticking out of the bolt thingy.

I found a desiccated bird below the headlights. Freaked me out when I realized it wasn't a dirty old paper towel.

The reman. pump as $230.

Leaf Sold

Mandy bought a Tesla. We sold the Leaf in October 2018.

Tesla 3 arrival

It's been more than a few weeks...two months.

Tesla 3 Ordered

A friend posted on facebook that he got an invitation to order long before he expected to see it. He figures he was around number 450,000 on the list, while we figure Mandy is at 200,000 or so. Jealous, we looked at her e-mail and found an invitation as well.

Preceeding months involved some consternation about spending $60k on a car mixed with concerns of a 25 mile commute taking an hour. I had gotten to the point of recommending more liberal use of the toll way to reduce the time spent on the way home. Mandy has been very careful to limit herself to a single trip per week resulting in a mere $25/month in tolls. Then came another inevitable low-battery episode which got me thinking about a high current charger. We could get one installed for about $1k, but it raises the question of what you would get if you had a Tesla. The Leaf can make use of a 30 amp 220v system, but the Tesla can use more than 50 amps.

Somewhere along the line, I wondered about more reasonably priced alternatives to a Tesla 3 made by more established manufacturers. I was curious about Audi's e-tron, a hybrid, but was disappointed to see it was FWD only. I googled about the ICE A3 anyway. You can get an A3 premium plus, with AWD, 2.0 turbo, leather and navi for about $38k. A premium 320x is $44k.

The Tesla model is restricted by what they sell and the price is complicated by government stimulus and fuel cost. You can get an AWD Tesla 3 with long range battery, luxury package and auto pilot for $61k (35 + 4 + 9 + 5 + 5). The price includes nice paint and nice wheels. The cost of fuel is about $100/month less (60 miles , 4x week @ $3.5/gallon 25 mpg, or $0.10/kwhr & 4m/kwhr...$0.11/mile savings.) If the timing is good, we'll get $7500 off taxes from the Feds, and $5000 off from Colorado. That takes it down to $48.5k.  $100/month is about 1/6 of a BMW payment, so this price on a Tesla 3 could be compared to $40k...BMW 3 series or Audi A3 level. Comparable.

Miata Lessons

I learned basically two things from having owned the Miata over the years:

1. With a high mileage car, you can run through a long list of tests, but you can't really tell what's going on inside an engine. You have to be suspicious and look for weaker signs of proper care or abuse. You want maintenance records, you don't want a dirty engine bay or sooty exhaust pipe. Even a compression test and leak-down test wouldn't reveal the mis-mounted and scratched cam caps on this car. If you could know the oil and filter had been run for 3000 miles (and not just 30 since last Saturday), you might crack open the filter and check for bits of metal. In the end, it is a bit of luck. You have read tea leaves, be suspicious, and choose a false negative over a false positive. Better to let a dirty good one go, than take a bad engine that left a sign of it's state.
2. A suspension can make a big difference, not just power. I hadn't written about it much, but I enjoyed driving the car this summer much more after I put the new suspension on it. I didn't drop it to get the "slammed" look, I wanted bette cornering and I got it.  The stock suspension is pretty soft on that car.
3. I also learned about the 90-10 rule for cars. I've long thought that all you really need from a car is reliable transportation to work, so buy whatever is fun. That worked when I bought the Integra. It wasn't tested too hard because the Integra was front-wheel drive and decent in snow. It also had a decent sized hatch for hauling things. The Miata doesn't have either and flips the rule around: Anything, even a motorcycle will get you to work, it's the 10% that matters. With rear wheel drive and no hatch, it's useless for anything else. The soft-top means it needs to be babied or kept inside to be protected from thieves and vandals, so it's high-maintenance on top of the other issues. I saw this over the years and would have predicted a Fall or Winter sale. I loved the car in Spring and Summer, but once the snow was flying, it was just a nuisance.  
4. Finally, you can't always trust a mechanic not to take your good money to throw at/after a bad engine. After I was already in for most of replacing the timing belt, and only because I asked him to look at the shims, did he discover the scratches and mis-mounted cam caps. I was curious that he didn't reveal the results of a compression or leak-down test until I did my own: there was nothing unusual. The only thing beyond the tea-leaves of a dirty engine bay, sooty exhaust would have been to try changing the oil filter and cutting it open. A leaky rear main seal is obvious enough and not indicative of a bad problem, but it might have lead to a low-oil situation. He managed to bill some 4-figure jobs from me, but I won't be back.

Cam Caps and Journals Redoux

When my mechanic, as part of a job to replace the timing belt a few years back, found that the exhaust side cam caps where on the intake side and vice versa, I knew the engine wasn't long for this world. I also knew it might not die immediately. Much more recently, curious about what doom awaits us, the opportunity for looking more closely presented itself with a needed oil change. After pulling the oil filter (see earlier post) I got curious and removed the valve cover to have a look at the cam caps and the cams themselves.

What's hard to see in the picture above is a ridge on the cam about 1/4 way up. I think that was the source of the sparkles in the oil filter.

Sadly, in the process of reassembling that cam cap, I managed to shear the bolts. Had I not, I might have been able to run the car for a few thousand more miles before engine replacement. My thoughts were, it's probably better to replace the head now, than the whole thing later. The plans were to pull the head and find a replacement.  Replacment BP4W heads were about $900.

I found used BP4W engines for $1200 or so. 1.6l JDM's were a bit cheaper. A full-on rebuild was $4k. Any of those would require either $500 (?) in tools to do it myself or $1000+ to have it done.

Its also worth noting that many of the replacement heads and engines for this car are BP5As not the BP4Ws that the 1999 and 2000 miatas came with. The later are better heads. The former are engines from MX3s.