Dylan20N

HI Recently bought a 2001 impreza 2.5rs and at first though the gauge and aircon illumination seemed dimmer than my previous 2001 20N impreza, but i did not think anything of it because all lights were still bright enough to read the gauges and air con. Yesterday though i start the car up and the illumination is so dim it might as well be off so i was driving home unsure of my speed etc. Does anyone know what might be going on here? With the illumination being so dim i didn't think they were on at all at first and checked the fuses etc, fuses all seem fine. This makes sense though as the illumination is still obviously getting some power.

hey does anyone know if the v7 wrx suspension will be an improvement on handling while slightly lowering the car? It was mentioned that sti struts would be good but there is a set of wrx struts on trademe, just not sure if they will be identical to my current suspension.

Im finding it quite hard to find some V7 sti struts, But thought I would mention my tire setup. Its not my first choice but the car has two bridgestone MY02's on the front with 6mm tread. and one kingstar k106 on the left rear with a roadstone N3000 on the right rear. The rear tires look like cheap rubbish tires and im not even sure its warrantable with two different tires on the rear. The bridgestones on the front, from what I hear are fairly hard wearing tires, with less traction probably. So Im thinking get rid of the cheap tires on the back put the MY02's on the back and get something better for the front. What do people recommend as a decent tire for traction in front without breaking the bank. Willing to spend $220 max/tire.

Yup I am interested, what size is the sway bar though? 22 or 24mm or something?

Hi all Just wanting a little advice on options for improving the handling on a sedan V7 2.5rs. One of the main reasons I bought the car over my previous car was for the comfortable ride. Aswell as this it really seemed like the car was on rails. After driving the car quicker once I owned it I am finding it does have a ton of understeer. I am aware i can add strut braces and sway bars etc to help this but I have a couple of issues. First I am not entirely sure what other versions/models of imprezas strut braces will fit. Will version 7 sti braces work, front and rear? Secondly what sway bars will fit the car, and would upgrading the rear sway bar have a decent effect on reducing understeer? Third I would like to maintain some level of comfortable ride. So not keen on super stiff adjustables or something. Nor am i keen on needing cert. Please advise what options i have that would improve handling in particular understeer and reduce some of the body roll, while keeping ride quality as much as possible. thanks in advance

You are likely correct and i am running out of time to play work and uni are piling up so its prob time to get it to a shop with a proper scanner and most likely swap the AFM, will look at the AVCS issue also. possibly fix my issue or avoid one coming.

Yeah thats fair enough and agreed but my thoughts were that given the speaker space available the fronts will end up with something a bit more powerful anyway and from previous installs ive found a huge improvement when matching amp power to speaker power and the 10-20 rms u might get out of the headunit is less than half of what a decent 5inch speaker can output. that said i would think moderate extra cost for a basic 4 channel amp is worth it as i would then have 4 speakers with less distortion or clipping and with a bit of a bias in power to the front, staging should be ok. Was thinking of only using something like alpine speakers as i\'ve had decent sound out of them. The models i was looking at all had just the one tweeter as mentioned. However if i do feel motivated and have more time for the instal ill probably go for some mid level components. Though correct me if im wrong but coaxials often seem to be a bit more shallow which may help. (prob just slightly smaller magnets etc because they are cheaper)

Ok so today i did a few things to try and sort it out, to rule them out for good i took the coils to the auto electrician and they all seemed perfectly happy. Then when i got home i had a closer look at spark plugs for any cracks etc and all was fine there, then swapped all coils and plugs into different cylinders hoping for some kind of change in engine behaviour no real luck there. Also while under the bonnet i noticed that the actual plate under the bonnet says the engine code is EJ204 not EJ20-b35... as mentioned before (so this oil pressure sensor issue is a possible culprit) Another thing i noticed while checking the ground cables the one from the battery to the engine had another grounding aftermarket cable going to the body of the car, despite there being a a nice thick ground from the battery to the body already. I also cleaned out a fair bit of black dirt from the throttle body butterfly valve, and once the car was all back in one piece it stalled just after starting the first time then went back to the same old slow starting loosing power behaviour as before. Only now i notice there is white smoke coming out of the exhaust doesn\'t seem like its just steam.

yeah that is the trouble for me. this is my first Subaru and it had this issue when i got it so i don\'t have much to compare it to.

is there any sure way to tell if it is misfiring or running on 3 cylinders all the time or during the loss of power?

Ok so i found this in another subaru forum thread. "Rough idle and disconnect the AFM. If it still runs then its AFM because the ecu has compensated for dodge idle AFM readings. If it does stall when you disconnect AFM then chances it isnt AFM." So then i tried it on my car, started it up let it idle then disconnected the AFM and after a second it stalled. So do i take that to mean the AFM is fine? i.e. is this a legitimate test method and do i go for coil packs?

Im not sure how to tell if it is running on 3 cylinders when it happens, but is is much worse when cold and less of an issue over 3000rpm, it also runs perfectly smooth when idling. so im thinking maybe i should just go for the $140 AFM available at sub euro parts and see how it goes. (dunno if they will take accept a return if it doesn\'t help). I know it is likely unrelated but does the fact that is seems slow to start up mean anything or is it just a flat four thing? Im used to my primera which starts within about 1 second.

its hard to tell if it is misfiring partly because i have not owned the car long and it being so quiet is not very audibly obvious that its misfiring, but i think it runs more rough when the power loss occurs so during the loss of power despite being steady on the accelerator it is a bit jerky. Except my problem is occurring most noticeably below 3200rpm and a bit over that and to be honest i haven\'t had it over 5500 yet. It seems to me like its engine load related because the problem seems to worst at low rpm/low torque/low power.

I am not sure how to tell if it is actually misfiring or just low on power but maybe if i better describe the issue. The loss of power only seems to happen at specific engine speeds so you will be accelerating then when it hits one of the problem engine speeds acceleration goes to zero basically then when engine speed increases slightly it has more power or torque and away you go, then at next problem engine speed the problem repeats, this does seem to occur even at slightly higher engine speeds but seems to be much less of an issue once you get over the stated max torque area of 3200 rpm, or its potentially just the fact that its spinning faster and more power and more torque. If is was just reduced power i would have though it would be more constant throughout the rev range?

How do i know which version engine i have? the engine code shown is EJ20-b35... if that helps I am not sure how to tell if it is actually misfiring or just low on power but maybe if i better describe the issue. The loss of power only seems to happen at specific engine speeds so you will be accelerating then when it hits one of the problem engine speeds acceleration goes to zero basically then when engine speed increases slightly it has more power or torque and away you go, then at next problem engine speed the problem repeats, this does seem to occur even at slightly higher engine speeds but seems to be much less of an issue once you get over the stated max torque area of 3200 rpm, or its potentially just the fact that its spinning faster and more power and more torque. If is was just reduced power i would have though it would be more constant throughout the rev range?

http://www.focal.com/en/43-car-audio-systems while i know it is better to have components in front im thinking seriously of getting something like alpine coaxials front and back roughly 50 watts rms each and a 4 channel amp. any real bass is going to come from the 10 inch sub the way i see it. Plus i already have the sub from my previous car in a small enough box to fit on the left of the boot out of the way of the removable floor panel. In my experience with stereos im going to have to spend heaps more to have a noticeable improvement over 4 X 50watts nicely power matched to an amp not to mention the quicker and more stealthy install. the only question is how big a speaker is possible in the back doors, seems like 5.25inches may be doable.

So i pulled the coils and spark plugs out and discovered the plugs had between .9 and 1.1mm gap so i made them all 0.7mm. The car is still misfiring but it does seem more responsive, noticeably picks up revs quicker which helps but it is still struggling when actually driving. The question is which to replace first the coils or the AFM?

Never used this dynamat stuff. so saying you just get a bit and use it as a spacer to kill the rattles and such, or how do you use it? really not sure what you mean when you say new bungs?

Yeah that sounds good to me if they are good components and you know they will fit i\'m keen, do you have a link to check them out?

You mention trying another AFM out but not quite sure how as they are pretty expensive, and will take at least a little while to get a second hand one. The previous owner tells me he had the spark plugs changed a few months ago so that is potentially where the problem began. Do you know what the gap should be on this engine? Also is it necessary to lift the engine slightly to get the clearance for the coils/plugs to come out? I dont have any engine error lights on though, and i have tried connecting both the black and green diagnostic plugs and don\'t seem to get anything like an error code from that. All that happens when i connect the black plugs is the engine check light flashes continuously (could not find any info on what that means) as i believe the code for no engine error is 4 long flashes. Also tried an OBD2 diagnostic tool which although being the wrong standard tells me there are no error codes stored.

Hi I have recently bought a 2001 Impreza 20N and i would like to get the stereo upgraded a bit. I was thinking something like my other car with 6" or 6.5" components in the front, the most decent speakers i can fit in the rear doors and a 50-70watt x 4 rms kinda level 4-channel amp along with a 10 inch sub. On looking at the speaker spaces in the front and rear doors it all looks pretty tight space wise. anyone have any idea what will fit in the doors with and without spacers and what spacers to use etc. I thought potentially some decent components in front could fit somehow and some ok 5" speakers in the back or something to fill the sound in the back might be sufficient. Any advice is appreciated cheers

Hi I have recently bought a 2001 Impreza 20N for a good price, though it needs some things sorted. When trying to accelerate, particularly when cold the engine seems to misfire or loose power one way or another at various engine speeds, and it seems to be less of an issue once you get to the 3000rpm area. This is making the car very hesitant to accelerate. I have given the air flow meter a good clean with a mass air flow sensor cleaner, this did not have any effect. I was thinking it could be one of the coil packs or something else ignition related. I was wondering if anyone has experienced this or if this is a common problem any info would be welcome.