birkhoff

If you don't fix this via electrical gremlins, another cause for rough idle at temp is valve adjustments out of spec. That would be kind of ironic given where you started this project but did you happen to check the valve clearances after mounting the heads and cams? It is not unheard of for machine shops to get this wrong and it is a quick check on their work before you pack things up. I have a car that suffered from this. Not a fun prospect to do this with the engine in the car.

A few days later and about an hour of trim removal time . . . . Replaced the fuel pump relay and everything works as normal. Great. Reader might wonder why we didn't deal with the relay diagnostics first? It is a big job to get in there. Centre console, console trim, more lower dash parts all have to come out. Even then, there is no way to back probe the assembly and even getting the relay in and out is a challenge due to access behind the wiring looms. The voltage showing at the FPC Bat + is probably the correct value for back probing the lead wire out of the relay, after all. Not easy to do, but easier than getting to the back of the relay cluster under the dash. Opening up the old relay the contact points were definitely charred. This car has been off the road for a couple years. It is only started to move it around and sometimes the battery is not the best. So this may have been the reason the relay burned, and yet another reason not to try to run these cars with a marginal battery.

Diagnostics (used the fuel pump wiring diagram from page WI-78 from the 2005 FSM attached) 1. Pulled the glove box trim and confirmed a 'click' from the fuel pump relay. There are three relays in there, so used a stethoscope to make sure the fuel pump one was clicking. 2. Check voltage on Bat + terminal at fuel pump: 1.4 - 1-8V during dial sweep. Not enough to start the pump. 3. Hard wiring the pump terminals to an external battery the pump works and the car starts, but dies as soon as power removed. Pump good. 4. Uncovered the Fuel Pump Controller (FPC) on the driver's side rear. This is a pain in the wagon as all the side trim rear of the back seats needs to be removed. Back probed the terminal block at the FPC. With key ON and Battery at 12.5 V: Heavy input wire RB (T10) 1.5 -1.8 V+ variable 0V with key off. G/R pump wire (T6) 1.5-1.8V + variable. 0V with key off. G/Y pump wire (T5) didn't record. Lg control wire (T9) 5V+ for a few seconds on dial sweep LgR control (T8) didn't record. B ground wire (T5) confirmed 0 ohm to ground. The low readings on T10 Bat + and T6 are suspicious. 5. Pulled off connector from FPC and checked voltage again. T10 Bat + was now 10.5 - 11.5 V+ variable T6 Pump positive now 0V. The inconsistent voltage at Bat+ and pump positive is the main symptom, as is the very low voltage when connected to the FPC. Suspect the relay is not closing properly and/or adding high resistance to the circuit. Getting to that relay requires more disassembly up front. Dang it! WI Wiring Sys_fuel_pump.pdf

Why would the rad fans come on when the engine/rad is still cold? If the T'stat isn't open yet, the rad should be cold/ Is it possible that you are not getting a correct coolant temperature to the ECM? Maybe it thinks the engine is really hot when in fact it is cold. Or the other way around. There must be a few parameters in timing and fuel that are modified by the ECM based on engine temp. I suppose you could log that and see what the ECM sees for engine temp in the first few minutes of running.

Your post about timing and re-timing seems like a loose end you should follow up. When you say the mark is out, you mean the timing mark on the sprocket and not the paint mark on the belt, right? kzr750r1 is correct that the belt marks only align at setup time and after rotation nothing aligns again: the number of belt teeth is not a multiple of the number on the gears or crank. But, all the notches must align -- two full rotations and crank mark aligned you should see all the cam gears in alignment with themselves, with the cover notches etc. That is the basic check (and no binding or crunching noises from within!) for the belt install. xt2005bonbon also mentioned the cam gear dowels. Easy on the phenolic gears, but the alignment of the pins on the intakes is finicky. There is a stamped dot on the actual toothed part that can help, but in the end, it is a bit of a 'by feel' thing and is it not unheard of to get the gear on but in a rotated position with respect to the cam. It will mess up the back of the cam gear, but it will sort of seat and torque down. Needless to say this will be a problem for running. That the engine ran and ran ok, for a while, is inconsistent with either of the above, but since you are two steps back after one step forward, keeping these things on the table may be a good idea.

Thanks KZJ. I'm gonna keep the engine sensors at the bottom of the list because it runs normally when I jump the pump. That still leaves the possibility that some disagreement between the sensors and ECM are messing up the controller signal, but not an outright component failure. That said, early in diagnosis I replaced the crank position sensor 'cause I had a good one handy and it was easy to swap out, but nothing changed. I agree that failure of the controller at exactly the same time as my work on the engine seems far fetched. I need to carefully review what I touched in the engine and trace backwards to see if I messed up a wire or ground somewhere. Failing that, I'll put the front of engine back together and see if by some miracle it runs. It is missing one ground strap (RHS -- the left is intact) which I need to attend to anyway.

The controller is bolted to the body stiffener at the left (driver) rear above the rear end of the wheel well. Unfortunately you have to take the entire side trim panel off to get to it. Disconnecting the module from the loom, I get about 12 V at the power-in lead (RB) when the key is on. It does not cut off after the dial sweep for prime, so that must be managed by the controller. Probing the ground line (B) from the controller confirms a good ground. The rest of the voltage measurements are confusing, so I'll do some more investigating before speculating how this works. After plugging and unplugging the controller, the pump still doesn't prime when the gauges sweep. Image 1 below shows rear side of left rear wheel well with controller hiding up behind. Image two with D-pillar ground and controller hanging. Image 3 is the layout of connector block. RedBlack should be Bat V with key on, Black is ground. Green/Yellow and Green/Red go to the pump. Light Green and Light Green/Red are to ECM.

Yes, do add this to the thread. From what I learned, you are one of the few where a subi-dealer took on the replacement under recall. On my 2005 wagon the records showed they had already dealt with it a few years earlier (under different owner) which amounted to nothing more than some wire brush work and anti-corrosion oil. The lines eventually failed in my driveway -- lucky me -- but I had to do the repair myself -- unlucky me. It is a huge job to do by the book. I think I added a writeup about it somewhere else on the site a few years back.

RESOLUTION: The fuel pump relay under the dash was bad. See diagnostics and pictures in post #5 & 6 below. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Couldn't find much about this via site search. Car is a 2008 LGT wagon, auto, 180K km (canadian car) that has some worrying noises coming from a RocketRally built engine. Decided to open up the timing area and check the tensioner, idlers and WP just in case it was something simple. When I went to start the car with the timing covers off it cranks but will not start. No sound at all from fuel pump when ignition is on to sweep dials so priming/run seem disabled. Diagnosis so far: Both fuses good. Fuel pump relay clicks when gauge sweep initiated. Refit the Alt/PS belt in case the ECM uses the ALT signal for something. No change. Found no fuel at engine quick connect so confirmed no prime pressure -- not just that it is an unusually quiet pump. Hard wired pump to 12V and it primes and engine will start and run as long as I keep 12V at the pump. Digging into the manual it looks like this car has a fuel pump controller, not just using the ECM for this. To be honest, I'm working from a 2005 LGT manual, but this seems true for all 2.5 turbos. If there is something different for 2008? That would be good to know. The car has some minor rodent damage to the wiring in the engine area. No damage behind dash or inside car. No exposed wires found yet, but I can only see what I can see without tearing too much apart. This could be a confounding issue, though there were no other oddball behaviours prior to taking the front off the engine. The obvious clue is that I only messed with the front end of the engine prior to this happening. Drained coolant, removed rad and fans, pulled off aux belts and crank pulley; removed timing covers and then . . . no start/prime. I'm sure I've run one of these engines without coolant and covers for a test like this before and not encountered this problem. Temporarily out of ideas, I plan to check voltages and grounds at the controller. Where is it located in this US spec Wagon? Wiring diagram WI indicates it is somewhere rear-ish on the driver's side but where? Any other pointers or ideas welcome.

I just finished dealing with this myself, since the brake line recall had been done to my car already (surprise!) and the dealer quote for repair was 'up to $5K due to rust and corrosion issues' . The car lived part of its life on the US northeast coast. I was losing about half a reservoir of brake fluid every two weeks. And it WAS a huge job. Yes, it would be possible to haywire a line up and over the tank and jury rig something at the connection block but I didn't think that was a wise long-term solution. So out came the rear suspension, subframe and fuel tank. All were rusted to the point of not being reusable so I had to source good used parts as replacement. It took about 3 days just to gingerly remove the ten heavy subframe bolts that run up into captive nuts inside the unibody and if you tear those out, you basically scrap the car. Uncovered some suspension problems that had been wearing out my tires (already noted by the tire techs) and the source of an annoying gas smell that was due to an evap line nipple rusted off the top of the camel hump on the fuel tank. Other connections to the tank simply fell off when I ran my hand over them. Add to that new brake backing plates and e-brake cables, as well as a set of e-brake hardware. I had one bit of good luck, the rear brake calipers were not seized; well not completely. With a couple hours of coaxing I got them moving full range again. Countering that, I needed a new fuel pump. Even though I was super gentle taking it out, the flange was already cracked and leaked badly when everything went back into the new (used) tank. In the end, keeping in mind that the dealer would have had to use all new, OEM parts for this, and have to go slow or risk bricking the car, I started to think their quote was not that unreasonable! One thing that kind of kept me up for a few nights was finding out that in fact both LH and RH brake lines were essentially rusted through near the connection block. They both broke as soon as I started working on them. My theory had been, as a dual circuit system, I would not lose all braking if a rusted line blew out. Given the condition of those lines, I could have easily lost both circuits under hard braking. That may be the issue that Subie4 encountered and I agree, this is hard to forgive the manufacturer/dealer system for. Anyway, I now have the west coast's sweetest 2005 LGT wagon from the rear seats back!

My 2005 EJ255/257 was eating oil at about that rate, at about the same mileage. On teardown it was simply stuck rings, specifically, stuck oil control rings. Everything else in the bottom end would have gone the extra 100K I'm pretty sure. HOWEVER What killed it shortly after 180K was a valve failure. If nobody has been in the top end of that engine yet, you might expect something similar as the exhaust valve clearances close up and then the valves burn. If compression is good and the valve clearances have been corrected, then I don't think it is beyond comprehension that the motor could run quite a long way before failing provided you keep pouring oil through it. As for mods at the time of rebuilds, I'll leave that to the experts. I rebuilt mine to stock (about 5 years ago) and never looked back.

Definitely, these behave like some sort of interference thread, as you say. Over the years, I've had flare fittings that are frozen so bad with rust that they simply won't move at all. Or, the compression nut breaks free, but the hard line is `welded' tight inside the nut from rust and you have to cut the line off. Once the nut breaks free, it should reverse easily. These things are binding all the way out, even though the line is running free inside the nut. Interference threads! Still, I happen to have a 2006 Outback parts car here and all the brake line fittings are perfectly normal, though rusty, so I don't know what is up with this 2005 LGT wagon!

Yes that was more or less the plan, but I was going to snake the line underneath and over the fuel tank following the existing line. You can drop the tank about an inch without removing the subframe for access. It was a good plan, until I found out my fuel tank was heavily corroded and some of the evap lines on the back had broken off (due to rust, again!) I guess that is where the gas smell was coming from Exactly correct. The rear nylon clip on the right rear box section up beside the fuel tank. The line actually broke in my hand at the clip when I started moving it around. Thank god for dual circuit brakes! Thanks for this. The problem I have is the same, but add in some issues with the flare fittings at all the brake line connections. It is a toss up to me whether I spend 10 hours fighting with the dealer (probably not successful) or just do the dang job myself. The entire undercarriage of this car is a mess of rust. My experience has been that any heavy work involves broken bolts and brackets if you don't watch out. Dropping the subframe with all those big captive nuts was not for the faint of heart, I'll tell you. This is why the dealer was really dragging their feet and advised that it could get very expensive. I talked with the lead mechanic as well as the manager. I get that. In the end it is not so bad. I have about 9 hours in so far, with the subframe removed and broken down and the tank dropped out. I can clean and prime the bodywork in there while the tank is out. Wrecker has a good rust-free replacement tank and all the fittings close by. I'll clean up and re-bush the subframe while it is out. All these are things that I avoided over the years because trying to work on it under the car without a lift was just too painful.

Did Subaru have problems with a batch of hard lines around 2005? My 2005 wagon developed a leak in the rear hard lines above the fuel tank. Not funny, because the tank has to come out, so the rear subframe has to come out . . . a real can of worms. Working through the replacement I found all the compression fittings hard to turn. They bind all the way out. Not from corrosion, as such, but it appears the threads are bad. They look like a bolt that has had the wrong pitch thread forced on. Even the connections in the engine bay have the problem, where there is NO corrosion at all. These rear lines were the subject of a recall a few years ago. Dealer cleaned up the outsides around connector block and sprayed some wax rustproofing around. Fair enough, but when I took the car back recently with the leak they basically threw up their hands. Since the recall was addressed, they have no authority to do any more work for free. Estimated $5-6K for the job since they would be replacing a lot of hardware due to rust and age. Obviously not a viable expenditure on a 16 year old vehicle with 220K miles on the clock.

Mine are scored beyond repair. Don't mind if they need rebuilding but they need to be good cores. Shipping or drop off at an address in Blaine WA. I live in Canada.