- Thread starter Hood
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Hood
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Yes, replaced the wheel bearings on the Spec B and may have also changed the drivers side on the Outback, can't remember for sure.
Do you know if it is normal for the spec B box to whine a wee bit? Nothing seriously noisy but it was something I noticed when I got it and was a bit worried but it never got worse, shame the rest of the underside was a rust bucket though or I would have kept it on the road.
Hood
I am obsessed.
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Yes still have it, it is minus a passenger seat though as that is now my computer chair
sako243
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Well see if the problem manifests itself on the drive downNot far from you, probably only 500 miles or so
slim_boy_fat
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Spec B with outback behind. Outback was the wifes so was clean, Spec B was mine so never washed. I now have the outback so it is the same state as the Spec B was
View attachment 132783
Go hang your head in shame at the state of that car.
Just something additional to check, if you haven't already. Pull the diff plug and strain/filter the oil looking for chips, filings, etc. as I had a pinion bearing fail on me over the course of 17 miles in the mountains.... Went from a very light whine under power when climbing to shudder to chunking and locking up the front wheels over the course of 3 miles at roughly the halfway point, on a 3 mile 30% downgrade about 8 miles from home at the bottom of said hill 
. Turns out they used plastic cages on the pinion bearings on some of the US spec Foresters, and when the cage gets tired all the rollers jump out and the pinion climbs out of mesh, usually under load, and your diff destroys itself, post haste and with little or no warning. AFAIK, at least about the NA spec Subies in the '99 to 2008 range, they have used 4 basic types of center diffs; torsens on the STIs and some of the WRXs, viscous coupling on most WRXs and manuals, an in-house designed and made electro-hydraulic actuated clutch pack in the early production (like a Haldex set-up), and finally a Haldex clutch pack on the later cars to current. Don't know if it applies to all of them, but on the early to mid 2006 or so automatics, you could pull a fuse that would uncouple the center diff and force the car to run in 2wd with the ABS defeated. Might help with pinning things down. We used to check out the health of the 4wd by running the cars in tight figure-8s on pavement, which would load up all the drivetrain parts in in any way we could concieve. It would usually point out marginal CV joints, clutches in the center and rear diffs, bad spider gears, etc. pretty quickly.
. Turns out they used plastic cages on the pinion bearings on some of the US spec Foresters, and when the cage gets tired all the rollers jump out and the pinion climbs out of mesh, usually under load, and your diff destroys itself, post haste and with little or no warning. AFAIK, at least about the NA spec Subies in the '99 to 2008 range, they have used 4 basic types of center diffs; torsens on the STIs and some of the WRXs, viscous coupling on most WRXs and manuals, an in-house designed and made electro-hydraulic actuated clutch pack in the early production (like a Haldex set-up), and finally a Haldex clutch pack on the later cars to current. Don't know if it applies to all of them, but on the early to mid 2006 or so automatics, you could pull a fuse that would uncouple the center diff and force the car to run in 2wd with the ABS defeated. Might help with pinning things down. We used to check out the health of the 4wd by running the cars in tight figure-8s on pavement, which would load up all the drivetrain parts in in any way we could concieve. It would usually point out marginal CV joints, clutches in the center and rear diffs, bad spider gears, etc. pretty quickly.
Hood
I am obsessed.
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Ok will have to check that out, maybe no oil in it
When I hauled the drive shafts I was expecting oil to come out but nothing, so just assumed it had either drained back into the box because it was jacked up or the level was normally below the shaft outputs.
Wightsparks
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I don't know much about these cars but I had a similar-ish issue on my Picasso - turned out it was a fractured/broken ARB - but you could not actually see it without looking very, very hard as the parts lined up perfectly.
