Racer X

I have a 2005 Legacy wagon, bought new. At around 80,000 miles I found a broken wheel lug stud on the right rear. I replaced it at didn’t think too much about it. That was the beginning of a series of broken lug studs, mostly on the right rear, but I did have a couple break in the other three positions. I do all my own maintenance and repair, and when the car needs tires I pull all the wheels, toss them in the pickup and take them to a tire shop. Power tools have never touched the lug nut on this, or any vehicle of mine. I asked in Subaru forums, and found dozens of other Subaru owners who were experiencing the same issue. I asked at the dealer, no one had an answer regarding the repeated failures. Subaru denied any problems, and offered no suggestions regarding why it was happening or how prevent the failures. At some point I tried cleaning the corrosion from the mating surfaces of the wheels and the hubs. Haven’t had a broken stud since. The car has 200,000 miles on it, and hasn’t had a broken wheel stud since. By the way, never heard of aluminum lug studs. The genuine Subaru lug studs and lug nuts I got from the local Subaru parts department have always been made from a high grade steel alloy, similar to tool steel. I doubt that aluminum would be a suitable material for a wheel stud, as the loads are too great. I have seen aluminum lug nuts, popular with the tuner crowd. They think that aluminum is lighter, so their “race prepped” grocery getter with excessive negative camber and slammed buckboard suspension can get to the grocery store faster. Again, I feel that aluminum is not a suitable material for critical fasteners like wheel attachments.

Where did you source the heat shield material?

Something more contemporary and a bit more intense.

Looks great. My dad was stationed at NAS Whidbey in 66 & 67. We lived in the housing just outside the (then) main gat at Ault Field.

In the five years I drove big trucks I covered 800,000 miles, all of the lower 48 and six Canadian provinces. I lost count of how many times I mad the run from Seattle to the east coast. If I left Seattle on a Saturday I could be in Jacksonville by Tuesday morning. A couple years ago Mrs. Racer and I took the oldest grandson’s car to him at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina. We left Seattle on Friday morning around 11 am, and rolled into Fayetteville Sunday afternoon around 5 pm. Only stopped for fuel, food, and once for a shower at a truck stop halfway across Missouri on Saturday evening.

Back from when Terrible Ted with the Ten Fingers of Doom was cool and didn’t use his celebrity status to push his radical extreme political agenda.

Keep in mind that the console mounting hardware is shared with hardware for other interior items. Pan head or oval head phillips drive screws, 6mm thread hex head bolts with a 10mm wrench size . . . . . As long as the correct length is used, nobody will know they didn't originally hold the console in place.

The carbs Ryan has here should work fine in a stroker, given proper cylinder head prep and porting, larger valves, proper tuned exhaust…… With the caveat regarding the tuning and jetting. They will certainly give more to the right foot fun factor.

All right! It's zee Wango, zee Tango 1-2-3-4 Come on boys Time to Wango My baby she like to rock My baby she like to roll My baby she can dance all night My baby got no control She do the Wango Tango My baby she can scream and shout My baby she can move it out My baby she can take a chance My baby got a brand new dance Wango Tango Wango Tango It's a Wango Tango Ooooh yeah! (oooooh.) Baby! My baby like to rock My baby like to roll My baby like to dance all night She got no control She do... Wango Tango Wango Tango Wango Tango Ooooh yeah! (oooooh.) Yeahhhhhhhhhh! Baby! Baby! Baby! Ooooh I like the way you look baby You look like you're made for me honey If you wanna take a little chance I'm gonna show you a new dance Baby I gotta Wango down one time with you honey I like it, I like it, I like it, I like it, I like it Well, it's a brand new dance Yeah been sweepin' the nation I said a brand new dance A rock 'n' roll sensation Yeah I like it baby, I do it every night I got to do it 'cos I like it so much Oh honey believe it baby You see it's a crazed gyration of the rock generation It's my motivation to avoid the nauseation, frustration When I need some lubrication - Baby! Kinda like, goes kinda like this You take her right ankle out You take her left ankle out You get her belly propped down You get her butt propped up Yeah lookin' good now baby I think you're in the right position now baby Yeah but if you ain't quite ready I'll make sure everything is a little bit nicer 'cos I'm gonna get a little talcum I'm gonna borrow it from Malcolm Yeah you look so good baby I'm startin to drool all over myself I got the droolin', droolin', get all wet, salivate, salivate I got salivate late, salivate late, salivate late Got salivate, salivate, salivate, salivate, heh heh heh Yeah you look so good baby, I like it, I like it, I like it You know what I been talkin' about honey It's a nice dance, we gotta a nice dance goin' here Now what you gotta do, I'll tell you what you gotta do You got to pretend your face is a Maserati It's a Maserati It's a Maserati It's a gettin' hotty It's a Maserati, Maserati, Maserati It's a fast one too man, that thing's turbocharged You feel like a little fuel injection honey? I'll tell ya about it, I'll tell you about it I'll check out the hood scoop I gotta get that hood scoop off, shine and shine and buff I gotta buff it up, buff it up, buff it up, buff it up, buff it up, Yeah, shiny now baby, heh heh heh You've been drivin' all night long It's time to put the old Maserati away So you look for a garage, you think you see a garage Wait a minute, Hey!, there's one up ahead And the damn thing's open Hello! Get in there! Is my baby alive? (Is my baby alive?) Is my baby alive? (Is my baby alive?) Is my baby alive? She Wango'd to death Wango Tango (Wango Tango) Wango Tango (Wango Tango) Wango Tango (Wango Tango) Wango Tango (Wango Tango) Wango Tango Wango Tango Wango Tango Wango Tango Wango Wango Tango Tango Wango Wango Wango Wango Tango Tango Tango Tango, yeah... (echoing)

The very long service intervals on today’s cars seem excessive to me. Sure, the oils available today are much better than 30 years ago, or more, but today’s car engines rebreathe the stuff that used to go out the crankcase vent into the atmosphere and onto the roadway. They also run hotter. I always change oil and filter every 5,000 miles, or once a year, whichever comes first. Oil is cheap insurance. Clean oil is essential to longevity.

Any carburetor setup will require frequent setting and adjusting to keep the engine in tune and performing well. I like the SU carbs because adjusting of jetting is a simple matter, just adjust the nozzles up or down, no pesky jet changing. If you are OK with the continual fiddling, or running the setup a bit fat as a compromise, go for it.

Pretty sure the marks on the combustion chamber and piston are mechanical damage caused by a foreign object. It could have been a spark plug electrode that broke off, or something ingested through the intake. I’ve seen both mechanical damage from foreign objects, and detonation damage which will have severe burn marks where the piston and/or combustion chamber begin to melt accompanied by mechanical damage such as broken ring lands and broken rings. This hemi ate a valve during a pass. There was damage in every combustion chamber. There were bits of broken and twisted metal in the intake and carburetor throats.

What welding setup are you using? MIG? Stick?

As promised, although a bit late, here are the corners on my 72. The center portion above the windshield was placed first, the right and left sides next. The windshield goes in last, the rubber gasket going over the vinyl, holding the edge down.

Having lunch at the moment, when I’m done I’ll go out to the shop and check a couple of my Zs. I can think of several that have original, unmolested interiors . BRB

I call bs. Glass is a very stable material, able to endure millennia provided it is not changed in any way. From Wikipedia: “Generally speaking, emulsions/colloidal systems and glasses are metastable. The metastability of silica glass, for example, is characterized by lifetimes on the order of 1098 years (as compared with the lifetime of the universe, which is thought to be around 13.787 X 109 years).” Ten to the ninetyeighth power is a very long time. Glass will outlive any of the other materials a car is made from. Without any interference from, say vandalism, if a car is left to sit undisurbed, after the metals corrode to dust, the plastics and vinyls decay into crumbs, the glass will still be there, dirty and covered in whatever growth is common to the place it is. So yes, glass may become unstable over time. A very, very long time. There it is. The small chip results in a weak point in the glass structure. If it had not been damaged, the glass would have been fine, given proper care and handling. Even brand new glass will be weakened when nicked or chipped.

14 x 6 or 14 x 7?

Windshield glass shouldn't be difficult to find. The question is, if you were paying someone to install it, and they broke it, why are you looking? It should fall on them to find another, at their expense.

Sorry, no video on or off track. I do have some in car video on VHS from the time I borrowed a camcorder and taped a couple races, but it needs to be digitized, and who knows if the recordings are still good after all this time. Notice the exhaust comes out the side. With it following the stock route, the heat was burning my right foot. I tried heat shields, header wrap, and still the heat would blister the side of my right foot. Since the rules allowed any exhaust system using the stock manifold, provided the exit was aft of the steering wheel hub, and the sound levels were met, I built a custom side outlet setup. I made a flange for the manifold attachment with 3/8” steel plate, and if memory serves, the pipes were 1-3/4”, then 3” going into the LoBak muffler (the LoBak was a circle track racing piece that isn’t filled with glass fiber, but has a spiral strip of steel wrapped around a 3/4” tube, the outer portion of the auger welded to the inside of the shell), with a 3” turndown. It was very quiet, never going over 65 to 70 db on the track sound meter (measured at 50 feet from the track).

I filled the back ones and just put stickers over the front ones. I also removed all the wires that weren't needed.

So @Yellow78 after two years, how is the power steering holding up?

An easy way to sort it out is to look at the profile of the car, and the light assemblies, from above. Notice that the car is narrower at the front and back, wider at the middle. Also notice that the lights are thicker at one end, thinner at the other. Placement of the lights should result in the outer surfaces of the lenses should be parallel from right to left, relatively congruent to a flat vertical plane running the length of the car. The forward ends of the front markers will be narrower vertically and thicker side to side at the forward ends, wider vertically and thinner side to side at the trailing ends, and the reverse will be the case for the rear markers. Just like the FSM page Zed posted.

Yes. Or garnish, or trim.

Yes, on originally installed u-joints. The assembly is too small to have clearance for the zerk fittings, so after assembly and lubrication, the zerk is removed and a plug inserted. During routine service, remove the plug, install a zerk, grease the joint, remove the zerk and replace the plug.

Interesting how the original exhaust and shielding is still intact.