Here we go again. This one's probably going to be more tricky.
Some of you may remember I did the HG in a bottle trick on an '89 GL
coupe. Five thousand miles and it still appears to be holding. This one's
going to be a little trickier...
The victim this time is a '97 Legacy L wagon, 335,000 on the body and
~125,000 on the engine and transmission. The problem this time is the leak
is on the exhaust side of things, letting exhaust gas into the cooling
system.
When I called 'Tech Sup****t' at Bar's last time, she told me to look for
orange deposits on the spark plugs. About the nearest I got to that was
what looked like rust on both plugs on the passenger's side cylinders. Not
really sure, I removed plug #1, then plug #3, then plug #2, then plug #4,
letting the car 'idle' (if you can call it that with a plug missing) for
5~7 minutes according to the instructions on the bottle. Since I pulled
the contact off one of the plug wires trying to remove it (Hey, I grabbed
the boot!), and since the car has to cool before the next step, off to
AutoZone for some NGKs and a set of Duracrap wires.
Fresh plugs and wires installed, step 2: get the car up to operating temp
and run for 15 minutes. Car ran nice and smooth for a while, then stumbled
a bit. Hey! The air filter from an '89 GL 1.8 fits the airbox! Running
nice and smooth again, I just shut the motor down, and now have to wait
for it to cool before the final step, which is running the engine at 1,500
RiPpeMs for another 15 minutes. (If nothing else, this 'repair' is costing
me in gasoline!)
We'll see what happens...if I can get 5~10,000 miles out of this, I'll be
a happy puppy!
Actually, I'm half hoping it DOESN'T work, since the days are getting
warmer and longer, and if I'm going to do headgaskets, I want to get them
done before September!
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