Behold! The mighty Subrute!

General talk about the Subaru Baja.

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Lune
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Posts: 22
Joined: Fri Dec 10, 2021 9:59 am

Re: Behold! The mighty Subrute!

Post by Lune »

So a couple of weeks ago my son got in his first fender bender (literally). Luckily he avoided all other vehicles and hit a rogue concrete pole. Also luckily he hit with the front right wing of his modular bumper. You what is good about modular bumpers? When one wing breaks (bends?) you can just pull that sucker off, buy a new one and slap it on there. We are going to be doing that soon. He wants to remove his entire bumper to do some maintenance on/behind it anyway. So when we do we will be sure to take pictures of the brackets that it attaches to.

I also think something got knocked loose in the front right wheel well. We had to do some gentle massaging (aka hammering) inside the wheel wells to make clearance for his tires. In so doing we had to strip back a bit of his plastic wheel well guard. On the back portion of it there seems to be some kind of drain hose behind it that is pushing it forward? Not sure if we can just cut the hose shorter so it isn't pushing on that plastic wheel well guard which is in turn pushing into the tire or if cutting it could cause some other issue. Hoping to get eyes on that tonight to see what could be done.

Also his brake light is now on. Not the ABS light but the red brake warning light. Fluid levels fine, no issue with stopping. Guessing this might be an issue with the E brake sensor or something. Maybe he needs new pads but it seems too soon for that. Unhooking/reconnecting the battery did not clear it. Might actually have to get it into the shop.

Did I mention his check engine light has been on for some time? It is the code for evap sensor. I had it on my old legacy (97 GT) and my new legacy (06 GT, modded ... of course). He has tried replacing the cap (that fixed it on both of mine) and the charcoal canister. Next I think we are going to need to get a smoke down test. My guess is he has a hole somewhere between the tank and cap.
dease42
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Re: Behold! The mighty Subrute!

Post by dease42 »

Pretty sure that hose is just the drainage outlet for the door or the quarter panel.. as long as it's still "there", I can't imagine it would cause any issues being shorter.

Would love the pics of the brackets.. and yeah, great point about the modular bumper!
Lune
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Joined: Fri Dec 10, 2021 9:59 am

Re: Behold! The mighty Subrute!

Post by Lune »

Alright. I have got some pictures about how the bumper hooks up. So I can show you these pictures and that pays for help with a recent problem, right? Thats how this exchange works isn't it? :lol:
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So, first of all excuse the little bit of surface rust. While he we were swapping out his headlights we cleaned that up and raptored it. There were some modifications that needed to be made to the bumper. First of all the bottom front rim of the headlights sit right on top of the bumper wings. But the bottom ridge that is under the lens of the headlights interferes. There is a bit of metal that needs to be cut out that basically surrounds that ridge.

Also the bumper did not come with the "glasses" (as my son calls them) that go in front of the headlights to protect them. That bit was custom made.

The plastic wheel well guards go too far forward and down and had to be cut. You can see the sheet metal plates that we had fabricated that go in front of them. Yeah, we know. More rust. They have been sanded and coated as well. That was all part of this weekend's project. We had those made so that mud, dirt and snow didn't fly up under the headlights and to help protect the wiring. Those two holes have holes aligned on the bumper wings where we have put bolts through to secure it.

You can see the fastener plate that was placed on the back of the bumper with the side facing bolts that help connect it to the Baja subframe. There are also some front facing bolts that also do that. We explained to our fabricator that we needed to be able to remove the bumper to service it but wanted to make sure it was secure. This is what he came up with and it definitely does the job.

Ok, on to our latest problem. After his accident his front right headlight was crunched pretty bad. It also bent the metal behind the headlight enclosure. Surprisingly everything still functioned correctly except the right turn signal (front and back ... even though the back was physically untouched).

We had to gently massage some metal back into place. In so doing we found some slightly abraised wires. Those have been repaired (not by me, I'm bad with electrical stuff). We took the same aftermarket LED headlights he had been using for the past year+ and put them back in the brand new headlight enclosures he has. ...that is when the problems started. First of all I will tell you that even though I told him to unhook his battery whenever he did electrical work he did not do that. After installing his headlights they worked fine but none of his turn signals did.

We didn't really know what to do so we tried to get it into the shop that installed them but they were too backed up. We got it into another shop and they tried telling us that the turn signal bulb sockets were bad. I doubted that very much. They also said that a module was bad (forgot its name) which I believe because it actually also smelled burnt out. We replaced the relay but the problems didn't stop. They actually got worse. Now his instrument cluster started flickering out and stopped working.

We got it into another shop and had them check it out. They spent 6 hours on it and it still isn't fixed. Currently they believe that it is the integrated unit and have that part on order. It will be here Monday. The issue they found is that there is something in the system feeding back. Well, first they found that the other shop had put the wrong turn signal bulbs in the wrong sockets. There are 2 types of sockets in these headlight enclosures, one with two contacts, one with one. They put the one contact bulb in the two contact socket and the two contact bulb in the one contact socket. The two contact bulb worked mostly fine and didn't cause a problem. But the one contact bulb bridged the gap with with the two contact socket and fed back through the system and caused some problems. So now really are really just stuck finding what problems it caused.

I happened to find this article:
https://www.justanswer.com/subaru/jbkum ... chase.html

That is the exact problem that this last shop was having. It kept blowing that fuse. Hopefully this integrated unit that the shop ordered is the current culprit and that resolves his issues permanently. If it doesn't then we are back to square one trying to find the problem. I'm actually posting this here in the hopes that someone who knows more about the electrical system on Bajas than me (doesn't take much) might have some experience to lend. If it isn't that or the parking light switch mentioned in the article above I'm not sure where to go from there. Ideas?

We are in a bit of a time crunch. We have a camping trip scheduled this Thursday. Hopefully we will have some pictures to post of our fun. ... kinda gotta get this problem fixed first though or else the trip gets postponed.
Lune
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Joined: Fri Dec 10, 2021 9:59 am

Re: Behold! The mighty Subrute!

Post by Lune »

So the shop just said they just messed with some of the wires and it started working. My son drove the car home with no issues. Lights on the dash all working fine, all lights on the car worked fine. He got it home and the next time he drove it his left headlight (still with the LEDs) is flickering. Does it on both high and low beams. Took the car back to the shop and they told me the part they had on order was actually the turn signal switch but they weren't sure it needed it. Discussed the problem with them and they think that it might be that the feedback that they were having caused a problem with the LED canbus and now it flickers. The good news is that we kept the headlight bulbs that came in the new enclosures so we can just swap those out if that is the issue. They might try that and check again for feedback and make sure everything else seems to be working correctly.

I did ask them if when they did whatever they thought fixed it last time if they were still getting the feedback and they said they were not. So with no more feedback issue and all of the components seeming to be working fine except that one headlight I am confident we will be able to take our camping trip. We probably will just have to switch back to OEM headlights. Worst case scenario there could still be a problem with the turn signal switch and that has to be replaced. Here's hoping!

Maybe we will give it a quick bath before the trip and try to get some pictures of fresh mud splattered on the crispy new headlights to post up. :lol:
Lune
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Posts: 22
Joined: Fri Dec 10, 2021 9:59 am

Re: Behold! The mighty Subrute!

Post by Lune »

Just got a call back from the shop. Found out what his brake issue was. When I went to pick it up last time they said the brakes were really weak and the peddle went all the way to the floor. Seemed odd cause they had just been working fine but there was that bit I mentioned before about his brake light. So I checked it out after we paid for the electrical work. Yeah... the peddle went all the way to the floor. The reservoir was really low. So I figured busted brake line. I was right. ... sometimes I hate it when I am right.

We were hoping it would have been one of the outside brake lines. Nope. So on our Bajas they run the brake lines inside the frame rails. On his rear right side he has a weak spot on his frame rail. I think someone may have tried jacking the car up there at one point. It has a small rusted hole in it. Its on the list of things to repair. Well the thought is something got knocked up into that hole and busted the line.

So the shop has a brake line bender and they aren't going to run the line inside the frame rail. I wouldn't expect them too and would think it would be fairly expensive to do the work that way. Their plan is to just run it underneath the car which is what I would think anyone would do. Anyone wanna guess how much they want to charge to do that?

...$600. Seems a bit high. Not sure what kind of hours they are charging for. I can't imagine it would take long. The interwebs tells me that price is higher than the highest quotes I could find but not by much. It is a bit of a custom job but nothing about it being custom makes it harder that I can see other than finding a few places to brace it at. What do you think? Does this price seem reasonable?

At least the good news is that this was caught before our trip not during. Damn, that coulda been bad. And it will be done and ready to go before our trip. As long as nothing ELSE goes wrong expect some pictures, I guess.
ltdan12a
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Re: Behold! The mighty Subrute!

Post by ltdan12a »

Figure they are custom bending a brake line from the front of the car, all the way to the right rear. They are also fabbing up mounting points for the brake line, and then they'll need to flush the system... I'd say 3 hours labor, plus the cost of a brake fluid flush.... $600 sounds fair to be honest...
Lune
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Posts: 22
Joined: Fri Dec 10, 2021 9:59 am

Re: Behold! The mighty Subrute!

Post by Lune »

They ended up running the brake line through adjacent to where the old brake line was. Not through the frame rails but above the bottom of the floor pan / undercarriage bits. So no hangers or mounting points. They didn't flush the system, in fact, they left the old brake lines just hanging in places. We had to have the car towed recently (the electrical gremlin has been growing) and when it was put on the flatbed when the car tilted back all the brake fluid in the old lines leaked out and left a pool. But yeah, the custom bending and hours I guess. Still seems a bit high to me.
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