'91 Legacy: How to get at the relays?
John Kaufmann
blower relay. At this point it should be simple, but how do you
replace the relay?
Yes, I bought the full 6-volume Service Manual set -- in general, a
good investment of ~$100. And it has been helpful in lots of ways that
the Chilton and Haynes manuals were not (like giving enough detail to
kill that darned beeper while I'm working). Still, though ... Subarus
are always bizarrely designed, electrically, and there are things that
even the service manuals do not cover. Like:
How do you get at the relays under the dash on the driver side wall?
Sounds simple, but darned if I can figure out how those relays are
replaced.
It's bad enough that the interior fusebox is buried in such an
inaccessible place, but the relays are even more inaccessible: Above
the fuses (separated by the courtesy light, which is also mounted on
the relay/fuse plate), behind a heavy harness. There are three relays
on the plate - for the blower, fuel pump and sunroof (as I've been able
to make out from the studying the wiring diagrams) - all identical, but
no way to tell which is which, or how to replace them. I would just
pull one at a time, until I find out which is the blower relay, but
they don't seem to want to release. There may be a latch somewhere,
but I can't feel anything and - given where they are - can't see
anything.
Can it really be this tough? Anyone figured it out?
--
John
HVYFUJI
should still have fig 63-3, there is thows the blower relay, the color neutral
refers to the connector, meaning, it's beige.the bolt, just to the right of the
relay, is the top bolt of the inside fuse box. To get to this, you almost
certainly have to drop the engine and trans control unit, which are held on
with 10 mm nuts, to remove the engine ECu, you need to remove the plastic knee
bar, remove all the screw, including the one behind the coin tray, if that's
still there, I don't remember which year they deleted it. There is a tab that
you have to push to remove the connector, and then you have to pry the relay
sits in a plastic cover that pops into a square hole in the sheet metal. It is
a pain, and causes a lot of cuts, scrapes and blood letting. Good luck : )
John Kaufmann
> I am looking at a 90 manual, section 6-3, page 102, ... fig 63-3,
> there is ... the blower relay, the color neutral refers to the
> connector, meaning, it's beige. the bolt, just to the right of
> the relay, is the top bolt of the inside fuse box.
Thanks! It was so NICE of you to take the time to look it up.
Actually, I probably would not have found those three relays in
Fig.63-3, because I was referring to the Bulhead Wiring Harness
(p.123), which lists only those 3 identical relays... so when I saw 3
identical relays on the relay/fuse panel, I assumed they were those 3.
>> How do you get at the relays under the dash on the driver side wall?
>> Sounds simple, but darned if I can figure out how those relays are
>> replaced.
> To get to this ... drop the engine and trans control unit,...
> There is a tab that you have to push to remove the connector,
> and then you have to pry the relay sits in a plastic cover that
> pops into a square hole in the sheet metal. It is a pain,
> and causes a lot of cuts, scrapes and blood letting. Good luck : )
Thanks. I appreciate your wishes as well as your advice.
One more thing, please ... About those _other_ 3 relays (rear defogger;
tail lights; main fan), on the relay/fuse panel: Do you know how those
are removed? Are they clamped on, or can they just be pulled, (_hard_)?
If clamped on, how are they disengaged?
--
John
Hallraker
combined! What's with all the pointy bits?
-Matt
"HVYFUJI" <hvy...@aol.comnospam> wrote in message
news:20010419184907...@ng-fw1.aol.com...
HVYFUJI
and they will come out.
John Kaufmann
>> How do you get at the relays under the dash on the driver side wall?
>> Sounds simple, but darned if I can figure out how those relays are
>> replaced.
>> ...
>> Can it really be this tough? Anyone figured it out?
In article <20010419184907...@ng-fw1.aol.com>, HVYFUJI
<hvy...@aol.comnospam> wrote:
> ... To get to this, you almost certainly have to drop the engine and
> trans control unit... It is a pain, and causes a lot of cuts, scrapes
> and blood letting...
Well, yes, I did drop the ECU and ATCU ... but that did not even come
close to making the job reasonable. In the end, I wound up completely
removing the dash <!> to reach the relays ... and then I could see why:
The blower and sunroof relays were BEHIND the fuse/relay panel. That
panel is mounted on an L-shaped bracket, with the short leg at the top,
to angle the top out from the side wall for at least minimal fuse
accessibility. So the blower and sunroof relays, which are round, are
mounted in nylon rings above the short leg of the "L".
That's bad enough - I could not reach them usefully from below - but
at least failure of one of those relays is not critical: you can at
least drive without the blower or sunroof. But the situation is even
worse for the igition and fuel pump relays, where failure IS critical.
The ignition relay is mounted on a tab on the long leg of the "L"
(behind the relay/fuse panel) -- inaccessible if it fails on the road.
And the fuel pump relay is, if anything, even worse: mounted on a
bracket on the side well well above the fuse/relay panel, tucked up
inside the top of the dash, out of arm's reach from below. Again, the
only solution is to remove the dash.
But putting those relays in such an inaccessible place is RIDICULOUS -
design malfeasance of a very high order - and I spent a good bit of the
weekend swearing at the designer who put them there. It was obvious to
me that I could not leave them there. Even moving the relays to a more
accessible place would take less time than removing the dash again in
the likely event of another failure. So that's what I did:
(1) There's a convex cavity immediately behind the knee plate - between
the steering wheel post and the little tray on the left - with NOTHING
in that space. I don't know why that space is unused when relays are
put in such an inaccessible place, so I decided to move the relays into
that cavity. That cavity has two oval holes on the upper side; I added
a hole on the lower side, 5x7 cm (2 x 2-3/4 in), for access from below.
(2) I would not have moved the fuel pump and ignition relays if it
meant touchig the wiring, because I did not want to affect reliability
of those critical circuits. Fortunately, those relays reached the new
location with no change in wiring; the horn relay did, too. That just
left the blower and sunroof relays, 4 wires each. So I patched in
extensions of the wiring (15cm or 6") for those relays.
(3) I removed the bracket with the fuel pump relay. This bracket has a
spare clip for another round relay and a tab for a rectangular relay
(like the ignition relay), so it was a good starting point for a
mounting plate for the five inaccessible relays. I bought another
round clip at the local hardware store, and cut two more tabs for
rectangular relays from a cat food can :). I drilled out the rivets
holding the original clips, and re-riveted the clips with the tabs on
the opposite side.
So, that one bracket provides mounting for 3 round relays on one
side, and 3 rectangular/tab relays on the other side -- one space more
than is needed.
So ... I mounted the relays on that modified bracket in the cavity
behind the knee plate. NOW, if a relay fails, I can just remove the
knee plate, and remove one more screw and replace the relay. Replacing
a relay should take minutes, not hours. Now, for our Legacy, it does.
I can't imagine why Subaru made it so hard.
--
John
HVYFUJI
that ignition relay is a common failure on 90-94, and I have done quite a few
of them, even without removing the control units. OUCH OOH, AAH, medic !!!
Matthew Stow
--
Matt with his 2¢
2000 Legacy GT
1990 Legacy L
"HVYFUJI" <hvy...@aol.comnospam> wrote in message
news:20010424154346...@ng-xc1.aol.com...
John Kaufmann
<hvy...@aol.comnospam> wrote:
Well, it MIGHT be possible if you can put the car on a lift, so that
the door sill is chest-high, and then you can at least fight the
problem from a convenient standing position. Replacing it at home,
though -- or worse, on the road -- has to be close to impossible from
below.
And even in the shop, on a lift, it seems like the job must be awful.
I found that the ignition relay had already been replaced on our car
[which we baught used]. That was obvious from the disarray: Among
other things, the ignition relay was not put back on its mounting tab,
but was left hanging on its wire. [Also, they had obviously removed the
steering wheel for the job, lost one of the M6x1 machine screws, and
replaced it with a M6 sheet metal screw. Removing the relay bracket
from the side wall gave me another M6x1 machine screw that I could use
to put the steering wheel back right when I finished. (I hate things
being out of order.)]
So OK, let's say that under ideal circumstances it is POSSIBLE, but
very unpleasant, to replace the ignition relay without removing the
dash. But how about the fuel pump relay, which is even MORE out of
reach? Can you actually reach that relay - tucked up near the top left
corner of the dash - from below?
--
John
John Kaufmann
<hvy...@aol.comnospam> wrote:
Well, it MIGHT be possible if you can put the car on a lift, so that
John Kaufmann
<milli...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hope mine doesn't go.
If it does, and if you replace it yourself, I'm convinced that moving
the relays is a job worth doing, to save time the next time. A case in
point:
To move the relays this weekend, I made up a mounting bracket which
takes 3 round relays on the front side and 3 rectangular relays on the
back side. Of course, this whole project started when the blower relay
(one of three identical round relays - for the blower, fuel pump and
sunroof), went bad, and the dealer had none in stock, so I had to order
a relay and put things back together so the car can be used until the
relay comes.
So I put the bad relay back, just as a place-holder, and *thought
that I plugged the sunroof (which is expendable) into it. Of course,
when I got things back together, it would not start ... because I had
plugged the _fuel_pump_ connector into the bad relay. I was *really*
glad that I just had to drop the knee plate and swap relays/connectors
to get the car started. This time, the job just took a few minutes;
that's as it should be.
--
John
HVYFUJI
it, just like with the Ignition relay (the brown one) getting your hand on it
is one thing, disconnecting it is a completely different issue. I however did
not remove the steering wheel, nor have the car on a lift. I replaced the relay
on my legacy when they came out with the redesigned unit, just to be safe, and
similar to what you did, I attached the new relay to a harness much lower, with
a tie wrap, just to keep it accessible.