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You connected your EGR pipe to the airbox? Um.....

Imdew, sounds like you're just grabbing filtered air from wherever, right?

The distributors don't last forever. Plus, you need to take them apart and make sure that all the moving parts have grease and swing properly. I have gone through one distributor every 100,000 miles or less. The little black plastic electronic thing a ma jig in the center goes bad, then there is no spark to the plugs. As far as electricity to the injectors, that could be the black wire in the fusible links, that runs the entire engine. Another culprit could be the capacitor that wires into the coil, that will cause the engine to not start. Obviously, you have to have installed the timing belts exactly right, and you need prior experience to do that. Coils also go bad. Then there is the electrical connectors of the hot wire coming off of the alternator. That wire with the looped end connector loses it's conductivity due to overheating, so you have to cut back the lead and reinstall a new loop end to reattach to the alternator. Ground wires also lose their ability to conduct electricity at the body end of the wire. If they are stiff, they are bad. If before you took everything apart, and tried to run the electric windows at the same time the engine was running, but that caused the engine to miss or drop in rpm, then the ground wire is bad. I use two ground wires to be safe. There are two out of the six rectifiers under the dash over your left knee, that will cause the engine to not run. You can look for a burned one or replace all of them. Don't buy them from Subaru, because they will sell you the same rectifier that you can buy on the internet for$10, but for $50.

Hey everybody ! I’m having a problem with getting my XT (4wd turbo) to start, really at all, got it a while ago (was running on purchase) but had a stuck transmission and decided to pull both, put a ‘new’ trans in, and to pull and clean up a lot of seals and outside of the engine, fix some leaks, etc, didn’t mess anywhere inside the heads, or touch the distributor but redid the timing/belts IAW the FSM (car luckily came with all 6 sections) long story short, put it all back together and surprise crank no start, I've been digging through the manuals for weeks and i am hopelessly stuck, im new to Subarus, (and pre-OBDII in general) so any help anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated. we have fuel pressure, spark, air, good battery, and a stumble on starting fluid, but no power going to the injectors, all grounds per manual were cleaned and sanded, injectors were resistance checked as good, the diagnostic LED on the ECM is just on and unblinking and won’t throw a code at all and the FSM has sent me in circles and upside down looking for test plugs and modules, from what i can tell there’s no voltage going to the injectors during crank, and it might be a CAS failure in the distributor and it’s just not telling the ECM that the motors even moving hence no spray or the ECM has frozen or internally failed and I’m just not sure how to rule either of those out any insight to help get this ol girl started again? Or atleast a way to isolate the problem?

Sorry I read crank instead of cam. Cam gear on the EA71 is two small bolts. Same on EA81

Please investigate before you decimate. If it’s in the block. Heat and pullers won’t do anything.

A "more gentle" option may be an induction heater. If you don't have one yet, I'd recommend saving up for a decent Chinese one ($200 range), they work wonders. That way you're only heating up what you need to and you're not affecting the temper of the steel as much. I've never removed an EA81 cam gear, just my 2¢. Any machine shop worth their salt would tackle that no problem. :]

Welcome! USMB has been a great resource to me as well and glad it is still around. I'm grateful to all the contributors throughout the years.

Great! Thanks for the follow up. I hate it when repair threads have no resolution, good or bad.

I was told you’ve got to split the cases. I didn’t want to hear that too if that helps. Good luck. Post back how it got done please.

Is its safe to remove the old Camshaft Gear from Suby EA81 heating it using a Oxy torch, or is there another way, Ive git to replace mine.

I’ve been meaning to get back with an update on this: I finally got the car running again, and of course the problem was simpler than I thought. Turns out the wire from the distributor/ignition control module to the + terminal of the coil had come loose from the ring terminal connector. I don’t know how I missed it because I must have looked that wire over multiple times before, but I reconnected it, and it fired right up!

Hi all. Decided to join the message board after finding quite a bit of good info here when researching what I think was Duty C solenoid issues on my 96 Legacy wagon. My first car in 10th grade was a 98 Impreza hatchback and I've loved the EJ22/4EAT combo since then. My Legacy is at 200k now and I certainly don't expect it to be trouble-free since I hope to drive it to 300k. This board has been a help and I'm sure it will be moving forward. See you around!

I've left the valve and have tapped into the airbox. It works as well.

Yes. That's the EGR valve. You can definitely run without it, and some choose to do so. Happy would depend on whether you're OK with a permanent check engine light, the emissions laws in your state, and your comfort with increased NOx emissions.

So that's for EGR? That means I can just plug the hole and be happy, right?

Wow! That’s a pain.

This is right along the lines of what I had to do dropping a 2000 Legacy engine into a 2003 Legacy. They made the first two or three years of that era with the EGR but didn’t for the last two. Or the other way around. On that one, as you should do, keep the original intake. You’ll have to get the drill and tap for that EGR pipe. Don’t drill too deep. Take the other one out and measure that depth and put some tape on your drill bit as a marker. I think it’s an M22 x 1.5 but double check that. I might have that set still. I had loaned it but I think Jesse gave it back. But for me to find it right now would be tough. Otherwise I’d mail it to you. I had my daughter get it from Amazon and it was like $16 for the set. Use a smaller pilot drill first.

Apparently we can't insert images from Google Drive.

What is this thing on the back of the intake manifold? It's a '95 Legacy wagon with automatic. We're trying to swap in an engine from a '96 Legacy with a manual, and it doesn't have this excrescence on the manifold or the hole in the head for that copper pipe to thread into. We're going to swap the '95 manifold onto the running '96 engine, but there is no way we can install that copper pipe onto the '96 head. So, what is this, and can the '95 with AT work without it? can we just put a plug in that thing where the copper pipe goes, and live without it? The thread where I'm documenting the swap is here: Had to delete the picture there to make room for this one.

I agree, water temp sensors will tell you if it's an airflow problem. You could try removing the hood scoop and vent inserts in the hood, give all that air from the fans somewhere to go

I got a box with some EA71 rocker arms and put them into a spare EA81 cylinder head I had, The EA71 rockers fit ok, and the two holding bolts side into the EA81 cylinder head no probs, so I assume they would be compatible with the bolt pattern on the EA81 block. Its Just that I read occasionally that these rockers arms are not compatible, however going through the specifications in Haynes and Gregorys manuals on 1600/EA71 and 1800/EA81 engines they do not mention any differences in the rocker arms. I dont have a spare engine block to compare at the moment--Any comment out there.

B and I did some work on our cars. Replaced a front CV axle in the Forester that's been making noise occasionally but for quite a while. B changed his engine and trans oils. Trying to figure out Impreza's potential cooling problems. Seems better with the new thermostat but still crept up a couple times on our last trip out west in mild ambient temps. Really need to get some temp senders calibrated to the Haltech and get them installed on top and bottom of radiator. IIRC the middle of the coolant temp gauge is about 210F on the Haltech but I can't guarantee either is accurate. Infrared temp gun near the coolant temp sensor indicates it's at least close. Then 3/4 of the way up the gauge is 217F at the Haltech, probably still nothing to worry about but should confirm actual temps. Also thermostat is at the bottom/inlet of engine while the temp sensor is at the top so I'm getting coolant temp readings from the opposite end of the system than where the temps are controlled. One thing we did was a smoke test on three different Subarus. The Impreza's fans seemed to suck in the smoke as well as my white Outback with the stock fans. Could see at least some of it blowing out the back of the radiator, didn't seem to be blowing around the sides or out from between the condenser and radiator. So I think the fans are at least decent but since the overheating is a low vehicle speed issue perhaps we could get better fans although these had the highest CFM rating of any fans I could find. One idea I have is to add a large heater core above the ABS unit under the hood vent on the passenger side with an electric fan on it. The one we added to the back of the black Outback dropped coolant temps by 20F so that should do the trick and would be fairly easy to add. AC was discharged before our last trip so I added some refrigerant but now it will cycle on and off about once a minute. The high side spikes up to about 250psi while the low side drops to 20psi, then they briefly start to converge before the compressor kicks off. Wondering if I have a clogged orifice as this seems like a much larger pressure difference than the charts show. One time out west the coolant temps went up the power steering pump stopped working at low RPMs. After we got home I first tried installing a pump from an EZ30. Bracket is slightly different, no big deal, I'll swap the bracket. Nope, pulley is a different size too, not going to mess with trying to swap that over. So much for Legos. Got an EZ36 PS pump from a local junkyard and swapped it in this morning which solved that issue. We decided to tack up a couple trailing arms for B's eventual billet rear knuckle swap. Also trying to figure out my gas tank filling issue on the Impreza. I replaced the carbon canister which is usually the culprit. Not much better, also the one I pulled out seems good (not dumping carbon pellets out like the bad ones usually do). Pulled the hose off the canister that goes to the gas tank vent. When we blow compressed air in the gas filler air comes out that tube (seemed maybe a little blocked at first) similar to the Forester's. Last time I went to fill up with gas it shut off before the tank was full, I pulled that hose off the canister and then the tank filled as it should. Next time I'll try to remember to pull the other large hose off the canister instead.

It seems we can only attach 438kB of files total for the whole thread? that means one picture per thread!

Yanked the '96 engine out. Lots of crusty oil on it, can't see where it was coming from. Pulled a valve cover, the gasket looks peachy, but we'll put in a new gasket anyway. The inside looks nice and clean, no signs of crud. Notice that keeper bolted onto the back side of the head. It's not on the back of the other head, no keeper thingy there. We've pulled the flywheel off, this is the subie that was breaking flex disks every few hundred miles. We'll put the flex disk from the '95 on and hope for the best. Photo of the valves.