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Got em all out without breaking any - I don't think Ive stripped the holes either but haven't cleaned it up yet. For this really tough bolt I decided to use a "paint stripper" heat gun on high for about 15 minutes and it still wouldn't budge so drilled a 2nd hole down closer to the threads, earlier had drilled a hole about in the middle of the column to get the penetrating oil down into the crud in the bottom inch of the column also. After drilling this second hole and then using a lot of penetrating oil, then heat, I had progress had to heat up down by the head for at least 10 minutes with paint stripper heat gun, that's why my aluminum shield has turned golden brown .. I tried a M.A.P. torch but it was to scary and causing way to much smoke for my comfort.. and wiggled back and forth tell I could get about 1/4 turn, came back next day tried it cold no t so much movement so heated it up again and kept working it back and forth - but not going as far in as out.. then add more sauce.. do it again and eventually.. Here's the bolt right after I got it out - I used a lot of B'laster penetration oil, and couldn't get it moving with the 3/8" impact gun - had to really push and pull on this ratchet - really hoping the bolt wouldn't break,, kind of amazed it didn't

There are many ppl that go down the Weber route and have loads of troubles with them - or just chew a whole lot of juice running with one. Give the hitachi a good service with a new kit (keep the old bowl float valve - the ones in the kit are never correct) and go again. You’ll find there are two camps in the Weber world - those that continue to run them and manage them to keep them going and those that revert back to the hitachi carb. Personally a rebuild kit was far cheaper than a Weber so I went that way with my Brumby and I have no regrets. It runs awesome now! Cheers Bennie

I wasn't the only one doing last minute prep on my car, slammo put his old skidplate on his daily driver and met up with us. Friday I picked up the bumpers from the paint shop but didn't have time to install before I left since I was packing the car. B and I drove down through Joplin MO and we found a campground south of there that had tent sites. Slammo and travelvw camped at this site. Saturday morning we headed south and met slammo and travelvw in Talihina OK. We drove east on highway 1 into AR. Did some trail riding there with travelvw mostly leading the way. Slammo and I both got to drive travelvw's bug. It rode quite rough as he has much too large torsion bars in the rear. He said the limited slip makes a big difference and it definitely looked like it on loose climbs, much less wheelspin than I would have expected. Travelvw's windshield washing technology: Near the end of the day we drove to the top of Eagle mountain. There was a rocky obstacle near the top that slammo left his car at the bottom of. B and travelvw were getting video so I took the most difficult line and put a hole in my RF tire sidewall. We swapped on the spare and drove to the top. A little off to the side of the building at the top there's a nice rocky outcrop with a good view. We camped at a site travelvw had been to before where two streams came together with some little rapids. We left slammo's car there for the day. Sunday morning I found this weirdly rotted out trunk near the campsite. We headed east. Hiked to a couple different old lookout towers, one a much longer hike and also more intact than the other. From the intact one you could see the hills/mountains generally run east/west. Views were good but it was overcast most of the weekend, on a sunny day they would have been great. Eventually travelvw had to head back north and we headed back west on some different trails. We went to the two footed oak tree which is bizarre. Went back to the campsite. We all planned to be back home Monday night so we figured we only had a few hours for trail riding Monday morning. We'd crossed a powerline grade near the campsite so we went to check that out first. It turned out to be a dead end but a decent hill climb. Headed north into Mena to get gas. Saw some plane junkyards at the airport. Decided to check out Top Walker Mountain road on the way north. Quite a few side trails on the way there. Drove to the end of the side trail/ridge on the map. There were a couple of narrower trails so we tried one of those, it dead ended at Round Mountain. Again, pretty good views but would be really cool in clearer weather. Before we got back on the tarmac for good we aired up and ate some sandwiches. We hadn't made it very far north when the Forester's engine suddenly stopped running going up a long grade and he pulled over on the (fortunately wide) shoulder. Engine cranked over fine, too well really, sounded like it had no compression so we assumed timing belt failure of some kind. Hooked up the tow bar to my Impreza. Had never towed with it before, has no wiring set up for towing. Towed Forester to the nearest off ramp. Slammo convinced us to do some wiring so we got some scotch locks and a four pin wiring pigtail from a parts store and wired up running lights and brake lights to the magnetic mount lights. Continued north, seemed a little squirrely when braking but not terrible. Slammo split off at Joplin to the north and we headed east. When I pulled into the next gas station in the dark it felt worse and I could see the Forester was clearly off center. Fortunately it has no problem driving over curbs. At this point only one leg of the tow bar was attached to the Forester. We straightened out the tabs and cranked all the bolts down and added a ratchet strap to keep the legs of the tow bar from spreading. After that it was much more stable the entire ride home. B took part of the timing cover off at one stop and confirmed the timing belt was loose. Didn't see this until after we got home. It's been a while since I've worked on EJ engines but I don't think you're supposed to see the timing belt through the cover and that looks like the wrong side of the belt. We both think the Impreza can hold grades better while towing the Forester than the Forester can while powering itself. I don't think we burned significantly more gas on the way home either but my speedo/odo still isn't working so I'm not sure. Overall a decent trip. Weather was pretty good. We never got stuck but I did get a flat tire and B's engine clearly needs some work. It probably needs new heads or at least valves. He does have two pairs of probably good heads in his basement. Impreza ran well all weekend. Did take three tries to start once but generally started pretty quickly so I'd say the rewiring was a success. I'm going to try a different crank position sensor and eventually probably shimming/shaving it up or down to get more cranking voltage.

Been a really long time since this thread was updated. Had my share of local trouble with attempted theft and damages. https://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/186359-beware-of-mevotech-parts/ Decided to go with KYB 2wd struts(new old stock) and Lesjofors '94 Kia Sephia front springs(4044208 on RA), new KYB strut mounts(SM5364, IF you can find 'em). New KYB 4wd rear shocks with better looking, less rusty springs. Rear cross member with gaps in mounts filled with urethane. Superpro front strut rod bushings(SPF2534K). Superpro new moustache bar bushings(same as rear diff mount bushing). Rides much better without all the bounciness on highways. Combination of Sachs 4wd struts with those Lesjofors springs, they're about .040" thicker than stock, will get you another inch of lift in front. Combination of those and 2wd rear KYB shocks + stock rear springs OR 4wd rear shocks with Honda Accord front springs, Lesjofors 4135713, may ride even front to rear. Just a suggestion. KYB 2wd strut, Lesjofors spring, KYB mount, SJR 4" lift. For $86 shipped this McPherson spring compressor was worth it. MUCH safer to work around than those hook compressors that tend to slip and always at the wrong time. spring compressor Be sure to lube the threads and round part with gear oil.

B and I moved most of the rest of my business inventory to my machine shop across town. We took one trip with his Forester and my white Outback loaded with parts. Then while he was working on his car I loaded the white Outback up with another literal ton of parts. Almost as soon as we started driving the transmission acted like it was slipping. Got to the shop and unloaded everything, still slipping on the way back and has been ever since. I tried adding some brake fluid since my brother knows some people who've had temporary success with it but it didn't really seem to help. Plan to get a lower mileage replacement trans from a junkyard and hopefully a tan leather driver's seat while I'm at it. The Impreza has been taking a while to start fairly often since the swap after it sits overnight or longer. Sometimes it takes two or three tries before it starts. A while back I discovered this was because the crank position sensor wasn't generating enough voltage while cranking. Voltage signal on the Haltech oscilloscope looked decent but it wasn't enough. I lowered the threshold voltage and also added a column for 0RPM which seemed to help but still wasn't a complete fix. Then it just wouldn't start, was giving crank position and throttle body codes. I took apart the engine harness connector as that's been the source of most of my problems and the wire pulled out of the pin for the crank position sensor. I repinned that and checked the throttle body connections and it started and no longer had those errors but it was running rough, probably on five cylinders. I decided I'd had enough and ordered some closed barrel pin connectors and a tool from JR Ready. I'm not a huge fan as they're made in China and I don't like how closed barrel pins don't crimp on the insulation but M says they're the best thing they've found for wiring airplanes so I figure it might be good enough for trail riding in a Subaru. The week before we left I rewired the engine harness plug on the Impreza with some help from B. Shortened up the wires with a couple feet of excess length in the process. Directly wired the throttle body and MAP sensors to the ECU as they're pretty easy to unplug and then I'd have one less connection in line and fewer things to run through the connectors I added. Added four Deutsch connectors with closed barrel pins. I did zip tie them away from that bracket after I took that picture. Labeled and checked wires, pinned out the connectors, double checked wire color matches and tried to start the car Thursday. Only cranked but didn't fire. I checked various things, sensors seemed to be reading except the cam and crank position sensors. Then I realized I hadn't plugged that connector in. Then it fired up. Overall pretty happy with how that turned out, should be much easier to repin those connectors and the reduced wiring under the dash makes it cleaner and allows the glovebox to fit better. Bit of a last minute fix finishing that the day before we left but I'm glad I did it.

after getting the bolts out (serious slow torture on the rusted encrusted ones https://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/186067-any-new-ideas-for-the-old-intake-manifold-stuck-bolt-problem ) then had to clean up the surfaces - the right side was so pitted I ended up taking it down with a medium diamond hone. The first and second image are from just scraping it with a sharp putty knife and carefully filing with a old "cross hatch" file - not happy.. so I worked it for about 3 minutes total with this medium diamond hone. Walla! did the same to the bottom of the manifold - but only removed what lines, pipes,sm0g stuff, etc. I needed to in order to lift it up only a few inches, so I had to use my selfie camera and it doesn't focus (kinda like my eyes now ) as I'm hoding the cell phone camera facing up .. kinda like holding a minature yoga pose Here's a couple of images using a "dental mirror" showing the ends of the manifold's water galley, I think I need to clean it up more BUT it was getting too cold and the wind and fog were rolling in.. .. and before I stuffed the sock in the intake port I looked down into it and I see a pile of "oxide crystals" so I'm going to make sure that intake valve is closed and try to get a skinny rubber hose attached to a vacuum cleaner down past it and knock most of it lose with a chopstick .. if yea all think that's a good idea?

Code compliance issue is no longer - gave the compliance officer a call and he was extremely easy to work with. Donor husk is in the garage for the time being, but apparently a car cover will suffice if I need to move it back out into the drive. That out of the way, we got the first test fitting of the EJ out of the way yesterday. It would appear that with only a slight extension of the mounting slots on the original crossmember, the new engine should drop right into it, but as expected the fit is very, very tight. It could (by my measurements anyway) be done without notching the frame, however that would leave mere millimeters of clearance at the back of the valve covers. It will still be a much tighter fit than its original chassis even with notching, so like past builders I will also be notching the frame. (Noted where I'm notching things out in blue sharpie in the photo.) I should have about a half inch of clearance on either side when that's complete unless I find a way to relocate that forward mounting bolt for the subframe - in which case I can probably get a little more. I also have 99% of the original wiring harness out of the donor now, and I'm pretty decided on attempting a full retrofit of most of the newer components into the old car, including the HVAC system. By my eye everything *should* fit, but it will be extremely tight. Since I'm also going as far as installing pretty much everything else of note from the impreza, I'm also considering either adapting the power steering rack to fit the old Brat crossmember, or adapting the Impreza crossmember to fit the Brat, although I suspect the simplest route would be to ditch the power steering in its entirety and just use the original Brat steering gear. My only concern there would be replacement of components on the steering gear down the line - I hate having to track down parts for weeks or months at a time. These next few days I'll be pulling the old 4 speed from the Brat and starting on the frame notching job. Somewhere in there I'm also going to do a refresh on the EJ while it's accessible. Oil pump, rear main seal, timing kit, that kind of thing, but that will likely be after the new year holiday, especially since I forsee a lot of removal and reinstall of the new engine and transmission while i do the fabrication on the crossmember, firewall, and transmission tunnel to get those to fit where they need to be. PS - as i build on this I'll be putting the parts and pieces I no longer need up for sale, including the complete but now partially disassembled EA71 engine. Maybe someone with more patience or skill can get that head free and give this thing a new life. Same goes with the transmission and other miscellaneous components as I go.

Yikes! Wiring is going to be a chore. I wish I had some harnesses to help you out. If you don’t mind please send me an email at moosens@yahoo.com just so I can send pics etc easier. Here on the USMB I need to sort out my pictures and maybe cough up some more donations. Otherwise I’d post pics here. Not sure how you feel about this but we used to say the 1600 was bulletproof. And then came the 2.2 and people called it 2.2 magic. I’d say it’s the best engine the public ever got with my beloved 1600s second place. That’s why I have an approximately 4,000 mile 2.2 engine and harness ready to put into my Coupe someday. Going to send you a message too. Talk soon.

Sounds like we’re the same type of uhh ……enthusiasts. But I’d stop short of the 360. With me it’s the early 70’s now. I’ve got my 73 Coupe and 77 stage one 4WD wagon. And my daily is a 94 same as you’re taking on, 2.2 first generation Legacy. Probably the best car they ever gave us. Enjoy ! Let me know what you need. Right now I’m cleaning house in major fashion and I’ve got boxes of 90-94 Legacy parts I could easily just donate and other items very cheap. I need space. In case you didn’t know this your car is the same nose as a 1990-91 but in 92-94 they change the lights etc. Folks refer to that as the “facelift” years. I have a very nice set of headlights for yours. Enjoy that 2.2

Good suggestion - I'm ahead of you with the car cover and had it purchased the day I brought the donor home. It is now underneath said cover and I'll be turning it around to face the house so the missing hood isn't so apparent. I'm in full agreement that it's an eyesore, I'm just surprised at the quickness of the neighbor though perhaps I shouldn't be, our municipality provides a live app to report with now. Whether it is enough to satisfy the city, well, we will see. I suspect between the cover and having one of these in the shop at most times should be sufficient to keep everyone off my case long enough to cut what I need off the donor husk and send it to scrap. Regardless, I've got inflated roller tires on both vehicles and the cover on the donor now. Going to clear some space in the garage/shop to push things in and out so I can start fabricating. Picked up the final major piece to the puzzle for a while yesterday as well - a relatively fresh 5 speed cable transmission - the only major part the donor didn't have.

'89 GL SPFI. Has had an idle issue since I've bought it (6 months ago). RPM's will flutter approx plus or minus 25 RPM with idle set to 750 RPM. It will continue to flutter until 1250 RPM. Along with this is a rattle-tick that is too fast to be a cam or lifter (the noise comes from the center of the engine). It will stall when cold unless I keep the accelerator held above 1000 RPM until the needle reads just above cold. RPM's will not increase when cold, it wants to but it sounds like it bogs then catches itself, leading to a loping-idle. What's been replaced: Plugs, dizzy cap, rotor, ignition wires, coil, IAC valve, coolant temp sensor, thermostat, radiator cap (this has helped the issue, but it still lopes) My ideas: Timing issue, water in the fuel system (it sat about a month while doing full suspension work), some sort of vacuum leak (haven't tested with a gauge), fuel pump or injector issue, a computer issue, a ground/harness issue Any guidance or pointers? Hope you enjoyed the novel :]

Yep, been done many times. Start here: I compiled all of the information I could find at the time into a pdf after completing my first, nearly 20 years ago. It's still available there. There are hundreds of combinations and approaches to do this, depending on your budget, skills and goals. Some of what we did then involves parts that are basically impossible to find now. Reliable daily? Drag Racing? Circuit? Ice racing? Rally? Mudding? Sand dunes? Rock crawling? It's all been done.

Two tone makes it easy to find! Several folks that I've fixed front end hits for love there two tone Subarus.

Forum noob, From central Wisconsin, bought myself an '89 GL wagon (Dual Range, oohlala). Currently my daily and what I'm using to gain experience repairing my own vehicle. There will be questions.

.. and about a week ago I sprayed em with my 20 year spray can of Liquid Wrench, - which I discovered 3 days ago had lost all it's pressure probably cause I unknowingly banged the head on it, probably shutting the hood.. So I bought a new spray can of B'laster and sprayed and soaked it a few more days - no cigar So here's the specs of a very nice portable 3/8" torque wrench I just bought from Home Depot on sale for $140 with battery and charger Lightweight Design. Heavyweight Performance. Pair with MAX Output batteries for maximum power Industry’s most compact Powerful Brushless Motor delivers 250 ft./lbs. of breakaway torque 3 speeds + auto-tightening mode provides adjustable power and speed Auto-tightening auto-stops when fastening to prevent over tightening bolts Auto-tightening in reverse, delivers full breakaway torque, then stops when the bolt is loose Tri-Beam LED enhances visibility and provides even distribution of light Compatible with RIDGID’s AC13B04N Impact Wrench protective boot (sold separately) 100% Compatible: Works with all RIDGID 18V Batteries, Tools, and Chargers Lifetime Service Agreement with registration within 90 days Includes: R872071 18V SubCompact Brushless 4-Mode 3/8 in. Impact Wrench, R87002 2.0 Ah battery, charger, belt hook with screw, and tool bag RIDGID: Build for a Lifetime 18V SubCompact Brushless Cordless 3/8 in. Impact Wrench Kit with 2.0 Ah Battery, Charger, and Bag and it didn't seem to move any of em at full torque, even trying in both directions.. So I cleaned the oil + road dirt mix off the passenger side intake manifold area (to lessen the chance of a bon fire) and only M.A.P. torched it for about 3 minutes total cause I've never done it before and was getting smoke and embers and nervous and cold and it was now dark outside where I'm working on it and the crappy harbor freight "free head lamp" was turning off all on it's own way to much - even after messing with it a lot.... and "amazing to me " got the bolt loose closest to the windshield loose! BUT it didn't want to go "looser" and "tighter" back and forth ( CCW and CW ) only looser so went about 2 turns and going to give it chance to soak more over night. - and the head wasn't really very hot, maybe 110 F. Progress, not perfection ... One down, two to go Grrrr ,, I mean "patience..."

Got the main bulk of the wiring harness pulled out this afternoon - It's pretty freeing to be able to just yank stuff out without worrying about "will it go back in where it came from and look good." (after labelling connections, anyway) Still finalizing exactly what I'm going to keep vs what I'm going to abandon - but right now planning on transplanting most of the Impreza harness into the Brat body and adapting at the terminations where needed, especially since I'm not sure of the condition of the original wiring. I'm also even more heavily leaning toward retrofitting in the impreza HVAC unit and lower center console trims. Taking a good imaginative sit in the gutted cab of the Brat holding the trims and HVAC parts up to the available space has me nearly convinced this is possible, especially since I also plan on transplanting the trans tunnel from the Impreza where that console and handbrake mounts up. So far so good. Still a scary prospect of a project but even only at this point, I'm still learning a lot.

I can understand a race vehicle copping stuff like this, but a slightly modified passenger vehicle that does some mild offroading is another thing (oh, and for those that didn’t pick up on it, ^ insert sarcasm here). Well going by Meatloaf’s theory, you’re doing better than two out of three, so that ain’t bad - if you’re game! Cheers Bennie

That grill looks like 95-99 Legacy/Outback. These only came with Phase 1 engines, either a SOHC 2.2 in the early years, or a DOHC 2.5 later. But the engine is pretty clearly a phase 2 SOHC engine. That would mean it's not original. A 99 Outback Sport (based on the Impreza) would have a phase 2 EJ22. Look on the passenger side, vertical surface of the block, right next to the bellhousing. There will be a flat spot in the casting roughly 1x3". All USDM engines will have the original VIN engraved on this surface. That will give you the information. At a glance, the 4th digit will tell you what chassis (B = Legacy, G=Impreza, S=Forester), and the 10th digit will tell you the VIN (W, X, Y, 1, 2 = 98, 99, 00, 01, 02 respectively, ETC.). And there are many tools online to decode a vin to the specific vehicle.

Nope. Disagree! Before first oil change or not, they’re squashed and had a heat cycle. You *might* get away with reusing them if you have to pull the head again during reassembly, realistically though, for all that work would you really want to risk reusing a head gasket only to have it fail prematurely? Some might have a crack at it. I won’t be though. Cheers Bennie

2003-07 impreza should be a safe bet, but other models are the same in the era should work too. It's been a while, I forgot which year compressor I swapped in to replace the 2002 impreza wrx. The electrical connector was different. My 03 had a 1 pin connector. It's 12v to activate the clutch. Cut the connector from the old clutch and put it on the newer unit. Been working fine since 2015

That’s nuts! You’d never hear away with that over here!! Not having any provision to utilise the towed vehicle’s brakes is the major issue - I couldn’t imaging two or three towed vehicles being much fun at all, regardless of how oversized your “utes” are over there (we're seeing more and more of them on our roads down here and they suck unless actually used for their towing capacity). We do have road trains though, and down in Victoria where I’m located we’re finally seeing them on our roads - only two trailers or B-triple configurations, much like NSW does. I believe QLD, NT, SA and WA all do three trailers with WA having a five trailer combo in the mining areas! Awesome bit of engineering and I wouldn’t mind driving one myself sometime… I digress. Cheers Bennie

Yes, rear bumper same gray color as front, roughly matches the bottom of the body. Agreed on the towed vehicle braking. Maybe the simplest would be to have an extra master cylinder plumbed in that the tongue would push on. Have seen this on some boat trailers. Could just have the extra master on a hose and store it somewhere on the vehicle when not towing. Also have discussed wiring a trailer light pigtail into the front of each car so we don't have to use the magnetic lights. But all of those things require a significant amount of work on all of the cars.

Don’t go the Weber, not worth the trouble! If you have an auto choke it should work on initial start up. Try double pumping the throttle before turning the ignition on and starting. Don’t touch the throttle pedal. If all is working well it’ll start and have high idle until you tap the throttle again, then it’ll drop the idle speed down and open the choke a bit more. Cheers Bennie

It could be the little tab on the end of the spiral spring is broken. A few things to consider. You could just deal with it and work the pedal. Could take that choke housing apart and likely see the small bent tab at the end of the spiral spring will have broken. Then either find another from a junkyard or an enthusiast. Could get the Weber kit.

Also forgot to mention, ran the AC on some fairly long climbs when it was 60F and temp gauge never budged. Not conclusive but I'm pretty sure under similar conditions it would have started going up on the trip out west, so hopefully the thermostat fixed that problem.

Weekend was a blast, glad we could make it happen! My daily definitely has a few more dents and scratches than it used to, but well worth it! It's been too long since I've taken a Subaru off road.

Looks like it is located behind the battery instead of mounted on the transmission.

You are an absolute legend thank you so much! I'll get a new gasket right away!

Reverse lamp switch. There’s a gasket behind it that measures 14.2x21x2

I used the Ford Escort distributor on my 2.5 frankenmotor with EJ22 heads and dual Weber IDF carbs. It was fitted into a long travel buggy. I had to fuss with the slots and I think file the drive tang a little. The slot in the cam and the tang don't have the same offset from the centerline but there is some float so the tang can slide on a pin. To me this is a bad situation because every revolution causes the drive tang to shuffle in the slot and on the pin. Expect high wear here. I ended up using an aftermarket cam which did not have a drive slot so I was able to machine the drive slot to fit correctly. It runs best with 15 degrees of initial advance but that causes too much total advance so I need to limit that. The Escort used a couple different versions of the TFI module and the one I got had the bastard first year TFI that was only made for one year and has issues. I bought up 4 of the modules on ebay and in stores and every single one was dead. I ended up adapting a GM HEI module with good results. I carry a spare cap, rotor and HEI module for trailside repairs. Still looking for a programmable digital ignition that doesn't cost $500. Right now I have a great engine that runs with just a few wires and a fuel line including a one wire alternator. It would be a shame to add a complex computer to something this simple.

and some more project Pictures

Would a 2001 impreza with the 2.2 NA motor be suitable for this swap? What is considered a phase one EJ22?

My car: Engine: '92 Legacy OBD I EJ22e Chassis: '92 Loyale Wagons Tranny: EA82 D/R FT4WD 5spd Other: Mrose Adapter Plate, OBX header, 5-lug swap, RS front brakes, 200SX rear calipers current project: Engine: '96 Impreza OBD II EJ22e Chassis: 1986 GL Wagon Tranny: EA82 D/R 5spd Other: Rear disc brakes, rguyver adapter plate