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Okay, I understand what you mean now. Test the alternator output, preferably immediately after the transmission issues happen again. There’s a chance the alt is overcharging (and maybe under charging) and I would want to rule out overcharging right away. Then test battery condition and connections. If it was only a poor connection it would most likely cut out while driving, not just at start up. So something else is the culprit or there’s an additional constraint on the power issue (like a TCU start up routine). I’d check the alt output first.

I'm excited to be writing this post. I'm one of those many hundreds or even thousands of people who have been lurking on the USMB for years but have never posted ANYTHING, I just hope I'm not too late. I've been a Subaru fanboy ever since I bought my silver 92 Loyale wagon back in 2014 with a vague notion that an old subaru might look cool lifted. I quickly found the USMB and the information here was instrumental in the building of my first 2" lift, which I did by hand, in the driveway, with little real mechanical experience. As I got to know my car better I delved deeper into the forums, chasing electrical bugs, basic disty tuning on the ea82, and then the headgasket blew and I was really out of my element. At my time of greatest need the USMB has my back and I was able to rebuild my blown daily, in my parents back yard, on weekends, commuting 100 miles by train and ferry to get there. Sometime around then I convinced my little brother to buy an 88 GL Wagon for $300 for he and I to work on. It was the first carbureted car I had ever worked on and his first car period, so we had fun. Deleted all the emissions junk and put on a Weber carb. Coudn't have done it without Loyale 2.7 Turbo and his excellent and detailed writeups on the process. He is my hero. I hope the Bumble Beast is still ripping the roads of Honduras. (No pictures ) I went through a few sets of tires on the Loyale, did a six lug swap, eventually complimented my 2" strut lift with a 2" engine drop. Had to replace a main bearing seal. Sadly, I ended up selling my lifted Loyale before I ever really got it dirty. I was in school and broke and I needed a more reliable daily driver. This guy wanted to trade for a 98 Chevy Astro and I was down. The Astro turned out to be an awesome work truck and is built like a tractor. So I was subaruless. At some point I did an engine swap for a friend with a blown ej25. Warped heads or something. We put in a JDM 2.2 with low miles. It was a little green Outback Sport and handled the minor loss of power with ease. She is still loving the car today with no major problems last I heard. My little brother upgraded from the weberized GL to an 03 Golf GTI (kind of a leap). But barely a year later he rolled the GTI and was back in a Subaru. He picked up a straight piped black 98 Forester S with 300K on the body but supposedly 140K on the engine. With a straight pipe, a resonator aaaand unequel length headers this was easily the craziest sounding subaru I had ever heard (at the time). It came with a worn out set of cheap Raceland coil-overs and was stanced in a way that just looks amazing on a forester. When he got it it was fully blacked out with pasti-dip, but over time he restored the original goldish accent color on the cladding and added a sweet set of custom fender flares to fit massive three piece wheels. The wheels came and went but he continued to break necks with that sexy sexy forester, slammed about as low as he could manage (way lower than I was comfortable with #liftedlife). He and I lived together so I ended up doing a lot of mechanical work on the car, most of which was had to do with suspension. I did do a clutch job on it, which went off without a hitch. He recently sold the Forester, mostly just because he had a good opportunity to sell for a great price. We all miss it terribly. Now he drives a 2003 Lexus IS300 Anyway, I came here to say I'm back in the subie game. I got maybe my dream car, except I didn't know it existed until I saw it. An '88 RX sedan. Turbocharged 1.8L making 120 whp running on subaru's first (and only?) fulltime AWD system with a locking diff and hi/low transfer case. A bright white rally shark car in a classic 80s 4 door sedan body with oh so alluring ground effects and crazy grid pattern hubcaps. It was love at first sight. It was obviously a project, likely a blown headgasket and a fair amount of rust in (hopefully) non-critical places. Worn interior, crap paint, a bit of body damage. But I had a lot of respect for the guy I was buying it from and when he told me that it was a unicorn and that I was the perfect owner for this car, I believed him. (The the guy was Scott In Bellingham, a USMB OG and now a good friend). I have spent a lot of time with the RX since I bought it in November. Cleaned it up pretty nice, tore down the engine thinking I was going to pull it then found a torn coolant hose and put it back together thinking maybe I had found the issue. Did a compression test and didn't like what I saw but decided to try to get it running anyway. I was already so close. This thing hadn't been run in at least 4 years and I really just wanted to hear it growl a bit before I separated it into boxes in my shop. I did get it running and even had it warmed up to a purr at one point, but then it started blowing out coolant and I knew that I had had my fun. The headgasket was definitely blown. I did another compression test and read 30 and 70 psi on the right side cylinders (the turbo side, go figure). I figured now was a good time to take a break from working on the car and tell my story here on the USMB. I'm a journalist (kinda) and a filmmaker (working on it) so documenting my projects is second nature and actually a really productive way for me to stay sharp. I went and made a video about my RX that you can see on youtube: I hope to keep on making videos on my RX build and whatever other car stuff catches my interest. I've got some footage of my brother's departed foz that I'm pumped to edit into something and share. I can't wait to get the RX up and running and explore some of the PNW back roads I've been hearing about my whole life. I hope to get it dirty on the regular but also to be able to drive it to work when I don't feel like taking the van (which I hope to be most of the time). I don't have plans to ej swap it anytime soon, but the desire is definitely there. I do have a soft spot for the ea82 just because it was the engine that I learned to wrench on. So that's me and my entire Subaru history. Lot's more posts to come, I think. Thanks for reading. It's nice to meet you - Jared

Wow, I didn't expect a reset would fix it. Cool. It would seem there is an intermittently poor connection between the transmission and TCU, since it went into "limp home mode". Or the TCU is beginning to fail. Could also be a wire. There are two fuses for the TCU, 14 and 16. Pull flip and reinsert them to improve their connection. Also remove and replace the connector on the TCU (behind the glove box on ours) and the 16 pin connector located above the bellhousing (TCU to transmission). May as well do the 12 pin connector too (inhibitor sw. and select lever). I would look for any corrosion or discoloration on the contacts of those connectors. If you want to spend some money, there is a product I use on RAM modules and cards in computers and sometimes on the car made by SMP - Standard SL5. It is a liquid for improving electrical connections on DC, AC and High Frequency connectors. It works, but is not cheap. Don't matter if you are sloppy with it, it will not conduct between adjacent contacts. Comment from a mech - It is perfect for resistance issues on SRS systems. Putting this product on the pins for the airbag connections under the seat of a jeep cleared the airbag light.

Yes the power light that sounds right for 80s and early 90s. Subaru has given that transmission light a few names over the years - Power, AT, AT Temp or Temp. If there’s a code, itll be the only thing flashing 16 times at start up. If you start the car while looking at the instrument cluster, it’s the only light that will blink 16 times (or really at all - so 16 is quite obvious - if there’s a noted code). it is also the light that will flash, and you will count, if you try to retrieve any codes. good to check to make sure the light is working, in which case you do need to know the name.

One of my loaners is a 1990 Legacy (first year) with 340k on the original engine and transmission. I got it for basically free from the original owner. For the price, availability, reliability, and ease of replacement parts, the Legacy wins in every category. The 3AT was absolute trash. The vast majority of the remaining EA chassis cars that still operate are manual transmissions. And regardless of what ANYONE says, the EA82 is a giant pile of unobtainable parts and is a nightmare to work on compared to the EJ22. And who doesn't want 60% more power and the same economy? The oil pump from a 2020 STI will fit a 1990 EJ22...... the EJ engine is Subaru's Small Block Chevy. Everything that came before is simply a museum artifact. GD

Thanks Bennie, I'll probably compare these shafts I bought and see if I could install the shaft into the Impreza inner joint if it's slightly longer, I doubt it though. Anyway, have a pic of it...