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Ok.. I decided to check the TPS first. Found one of my spare engine wiring harnesses, and separated the throttle cable. The pins slide out the back of the big round connector when you use a jewelers screwdriver to lift the locking tab. Got one of my spare TPS units. Carefully opened it up, these things are well made. 50 years of designing and building electronics with potentiometers, you get to know a well made pot.... Anyway, it looked good, so I cleaned a little glue off, and reassembled it. Trying to check for a flaky pot with a digital meter, as usual, is nearly useless, so I thought about it for a minute.... The easiest way to find a noisy pot is to listen to audio going through it, so I rigged connections from a music source through the TPS, to an amplified speaker. It worked great. Also checked the throttle closed switch, good. Bring the test rig up to the car, and plug the connector onto the TPS. Instantly, I have no ground continuity, music at full volume! wiggle the TPS connector, crackle, no volume, crackle low volume. Well, there's a problem! Never would have found it that quick probing a meter on the pins, since the probes would poke through any oxide, etc. I used my tiny wire brushes to clean the pins, cardboard to clean the sockets in the cable end, a little contact cleaner on both. The test connector now works as well as it did with the reference TPS. Volume goes up and down smoothly with no crackles with throttle position. Tomorrow, I'll take a drive to verify if this is the total fix.

On MY14 Impreza HD radio, some stations had 3 selections within a station. the primary one was the one you were used to listening to. While the 2nd may be all weather from the same station and the 3rd, all news, or different types of music.

Amazing way to diagnose the problem.

I'm fairly sure online commentary heavily favors MT's. I've never kept data on it, but it seems people who favor MT's will be inclined to internet car forums more than people who favor AT's - by a long shot. I know far more MT lovers/owners in Subaru forums and groups than I do personally or work on weekly locally. Seems kind of how it goes - online forums will be heavily MT biased. And that crowd often hates AT's. I'm not suggesting Subaru AT's are awesome over all - they may have drawbacks, they may not perform as well as in some situations or compared to other automatics, they might not feel as smooth, etc. I don't care about those things - I only like they for their longevity, forgiveness, and reliability. If you're buying a new(er) car then longevity, forgiveness, maintenance might not matter as much and people focus more on feel, performance, comparing it to other manufacturers vehicles. I'm not talking about that. So there's good reason to favor MT's and I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. Except there is a predominate genearl perception that MT's are more reliable and cheaper which is no longer the case. But for practical and reliability reasons - it's a very good transmission to have, particularly on any vehicles with age/mileage. Anecdotally the 4EAT's also seem more resilient in the face of a large portion of the public who never change anything but engine oil. The 150k+ MT's that i've seen with grinding synchro's and popping out of gear when driving haven't ever had their transmission fluid changed. Meanwhile...I don't think I've ever helped anyone with AT issues except to change the fluid to firm them up, address torque bind, or get out of the 99 delay-park-to-drive issue. I've encountered multilple MT failures and no catastrophic undriveable AT issues...and i see waaaaay more AT's than MT's. Anecdotal since I'm not a shop or full time mecahnic and don't see a lot of trans failures overall. But I've seen enough to encounter almost every common MT issue.

I love reading posts like that last one. 50 years experience! Thanks for sharing your knowledge here. Folks keeping these car will need this info down the line for sure.

yup, the 4EAT is a darn good tranny, all things considered. my Foz is an auto, and it still shifts quite nicely - super smooth when fully warmed up.

Oddly 99 has TWO EJ25s. Outback legacy got the dreaded DOHC EJ25D. Forester got the far more forgiving first year SOHC EJ25 Yes for Subarus (and many other modern vehicles) manuals are more expensive and problematic to own for a number of reasons. Clutch maintenance alone is time and $ sucker. Those 90s 4EATs were so robust they could out run MTs all day long. Clutch replacement, Throw out bearings, cracked forks, warn snouts, less forgiving torque bind, synchros wearing, and the hydraulic clutch slave cylinders abs hoses frequently are problematic and need replaced and they’re annoying to bleed. And you can’t go FWD or install a diff lock switch like you can to lock the AWD like an auto. Lose lose lose lose lose. waste of my time. The 4EATs aren’t crisp when they age, that’s normal but they’ll run forever and are the !@!!&@ energizer bunny of subaru transmissions and a win for practical utilitarian low down time low cost Subaru owners.