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Tires must be the same brand/model/size. It matters. If the rolling radius is different , by even a tiny amount, you can get torque bind. if there's a chance the trans or rear diff where swapped, they may have mismatched final drive ratios. That said, working OK when stone cold, failing when warm is a classic center VLSD failure symptom.

yeah, not gonna happen.. not anything worth putting on the car anyway. KYB struts.. either rent a spring compressor, or get the assemblies out of the car and take them to a local independent shop and they might do the spring swap for you for a small fee. Shop near us only charged like $25 to do the 2 fronts on the other half's Outback

You likely won't, certainly not from a quality manufacturer. Just get a couple KYB Excel Gs, and rent a spring compressor.

Low refrigerant-pressure?

Yes loose intake results in unmetered air. Make sure again there’s no intake or vacuum leaks. Are O2 sensors original with 200,000 miles?

This car replaced a 2000 Legacy and I drive an Impreza. It was big change going from the 4EAT to the CVT and the ride height. It's been a great vehicle, it is just time for new struts so I thought I would see if there were any upgrades that were worth spending money on. I have had good experiences with KYB in the past and it looks like that's still the rout to go since there are a lot of complaints about the Billsteins, even the B4s. There is no expectation for it to perform like the legacy, though it does pretty good with good rubber on it. I'll look into some new sway bar links and see if there is any support for alternative suspension.

figured it out

maybe eventually, but it did not right away on the 06... took several months for it to finally throw a code. In the meantime, we were scratching our heads trying to figure out what was going on with it. Sometimes it would be fine, others it wasnt..

I've gone through stretches where I worked on my cars a fair bit, then years when I barely had to do anything. All EA82 wagons since 1988.

I only know that I've done fuel injection every way you can imagine with pretty much every stand alone option out there and the LINK stuff saves a lot of time and frustration. Adding trigger wheels and all that to an engine incapable of using the additional resolution because ultimately it's red line is low, it's horse pucker potential is laughable..... just use the parts it came with - the optical distributor is quite reliable. GD

Find any other vacuum leaks. Check for any exhaust leaks, upstream of sensors. Those items are directly related to engine removal and installs which yours needed if it was “rebuilt” Test the O2 sensor and catalytic converter. Those could be impacted by issues requiring a “rebuild”. Too much fuel, oil or coolant entering the exhaust. You might want to watch what the O2 sensors are doing while watching STFT and LTFT but I’m not well experienced in interpreting the results. But I’d be curious what it looks like.