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I am on my 5th "older" Subaru in about 22 yrs... and the FIRST thing that gets done with them when I purchase is a full timing job.. regardless of history. you may have proof the belt was done, but, were the pulleys replaced? how about the water pump? seals? those are often not touched, and on the 2.5s the cogged idler pulley is usually the one to go first from bearing failure. when that happens, you end up with major damage costing a couple thousand to fix. the only way to know it is done, and done right, is to do it yourself - either you personally, or a good shop you trust. dont rely on anything else. my list spans from a 1989 GL wagon (that i paid $150 for and drove for 8 yrs, thanks to this forum) to my current, a 2004 Forester... all were purchased used, and mostly with no real maintenance history. All had somewhere between 155k and 214k on the odometer. A bit of preventive maintenance to start out with prevents a whole lot of headaches down the line.

Just following up on how this had held up. I casted the center bearing with the stuff GD linked to (Smooth-On Vytaflex 60 Urethane). It worked great! I've 4wheeled it and have driven it for a while and I'm very happy. If I were to make any other type of Urethane bushings I would use a more hard durometer like 80 or more, but for this center bearing it is perfect. Also, I made proper spacers for the mount to the body.

Hello Everyone! I'm still here and still own my great Subaru. I've figured out a few electrical problem and have a good.... local car. It eats axles and I plan to go back to stock front springs from the Ford Tempo spring that are currently in there(I think I have a thread on the Ford springs on here). That should relive some of the axle angle strain and increase compliance. It will obviously decrease clearance, but it's how you drive it, right? My wife, dog and I were going to go on a hike in the mountains and the car kept dying when I stepped on the brake hard... She kindly pointed out that a few wires might be touching on the dummy conversion box I had dangling at her feet to, supposedly, make the car work better. Now she's the chief electrical diagnosis go to person (funny because I'm the electronics repair guy, professionally). "Why are those wires touching? Could that be it?" It's been running great ever since. I've recently acquired a 3d printer and am going to print something to hold a phone for a Torque Pro speedometer. There are a few tweaks that would make this rig more reliable and safe, like good alignment and better axle angles, etc... I'll probably make other threads for this, but I wanted to touch on this thread again for the fun of it. I hope everyone is still out there trying to keep these old rigs going!

selfserve Junk yards are always a good place to practice removals! The oring may just be hard.

I got it all done. Temps at the vent got as low as 45.5. it's 70 outside. It took about 16 ounces.

There is no way I'm reusing that pan. A web search tells me that I can get a new one for under $50.

Yes. Subarus are easy. After repairing the issue add about 20 ounces of refrigerant and done. That’s it. Read the amount of refrigerant needed, often there’s a sticker on the top radiator supper (roughly around 20 ounces for most Subarus) and compare to the bottle contents, it’s roughly “two cans”, can sizes vary. You do not need to replace the drier. But you can while it’s apart - they’re cheap and easy. If the compressor is bad then presumably the refrigerant is fine and no ambient air and moisture entered the system. Replacing a compressor doesn’t give much time for ambient air to saturate the drier. Even if it was open for long periods of time I’ve never seen issues and live in a high humidity area. But again - driers are cheap and easy. There’s zero need to pull a vacuum unless you absolutely need the AC to work 100% like new. The AC works fine in 95 degree 90% humidity summers even if you don’t pull a vacuum. if you want the AC to blow 48 degrees instead of 53 degrees (I’m making up numbers for illustration) then pull the vaccum. Maybe some people on coastal southern humid areas with dark cars that sit in the sun all day or something need it 100%. If that’s the case pull a vacuum. I have a vaccuum puller and gauges with adapters for all Subaru AC fittings and haven’t used them in 15 years. Subarus are so easy it’s not worth my time. I think I’ve used the gauges a time or two actually since then but it’s rare. When replacing the compressor replace the orings at the compressor - they’re the most common orings to fail by a looooong shot. Due to heat cycling from engine/compressor heat loads I guess. I wrote the now 10+ year old Subaru article about AC charging and repair that’s now many pages of comments long of raving success. I buy fix wrecked or totaled front impact Subarus and old Subarus so repairing Subaru AC is about as common as it can be for a DIY person who isn’t doing this for a living. I wouldn’t assume anything anout other manufacturers AC systems based on this.

From the pictures, it looks correctly installed. I drove thousands of miles in my '88 with similar geometry (not an EJ swap, though). Is your pitch stopper hooked up? I'm curious about "There is a bit of space on the tranny cross member that I had to use a spacer for."