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Open to meeting (quickly unless you can offer a place to crash out) anyone along the magical route we haven’t quite finalized yet. Most likely working our way through the upper Midwest and then down I think 79 towards Denver. Always considering anything vintage and running or even close to running , or super solid body. If you know of something local or have something you want to off load please let me know and if along the way I will certainly stop by if I’m truly interested. And if you just want to meet up and shoot the dook for a little that’s cool too. Maybe even combine with a good junkyard you know of ?? My taste: 1970’s most anything , 1990-94 Legacy , early Impreza up to 2001 Outside chance you catch me on a good day and I may be a sucker for an 80’s dual range whatever. Was considering a run to CA but that might just become a long day trip or overnight around San Diego. Thereby smashing my dreams of hitting northern Cali and scoring a front bumper I want , etc etc etc And the rest of you are looking for a shiny green 2003 Legacy wagon , likely a blur in the highway. It’ll have Connecticut plates. Hopefully we drive past the red necks fast enough that they don’t see our plates and start throwing rocks at us. See ya !

But you won’t see any rust free Subarus here. Keep driving. Hahaha.

There’s some craptastic I70 congested one lane action on Rt 70 around Wheeling WV. If possible avoid high traffic times there. I just drove it yesterday. If you come across RT 68 June 5th you can crash at my office on the floor, I’ve got an inflatable, and I’ll buy you breakfast and talk less than 11 minutes Mon Morning. Probably a little out of your way but 68 is commonly used by frequent travelers to avoid I76 tolls and less traffic through the beautiful mountains of western Maryland. You won’t be the first board member who’s stayed in my office. I’m the only person there during summers. It’s just a minute off the interstate. But I’m not in town June 3/4. My house is way off the beaten bath, no cable no TV reception no internet probably no cell service and its a long way from the interstate, curvy mountain gravel roads so it’s not a convenient over night stop.

No toss up: 2002 ATs have removable shafts, MTs do not. Do just like nvu said and pop them right out. I’ve gotten used and JDM trans with one or both missing before (including 2002 automatics). No, but this brings up a good point. The seals around them are directional. The shafts are not. If they beat it enough to yank one side out and not the other then replace that seal, or carefully inspect it and make sure it has its inner sealing spring. I’ve seen those come out on axle yank jobs. As he said it’s directional L/R so get the correct side.

Installed nee seat covers. I wasn't able to remove the head rest. So I had to slice a hole onto the seat covers and had my gf sew them back together.

Time to close the loop on this - I had too much going on last fall and it sat over the winter. In retrospect, I'd run down a rabbit hole and gotten lost, thinking that out-of-range manifold vacuum might be affecting injector rail pressure, and that bad vacuum may be a product of maladjusted valves - all of which was just getting too arcane. So I backed up, considered that the only source of parametric combustion feedback is from the O2 sensors, and that (despite them not generating any error codes) it would be stupid not to replace them both on spec - fastest and cheapest thing to try. So I just did that and now it's as happy as a baby in a barrel of t!ts.

Extremely tall ask, especially for someone asking such basic questions. I'll slide my bet onto "this project never happens". You have a big list of things there, it's not going to happen quickly. I'd guess multiple hundreds of hours of labor to complete that list. Maybe with hundreds of hours of research/parts gathering, you could have the car out of commission for one hundred hours of work time. However you slice it, that's an enormous amount of labor to bring it up to 30 year old technology. The early EJ22s are reliable and fairly simple, but not fast. If your target is a long travel thing like the Subaru version of Caswell's Baja Pig. You'll be looking at turbo platforms, or H6s, or both. You'll need a better transmission and rear diff. And custom suspension and axles. All of which means any work you do with the Legacy parts will get you no closer, and have to be completely un-/re-done. Sure, swap the engine/transmission. Keep the suspension stock and serviceable. And it'll be a fun, reliable little street car. If you want to offroad it, get a D/R 5MT to go behind the EJ22, redrill the hubs to 6-lug and a 4" lift. And you'll have a fun, reliable little wheeler. If you want any more than that, you're starting with a rough platform, and definitely have the wrong donor to get there. Really think what your budget (money AND time) is, and what your goals are.

if your making your own adapter for the strut top make some provision for altering the ride height....the stock length impreza struts i had in made my ute run really low in the front....and they where soft as hell too compared to the ea81 setup

Actually just going through all this with an 86 RX Sedan here in Kangaroo country . Also these are our opinions ATM in a development phase . Front : Keep your std control arms and radius rods because you can do more with them than fixed "A" arms . Need urethane radius rod bushes . I'd use Legacy knuckles as you call them because they fit between the "ears" of Legacy/Impreza front struts . I'm told L front calipers and 1G Legacy RS brackets go over the RS sized disc rotors - will get back on this one . Rear: Impreza GC8 rear geometry is not all its cracked up to be (roll centers) , they are effectively Chapman struts . You can do a fair bit with the stdish semi trailing arm IRS and simple mods . The first is to beef up the std anti roll bar mounts so that they can handle much higher rate bars . I had custom 24 and 22mm bars made for my RX L sedan and honestly the rear could easily be 24mm especially on a heavier car like an XT6 . The std bar mounts failed dismally with the up from 16mm 22mm rear bar , the tinny hoops open up because of the cheap nasty tag and one bolt design . What you need to do is remove the captive nut and slide in a piece of flat bar with two captive nuts fitted so that you can use easily available two bolt hoops . May need to strengthen the gussets under the arms in this area as well . Use urethane bushes as well . We are having made up a Koni rear damper (gas/hydraulic) here in Aus that's a std thing and even its rate looks suitable for 200-240 in/lb springs . The only mod it should need is a circlip groove down low to mount the lower spring seats threaded tube . Springs are easy peasy , 66mm ID motor-sport springs are common and cheap - hell even L 4WD wagon rears are 196 in/lb so very cheap starting point . If you can take most of the body roll out of the equation camber/caster problems are much reduced . Must do something about very soft rear diff and cross member body mount bushes otherwise the whole rear end tries to "rear steer" under high cornering loads . If you cant get urethane ones we found the next best thing was filling the air gaps in the bushes with "Stikaflex" which is a silastic like flexible gunge with rubber like consistency when set . On an R30 Skyline we used lots so remove the X member and fill in the gaps on one side and let set for a day . Turn over and repeat the same the following day . Works surprisingly well and cheap ! I would try spring rates more like 220-240 front and 200-220 rear . The increased anti roll bar thickness increases the roll stiffness both ends so the spring rates don't need to be mega high . To keep the wheels on the ground (tyres can't steer/stop/drive if bouncing off the road) you really need to use the lowest rate spring that gets the job done - by low I mean adequate not the lowest you can find ! Geometry wise we will start with ~ 0.5 neg camber and as much positive caster as we can get . BTW adjustable front Impreza tops are available in Aus that have the spherical joint suspended in urethane so less agro for your back teeth . We spaced the std radius rods as far forward as we could which is ~ 10-12mm . This and pulling the top of the strut back with adjustable tops should get us maybe 6 deg pos caster , running 66mm ID front springs gives more room to move in the front towers . If this car is for tarmac only you could think seriously about flicking the EA/ER FT box for the 1 gen Legacy type with the viscous drag on the center diff . The trouble with the EA/ER type with its open centre diff is that it WILL feed ALL the power out through the least loaded wheel . Typically the front inner is the first to go "lite" when going hard so the center diff sends all the power to the front diff and its open centre feeds all that to the spinning wheel . With the viscous type there are 3 variations of the viscous "drag" , they are rated in Kg and don't quote my numbers but they are something like from memory 4/8/15 ? for Legacy/WRX and STi . A fellow Australian has the Legacy viscous type in a Brumby (Brat) with the STi center and front and rear LSD's . VERY adequate I'm told ... Lastly we are thinking of using an Impreza coil over strut where the lower section (with the 4 mount holes) is hollow and threaded as well as the lower spring seat . This way can screw the seat and foot up and down to make the stroke of the damper match the suspension travel - damper wont bottom out . The suspension specialist I go through may one day be interested in doing kits for MY/L/XT's if there is enough interest , anti roll bars (sway bars) wouldn't be a problem as they have a master for L front and my old RX Sedans rear is their new master so can make in any size up to I think 32mm ! Thoughts ? Cheers Adrian .