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Mostly unrelated but B and I stopped by C's shop. Standard EJ25 with a rod sticking out. Has another one with rod knock, in his dreams he will eventually make one good engine out of two. The main reason we were there was to remove and disassemble a CVT out of a 2014 Outback. C bought the car pretty cheap knowing the transmission was bad and since he's cheap he wants to try to fix the trans rather than just replacing it. It still ran and drove but made horrible noises. Car has 208k miles on it but has minimal rust. Previous owner supposedly pulled his 18' pontoon boat in and out of the water with it regularly, which may not have been a good idea. Once we removed all the bellhousing bolts, the transmission wasn't too hard to remove. We first tried unbolting the front/bellhousing from the trans but that didn't seem to work. Then we unbolted the top cover and removed this valve body which also didn't accomplish much. Figured it was a long shot but removed this front cover and oil pump, also no real progress. These screws are pretty crazy though. Took the tailhousing off, standard Subaru auto trans clutch pack for the rear drive. Didn't really look at it at the time but seems feasible that some kind of planetary low range might be possible. Took the pan and filter off and some kind of splash/windage tray. Then we were able to split the case. Transmission is pretty simple really. Sheaves still look very smooth. Some burs/wear on the top edge of the pulley on the left, I'm guessing that's what was causing the intermittent nails on the chalkboard noise C told us about. Pretty sure we found the root of the problem. This used to be spherical. C plans on replacing that bearing, a sensor we broke during disassembly, and putting it back in the car.

A weird bump/popping has developed in the steering column. It feels like it is coming from directly behind the steering wheel and is inaudible. It only happens when the wheel is turned more than 75% to lock in either direction. The steering wheel feels like it is actually shifting in its plane of operation. Does the dash removal require the steering column to be removed in these vehicles (I know it does in other Subarus).