fishy

If it helps at all to know: I put 98 forester front seats in my 98 impreza and the seats were about the same but the rails on the forester seats were higher. I swapped those without much trouble for the impreza rails and it was great. You might need to swap rails from your old ones to the new ones to make it fit appropriately. Good luck with it.

If you mean the main crank pulley torque spec it's pretty high. I believe around 140ft/lbs.

I recently pulled a filler neck off of a 98 Forester to put in my 98 impreza (perfect fit btw) and you can definitely do it without dropping the tank. the worst part was drilling out the 3 bolts that hold the top of the neck to the body. You might want to splice the little vent lines instead of trying to get at the tank end of them.Good luck with it!

I've also got an 05 Outback and my wife has a much newer Civic that gets much better mileage ($)... but which one do I grab the keys for even if we're going to be going 2-300km that day? Yep. my old high-mileage Outback, every time. There's something jusssst right about those 3rd generation Outbacks. As much as I'd love to have a WRX too I have to agree with the others about the financial burden of it sitting there as expensive lawn art. Good luck with your choices. Life's short, be happy.

The knock sensor helps the ECU control ignition timing so if that gets out of whack you could hear the motor pinging (which can be damaging if you have a lot of it) or more likely as you have described a loss of power in certain parts of the rev range. Also my understanding is that when the CEL comes on the ECU is going to pull timing anyway to keep the engine safe. It's not awfully likely to cause serious damage but it's a fairly quick fix and can be done very cheaply. Fairtax's thread has all the info you would need. I can't remember if I added my video to that thread or not but I did a video about knock sensor replacement on my 98 Impreza:

Very this!

Some questions for my curiosity and everyone's diagnostic help: Is your car an automatic or manual? If it's an automatic can you try shifting into Neutral before stopping to see if the engine still dies? Do you know what code the ECU is throwing to set off the check engine light?

If it's not too late: Have a look at the rear subframe if you can. They tend to rot through on the bigger flatter sections. Also stick your hand in the rear wheel well between the spring and the outboard inner wall of the wheel well and see if there is any metal left there. Chances are you might find that there's nothing left there but rusty lace and hope. Those are the tricky rust spots. Otherwise check for the regular rocker panels, floor, fenders, etc. And the other advice above for the mechanics is all good stuff to look into as well. Happy hunting!

I think I've heard of this happening on any vintage subaru as well as other makes and models that use the same rubber-layer pulley construction. I didn't realize at first what was going on. my AC belt came apart and was making noises on the drive to work one morning so I pulled over and cut it off with my pocket knife. When I had time later to check everything over I saw the other belt was starting to go too. So It got a replacement belt, looked one more time and AW DANG... I noticed the crank pulley all cattywompus and discombobulated.

Indeed I did. Actually I think I torqued it to about 137 ft lbs because I slipped adjusting the torque wrench but I reckon that's right in the neighborhood of 'close enough'.

This year for(and on) my birthday I gave my 05 Outback an emergency crank pulley replacement! Hooray! The garage wasn't able to take the car in for almost a week due to the winter tire rush being in full swing so I bit the bullet and swapped it out myself. Not as bad a job as I had thought. I did a bit of video during the process in case anyone's curious about the truly ghetto mechanic method:

As I understand it the +/- shifting is just a way to ask the transmission nicely for the next or previous gear. I don't think it will let you over-rev the motor or anything, it shifts when it absolutely has to. I use this feature fairly often on my 2005 Outback because like you say it IS a little more fun. I'm no expert but the auto tranny shifts all the time so I don't think this other shifting is going to hurt it any.

Your rigs are modern enough that they're both designed to run on regular fuel AND have sensors and mapping to keep them from knocking and pinging if they get a bad batch or a funny load situation. Aside from boosted or very high compression engines there's really no reason to the high-test in normal cars. With that said I _do_ run a tank of premium through my 05 Outback a couple times per year just for the higher level of detergents and unicorn magic but I only do it when the prices are good. For my lawn equipment, however, I only run premium fuel because around here that's all I can get without ethanol in it (I won't go into that rant here).

I'm no expert on trans work.One of the elders around here will have to chime in for sure but my first instinct would be a trans fluid change.

For clarification, does the car turn off electrically when you come to a stop or does just the engine stall out? If it's just the engine I'd suspect a torque converted-related issue. To check that, can you try shifting it into neutral before coming to a stop when the conditions are right for it to quit? If the whole car is shutting off then I have no idea other than a possible connection in a harness somewhere as was mentioned. Good luck either way.