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.

FSM generally means "Factory Service Manual" around here. And whenever someone is wondering about changing their knock sensor I like to offer up my video of the process. I'm no hotshot mechanic and I found it easy enough:

I just drive a normal Outback in mostly normal capacity but I always do some shorter version of the 30-30-30 break-in procedure on new brakes. Probably just to make myself feel clever for doing it. I have no way to measure if it really helps in any way. *shrug*

I'm in the process of changing out the neck on my 98 impreza right now. It's what I classify as "new evap" style so it has the little valve box thing near the top with two hoses and a third hose to a point on the neck a little above the valve. I was under the impression that the "new evap" stuff came in around 97 so I'm surprised there is a question on yours. It's pretty easy to check as directed by Fairtax above though. Good luck with the process.

I bet that would work nicely as primitive traction control if you've got one rear tire tripoded up in the air.

Good luck with your car shopping... and since you didn't really ask I thought I'd barf up some more opinions SVX = very cool cars but nearly impossible and/or very expensive to get used parts for and things like a windshield apparently cost both legs, an arm, and your lunch money. Also they're a big heavy pig of a thing. I think of them as an all-weather grand touring car moreso than a sports car. 90's Impreza (this is the winner in my books) = very popular/common cars that also happen to weigh in under 3000lbs before any weight reductions. They'd be pretty tight for fitting a 6 into but are the perfect home for a turbo power plant. Baja = I wish I could find one of these buggers for a reasonable price someday... I yearn for one But they're also Outback ride height, heavy, and a touch longer than an Outback if I remember correctly so I wouldn't think they're a natural base for a sporty car.

I'm also a MCM fan/subscriber and the thing I took note of during that turbo ez36 build was the sheer amount of experts involved doing thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth of very custom one-off things to make the project happen. They also have rust-free used cars to play with and somehow got a nearly-no miles h6 from japan to start with. I reckon if I had to hire the help it took them to do that project it would end up as a $10,000 engine. Even with all of that work and tuning Marty basically acknowledges that it might grenade at some point and they'll have to build the internals... yow. So is it possible to turbo an h6? clearly it is. Is it worth it to do so? Unless you've got friends in all the right places probably not.

2005 Outback wagon 2.5i auto. Currently around 9L/100km which is about 26mpg in your American pesos. (That's with mostly shorter trips and still cool mornings)

I'm so ghetto that my first instinct response would be to get the end of seatbelt out of a junker and leave it plugged in on the passenger side till I felt like dealing with wires good luck, I've also got an 05 outback so I also hate the seatbelt dings.

Big improvements! I see what you mean about the carpet and rear seat bottom though. Good luck there

Good job so far, I enjoy a good build/mod/repair thread with pictures! That thing sure was farm fresh on the inside though, holy monkey!