fishy

Hey Subaru people, thanks to the info here and your DIY inspiration my 98 Impreza Brighton wagon is now 100% inspected and road legal! I bought the car back in the fall for $450cdn and had to do a whole bunch of ghetto bodywork and repair on the rear crossmember. The first plan for the car is a Top Gear-esque road trip challenge with a friend who also bought a cheap car... After that I'll probably put Outback struts on it and beat it around the backroads and gravel pits of the area.

Subframe Success! I've got the crossmember repaired and re-installed! For anyone who's interested here's a hastily shot and fairly dark video of how I got the crossmember installed without taking the diff out of the way:

I was surprised not to break a single nut or bolt on the job. The car is a longer-term project so I wasn't in a hurry and I cleaned all exposed thread with a wire brush as best I could and then hosed all the fasteners down with a 50/50 mix of ATF and Acetone. I soaked them all probably 6 or more times over a month before putting a wrench on them. I know that's not practical for most people but it seemed to work.

Short answer is: YES. I just finished pulling the rotten rear crossmember out of a 98 impreza without removing the differential. it hangs down out of the way enough to get the crossmember around it. In my case one of the studs in the diff cover came out with the nut and one didn't. I don't know how it would work differently if they were both still in the way. YMMY of course but good luck.

Short answer: Sort of. I lowered the crossmember (which had the diff and shafts still attached to it) by about 2" before having anything except the 4 main subframe bolts undone. The diff and shafts move along with it because the subframe holds the back end of the diff up. I believe this is how early Outbacks were lifted. They had a spacer between the body and subframe(and between the body and other drivetrain parts further forward as well). Longer answer: Not really... Hopefully someone more experienced in the matter can chime in. This is my first structural work on a car so I'm new. :-\

Thankfully my trick of drilling holes for penetrating juice worked and I didn't have to get to the captured nuts inside the body this time.

GREAT SUCCESS! Ladies and gentlemen I have finally coaxed the subframe out from under my Impreza! First of all, thanks to everyone here for keeping me motivated and informed. Now onto the gory pictures: Observe the Stage II Iron Oxide Weight Reduction kit that was in play. I'm sort of surprised it still drove fine. The entire area circled in red is pretty seedy. And in the second picture you can see that I didn't remove the diff, axles, exhaust, or much else for that matter. just all the bolts that went through the subframe.

99 2.2 lego wagon with over 300,000km on it: If I'm not running late I cruise at about 110kph (posted limit is 110). On a good day she'll still return almost 30mpg. Even on winter tires.

Well I've got some progress to report! I drilled my goofy little holes and sprayed the bejeezuz out of them with a home-brewed penetrant. I applied a breaker bar and moved both left side bolts! I worked them back and forth a bit and then backed them out a little and hosed them with penetrant again so they can soak overnight. Then I drilled and sprayed the other side. I'll try those tomorrow. Now that I feel like I can get the crossmember out I'll get back underneath and start working on getting the other stuff detached and out of the way as best I can before finally dropping the big chunk out of it. Hooray!

Ouch, you "win". Good luck with 'er!

Yesterday while trying to finish some holiday errands I pulled into a parking spot and went to shift the car into Park but the shifter moved with zero resistance up and down the pattern (automatic). So I reckon the shift cable/linkage/whatever let go. Unfortunately a busy parking lot full of 4 inches of slush right before christmas isn't a good place to crawl under the car to poke around so I gave the car a $60 flatbed ride to the garage as a special treat from me to it. Merry Christmas, old girl. Good luck on wednesday when you have your appointment! Hopefully the garage doesn't have a large bill for me for a New Year's gift. Thankfully we're a 2 car family and don't need that car for the next few days. Happy Quirky Subaru Christmas to everyone (and their cars)!

Good feedback, guys. Thanks! I believe I read about those captured nuts being completely inaccessible from inside the car (or anywhere else) but I'll have another look around. I haven't tried a breaker bar yet, no. I'm using 6point impact sockets and thus far the bolt head is NOT stripped. I think I will get a half-inch drive breaker bar and put my lardy stature to work for the cause. I'm not sure about drilling all of those bad boys out, I don't think that would end well... but I might change my tune after I strip the heads off with a breaker bar I think I will try drilling the oil-access holes. I have a mig welder and can squirt a little metal back into them to close them up afterwards if I can't find a plug or screw to fit the bill. I'll be sure to report back on any progress when I can make some. I feel a flu coming on right now just in time for the holiday season so between illness and family time I suspect I won't get a chance for a while Thank you, everyone for the ideas again, I really appreciate having you here to bounce my thoughts off of and ask questions to!

Howdy again, Subaru people. I've been poking around under my project 98 Impreza wagon soaking things with penetrating oil and trying to figure out how to get the rotten crossmember out with my limited tools. Last weekend I put my impact gun on one of the bolts and blasted away for a while but it didn't budge. I'm including a very poorly doodled picture to help with my question. The question is: would it be possible (or stupid) to drill a small hole (red dots) in the body just above the hidden nut so I can soak the crap out of it with oils? I don't have a real man's torch to heat things up cherry red before I try them so I'm looking for any bit of advantage I can gain. Any help or tricks is greatly welcome. Bonus questions: I surfed around opposedforces for a while looking for cross-compatible crossmembers and basically a couple older legacy parts will fit but everything from 94 to about 2000 looks the same in the blown up diagrams except for small differences in exhaust hanger type things. Is that true? Are the 90's legacy crossmembers the same width and such? Thanks again for help guys and gals.

Thanks for the info. I'm not yet familiar with opposedforces.com but it sure looks useful!

Good day, fellow Subaru-minded folk! I've recently picked up a 98 Impreza Brighton wagon on the cheap for a film project my friends and I are working on and being in east coast Canada the car is full of rust. Well the rear end is anyway. The rear wheel arches are a mess but I'm already gaining ground on those... My main concern is the dreaded rusted out rear crossmember/subframe unit. On the driver's side there's a pretty good sized hole rotted through it. I'm fairly certain that I'm going to have to pull the crossmember to either repair or replace it but I wanted to know two things: 1) Does anyone have any life-saving tips for getting the crossmember out of a rusty old car? (I have an air impact gun which isn't SUPER potent, some hand tools, and some jack stands...) 2 Will the crossmember from a legacy or forester in that generation fit the impreza or are they different enough to be incompatible? Any and all help appreciated. I've been reading lots about the crossmember curse but haven't really seen anything about cross-model compatibility.

Seconded and thirded. I've used toothpaste on my subaru and my honda. My only downfall was not finishing the job right (by clearcoating) so now I have to do it again sometime soon.

I was actually singing the lumberjack song to myself while I titled my thread

Unfortunately the logs are worth about as much as uncut lumber/firewood. If I recall correctly they're mostly red spruce or something simliar. No awesome rare hardwoods here. They dry out enough to cut and split after a couple months on the beach and then a year or so in a pile and they're ready for planking salmon, roasting marshmallows, cooking hotdogs, and keeping the cottage warm on cool nights.

I thought you guys might get a kick out of this little tale... Our family cottage is on a lake which, over the last 100 years or so, has had several saw mills on it. From time to time old logs will float one end up off the bottom of the lake and become a 'deadhead' which is vicious for boaters. My family has always taken it upon ourselves to drag these logs ashore to get them out of the waterways and also to cut and split for firewood and kindling. It's win-win. During my last stay at the cottage I dragged 4 of these deadheads ashore and 3 of them were far too large and heavy for me to drag onto land with just my own manpower... So it did what any logical man would do: braided some loops in the end of a stout rope and grabbed the keys to my wife's 99 legacy wagon: The logs were so waterlogged and heavy that I needed a metal prybar to roll them off to the side of the beach. The Mrs. wasn't thrilled with my repurposing of her car but I was impressed how well it did. it's only a 2.2 automatic.

I just changed the wires on my 99 legacy. It looked like it had the original wires from 99 on it and I thought it ran perfectly. I put new NGK wires from the stealership on it and I think the car reclaimed about 10hp and is also now smoother through the full range. Long story short: if you've got orginal wires it's definately time to change them.

Good point for everyone! The plugs were done on my 99 about 10,000kms ago (also ngk coppers) and I was holding off on the wires untill I got the leaking valve cover gaskets taken care of because I didn't want oil ruining my pretty new blue wires.

This is just a minor thing but today I had the diff oils, valve cover gaskets, and plug wires(NGK/OEM) changed on my 99 Lego wagon. It honestly feels like it's got 15HP more than it did before. It holds hills better, doesn't shift as much, and is smoother all around. So don't forget to think of your plug wires every so often. The old ones were originals from 99 as far as I could tell.

I've developed a practice of brushing on a thin layer of never-seize (or similar) around and over where the rim seats on the rotor/drum. I find that it really helps with removal of the wheel later on when the rust would have stuck it in place. My friend's legacy sat for a while and the rotors rusted so bad we had to pound the rims off with hammers and wood blocks. Never-seize on the mating surface would have prevented this easily.

I'm afraid I can't help you in your local area but just to reassure you: two of my friends both got popup sunroofs installed in cars at Speedy Autoglass shops and they were both done very well.

That seems pretty steep to me. They must be getting you on the strut price AND the install price. I've seen NIB sets of KYB struts all over ebay for ~$250 (yes the whole set of 4). Also I believe http://www.tirerack.com has the KYBs for under $100 each. See if you can get a breakdown of the strut price and labour price estimates. I know I was looking into stuffing Outback struts under my 94 wagon and I found that Napa and Carquest had STUPID prices for struts: as high as $250 EACH. Nearly dealer-stupid prices. If the shop is getting struts from a supplier with prices like that it would be easy for the price to hit near $1000 for the whole job.