porcupine73

Put a rag or old pillow against the lug nuts, kneel on it or use your foot to force the bearing housing down. Get that bottom bolt in. Just keep pressure on the bottom bolt through the strut and keep pushing the bearing housing down, thrusting on it if needed, until the bottom bolt goes in. Then get a scrap of 2x3 lumber, and rotate the hub so that two wheel lugs are parallel at the bttom, sit the scrap 2x3 lumber there, and get your small floor jack under there, and start jacking. CAUTION of course, the pressure will build, but that bearing housing will rotate right up into place and you can slip that top bolt in. NOTE YOU MAY NEED FASTCAM BOLT in the rear to get the camber where you want doing this. I have done this mod on '94 and '96 and needed one fastcam in the rear (on each side) to get camber back.

What year are we talking about here? Yes you may need to get a pry bar involved to pry the bearing housing down far enough to make up with a fully extended Outback strut. I've done this on late 90's soobs and usually you will need a little motivation on the rears to get them to fit up. UsualLy I put me knee on the bearing housing, then get in the bottom bolt. Then I use a jack with a block of wood and jack under the lug nuts to rotate the bearing housing up into position, and then put in the upper bolt. I've bolted the rear sway bars back up on these; don't know if it's needed but no real issues in having it bolted. Actually thinking about it I never unbolted them to begin with.

I'm talking specifically 4EAT phase I vs at least the early 4EAT phase II. Later than that might have more improvements. I would think those with traction control and open diffs would be the best, because then it really can transfer power from the 'wheel' that slips to the 'wheel' that grips. And not just how they used to say the 'wheels' that slip to the wheels that grip, which really just meant the front pair or wheels and the rear pair of wheels. Now I don't know how they would necessarily fair for example if the front wheels were in a ditch and you were trying to back out. Whether it could spin the rears would be interesting.

Yah just get a used one from a scrapyard or say car-part.com. Genuine new probably is still available but might easily cost more than the value of the car. The ignitors don't often go bad, but, they do fail. Especially when you're talking 20 year old electronics.

Well the salt basically hangs around until in the spring sometime after there have been at least a few good heavy rains. Else you will still see the white salty crust on the sides of the road. That might be ok to drive on if it is perfectly dry, but there's almost always some puddles or slush in a parking lot etc. Well the older anyway 5spd manual center diff is purely mechanical. The 4EAT has a computer controlling the power transfer. I've never driven a manual soob, but I will say the 4EAT works just fine in the snow. In my opinion it works much better on the 90's soobs then it does on the 2000-2004 soobs. I don't know, they did something starting in the 4EAT phase II that makes it not want to seem to power the rears the same way they used to, like it is much less agressive.

It should lock, maybe try pushing it forward a little more firmly into park. Sometimes if the cable has been stretched from forcing it into the rarely used lower gears it might not be moving far enough forward to lock. In park do you hear a click when you press the brake? If not the solenoid might be hung up or somehow messed up. Personally I hate the interlock. The only thing it has done for me is make it so I can't get it out of park when the thing hangs up from coke or whatever got spilled in there. So I have a little screwdriver shoved down in there on all of mine. Didn't that interlock start when people were driving their Audi's off piers back in the 80's?

Well ... I will tell you this ... cars that live in NY and are driven in the winter, if they make it maybe 8 years without showing body rust that's pretty good. IF they are treated say with krown annually they can usually live rust free for a good long time. Main issue even if it isn't showing body rust, is all the ancillary parts that rust out - rear brake lines, fuel filler pipe, emissions tubes, stuff like that. Not to mention that pretty much any fastener you have to remove you're going to have to fight with to remove or snap off. Usually end up needing a bolt out because the head is so rusted it rounds off. Then replacing with a new fastener.

Not specifically related, but I just thought I'd throw this out there, probably is like this in other states too, in NY, you really have to make sure the title the seller is giving you is the last title that was issued. Because s/he could have possibly an old title that shows no liens, but then the title was later branded with a lein. So in NY anyway you can go to the DMV web site and enter the vehicle VIN and it will tell you the date the last title was issued so you can compare that with the title issue date on the title the seller is showing you. I think in many areas verbal contracts can be considered binding, though of course some sort of judge or arbitrator would have to decide who is telling the truth. I don't know, on Judge Judy she seems to take into account text messages, twitter posts, stuff like that all the time. Though that isn't really a court of law I don't believe, I think it's really an arbitration. It seems like an e-mail of the seller accepting the offer could be enforceable, though I guess the seller could claim it wasn't him, it was altered, he never sent it etc. In the end it probably just isn't worth the time and money it would take to force him to sell you the car, plus then people like to do stupid things to cars before selling in this kind of case probably.

^^ agreed, that is what I tried ... at first, the grinding route. Well then I ended up with a huge hole in the metal. So I packed some aluminum mesh screen in there and bondoed it over. But yes in a couple years it just rusted again. It wasn't worth it. The painting over looks kind of cheesy but damn it is like 1000 times faster. It's an unfortuante thing of having an older vehicle I suppose, esp in a place like NY where they salt the F*$*$# out of the roads.

Well ... I don't know what to tell you. I thought I was doing the right thing a couple years back by grinding the FFFFF out of those areas, patching with fiberglass (and often needing to reinforce with wire mesh), sanding, priming, and repainting ... And well, I didn't do the best job I guess, but within a year or two, it just rotted out again. So roughly speaking I gave up. I just paint over the rust spots with a paint of roughly the same color. Yes it loooks cheesy. But it's cheaper and much less time spent for roughly the same result anyway I guess ..

Glad it is fixed. Right I think the first shop broke them when removing them too. It is a little tricky on 2000 Outback with the fuel rail basically holding the injectors in.

Probably better off with the 2.2L anyway. Unless you were going to custom fab a lift yourself, it would seem like the cost of the vehicle plus a lift kit would get you into a 96+ Outback? Pretty much you could pop in Outback struts and springs, and run larger dia. tires, and get probably a good 2" lift that way. The downside being it does gear it up a little bit, it still does OK but it is noticeable. I'm not sure what the roof rack is rated off hand, most cars seem to list 70lb to 150lb, but they are saying that more from a standpoint of stability or not having the roof rack tear off in an accident of sudden deceleration rather than what it can actually handle. I mean I think if you had two 200 lb people lying on the roof I don't think it would collapse.

Hm that image looks like it is for an older like maybe '94ish soob, or possibly a turbo? I pulled the injectors on 2000 Outback. I don't remember it having those retainers with the screws like that but I think I have seen that on my '94. Getting them out was a little tricky but not too bad. It's like the fuel rail plugged in on top of them. That was the hardest part, wrestling the fuel rail out of the way. Putting them back in wasn't too hard. The funny thing was I had ordered new genuine o-rings. On two injectors I used the genuine o-rings, on the other two I used what Witchhunter sent back, which looked to be the same size as the genuine. The genuine ones were OK, the ones from Witchhunter sucked air around the injectors while idling, for some reason they just wouldn't seat properly.

How much clearance do you have between your existing tires and the strut lower spring seat? I ran the numbers through a graphic tiresize calculator and it showed, that at least nominally, the 165 tire would be about 3/4" taller than the 160 tire, so it would decrease your strut spring seat clearance by about 3/8". So it will be a little tighter.

Five cooling hoses all together you mentioned, I think you you are saying 1. upper rad hose, 2. lower rad hose, 3. thermostat bypass hose (heater core return), 4. heater core inlet, 5. heater core outlet. That's close but there's still a couple more hidden in there. The IACV/throttle body hoses might add few more. Turbos might have additional also.

There's some leads you can jumper depending on the ABS style to get it to flash out the code(s), then you can tell what problem it is seeing.

I put stainless braided lines on 2000 Outback some years ago, I think they were for a WRX, they went on fine. I didn't really notice any difference. I think probably if you do a lot of really hard/heavy braking would be the biggest noticeable difference, it seems like that's when the regular rubber hoses would be most likely to swell, under the higher pressure.

I almost always replace those caliper to bracket bolts. I've only manage to snap one off, and fortunately that isn't the end of the world, because it doesn't thread into the bearing housing, just the bracket, so once you get the rotor freed up it will still fall off. Then you can use a bolt type ez out on the protruding piece of bolt to get it out of the bracket. Though since you're replacing the bracket anyway you'll be golden. Those bolts I think are about $4 each at the dealer. I searched high and low for aftermarket bolts for that but never did manage to find any, the issue being I think it was like M12x1.25, something like that, it was considered an extra fine thread pitch for the size was the issue iirc.

I believe I have seen it in the manual, the switch being a pressure switch so it can bump up the idle if the pump output pressure is above a certain amount. Would it work unhooked, yes I believe so, I don't think it would stall the engine, and the enterprising driver could always double foot it if necessary.

Also larger front rotors gives you more swept area and more rotor mass equals more thermal mass, i.e. the brakes should be cooler after a stop if all other conditions are the same. You may gain better brake feel and modulation. I didn't really notice a difference when I did it on the 2000 Outback, but, it already had dual piston front calipers; just the rotors were a bit bigger from the 2001. I imagine on the older single piston front calipers for the 14" wheels, yes those things are just marginal to begin with. If you have much rotor rust at all they become inadequate quickly.

Right on, endlink, biggest difference would probably be during emergency maneuvers. I used Whiteline when I replaced mine,

Hi, yes well fuel prices around here aren't much less, at least not for premium, it runs around USD$4.40/gal. I was researching this in years past to attempt a CNG conversion. Pretty much it seems like you need either a different ECU or a piggyback ECU, especially if you want to be able to switch between LPG and gasoline. This also meters the right amount of LPG into the intake manifold for the amount of airflow. This regulator/meter also needs coolant lines run to it to keep it warm, else it will ice up usually. I think you get less power on LPG too since an engine specifically for LPG would have a higher compression ratio?

Ah ok got it, well yes the fronts were definitely smaller on the 2000's, I believe 10.9", and they were maybe 11.5" on 2001 iirc. I have done this conversion, on the front only. Not sure off hand if the rears are bigger, checking the part #'s at for example subarupartsforyou.com would lend some insight. The majority of the breaking comes from the front anyway; that's not to say the rears should be ignored, but the fronts are going to give the best bang for the buck. If you do the rears, you may have to check the parking brake setup then too, if indeed the rotor sizes are different. It's not likely but possible that if the rears are bigger, the radius for the little parking drum brake is different too.

Well that doesn't necessarily mean she's running rich, she might just be running extremely inefficiently for any of a variety of reasons. The fuel gauges on these are notoriously inaccurate as sulfur builds up on the sensors too btw ...

You won't get away from the 'pig rich' running; that's just how they are, especially when cold. Subaru stated something like it was because they couldn't know what the vapor pressure of the fuel was, so basically they were going to run her nice and rich so that you could run with summer blend in winter conditions.