porcupine73

Sorry to hear about that story, it doesn't sound good! A couple things that come to mind, the clicking of relays and odd behavior - are the test connectors under the dash connected by any chance? That will make all kinds of things cycle on and off. The loss of power, things like that, sounds like the timing might be off. The wires glowing orange and such is obviously not good. There may be other related damage now.

Sounds good, hopefully that will take care of it! That is kind of unique, I haven't seen anyone say this filter loosened up on them before.

Sounds good, hope it fixes it! Of course make sure the old gasket comes off before you put on the new filter. Local dealers often double the list price on walk-in sales; not all of them but many do.

Yes any Subaru dealer can get it, a good price is around $20-24, but many will want to charge you more. You can just stick an engine oil filter on there, at least short term, that will get you out from having to have it towed. The thread size and pitch is the same as the engine oil filter, but you might need something a little shorter to clear the obstructions around it. Basically if you get this filter at say a Napa or Autozone, that's what they probably would give you.

If it is something that went wrong with the filter and is leaking that should be a pretty simple fix. If it's leaking from a line or something above the filter and then leaking onto the filter that might be more work. Use the genuine Subaru ATF filter for the replacement. They do cost more, but they have some metal screening over the internal bypass valve to keep large pieces of junk from getting by and plugging up the cooler.

Let us know how it comes out Bill! Now.....it shouldn't go without mentioning.....that if you are unhappy with your engine.....your chassis a popular one for installing one of the Japanese market twin turbo Subaru engines. More mail delivered, less time!

King Springs come from Australia. There might be a few US vendors of them but they seem to come and go. They will ship them to you from Australia, but note the shipping cost and any possible brokerage/import fees. Also the king springs catalog is for Australian spec vehicles; usually they will still fit but sometimes the spring upper diameter is different from usdm for some reason. I've used King Springs lift springs on two of my soobs and I really like them. They give a nice stiff ride.

Nice! It's fun to hold it by the tail like a rat after it's out. Now it's time to fix up some more of the heat shields that have come loose in the past year.

That was what I did too, pulled it up on four plastic ramps. That makes it quick and easy to get under there. I unplugged the sensor so I could get a wrench on it. I had an o2 sensor socket but it felt a little sloppy of a fit and was starting to round it off. I was going to use a pipe but I had read sometimes if you use way too much force it can mess up the exhaust but fortunately that did not happen!

Plus that phase II 4EAT I believe does not use a transmission pan gasket, it just has some kind of orange colored RTV or something like that. Maybe you dented it on a rock while doing some wheeling?

Somewhere in the cooler lines or filter would be likely locations for it to leak. It could be leaking that much around the pan gasket I would guess but it doesn't seem many people say they have had that happen. Sometimes a leak looks like it is dripping from a particular point, but is actually running from somewhere else and just dripping off right there. Can you stop with it in drive and have the engine not stall out? Then your torque converter is not locked up.

My '96 has been coughing up P0141 for over a year now. I was finally last night able to get the blasted rear O2 sensor out of this thing! I started trying to replace it over a year ago but never could quite get it to budge. So every few weeks I would put kroil on it with the exhaust hot. And every few months I would try to remove it. Finally last night I was getting upset with it. So I got it good and hot, and also put real beeswax around the threads. It smelled really nice. Then I put a 22mm wrench on the sensor, backed up, and put both feet on top of the wrench and pushed as hard as I could. I thought I might screw something up in the exhaust. After doing that a couple of times, the darn thing FINALLY let loose and I could get it out!!!!!!!! Now to see if that code stays away.

Yep, only times I have had this happen is when I had it set to recirc. That for some reason really seems to build humidity inside the vehicle. Usually I only go recirc when I'm behind some smokey diesel truck or someone burning more oil than gasoline, then I end up forgetting.

^^^^ all good suggestions! For reference, this is roughly what the vehicle should look like when you are done.

From that location it's most likely from the cam seals or crank seal. On that era, some of the screws on the back of the oil pump could loosen up, possibly letting oil leak out the crank seal, and sometimes even pushing it out completely. Get the cam and crank seals from a Subaru dealer, they are not overly expensive and are good quality. Oil pump should get resealed too, mainly to see if the screws are loosening up. So get a discharge o-ring from Subaru too. If you want to do a timing belt and idlers, there are kits on eBay that people seem to like and are not very expensive. Could replace the valve cover gaskets too if desired.

What kind of parts are being used? If they're cheap Chinese made stuff from the parts store they might not be as durable as the originals. Do you drive over a lot of rough ground, potholes, or do any drifting?

What year Outback are you putting it into? You'd have to of course make sure the rear suspensions are the same, multilink or mcpherson.

I'd probably pull the cam and crank position sensors, maybe the radiator, yes alternator, maybe some other sensors such as engine coolant temp sensor, the MAF if it has one, the coil pack, ignitor, most of that stuff should be the same between 96 and 99, though I think the Calif. emissions '99 had some weirdness to it.

I started looking up a couple of those, like atmospheric pressure sensor, evap canister purge, it almost sounds like you have a wiring harness that is starting to come unplugged or other wiring issue with so many codes. Yours must be a Legacy wagon, the Legacy Outback didn't start until 1995.

I was looking at the specs between the ATF's some. I notice Royal Purple and Redline don't seem to list any of the wear/durability related specs such as 4 ball.

Glad you found it. If the connector fits it might work for testing. It's a pretty simple device so probably Subaru used it for lots of models/years.

Also, you probably figured this out already, but if you have no spark on cylinder 2 you won't have a spark on cylinder 1 either. 3 - 4 1 - 2 It seems I remember an Endwrench article saying something about on a few years around '96, they had seen one of the wires, maybe that pin 15 in the diagram, backed out of the connector.

Ah here we are, how's this?

On that year, it should be on the firewall, sort of near the brake booster. I might have a pic of it on my '96....let me check.

I've been using Amsoil ATF in all my soobs for some years. I would not hesitate to use Redline ATF either, in fact it might even have the edge. I am not convinced about Royal Purple products so I have not tried them.