86BRATMAN

Do you have an advance auto nearby? They had no problem getting me a set of single port gaskets a few months ago, the one in my town had them in stock. Felpro brand, if I was at home I could probably get you the part number. I didn't bleed the hlas on my forester swap, it was noisy for a little on start-up. It went back to normal hla quiet pretty quickly. It had also sat for multiple years before I swapped it.

Looks like you have the same type uel header I'm running. Love the sound, but mine keeps blowing the gasket between it header and convertor section. Pretty annoying, and I'm yet to one that will properly seal to the smaller flange.

Neither front or rear will clear on anything smaller than 16s with the parts you have. There may be aftermarket 15s that will clear, but it would be cheaper to find a set of wrx take off wheels on Craigslist or the forums.

With the solid lifter buckets there shouldn't be intermittent noise, it should either be there or not. You may have another issue surfacing or you could be hearing detonation. It is possible your that your timing is slightly off, the 25d is rather sensitive in that respect. Might be worthwhile to pull the timing belt covers to be sure everything is lined up properly.

Yeah its definitely not a tensioner from the volume of the noise. If it was me (and it was me about a month ago on a knocking 25d 98 forester) I just swapped a 22e to save the case halves for another day.

I've seen a couple dual port 96s, so it may very well be a 96 engine. Now for the egr hole in the head, run down to advance auto and pick up an m16x1.5 oil drain plug. The one I ended up getting needed to have the magnetic end ground down to get fully seated to the head.

Tribeca is out of the question, virtually nothing interchanges with the older legacy. The only difference you'll have with doing the suspension transplant on the postal wagon versus your old Brighton will be that you'll sit in the other seat when you take it out for a drive lol.

His 95 outback will get the same as your L did, wasn't until 96 the outback got taller. And any forester from 98-08 will swap over, the 03-08 will be slightly taller and have stiffer springs than the 98-02 models.

Stock exhaust on your 97 is 1 7/8th, that's quite a bit of difference in size. Your best bet would be to have a shop do the install, around here they wouldn't charge more than $30 for that, I've had full catbacks made for under 100 if I supply the muffler.

I didn't get to snap any pics last night, but I'll work on it. The 90-94 legacy and 93-01 Impreza share the same mount pattern. 95-99 legacy, 02-07 impreza, and 98-08 forester have the same pattern. You'll want the tracking arm brackets, the arms themselves are identical to what you already have. If it were me I'd look for struts and springs from a forester xt, they got stiffer springs and better dampening struts. The 98-02 springs I ran on my car were fairly mushy compared to one I road in with XT suspension. Also be prepared to run a spacer in the rear, due to chassis differences the rear will sag compared to the front with your wagon. There are some pics on the web you can search and see what I mean.

The coolant temp sensor could be on its way out. my buddy's ej22 swapped 97 Legacy gt was getting similar mileage to yours after we swapped it due to a completely fubar'd ej25d. He chased all kinds of stuff for aboutb2 months before he finally listened to me and replaced the sensor. During this time his mileage degraded to about 12-14 highway. I replaced the sensor and it went back up to the upper 20s. if the coolant temp sensor is bad it won't usually trigger a cel, it just tells the ecu the motor is very cold and it dumps loads of extra fuel in to "warm" post the engine up. On your motor there will be two, one single wire sensor for the dash guage and a two wire for the ecu. It's the two wire one I'm talking about. Removing the idle air control valve will provide pretty easy access to the sensor.

No didn't have to, all 98-08 foresters have the same top had bolt pattern as the 95-99 legacy. Thing about this 98-03 rear top hats is they have about an inch of lift built into them over outback ones. I'll try to post a couple pics in a day or two so you can see what I mean.

My forester is a 98 btw, second gen has more clearance on its struts.

This is the rear clearance with the same 205/75r15s grabber on my forester. It's all stock suspension at the moment. When I had these tires on with outback struts I could get my hand between there.

Welcome back again. Hope the islands are treating you well. How many miles have you driven since the incident? I would wager that it needs to relearn what it's doing, there was a similar posting a few days ago about a similar year legacy and I think that was the general consensus.

If you run outback springs and forester struts you'll have some horrible butt sag, outback struts with forester springs is what my legacy had, forester (1st gen anyway) had a lower rear spring perch than outback which also equates to less tire clearance. I ran outback trailing arm brackets, outback struts and forester springs and upper perches and mounts. Strut and spring alone gave me 3.5" and the tires being 3" taller than stock put it at 5" of lift total. I ran this setup for about 10k miles. I could have benefited from the crossmember spacers from an outback, but my car still has the same axles in it as it did when I bought it 25k ago.

Not to burst any bubbles, but I've seen instances in which the engine has the 32 tooth crank gear and the older 7 trigger cam gear. There is a thread on either nasioc or rs25 (I feel like it's on rs25 because I avoid nasioc generally) where a guy got a replacement engine for his impreza and only checked the crank gear before instalation. He had about a month worth of troubleshooting before he checked the cam gears and found the 7 trigger on the old motor.

I've got 205/75r15s grabber at2s on my forester, 27.1" and they look small. They looked much bigger on my legacy.

I too have been wanting to express my thoughts about Ed, but there's no way I could even come close to doing him justice. What I knew of him was just through interactions on the forum but he was one of the most genuine people I've known. I know the pain the family is going through, it's only been just over five months since I lost my dad at 74. There is a long road ahead for everyone. And I know everyone greaves differently. For me it's been hard to put down a wrench since dad was the person who got me started with my love for cars and working on them. It's hard to really comprehend a loss of this magnitude. But I urge all of you who shared a passion with Ed to continue with your ventures full force. I feel it's the best way to honor the memory of the person he was.

The only one I know for a fact in my list has different rear brakes is the 91-94 legacy turbo. lmdew is correct you'll want to grab ebrake cables, but get them from a 95-99 legacy so they have the correct length

You'll also want to grab the proportioning valve, and the rubber lines for the calipers. It's easiest to do the whole knuckle as an assembly. And you can use any rear disc knuckle from a 90-99 legacy, 93-07 non-sti impreza(06/07 wrx backing plates are different for the 2 pot calipers) and 98-07/8 forester. There will of course be differences with the abs sensor over the years if your legacy has it, but it sounds to me like yours is a Brighton so it won't have abs anyways.

The 92 ecu also needs the plastic maf, and if it's a manual you have to swap the iacv as well.

It's definitely a turbo axle, an ea81 axle would fit on the trans stub but would be too short in overall length to work properly.

The only suspension part I know that will swap to a legacy is the front sway bar. It's become a fairly popular low cost upgrade, being 25mm as opposed to the much smaller one on most legacy and impreza models.

There is a very good chance that the 01 crank has the machining from the factory to use the #3 thrust location. I've had a couple early ej251 cranks that have been machined for both.