WoodsWagon

I busted the captured nut loose on my Loyale where the radius rod bracket attached, pretty much the same spot as where the rear bushing bracket on the EJ's is. I measured to get an approximation, took a look at the spot weld pattern on the floor to see where the "frame" channel attached, and started by drilling a small hole and peering in. Then drilled another hole and got centered on the bolt and used a hole saw to cut a big enough hole to get a socket in on the captured nut. Then I could snap the bolt off and put a new one in. I just left the hole in the floor and put a strip of tape over it.

Drums also last way longer. A set of shoes will go 200k miles where as pads seem to wear out every 60k. Plus since all the moving parts are enclosed in the drum, they tend to not rust up like caliper pistons, slider pins, and pad brackets do. The downside is they don't dump heat as well, so under hard driving conditions they can let you down.

The ea radiator will work fine. I had a 150k mile old single core with my EJ22 with a single pusher fan out of a saab or something wired backwards to work as a puller mounted on one side of the radiator. I beat the hell out of the car and the only time it got hot was when I was stuck in a valley with foot deep slush snow that I just couldn't climb on top of and it was snowing. It was an hour straight of backing down to the bottom and doing full throttle runs up trying to cut ruts. Plus winching to pull it out of the ditches. One of the longest 1/2 miles I've ever fought a vehicle through. That one time it got hot, it got really hot. It pegged the EA temp gauge with the EJ sender. It was so toasty it was getting severely down on power. Of course there was snow packing in front of the radiator too limiting airflow, but what really did it was the lack of a good fan. If you can ditch the A/C condensor there's a lot more space for fans in front of the radiator. The EJ crank pulley is too close to the rad to fit a fan in between, so you're kind of stuck with a thin single fan offset to the drivers side in the engine bay if you go that route.

Buy a tube of 3m Window Weld and fill the bushing in yourself.

2.25 is as big a pipe as you would want to run on an EA82 non-turbo. Bigger than that and you loose exhaust velocity and the backpressure actually goes up, choking flow. I tried just a cherry bomb at the back with a 2.25 straight pipe from the cat to the muffler. Too loud. Then I replaced it with a Flowmaster 40, even louder! So then I put the cherry bomb in as a resonator in the middle with the flowmaster at the back and it sounded perfect. Some growl, but not annoyingly loud.

Not meant as an insult or a compliment. Hack fab can be a lot of fun, but don't be surprised if other's see it for the pile of welded together scrap it is and judge you because of it. I have often slapped something together and said "F it, good enough" but it isn't stuff I'd want my name on.

The idlers and tensioner are more important to replace than the water pump. I've seen the water pumps seize up, but since they run on the backside of the belt it just slips and the engine overheats instead of the belt breaking and the valves getting smashed by the pistons.

You need wheels that keep the tire tucked as close in to the strut as possible without rubbing on it. If you have rims that stick the tires out, they swing a larger radius when steering and will rub on the wheel wells at full lock. Wheel hub spacers will make this even worse. I had 235/75r15's with a 4" lift on my Loyale and it still took a fair bit of sledgehammer adjusting to clear the rear of the wheel wells. They would rub on the side of the frame rail at full lock, but only lightly.

Couple things. First, you're frustrated about what's not working out and you're shotgunning solutions at them without thinking. That's just going to lead to more aggravation. You're already using the sunk costs argument to justify throwing more good money after bad and still not fixing the problems. Second, you've got a serious safety issue from the sounds of it in the rear suspension. You described it at positve camber. That would be the tops of the wheels leaning out \ /. Negative camber is the tops leaning in / \. Negative camber in the rear and a rusty rear crossmember usually means only one thing, the crossmember is folding up as its structure is failing. This can happen lift or no lift, it's a rust thing. And it's dangerous because if it tears off the wheel will cock over one way or the other and you will likely loose control and either go into oncoming traffic or off the side of the road. And finally 3rd. Springs won't stop rubbing. At full bump on compression the strut will still bottom out at the same point, it will just take a harder bump to get it there. Since it can still compress to the same place, the tire will still rub. This is the point of the lift blocks that move the whole strut assembly down, now the maximum stuffed position of the wheel is however many inches you lift block is further down out of the wheel well so it won't rub. Struts also don't change the ride height as they wear out, the car just bounces around more. Too stiff springs will make the car ride like a brick and keeping the suspension mostly extended all the time means there isn't any downtravel or droop left so the strut topps out frequently and that is bad for it and harsh on the ride plus reduces control. Bad things all the way round. If you cut coils off the springs, it will make them even stiffer, but it will drop your ride height. The tempo springs are for cars with a heavy front bumper/winch/engine/skidplates ect which is overloading the stock springs and making them sag. If you want this car right, you need to replace the rear crossmember with a good used one first. Then, put the stock springs back on. Then, put the lift blocks back in the right way so your camber is correct and you get no rubbing. These are all projects you can do with cheap hand tools from harbor freight. Get jackstands and use them.

This build is looking like a really good candidate for this thread: http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/general-4x4-discussion/849050-ghetto-fab-hack-jobs.html

The skid plate is off it in this picture, but it was an 1/8" steel plate that attached to the two runners underneath with a half dozen bolts. It took some hard hits, and I put some brutal pulling forces on it with that winch. The key part of the bumper was the two box tubing braces that went down to a piece of angle iron that saddled the lower radiator support. That stopped the bumper from rotating down when the winch was pulling. It also spread the load into the front of the car when hitting things with the bumper.

I would try and find which junkyard has the RX the hatch came off and see if they have the rest of the car. Grab the clutch type limited slip rear diff out of it, they are getting hard to find.

The flywheel off a 2.5l in a 97-99 legacy Outback is a lot heavier than the same year 2.2l one, so that would help with keeping it from stalling out. A 2.5L shortblock would help more... Superchargers won't help much at 1k rpm unless you have the supercharger's ratio set way faster than the crank and you won't be able to run the engine over 3k without the supercharger exploding at that point.

Have you topped the trans fluid off again? Once it starts it sucks up a bunch more fluid to fill the torque converter. Check the level with it idling in neutral, parking brake on.

To add to what Fairtax4me said, the thermostat operates based on the return flow from the heater core. That's the only circulation of coolant around the thermostat when its cold and isn't open. So if the heater core is plugged, then there may not be enough flow to heat the thermostat after it gets through heating the interior.

Make sure the drainback holes behind the seal are clear. If they get clogged with a stray bit of RTV or other debris, then oil pressure starts building behind the seal and pushes it out. Your lucky it happened around town and that you caught it. The same seal popped on my mothers 98 outback when she was doing 70 on the highway. It pumped all the oil out pretty quick and her only warning was the no oil pressure idiot light coming on. She shut it off and coasted to the next exit, then walked to the nearest gas station to buy a few quarts of oil. That was enough to drive it to the nearest shop and have them put a new seal and timing belt in it. Surprisingly the bearings survived, and the motor was still running fine 10k later when the rest of the car rusted out.

The last one I did someone had used some sort of epoxy on the threads. The knuckle had a fine crack in it at the top of the ball joint hole where they had used a chisel to spread the ears where the pinch bolt goes through, so I knew someone had been in there before. I tried everything, including heating the tab where the threads are glowing hot. The bolt would not move. I ended up snapping it off where the threads start, so i got that half of the bolt out. Then I drilled the core out of the other half until it was just threads, then used a pick and chisel to pull out the remaining bits of the bolt. The threads in the knuckle were still fine, they just had a thin hard layer of black stuff on them. I ran a tap through them and the new bolt torqued down fine, with anti-seize this time. It's not the first time I've found the black hard layer of mysterious bonding agent on this car. They had put it on the axle splines on the other side. We ended up having to make a puller to press the axle out of the hub and it took so much pressure it mushroomed the end of a 5/8" grade 8 bolt pushing on the end of the axle. When it finally popped, no rust, just the black layer. I don't know what they were thinking applying this stuff, but they deserve a swift kick in the nuts for doing it. I just hope it doesn't turn up in more places on the car.

No dealer would have converted a FWD Legacy to an AWD one. It's not an easily installed option, like say floor mats. Subaru was "wasteful" in a lot of ways. All legacy wagons have the wiring for the rear wiper motor, equipped or not. Same with rear door speakers and the tweeter wiring. They just used the same main harness regardless of the trim package. Air suspension wasn't available as a USDM option 95+ so there'd be no reason for any bulbs in those positions. TCS was, so populating those two bulb positions meant that they only needed one part # cluster that would cover all those cars.

The TCS uses the ABS module and pump/valve body assembly to do its job, but they are a different ABS unit built special to be compatible with TCS. Light bulbs are cheap, so it's much more likely that the holes in the cluster were filled with them so the same cluster could go in a car with TCS or without and not cause any issues. AWD did not come with TCS.

Yup, you need to flatten out the inside of the yokes a bit for the clip to fit on the Rockford joints as well. I use a die grinder to clean up the staking marks.

98 Outback with the 2.5l and auto could pull down 27 consistently on road trips loaded with family. Best was 29.8 across Nebraska. So I could see a 2.2l in a lower ride height legacy with less weight in it doing better no problem. But for the original question, cold start issues and low MPG could be due to a failing coolant temp sensor for the engine's computer. There's two sensors, one for the gauge with just one flat spade connection, and one for the computer, with a two pin connector. The first thing to do is to read the codes stored in the computer. It's easy to do on that car, there's a pair of connectors under the dash that you plug together and it will make the check engine light flash in a pattern. Decipher the pattern and you get two digit code numbers that you can look up to see why the computer is unhappy. That's your first step to figuring out what might be wrong. Oh, and the gas gauge isn't 15.9 gallons from full mark to empty. There's usually a couple gallons left below the Empty mark as a "reserve". So when the gauge hits empty, and the low fuel idiot light comes on, there's still enough gas in the tank to drive it to a gas station. Only figure out your mileage based on full tank to refilled full tank divided by miles driven.

L has the tank mounted behind the rear diff. Liberty saddles it over the rear diff. Why would the L series tank cause a lot of hassle? You just need an external high pressure fuel pump.

The FWD fuse makes no MPG difference on a AWD equipped car. Instead of the transmission directly powering the rear driveline, it's powering it through the road. The power goes to the front wheels, moves the car, the back wheels get turned, and they then spin the rear axles, differential, and driveshaft. So all the same mechanical parts are being turned, and they are creating the same amount of drag and mpg loss. The only way to see a MPG gain is by physically breaking the rear axles. You need the ends of the axles in the hubs to keep the bearings together, so you need to break apart the CV joints to remove the middle part of the axles. It makes it a lot of work to switch back to AWD if you want it again. If you drive reasonably, high 20mpg's on the highway and low 20's around town are to be expected. That's not bad for a decently large wagon.

More likely it's the intake manifold gaskets. They are cheap from Subaru and pretty easy to replace if you can get the bolts out. You can try the subaru stop leak, it will probably work because the intake gaskets don't see the combustion pressures that a leaking headgasket would. But it would make more sense to replace the intake gaskets and fix it right.

I believe it wasn't until later that the Justy became just a re-badged Suzuki in foreign markets. So the 3cyl in it and the attached transmission in yours are probably subaru only. With yours being a FWD only one, there's no reason to keep the subaru transmission. Just use the whole suzuki powertrain package and splice the axles together.