WoodsWagon

I've dealt with this a couple times. Cut the lines under the back seat and use a flare union. 3/16". Re-use the flare nuts where they attach to the hose in the wheel well. Cut the line off at the back of the nut so you can put a 6-point socket on instead of rounding them off with a flare wrench. Then use a drill to take out the stub of brake line left in the nut. Or get two new metric nuts. Use the copper/nickle alloy brake line, it costs more but is much easier to work with. Buy/rent a double flaring tool from a parts store. The hardest part is keeping the bends right where it meets the hose tight, you don't want them hanging down into where the suspension and the axle move. I ran the new line to the left rear behind the rear crossmember. there's a body floor crossmember there that you can zip-ty it to as you go across. The bleeders on the calipers will be your next problem. 6 point socket is a must. Whack the bleeders with a hammer a couple times like you were driving a nail. If they still won't break loose, you need heat. Use a torch to heat the bleeder screw up until it glows, then try loosening it. Most of the time they come out. If those brake lines are rotted, all your evap and fuel lines are probably ready to go too. Plus the gas tank is probably rusted around where the filler hose nipple is and the seam around the whole tank. And the filler neck too at the bottom of its bend. Plus check the rear crossmember, they like to rot out too on either side of where the rear diff mounts. Pretty much the whole rear of the car goes to spoob at the same time, so expect to be back there fixing stuff pretty often.

Clean the idle air control valve out with carb cleaner. If it's sticky it can't give the engine more air to compensate for the extra load while idling in gear. You may need to take if off the side of the manifold to clean it thoroughly.

Rear LSD or welded up rear diff if you don't drive on the street. The rear LSD will make the biggest change in the predictability of being able to throw the car around. I can't stress how much better the car will rotate with a good clutch type LSD. Leave the shifter alone. On some courses it may be handy to quickly shift between FWD and 4x4. You could try advancing the timing a bit and running premium gas. Keep the RPM's up. The redline is just a suggestion, and the valves don't float till past 8k. You will get a feel for where the power starts to drop off and shift there. Swaybars off an xt6 would be good. They're thicker and will help keep the car flat in turns.

Light could have burned out, the pressure switch on the passenger side strut tower behind the air filter box could have died or the vacuum hose hooked to it could have broken. Or you could have a big exhaust leak between the engine and the turbo.

There are two fuel level senders in the tank, a left side one on it's own and the right side one which is part of the fuel pump assembly. The gauge averages the readings of the two senders, so if one stops working, the gauge will never read above 1/2 even with a full tank. There are access covers in the floor right behind the back seat to get at the senders. Check for broken wires at the senders first, then check them with an ohm meter.

Try turning the key to the run position and waiting 3 seconds before turning it to crank. If it fires right up, then your fuel pressure is bleeding down. That can either be the check valve in the pump or the fuel pressure regulator. If it is this, then it's not really a problem really, just pause in run before cranking it to let the fuel pump prime the system. The other thing I'd think of is the coolant temp sensor for the computer. If that's starting to fail it can give the computer a bad reading as to how cold the engine is and it won't feed in the extra fuel needed to get it to fire off. It's like the choke on a carb engine. There's two sensors, one for the gauge, one for the computer, so keep that in mind if you replace it. It's easy to check with an obd2 scan tool, just go into the live sensor readings and check if the coolant temp reading matches the outside temp if the engine has been sitting cold. Then start it and see if the temp reading climbs up to 195ish when the gauge hits the middle of it's range. Since it started after you messed with the battery, I would also suspect the cables. If they are corroded internally, bending them as you pull off the connections could have cracked the wires inside. But that would cause slow cranking. With the battery disconnected, the ECU also resets. So it may need to re-learn the idle but it should have done that the first time you started it up and let it run for a while.

I'd recommend some sort of bump stop on the lower control arm but I don't think the lower ball joint is rated for that kind of tension load, it's just meant to locate the knuckle, not support weight. So the bumpstop would have to be in the strut assembly. Maybe you could drill the hole out of a smaller Timbren bumpstop to fit over the strutrod where the stock rubber bumper goes? Or find some other beefy block of rubber you could drill and place there. You might need to make a cap to fit over the end of the strut body around the rod where the bumpstop hits to make a larger landing zone. Full on rally cars would probably have tunable coil over struts but they would likely be out of your budget. I would also look into adding braces between the strut towers and the center of the firewall and also to each other. There is going to be a lot of twist trying to fold the strut towers in toward the middle of the car.

I use the EJ25 turbo gaskets. I cross checked the coolant holes against the SOHC gasket and the thickness and everything was close enough not to matter. The MLS gaskets were certainly an upgrade on the older EJ25d's, so I'd expect the same thing for the newer ones. With 3 layers of gasket you have 4 interfaces for the gasket to be able to move to stay with the expansion of the block and head instead of just 2 with the single layer gaskets. I would run a tap down the block threads for the headbolts. A lot of them have coolant leaked in around the bolt and corrosion. You can't get a reliable torque reading if the threads are full of junk. I think it's 11mm X1.25, but check before your order.

There's also the compactness and ease of serviceability of the phase1 SOHC heads on the EJ22 and EJ18. Spark plugs are easy to get to, you can pull the head without touching the valvecover, and there's plenty of space between them and the frame rail even in an EA engine bay. The DOHC heads take up a lot more space and the timing belt is more vulnerable when offroad. Plus those stupid plastic cam pulleys like to break if you happen to whack them on something or get a good stick jammed up in the timing belt. Then you bend valves because the DOHC's are interference heads. The EJ22 has good power, it's dirt cheap, and plentiful in good used condition in the USDM junkyards. Anything EJ turbo is either rare, or too new to be cheap, or to beat to be usable. Any WRX in a junkyard has either been hit so hard in a wreck that the cam pulleys broke, or the motor has spun rod bearings. So you're still paying good money for an engine that needs an overhaul before you can use it. The last EJ22 I bought to swap into a DOHC EJ25 car with blown headgaskets was $300 with a 30 day warranty pulled and on a pallet. They even loaded it into my truck for me. I picked up an EG33 and full wiring harness from a pick your own junkyard for $120. The older stuff was dead reliable and they sold tons of them so the junkyards are flooded with good engines. It will change though and the next common engine will be the 00-04 SOHC EJ25. A 10 year old Subaru is reaching the end of it's life around here due to the salt on the roads and how bad the body's rust, so they are the next crop in the junkyards. Unfortunately a lot of those engines are hurt by the headgaskets leaking and people running them low on coolant so they will be more of a gamble. Plus they're speed-density EFI which I don't particularly like. But they will be all that's available cheap so that's what we'll swap in.

What miles said, the failsafe mode for the coolant temp sensor dieing is for the computer to turn the fans on full. Is the check engine light on?

Change the brackets that attach to the nose of the differential and it should go right in. I'd question the Outback being a 3.9, if it was a 5spd it should be 4.11 and if it's an auto it should be 4.44.

Do the water pump too, I've seen them seize up. Didn't break the belt because it runs on the smooth side but it sure caused overheating. So easy and comparatively cheap to replace it when in there for a timing belt job. Check the headgaskets for external coolant and oil leaks, those years 2.5l's are good for those and you may be due for headgaskets too. Use the ones meant for a 04 WRX STi 2.5l, they're multilayer and an upgrade. Subaru is still selling the single layer ones for the non-turbo 2.5l's and they leak.

Backlash is easy, you rock the ring back and forth through the drain plug to check it and spin the bearing retainers to adjust. The problem is the pinion depth, and that's what you need the tools for to check it before assembling.

No there's a small phillips screw that holds the switch into the knob. I think it goes up from the underside into it but it's been years since I've looked at one.

Works good as a resonator in the middle of the exhaust. Pretty loud if you're just using it as a muffler at the end of a straight pipe exhaust.

So the EJ25 block was bolted to the 95 EJ22 transmission? Most likely it had the 2.2l flexplate bolted to it. 2.2l torque converter is smaller, so it uses a "deep dish" flexplate. 2.5l torque converter is bigger, so it uses a flatter flexplate. Put the 2.5l flexplate with a 2.2l converter and it will pull the converter back too far out of the trans. Put the 2.2l flexplate with a 2.5l torque converter and the bellhousing won't pull together that last 1/2". So if you're trying to put it on a 2.5l trans with the big converter, you will quickly find out if it will slide together, meaning it has the right flexplate, or if it stands off a 1/2", which means it has the 2.2l flexplate. If so, I'd swap across the 2.5l flexplate but that's just because I like to keep the TC with the trans.

Cupro-nickle alloy brake tubing is indeed the best thing ever. It's DOT-legal, some European cars have been using it since the 80's. Ever seen a Volvo with a rusted brake line? It's easy to bend, easy to flare, and never rusts. http://ribetautoparts.com/cupro-nickel-brake-line-coil---3-16---25---lifetime-guaranteed.aspx Straight copper plumbing tubing is not legal. What you use for propane and water will not hold up under the pressures that brake hydraulic systems see. It also fatigues from vibration and will crack. Same thing with people using plumbing compression unions to splice brake line. Flare unions are what are needed for the pressures involved. The problem with coated brake lines (poly or galvi) is that the coating breaks when you bend the line. So it's failed from the get go on installation and rusts out quickly. Stainless is a pain to work with, hard to flare, and hard to get to seal at the flare fittings.

Bolts were too long and bottomed out in the threads, and felt tight, but weren't actually clamping the pulley. More washers, shorter bolts, or the correct stud and nut combo are your options. Why didn't you reuse the studs from the old pump?

If they are airtex brand pumps, they suck.

Push the handle back to the fully returned position, then unlock the door and pull the handle. If that works, then spray penetrating oil on the handles hinge and work it back and forth until it springs all the way back on its own.

Id rethink your ea82 hate for a daily driver but if you must swap put the ea81 in. Put the EJ harness in the brat because when you want more power down the road a 2.5l is easy.

Why not run the water/meth with the nitrous and then avoid pulling timing?

what flow rate are you running the water meth at? Do you have a progressivecontroller or just a pressure switch? You might want to up it until you start to feel it bog.

If it has a 4eat, put in one from an Outback with 4.44 gears and matching rear diff. With a skidplate on the pan, an auxiliary aftermarket cooler and the center clutchpack 4x4 lock switch it will outperform the d/r 5spd offroad.

04 should be a speed density car so no maf. Only the cal-spec pzev cars had a maf in 04, but they were only sold in the northeast or california.