WoodsWagon

What about a forester XT? Up until this year they had a de-tuned version of the wrx engine, so you could have the ride height and the power.

The only motor that works is one out of another justy. It was the only car that used that model of engine. If you use a pre-1989 engine you will have to swap your head on to it because the EFI heads are different than the carburated ones and the intake will not bolt up. Install a new oil pump on the replacement engine before you put it in. The oil pumps are a known weak point and that's probably why yours chucked a rod.

The ECU for the newer subaru's is down in the passenger footwell. It's a really stupid place for it in my opinion. When we got a friends WRX stuck in some deep ruts in the bottom of a pond it filled up flush with the seat cushions, and yes it was running because we were still trying to get it to drive out and we knew the air intake was still above water line. It shut down though because the computer shorted out. I had to drag it out with my truck, then take the ECU out and apart and wash the board off in a clean brook, dry it off on my dash with the defrost on, then reassemble it and plug it back in. It fired right back up, though the evap purge solenoid driver circuit had it's traces fried clean off the board. If you plan on spending any time in water, take the ECU off the floor and mount it up behind the glove box. He also pulled the seats and carpet out when he got home and hung them out to dry. There's thick insulation under the carpet that works like a sponge and it will never dry out if you don't take it out. Mold will grow and the car will smell like an old sock if you let it sit still wet.

Stainless is a pain to work with and it's harder to get leak free connections at the flare fittings. Copper-nickle brake tubing doesn't corrode like steel and it's easy to use, it just costs more for the tubing. Volvo's been using it for decades, as have some other euro manufacturers. Steel brake lines will all eventually rust out in salt country. All it takes is one rock chip in the tubes paint coat and it starts rusting through. But they're cheap and they last for the warranty period so manufacturers keep using it.

Is the o-ring swelling due to the 10% ethanol in the gas now?

Has coffee or soda ever been spilt on the center console?

It could also be an older engine swapped in to your car after someone overheated and killed the original one when the headgaskets blew. I got a Gates timing belt kit off ebay for $180 shipped for a newer engine. It had koyo bearings in all the idlers and a new water pump and tensioner. It's good you're getting the kit, a lot of people replace just the belt expecting the idler bearings to make it to 210k miles. Often, they don't. And when the idlers go they take the belt with them. The 04 2.5l I put the timing belt kit on had the belt done at a subaru dealership at 110k and I got in there at 180k. A couple of the idlers had significant play in them and they all sounded dry when spun. Replacing them is cheap insurance, and really should be factory recommended.

Bank 1 sensor 1 is the o2 sensor before the catalytic converter. The plug is by the main engine connectors and the wire runs down in between the front axle and the engine crossmember. There is supposed to be a wire clamp that goes on the lower bellhousing stud before you put the nut on to hold that wire back from rubbing the CV. If the sensor is plugged in, it's probably bad. Easy to check the heater circuit with an ohm meter. O2 sensors are a wear item, and the one before the cat is important because the computer uses it to adjust the fuel it feeds to the engine. Buy a NTK or NGK one, not a Bosch. They can be stuck in the exhaust pretty good. They take a 7/8" wrench, use the box end and thread it over the connector or just cut the wires off at the sensor. Run the engine to get the exhaust hot, put the box end of the wrench on, and smack the side of the wrench with a hammer to get it moving. You can put the new one in with the open end of the wrench, but you will strip it if you try to take the old one off with it.

Never seen a ground strap on any of the EA82's I've torn apart. Most of the radiators looked just like yours with the fins either falling out o just gone. It's the salt. If you had a grounding issue on a radiator and your coolant was bad enough to work as an electrolyte then it would corrode the radiator from the inside out and start leaking. Which is not what you're seeing, the radiator is corroding from the outside in because of salt.

The plastic clutch alignment tools suck. They are sloppy so if you don't wiggle them around and then hold them in the centered position while you snug up the pressure plate bolts the clutch disk ends up off center. Then when you try to put the transmission in, the shaft won't go into the pilot bearing. Try re-centering the disk. You can also leave the pressure plate bolts loose. Tighten them just enough so the disk starts to be grabbed, then tighten them through the starter hole once the transmission is on. You'll have to turn the engine a bunch of times to tighten the bolts down in a criss cross pattern evenly, but it will work in a pinch. I cut the input shaft off a junk transmission I had and use that as my alignment tool. The transmissions slip right in.

I'm not looking to do a part out and sell bits, I was looking for what parts are usefull for upgrading other subarus. I'm pulling the engine swap wiring and parts. Rear VLSD is a meh because they are in all the newer outbacks so they're easier to find in the junkyard. Sounds like that's the only other desirable mechanical component on a SVX? The interior is trashed. Seriously, I'll have to shovel all the trash out of it to get the wiring harness out of the dash. It was also spray painted white inside and primer gray outside. Most of the glass was broken in the crash or when they were packing it full of junk.

A wrecked Svx built 01/92 showed up in my local junkyard. It has a subaru reman trans in it (sticker by the starter motor). The car is trashed but it was driving well enough to pop the airbags so I figure the drivetrain is still in ok shape. Whats worth keeping other than the engine?

What failures have you seen on the EJ front hooks? I've put the EA ones through hell and they look to be the exact same design as the EJ ones. The EJ hooks that got sawed off flush with the frame were due to a recall for airbags going off when the hooks would catch a curb.

Was the road icy where you had the slowly rolling downhill incident? If one of the front tires can easily slip, it will spin backwards while the other tire with traction rolls down the hill with the transmission in park because the gears in the open differential can still turn. That's the advantage of the parking brake, it actually holds the wheels still and not just the transmission. Park should hold the car within a foot when you let the brakes off. Try finding a steep hill, putting it in park, and riding in the car as it lurches down the hill and see just how far it will go. If it moves more than a couple feet you have a genuine problem that you can demonstrate and demand a fix. I have had friends with beater cars that the park pawl in the transmission was stripped. Some of them would barely hold on a slope and then let go with a ping! Then ting, ting, ting, it would roll away on it's own as the pawl skipped over the gear teeth. This could potentially happen in a new car if the pawl was incorrectly installed.

you have to loop the two pipes together to direct the purge solenoid vacuum to the rear evap cannister.

Buy a cluster from a you-pull-it junkyard for $20 and plug it in.

The gear hub reduction boxes would work well, but they were all swing axle design on the US models, so the transmission is the pivot point of the rear suspension. Brazilian bus's used an IRS reduction box that had a U joint half shaft running to it. Here's a swingaxle one with a CV axle modified to fit: http://www.mudtrials.org/thetrialscar41.htm The gear reduction on the later ones was 1.26:1 Combine that with the steep overdrive of 0.69 in a 4eat with an avalable 3.9 final drive and you end up with 2700 rpms at 65mph on 205/75r15 tires which should be close to a stock bus size. That's a livable cruising RPM. Edit: Looked up stock bay window bus tires. They are 185/80r14's which puts 65mph at 2900 rpms. Still OK for highway use especially as that's what a stock 2003 Outback 5spd is turning at the same speed.

How's the rust on the RX? You might be time/effort ahead to just use that body instead of your wagon. The Full time 4x4 box will need to have the center diff locked the whole time you're offroad so it will need the vacuum hoses and solenoids hooked up. The low range is not very good, it's a 1.2:1 reduction instead of a 1.59. Plus the differential gearing is only 3.7 instead of 3.9, so it's less gear reduction there too. You will also have to swap in the RX rear diff to match, but you will want to score that RX rear diff anyways because it's likely a LSD which is worth $300 to the Datusn 510 crowd if you don't use it.

Do not jack up on the hub while it's a wobbly mess. You are compressing the spring on the strut and are creating a lot of potential energy just waiting to come loose and seriously hurt you. With the swaybar disconnected, stick a long prybar between the control arm and the engine crossmember, then lever down so it forces the control arm down. That is winding up the rubber control arm bushings, but they store a heck of a lot less power than the spring. The ball joints can be a nightmare, but wait until you have to do rear wheel bearings and have to take the lower lateral link bolt out. That's the worst job by far on a subaru.

Half assed or not it will probably work fine. They are chrome-moly rings and don't really wear. I have never seen one break either. Clean out the oil rings, the grooves, and the oil drain ports in the oil ring groove.

First off, nothing in the subaru drivetrain will hold up to what you hope to do. So you must really like the body style to want to do a swap, because that's the only subaru part that will be left. There are many other cars that lend themselves much better to v8 swaps. Like boxy styling? There are KITS to bolt a v8 into any 80's volvo. Or buy a v8 car. Most of them have well supported platforms, so braking, steering, suspension, and drivetrain upgrades are off the shelf bolt on parts. Unlike the 88GL, which is a dead platform and has no aftermarket performance parts made for it. The only thing that makes an old disposable cheap subaru any better than any other car of its vintage is the 4wd. You plan on tossing that out, so why not get an econobox that was made to be RWD in the first place and do the swap in that? A ford 5.0l will fit a lot better than a SBC, and you can get good ones cheap out of Explorers. 96 had the GT40 heads that work with any of the older headers, 97-01 had GT40p's that take special headers to clear the spark plugs. You can drop a carbed manifold on any of them and plug in a distributor.

You can also switch to 4.44 gears in the transmission and rear diff if you find the bigger tires are bogging it down. The front ring and pinion are about $350 from subaru, plus the work to take the trans apart. Rear diffs are really easy to find out of later auto trans cars.

The rev and release you did at 1:45 in the video would have resulted in a nasty back-rattle noise if the rod bearings were gone. It does sound a lot like piston slap but that doesn't start suddenly. As Grossgary mentioned, the timing belt tensioner is a known culprit of bad noises. If you take the drivers side cover off you can peer in with it running and see if the tensioner is flapping about or holding steady. The other possibility is a cracked flexplate if it has an automatic transmission.

Oh, yes... The power is very noticable. When I had a dead cylinder in my EJ22 it still drove as well as it did with the EA82 in it running on all 4. I could light up 29" dia tires if I wanted to and had to be careful taking off from a stop in the rain because both fronts would break loose. The legacy's had decent performance with the EJ22 and your car is 500lbs lighter than that. It makes the car fun to drive.

Explain to me why the locking diff trans is any better than a pushbutton 4x4/FWD trans for normal use? The viscous center works great in snow and mud, I've done plenty of muck and snow on logging trails and never been let down by the diff. The only time it's a problem is when you start getting into rocky stuff and lifting wheels off the ground, then the viscous needs more throttle to lock up. He wants predominanly street use for the car. The viscous center diff is a great option for that. The full time 4x4 is not. The center diff lock is not a desireable option compared to the viscous center diff. The 94 WRX box would work well for you.