WoodsWagon

You can also use a SubaSpool from these guys to replace the center diff. It makes your existing AWD 5spd a FWD transmission. http://www.subarugears.com/index_files/Products.html You will need to take apart your rear axles to see any mpg gains. The outer CV cups need to stay in the hubs, the nut on the end of the axle is what holds the bearings together.

Why the sad face? It's arguably a better engine than the EA82. Good things you can do to it are a SPFI swap out of a later EA82 or a weber carb swap if it doesn't already have one.

I wouldn't agree with you there, you're getting fatigue cracks back there because the block is moving too much. I would remove the block and check the captured nut beneath it for more cracking. Then figure out a way to stop it from flexing. Adding in a diagonal that links the head of the bolt down to those two bolts at the rear of the floorpan will help. I built a box channel that enclosed the bushing area of the crossmember and had a sloped face that went down to the two bolts on the rear of the floorpan. It had flanges sticking up where it bolted down to reinforce it.

This is not true. The 85-86 flapper door MAF cars have a boost pressure switch over on the passenger side fender that tells the ECU when it's overboosting. There's two switches right in the same bracket, one comes on at a couple psi and turns the turbo light on in the dash, the other comes on at 10 psi and tells the ECU to cut fuel. Unplug that switch and it will never cut fuel. The later hot wire MAF cars hit fuel cut because the MAF is reading too much air getting pulled into the engine. This isn't a lean condition because it's still fueling to match the air coming in, but it hits fuel cut after a couple seconds of seeing the MAF voltage stay high and steady.

If you are lying on your back in the driveway, maybe. The 4eat's are heavy bastards. If you have a lift or a pit, no, pull just the tranmission and save the work of hauling the engine out too.

So if the duty C and clutchpack had been replaced properly, you would have had working AWD and no flashing light on the dash, right? That means the dealerships origional diagnosis and quote was right. And it means by going to a cheaper shop you ended up having to do the job twice. The dealer doesn't suck, if you had them do the work it would have been fixed right the first time with the original diagnosis and recommended work because they would have known how to put it together correctly. From your first post: "So effectively the dealership's recommended service fixed electrical problem.... that's exactly what they said when I returned and denied any liability for my AWD problems. stating I only asked them about a flashing at oil temp light." and my response: You got a preliminary diagnosis from a dealer and then went to an independent shop to have it fixed. You should be going back to the independent shop to have them figure out why it isn't working, not screaming at the dealer until they have the cops haul you out. They didn't do the work. It could easily be the work of the other shop that's causing your continued problems, not a misdiagnosis by the dealer. How much emotional energy and time wasting have you been doing since then about this issue? Was it worth the $500 you saved by going to the cheap shop over the dealer?

One thing to consider is a water/methanol injection system if you turn up the boost. I'm using washer fluid injection on my supercharged tacoma. 12.5psi going into a 9.6:1 compression ratio v6 with no tune. 3 years later it still hasn't blown up, though I've sure tried.

Use an OBDII harness from a 95-98 for your bus, they're easier to work with and will support a 2.5l if you get power hungry later. Plus you can plug a scangauge into them and get instant MPG readouts and such up on the dash.

Really? I was pretty sure they could be used as conversion stubs for a newer diff in an older car. Pity that. I guess building a hybrid axle is the only way to go to clip in stubs then. There's been plenty of chance for people to build these but even the big companies that manufacture them for other makes have had no interest in building subaru ones. All they would have to do is resize their CAD drawings to be the right dimensions to fit in a subaru diff instead of reverse-engineering them like you're doing. I think if someone is going to pull it off, it's going to be you. That's why there's so many of us rooting for you to succeed. As long as you don't go posting the CAD files up on the net your pictures don't show anything more than a generic locker picture would. I wouldn't worry about it, and we love seeing progress pictures.

Most likely a brake component related noise. Check that the drum isn't rubbing on the brake backing plate because of it being bent or really rusty. Check the bearings and the shoes on the left rear. Highly unlikely to be anything to do with the rear differential and axle shafts, they're pretty much indestructible in stock form.

I had to do the exact same repair on my Loyale. We sledgehammered the firewall and trans tunnel back down, welded it where it had torn from the trans tunnel, and then put down a 1/8" plate with bolts sandwiching it to the damaged area and welded that down too. This damage is caused by not having the lift blocks on the radius arm mount linked together. I welded a flat tab out from the radius arm mount to the top of the lower lift block so it was captured on both ends and a 3/8" thick x 2.5" tall plate between the two leading lift bocks. I had the exact same damage in the rear, but mine was worse and compounded by rust. The way mine was lifted was with a block under the crossmember mount and an equal block under the two mount reinforcement plate bolts. I replaced the plate and the two hole block with a welded sheetmetal box that surrounded the crossmember bushing and tapered down to the two bolts in the front. That helped a lot. I still had problems with all the rear crossmember mounting points captured nuts cracking out of the body. I'd weld the nuts to big washers and then weld the washers to the body to fix those. The individual block lifts increase the leverage the suspension componants have on the body. Add in the abuse of offroading and the body will fail. Tie the lift blocks together with solid brace material and add in diagonal bracing bracing where you can to keep suspension parts from moving forward to back. I would take pictures to show you what I'm talking about but I'm 2,500 miles away from the box of lift parts saved from that car before I junked it.

I had a friend do that and he paid $100 for a new sprocket from the dealer because he needed the car running that weekend. The sprokets are fragile and the bolts holding them to the cam are usually brutally tight.

I'm assuming this is a GL-10 turbo model? You can squeeze more power out of the turbo engine, but the results aren't that great and the reliability goes down the toilet. It's a 2 valve per cylinder engine with poor flowing heads that like to crack or blow headgaskets or overheat so if you try pushing it hard it will likely fail. Some things you can do are the xt-4 spider intake manifold that's set up like an EJ one and an intercooler from an EJ where the spare tire goes. Search for posts by WJM on cranking them up. The most important think to keep on top of is the cooling system. Replace all the rubber hoses, including the ones to the turbo and make sure the radiator is in good shape. Pretty much if you overheat it once it's done.

Use the spring clip retainer axles. They just push in from the outside and the clip expands once it clears the splined portion of the bore to keep the axle from coming back out. You can use the 90-94 legacy stubs to run earlier CV's or use 95+ stubs with integrated CV cups. I've broken a few of the bolt in stubs with a stock clutch type LSD, they are definitely a weak point. Being hollow and having a rollpin hole drilled through doesn't do much for strength.

Why is there a flat section with no teeth? Shouldn't there be teeth all the way round?

No, you will break or chip the cam pulleys. Take the valve cover off, there's a spot on each cam you can grab it with a wrench, I think a 1 1/16 fits? It's been a while.

There is a tool that percolates the gasses from the top of the radiator through a blue fluid. If it turns bright green, the cooling system is contaminated with combustion gasses. That's the first step in confirming your headgaskets are gone.

Except for the fact that you have to remove and split a subaru transmission to change the speedo gear. 95 and newer are all electronic speedo's for the most part. The impreza may have stayed cable for another year or two after that.

Turnpike auto parts? Used to be Tuttles, now run by the Pelletiers. You should have stopped for dinner at Pizza Haven Too, really good thincrust pizza. I pretty much live in New Ipswich, our land abuts the New Ipswich town line. I drove down to CT once for a transmission, you made the opposite pilgrimage.

That's not correct either... It was a 1.6L diesel 4cyl leaned over at a 50 degree angle. The angle didn't make them smoke, the fact it was a 48-52hp diesel in a 4000lb vehicle so it had to be floored all the time made them smoke. The 1.9L's were canadian or european, the US didn't get a 1.9L diesel until the TDI came out. There were 1.6 Turbo Diesel (TD) engines in Jetta's and some Golf's starting in the mid 80's. These are indirect injection engines (IDI) and are run by a fully mechanical injection pump. The later Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI) engines have a computer running the injection pump. They started in the mid 90's. I'm personally a fan of the TD's. The mechanical injection pump is easy to modify and with some washers stacked in where springs were on the governor assembly, the max power screw backed out a bit, the boost pin rotated to the more aggressive ramp, and the spring tension lowered on the boost aneroid it will about double the fuel going in and keep fueling up past redline. It's meant to rev to 5k rpms and the turbos on them are sized big enough you can turn up the boost pressure without running out of it's efficiency range. It goes from being pokey do downright fun to drive.

My solution was to use one of those embossed tape things to print out sticky back labels for the new speed positions. I'd get it stabilized at a speed on the GPS and stick the label on where the speedo needle was pointing. They weren't much use after dark, but they gave a good reference to get used to. Mine read about 20% low.

Are you sure it's the oil light and not the a/t trans oil temp light?

You may have issues fitting it under the hood, even leaned way over like in a vanagon. It's pretty tall from the crank centerline to the top of the valvecover. The 1.6d's are pretty gutless too. You'd also need to make a custom oil pan and pickup to clear the front crossmember. A friend of mine did a 1.9td swap into his vanagon. I'm trying to convince him to turn up the boost and injector pump but he's hung up on this reliability thing. The 1.6td that I helped swap into a Rabbit and "adjusted" downright hauled. You have to put in an EGT gauge and watch it if you turn up the pump but damn is it fun!

The clutch switch input is more important to the ECU to prevent stalling when coasting up to a stop. It cuts all fuel injection when coasting, the clutch switch warns it to start fueling the engine again because you're about to de-couple it from the wheels. I don't think I ever hooked up the neutral switch on the transmission because some of my d/r's were from carbed cars and others were from EFI so it was a crapshoot if it would have the switch or not. I went though a lot of transmissions.

It also wouldn't hurt to check the fusable links, which are wire loops in a 3"x1" box attached to the coolant overflow bottle under the hood. If they crack or the contacts get corroded it can cause issues like this. Wiggle them around so the contacts get moved to clean any corrosion off and make sure the wires aren't cracked inside their cloth coverings. The connector shown above in the picture of the ignition switch can get burned. It's under the dash partway down the steering column. Pull it apart and see if any of the pins look scorched.