WoodsWagon

The headlight switch has 3 positions. Low beams, high beams, and a springloaded flash high beams position. What does it do in the springloaded position?

Probably a dirty idle air control solenoid. You can try spraying carb cleaner in to clean it, pull off the 1" black rubber hose that goes to the IAC which is on the passenger side of the throttle body and hose the valve inside down. You may have to take the whole valve off the intake to clean it properly. Headlights could be the switch or the relay, which I think is under the dash on those. Do the high beams work when you pull the switch into the "flash to pass" position?

A HLA is a Hydraulic Lash Adjuster, it's the lifter that ticks in the head. The "Micky Mouse" gasket is so named because it's outline is similar to the Disney character's profile.

You can use the VSS out of an auto. The earlier manual VSS's had a longer wiring pigtail that went up to the connector by the bellhousing. Autos the bellhousing connector plugged directly onto the sensor. Later subaru's used a 6" harness with connectors on both ends so that the same sensor was used auto or manual. If you pull the sensor from an auto car, nip the connector with enough wire pigtail to splice to. Then cut the wires off your old 5spd VSS and make your own short connector harness. Did this on my manual 96 legacy using a vss out of a 99 Forester auto. Bought the car for $500 because among other things the speedo didn't work and the check engine light was on. Replaced the VSS, adjusted the TPS, and it's code free and the speedo works again.

It's also really easy to replace the VSS. It just threads into the passenger side of the transmission about halfway back.

Leave the FWD fuse out. Your issue is that the rear drive doesn't get engaged, so putting the FWD fuse in will do absolutely nothing. Either just drive the car and fix it when you have money, or have a competent mechanic take apart the rear transfer housing and figure out why it isn't getting or holding hydraulic pressure. Go back to your discount parts swappers and have them take another look at it. They had it apart once to put the solenoid and clutch pack in, they can have it apart again to look for hydraulic leaks.

If he's parting a legacy SS, wouldn't he have the stubs to go with the diff?

The gearset might still be OK, but the synchro blocking ring and the shift collar look like someone tried to beat them together with a sledgehammer.

Try and keep all your questions in your original 94 turbo thread rather than starting new threads for each question. It's worth it to fix the EJ22t, it's a much stronger block, has oil squirters for the pistons, and I think the valves are different vs the non turbo. Pull the head that has no compression (you can do it with the engine in the car if you have to) and see if it's a burned exhaust valve. A new valve and fuel injector should fix it if that's the cause.

They probably tried pulling it for a reason, that probably being the input shaft seal leaking. It's not hard to split the case as long as you keep track of how everything lines up so you can get it back together. The hardest part is getting the shift yoke off the shifter shaft depending on how rusted it is.

Is it an auto trans car? The flexplates are known to crack around the hub of the crank and make noise just like a rod bearing. Pull the rubber inspection plug out of the bellhousing, it's on the top rear of the engine to the passenger side of the throttle body. If the noise is a lot louder coming out of there, that may be your problem. The timing belt tensioner, as you mentioned, can make a similar noise too. I've had SOHC's come in still running with the cogged tooth idler gone, or with the bearings missing out of it and the idler running metal on metal, so the timing belt can be really loose and not jump time depending on your luck. You can take off the drivers side timing belt cover and look in to see if the belt is flapping under the idler. Draining the oil and looking for shiny metal glitter is a good test to do too.

I can get a 2.2l tested, pulled and on a pallet with a warranty for $300 from the junkyards around me. The 2.2's go for fricken ever, so if it's in the low to mid 100k's it's got loads of life left in it. Yours probably does too, but you need to reassemble it and drive it rather than calling it quits just because it has a little wear in it. I rebuilt a 2.2l once. I put it in the car, drove it around town for a week took it cross country. The hood latch cable broke early in the trip, so I couldn't check or top off the oil. By the time I got to Wyoming, it was under 2qts of seriously black nasty oil. The rings went from fresh, to partially seated, to oil starved in one trip. It burned oil from there out. I replaced it with a 2.2 that I got out of a 92 Postal legacy for free because they had swapped it due to a cracked flexplate sounding like rod knock. That engine had about a billion stop and go miles (rural mail delivery 6 days a week for 16 years) and runs great. Doesn't burn oil, has decent power and is wicked reliable. I even had the temp gauge pegged a few times, once overheated so bad it was down to about 1/2 power, and it still runs like a champ. Hard snow wheeling with only 1 fan on an undersized radiator will do that. With the 2.2l's, the car really falls apart around the engine unless it's seriously neglected. So the chance of getting a good one from a junkyard is a good gamble. They aren't hard to swap so if you do get a bum one, it's easy to do the warranty claim. Last 2.5l to 2.2l swap I helped with was done in a gravel driveway with a borrowed engine lift and hand tools in a weekend.

Rear diffs rarely break if you aren't being stupid with them. I'd be much more suspect of the U-joints in the rear driveshaft. It's pretty easy to unbolt the middle section of driveshaft from the diff and the carrier bearing. If the noise goes away when you drive it, you know that's your problem. You can also check the joints while it's out.

Check to make sure the PCV hoses are all clear and put a new Subaru PCV valve on. Especially check the 1" dia hose that comes up from the oil separator on the back of the block, it can get really clogged with carbon crusties. When the hoses get restricted by deposits, the air flowing through them has to travel faster. That keeps the oil droplets in suspension instead of letting them condense and drain back to the crankcase, so they get sucked into the intake manifold.

The wear honestly doesn't sound that bad. You will loose power and mpg if the lifters are collapsed because the valves aren't opening as long or as far as they should be. Now that you have the lifters cleaned out, put the motor back together and run it. Put on a new oil filter and toss a quart of dex/merc ATF into the engine oil. After a few days of driving, change the oil and filter. The ATF has a lot of detergents in it so it does a great job of cleaning oil sludge out of the engine. The 2.2's aren't worth rebuilding, there's so many good condition ones in junkyards that it's much easier to swap.

I can tell you subaru and honda bolts are a lot higher quality than Toyota bolts. If you crank too hard on a subaru or honda bolt it will usually strip the threads of what it's going into. Toyota bolts shear if you put just a little extra torque on them. Working on a rusty Toyota is a mess of sheared bolts.

The 95's have the normal OBDii interface, the problem with them is they reset the monitors when shut off, so they can't be used for testing emissions compliance. That's why state inspections that use a plug in to check for codes have exemptions for 95-96 subarus.

I've had bad luck with rear KYB-Gr2's on legacys. They seem to blow out within a year on the admittedly bad roads around here. The fronts seem to hold up fine.

While you have your scan tool hooked up, check to see what the coolant temp sensor reading is in the live data stream. If the engine is cold, it should read the same as the intake air temp sensor reading. If the readings are way off, the computer may thing the engine is warm when trying to start it cold and not give it a rich enough mix. Don't use ether in a gas engine or an IDI diesel. I have shattered a piston before using ether. Use propane or WD40 or carb cleaner, not ether. I'd be suspect of the fuel pump too, but that should cause issues under load not just starting problems.

If you ground the appropriate pin on the ECU it knows it's a manual trans and will look for the neutral and clutch switch. If you have those hooked up to the right pins on the ECU it will be just the same as a manual car. If you don't hook them up it will set a code but not turn on the Check Engine Light. It will stall if you push the clutch in while coasting. The a/t to m/t swap I did on a 94 Turbo Wagon runs fine and has all the right sensors hooked up to the right spots. It wasn't that hard to wire it up right. The PITA with that job was a leaky speedo cable seal in the new trans which pumped gear oil into the dash. Couldn't replace the seal, so I converted it to a electronic speedo.

Rather than screaming and yelling and getting hauled off by the cops trying to place blame on the dealership, you might want to question the work your cheap shop turned out.

The stub shafts are often loose but it won't cause problems. The differential and gears are supported on bearings, the shafts are only held by the carrier of the diff. A lot of people panic when they do the wiggle check like you did thinking the transmission is about to grenade, but it won't. How much gear oil is leaking around the stub shafts? If it isn't wet, it isn't a concern. A clicking on turns that gets more frequent over time is almost always the CV joints going down.

Gas used to smell nice before they put ethanol in it. Every now and then I run across a real gas station out west and the smell reminds me of all the snowmobiles, dirtbikes, and ATC's of my youth. Ahh, the halcyon days of MBTE.

No, the 2.5l to 2.2l swap is for the DOHC EJ25d's from 96-99. Your 02 2.5l is SOHC, has a different intake bolt pattern, different wiring, different pretty much everything because it's a Phase2 EJ engine. What's wrong with the 2.5 you have in the 02?

I've used ziplock bags to hold gear oil on trucks with seized diff fill plugs. You pack the bags full of oil around the diff carrier and then bolt the cover on. When I've gone into those diffs later, there was no trace of the plastic bags left. My only worry would be the speedometer drive gear. I think it's in with the front diff on the autos. That gear may not be strong enough to "process" the rubber hose if it happens to get caught in it. The ring and pinion will be fine.