WoodsWagon

You can turbo a non-turbo subaru but you need to be handy with tools and fabrication. Instead of swapping the crossmember people build an up pipe that bolts to the collector where the cat used to and a down pipe that runs pretty much parallel to it to go back down around the axle. Higher boost than 6psi is possible, but you need to familiarize yourself with water/meth injection. There's a lot involved in swapping a turbo onto a car, but it's possible if you can fabricate parts on your own and understand how the system is meant to work. I did a honda civic in a week with $125 using a junkyard Saab turbo.

Did you break the smaller bolt that goes into the caliper or the bigger bolt that holds the caliper bracket to the knuckle? If it's the big bolt that holds the bracket, then it goes through a clearance hole in the knuckle and threads into the caliper bracket. If you snapped it off, you should be able to pull the caliper and rotor off at the same time and then pull the bracket off the rotor once it's off the hub. Then heat the hell out of the stub of the bolt sticking out with the bracket held in a vice, then use vice-grips to twist out the broken bolt. If that doesn't work, get a replacement caliper bracket.

Did he remove the oil pump and tighten the backing plate screws yet? When the screws loosen up, then a gap opens between the pump gears and the case, letting oil bypass the pump. I've seen this happen on 3 pumps. Use loctite on the screws.

I made stickers for each speed and stuck them on to match. Ghetto but it worked.

WRX's use the same intake scoop, but it goes to the fenderwell snorkus that MAF cars use.

You will most likely have torque bind now when you drive in a circle after you fix your axle. The only way to fix it will be to replace the center diff. It locked up and drove fine 65 the whole way home because the viscous coupler over heated so bad the plates inside it warped to the point they jammed together. They don't un-warp after that.

They might be a little wide and rub on the spring seats of the front struts. 215/70r16's fit and they're 3/4" bigger diameter than the 235/60's are. The tread comes close to the spring seat though.

You could get an AWD transmission and lock it into FWD using the "subaspool" sold by these guys: http://www.subarugears.com/index_files/Products.html It replaces the center diff.

You can run 27" tires as it is right now. I've got a friend running 215/70r16's which are 28" diameter on his WRX with Outback struts in it and they lightly rubbed on the rear edge of the rocker before we tapped it a bit with a hammer.

That's where I would start. If you ignored a front CV until it broke, the car will roll in park because the transmission is no longer connected to the front wheels. You will also get a pause in acceleration because the AWD system redirects power to the rear wheels when it sees the front wheels are not moving the car. You're probably running RWD right now, but you won't be for long before the rear transfer clutch pack smokes. If you put the FWD fuse in (rear corner of the passenger side of the engine bay, use any size fuse), I bet it won't move at all. To see if it's an axle or something in the front diff, chock the wheels, put the parking brake full on, put it in drive at idle, and look under the hood to see which axle is spinning but isn't turning a wheel. That's the one you need to replace.

It's safe if you do it right. The easiest way is to drill the wheels. Now, you want wheels that are the same thickness and flat the whole way around the mounting surface, unlike the wheels shown above that have raised stamped metal areas where the new holes need to be. Then, take a spare front hub, unbolt the rotor off it, and punch out 2 studs opposite of each other. Bolt the hub to your 6 lug wheel, and use a transfer punch the right size to dimple the surface of of the wheel where the hole needs to be. Drill the holes out using increasing sized bits. Then use a tapered stone in a die grinder or a countersink bit to put a taper in the outside face of the holes in the wheel for the lugnut to push on. If you have a hub you don't care about, you can use it as a drill guide with the final size bit to make the center mark for drilling instead of a transfer punch. I drove like a pissed off teenager, heck I was one. Held 80mph through corners marked with warning signs for 40 in 50mph zones. Averaged 90mph from northern VT to southern VT on I91. Rally'd the hell out of the car on all the dirt roads around here and offroaded it to destruction in the woods. Oh yeah, and commuted 70 miles a day for 3 years. Never had a lick of trouble with the wheels. Be prepared to have trouble with chain stores installing tires on your drilled wheels or tires other than the original size. It's best to bring the wheels in unmounted rather than on the car. Independent shops usually won't care either way, but it's best to have the least questions asked with a chain store. Here's a fuzzy pic of my redrilled mitsubishi mighy max/dodge ram D50 15" wheels: If you use the plain steel subaru nuts you can use the earlier hub caps on them too to make them look like they were meant to be that way:

I would check for play in the u-joint where the rear driveshaft goes into the back of the transmission. I had a friend that ignored a vibration and other noises until the u-joint wore through the yoke, then the driveshaft whipped around and wiped out the exhaust heat shield, O2 sensor, and punched the shifter assembly through the center console and kinked the shift cable while it was at it pulling it into neutral. This was in a 2000 forester. You will probably have to take off the heat shield that goes between the exhaust and the body to get your hand in to check the joint, but I wouldn't ignore the possibility.

In most transmissions the fluid goes from the pump to the torque converter, out through the cooler, and then back in to lubricate the bearings, then drains to the pan through the bearings. The cooler circuit and tc run at the lubrication circuit pressure, so there's usually around 30psi in the cooler hoses when it's running. You will have pepto-bismol foam in the radiator if the trans fluid is leaking in. The radiator runs at 15psi, so while the engine is running the trans fluid will pump into the radiator. Once you shut if off though, the oil pressure drops off quick while the radiator holds pressure until it cools, so coolant will pump back into the transmission.

EA82's. One carbed, 2 spfi, and one turbo. Not that they make any power up there, but it is fun to make an engine scream. One of the spfi's would only rev to the high sixes after I bent 3 rods in it in a pond.

I have seen plenty of subaru oil pans with dents or bashed in on the bottom, with no leaks. Sure, it takes a 17mm wrench and 30 extra seconds when doing an oil change, but that's worth it for the rugged simplicity of a drainbolt. Having a valve cantilevered out where rocks and ice can snap it off seems like asking for trouble on any car that sees more than pavement.

Well, on subaru's you leave the rear main alone because they almost never leak, but you do reseal the rear oil separator plate, because they always leak.

With it slipping/clunking but still driving for a while before it completely locked up, I'd check the rear transfer gears. There's a big circlip that holds the viscous coupler pack into the center diff, and this clip sometimes pops out. It then gets run through the rear transfer gears and chips teeth. When the teeth get broken enough, they start skipping and then shatter the remaining teeth. Those chunks get caught between the gears and lock it up. Since you already have the trans out of the car, pull the rear housing cover off. You need the shift yoke off the shift rail, there's a roll pin inside a roll pin that lock it to the rail. Then 8 bolts or so and the rear housing cover comes off. That will let you get at the transfer gears and the center diff. They just drop out of the back of the transmission at that point. The rear transfer housing is kind of it's own compartment, so metal chunks from there don't tend to circulate into the main transmission. That may explain not seeing metal in the oil when you drained it.

A legacy is a safe car to put your kids in when they first get their licenses. The 2.2l is pretty much bullet proof so even if your kids abuse it, it will get them home. Water pump and idler pulleys are a maintenance job. It should have been done when "cam seals and various belts in June 2009" were replaced, and it probably wasn't. That means those parts went 50k more then they were designed to. If the body isn't rusty, definitely fix it and have it for your kids to use. Put good liability-only insurance on it. When they back into a post/get into a fender bender (and they will), then you're not loosing a lot of money. Any older car will need occasional work, and all the work you had done on it should have been cheap. If it wasn't, and since the shop you go to is quoting $700 for a water pump, I suspect is wasn't, then you need to find another shop that charges reasonable rates. 150k miles is nothing for any car these days, even a Kia. Any shop that says a car is just about done at 150k is not in touch with reality. I just bought a 96 legacy with 285k on the odometer, and the guy I bought it from said the speedometer and odometer haven't worked for the last 2 years. He took it from Canada to Mexico and from California to Iowa and all points in between, so you know it has way over 300k on it by now. It still runs and drives great.

The valves float at 8100-8200 and it won't rev any higher. Same result on 4 different engines, so that gives you a pretty good idea of what the stock valve springs are capable of.

U-joints seizing in the rear driveshaft can do the same thing, and the driveshaft is spinning if your in 4wd or not. Front CV's can do that, and I've had one start seizing up on me and it shook the steering wheel like a wheel was coming off. I packed it full of wheel bearing grease and duct taped a bread bag around it and it made it 200 miles home.

If you only did one drain and refill, there's still a bunch of water in the oil. I'd also be concerned about how much mud got in too, you might want to drop the pan and have the filter screen cleaned off.

4eat's are a FWD transmission with a clutchpack sending power to the rear. With the engine off, there's no hydraulic pressure being generated to apply the rear clutch pack, so they can slip. This is why people get away with towing autos with the rear wheels on the ground. It causes extra wear to the transfer clutch pack, but it won't kill anything in a short tow. If you tow with the front wheels on the ground, you're spinning the planetary gear sets in the transmission with no lubrication. That will end badly. Manuals have a limited slip center diff, so if you try towing it with a set of wheels on the ground, it will fight the wheels turning against the ones that aren't. That fight generates heat, and it will destroy the center diff. Usually the disks in the viscous coupler get so warped by the heat that they jam against each other, locking it into a 4x4 instead of AWD.

Having the CTS unplugged will stop it from doing cold start enrichment. Try splashing some gas on the air filter before starting it. Re-check the timing belt, especially the crank. There's a hash mark on one of the reluctor teeth that the crank sensor reads, that's the one that needs to be aligned with the mark on the crank sensor mounting boss.

The shift cable may have seized up. If you force it, it will shear. The cable is under the car and runs down the passenger side of the transmission.

The connector and wiring about 6" back from the coolant temp sensor are known to corrode. This will cause the ECM to get a bad reading from the coolant temp sensor. If you shave off the insulation from the wire, the copper should be bright and shiny, not dull and green. The corrosion causes higher resistance in the circuit, which makes the temp sensor signal seem colder than it actually is.