WoodsWagon

I'm not seeing a lot of real numbers when it comes to the franken motor. It's a cheap hack to start with, so people that do it are unlikely to pay for dyno time to confirm it. There's also the phase 2 frankenmotor which adds to the confusion. Thats a phase 2 SOHC EJ22 head on a SOHC EJ25 block, not a phase one small valve cover ej22 head on a DOHC ej25d block. Add in stuff like compound performance estimates, like the CAI adds 5hp and the borla header adds 5hp and the lightweight pulley adds 5hp and the crawford sticker on the hood adds 5hp and next thing you know it's a STi killa. Color me dubious. Phase one EJ22 heads flow less than ej25d DOHC heads. Everyone agrees on that. You can try to make up for it by buying delta cam regrinds for the small heads. Some argue the savings of only having to buy 2 reground cams instead of 4 make it worth running the small heads. If you're going to tear down a motor, the price of having 2 extra cams ground for an even larger increase in performance rather than just matching the DOHC performace seems like a small cost. The compression increase will provide some performance increase, but it's not a game-changer. On V8's it's usually 10hp for every point higher, so divide that estimate in half for a 4cyl. It also requires the use of premium fuel all the time, so add 20 cents a gallon extra times however many gallons of fuel burned over the life of the engine and you could have paid for those extra cams to be ground with that money. The franken motor has it's place. It has a cool name, that counts for a lot. It fits between ea81 frame rails, and fits better in beetles and busses. But if you have a car where you can plug a whole EJ25d in without dicking with anything else, there's no reason not to. Remember that a lot of the cars the frankenmotor is going into are lighter than the subarus equipped with EJ25d's to start with, so it feels sportier than a stock one just because of that. Tricks the ol' butt dyno. Another thing to think about: an EJ22t, which uses the same small SOHC heads, with a turbo, makes the same power as a stock EJ25d. Now take the turbo away and put those heads on the EJ25d, what do you think will happen?

EJ22t out of a 90-94 legacy turbo is the best fit for a brat. Phase 1 sohc heads, so it fits in between the brat frame rails. Use the AWD 5mt that comes with it, or use any other 5mt AWD you can find with the matching first gen legacy rear diff to put in the brat. You need XT6 rear hubs and brakes for the 5lug and rear disk swap for the brat. Back down the preload on the rear torsion bar to level it. The axles/knuckles/struts combos are covered pretty good on here for the front. I would recommend using a WRX wiring harness and computer to run the EJ22t. It's the cheapest well supported standalone tuning system you can get, and available in a junkyard near you. You will need to swap out the timing belt crank sprocket to match reluctor teeth to what the ECU expects and check to see if the cam trigger is the same. A tuner can shut off the evap and rear o2 sensor options in the ECU. A franken motor will not "rip every gear out of a FWD trans" The d/r 5spd is arguably the same strength as the phase 1 AWD tranies were. It will however rip the steering wheel out of your hands if one side catches more traction than the other, go sideways instead of forwards if you try to take off quick at a light in the rain, and run through tires pretty quick. AWD makes the power much more manageable.

Yes, I retrofitted a electronic speedo from a 98 Forester cluster into a 92 Legacy cluster. VSS threads right into the transmission no problem. Take the cable out, pull out the rubber washer/seal doohicky if it didn't stay with the cable, and put in the VSS. The twisted pair of wires go straight from the VSS to the electronic speedo head. The speedo head has a + and - connections for the VSS. Then you have to make a jumper to the VSS output from the speedo head to the computer, the trace is already there for the reed switch in the cable head. You need ground, key-on power, and constant power. All those are available on different parts of the cluster, so you just have to run jumper wires here and there and tuck them under screws. Now with a 97 impreza, you may be able to direct swap a 98 or 99 or 00 or 01 cluster in, depending on what year they switched over. You would need to check the pinouts, and you would have to run the pair of wires to the VSS, but that would be the easiest way. I would look at wiring diagrams for both years and make sure the same wires are coming in on the same pins in the same connectors. You might be lucky and it's nearly plug and play. With a first gen legacy, there is no newer cluster that fits the same hole in the dash, so I had to get creative with the air body saw, files, and hot glue to make it fit.

Headgaskets were fine on those. There is a problem with an oil filter screen on the banjo bolt that feeds the turbo or the variable cam timing actuator, forget which, but it would fall out of position and block off oil to the turbo. The fix was to remove the screen. Do a search on that. Banjo screen or something should pull it up.

Isn't the automatic transmission tunnel the most spacious of the EA81 bodies? That should make the mandatory d/r 5mt swap easier.

No, the lower end is not weak, and all the parts that make up the lower end is exactly what you're asking about to put into your 2.2l. The blocks don't fail, it's the spinning parts that come apart. I'll use my mom's outback as an example, because I screwed up with it. It was an insurance auction car, and had been totaled because of an engine fire. The harness was burned on the passenger side, and the hood insulation was burned in a spot where the hood was already up when the fire happened, not over where the fire was concentrated on the engine had the hood been closed. So we replace the engine harness and intake duct, and it fires up. Well, you could hear it breath through the radiator the headgaskets were so blown. It also had pretty bad piston slap, but being told it's normal when cold, and not wanting to warm up an engine with no headgaskets, I ignored it. I had the heads milled, did the gaskets, and put the car back together. After changing the ATF a bunch of times to get the torque bind to go away, we put it back on the road. The piston slap has been awful for the last 60k miles. Tak Tak Tak Tak, it sounds like a diesel. But it runs good and we've taken it cross country and back without incident. Seeing as the previous owners resorted to ARSON to get it totalled rather than fixing the headgaskets, and it has brutal piston slap, I guarantee they buried the temp gauge in the red until it seized multiple times. With the tranny fluid burnt and the radiator burst, the coolant left in it had to be molten. Yet it's made it 60k beyond that without a problem, and I didn't touch the bottom end. I should have of course. It would have been easy to put fresh pistons in it then, but I was in a rush since her car had just been hit and demolished. The EJ25 is not weak. It's not a POS, or a ticking time bomb. It was issued with crappy factory head gaskets. I've seen a 98 forester with 187k on it with the origional head gaskets, and an outback with 125k with the origional headgaskets, both without overheating problems. If I had kept those, I would have put new MLS headgaskets in them just to head off the problem. But since I was horsetrading them, I let them be. So it is possible to find good EJ25's in junkyards. Look at the coolant overflow bottle. If it's filled inside with a layer of black goo, the headgaskets have let go. If it's clean or only lightly skuzzy, it's a good donor. Pick up the whole motor, do the headgaskets, water pump, timing belt and idlers, and reseal the rear oil seperator plate, and drop it in place of the EJ22. It will be just as reliable, and plenty of power. The frankenmotor is really only for EA81 body cars where you can't fit the DOHC heads between the frame rails. They flow better than the EJ22 heads, and the increase in compression ratio doesn't make for that big of a difference in power anyway.

You have to do a bit of wiring to make it work, plus swap in the pedal box, rear diff, driveshaft, center console shifter stuff, tranny crossmember, ect. It's a fair bit of work, and not a one day project. If you're good and you've done one before, and everything goes perfect, it could be a long weekend job. But if the car is a rusty piece of hell to start with, it can take a lot longer. Simplest would be to chuck another auto trans in. It's rare that they go.

Just so you didn't miss this in your angry reading; it's the fastest way to get the car back in good running condition. Since you already have the motor out, go pull a carbed shortblock, not a single point fuel injected, they're 9.5:1 compression and won't work with a turbo. Chuck in the carbed shorblock, put your heads on it, and you should have the car going by the end of the weekend. You'll notice that I didn't say there's anything bad about abusing cars, it's a lot of fun actually. But you can't do it to the only car you depend on to get to work when your already in debt.

Go to the junkyard and grab the shortblock out of a carbed EA82 because it's lower compression ratio like the turbo, and unlikely to have been abused like a turbo motor. Put your heads on that block, then hook the turbo wastegate actuator directly to the output of the turbo so it can't boost above wastegate spring pressure. Then stop beating the bag out of the only car you depend on to get to work. That 6k should be your priority. I'm assuming that was lawyers fees that kept you out of jail? Consider that the price of your freedom, so dedicate your freedom to paying that off as fast as possible. Work weekends, side jobs, ect whatever you can grab. The sooner you get out of debt, the faster you can get back to abusing cars.

If you want reliable power, just put an EJ25d in with the new multilayer steel headgaskets. They're fine engines until people overheat the crap out of them a bunch of times after the headgaskets blow.

I fixed my friends turbo wagon 4eat by doing a 5mt swap. Same thing, reverse worked one day, gone the next. It would work just enough to creep out of a parking space when the transmission was stone cold, but as soon as it was warm it was just another neutral.

Yeah, that sounds like a completely gone rod bearing. Hold it at 6k rpms for a couple minutes and you'll know exactly which one it is going by which rod makes an appearance out the top of the block. Here's hoping the flexplate/flywheel bolts weren't tight and that's whats rattling, but they usually have a different sound to them.

So you want to use the crank and rods from an EJ25d in an EJ22e block? I think you end up with a 2.35l engine or something, and it needs custom pistons. Just use the whole EJ25 shortblock and put the EJ22 heads on it. There's nothing to be gained by stroking an EJ22.

The trailing arm bracket on the forester is the same as an Outback one, so you could pull that off the same car. I would honestly chuck the rear swaybar. The added articulation offroad more than makes up for the slight loss in flat cornering on road. The front swaybar is worth keeping if you do mostly on-road driving. There aren't longer endlinks on outbacks/foresters because the swaybar is attached to the engine crossmember. The whole crossmember is dropped down, so the swaybar moves down with it. That said, don't worry about the sway bar. They work fine with the extra height, and just flex the endlink bushings a bit more. From the factory, subaru put spacers between all the crossmembers and the body to match the extra height of the struts, so all the axles and balljoints are at the same angle. While that's nice, it also defeats the ground clearance that just a strut lift gives you. I haven't had any problems with ball joints or CV's on any of the cars I've Outback strut lifted, and some of them have 50+ thousand miles on them with the lift in.

I'm annoyed to find that my post was deleted along with the garbage that spliff was spewing, seeing as I gave some good information. Baby getting chucked with the bathwater ect. So I'll repeat it: The dowel pins are not there to stop the engine and transmission from shifting once it's all put together. The static friction between the surfaces of the bellhousing halfs where they're clamped together by the bolts is what does that. What the dowel pins do is align the crankshaft and the transmission input shaft so they are spinning on the same centerline. If that alignment isn't set by the dowel pins, then the crank bearings and transmission input bearings are running under a side load all the time. They aren't built for that, and the splash lubricated transmission bearings will fail first. While running without dowel pins will work at first, the transmission will soon begin to howl/whirr/growl while being driven and when in neutral with you foot off the clutch. If you want to build an adapter plate on the cheap, go to a local tech college and talk to the machining department. They're often willing to do small simple projects like that, and punching 10 holes in the right place in a 1/2 plate is easy with a milling machine. I have a printout of the coordinates and sizes of the holes needed from when I did my adapter plate. Take it home and cut out the plate to match the bellhousings and you have your precise adapter plate for cheap.

90-91 had cone shaped springs, 92+ have normal ones. I've lifted first gen legacys using just the struts, and using outback springs too. The effect was exactly the same. WRX springs are significantly shorter than the legacy springs, and were loose on the strut at full extension, so I used some 1st gen legacy wagon springs I had around on that one. If his car has air suspension, he needs new strut caps, springs, bumpstops, and strut boots along with the struts. Grabbing a full set out of the junkyard gets him all that at the same time for cheap money. Front struts seem to hold up really well, the rears are mostly blown. Even the replacement rear KYB gr2's are easy to blow. If he grabs the struts from a u-pull-it yard, they should be dirt cheap and he can look around for ones that aren't leaking.

Abs vs non Abs doesn't matter. On the older cars there's a bracket for the ABS wire on the front struts. 98 and older that bracket is held on by one of the 2 big bolts that holds the strut to the knuckle. 99 and newer the bracket is replaced by a tab welded to the strut. You most likely already have the separate brackets, so they will go on the new struts just fine. If not, easy to find the brackets in a junkyard. Struts need to be from a Legacy Outback 96-99. Not a Impreza Outback Sport, or a 95 Legacy Outback. Use the springs meant for your car, or ones from a 95-99 legacy wagon, they're all the same. What's different is the bolt pattern of the rear strut caps. You can redrill your strut towers to fit the newer style caps in (not recommended but I've done it), or use old style strut caps on the new struts. This often requires an extra washer ground to fit that goes on under the nut that holds the strut into the strut cap. If the threads don't go far enough down the strut shaft, the nut bottoms out before it clamps the strut cap to the strut, so you get clunking noises from the back. 215/75r15's are about as big as you can go without needing to trim the body. Swapping the body brackets that the rear trailing arms attach to under the back seat to Legacy Outback or Forester ones will help re-center the rear wheels in the wheel wells, but it's not required. Honestly, with your car having air suspension, I'd go to a junkyard and grab a full set of complete strut/spring assemblies out of an Outback. The fronts will bolt right in and you only need to swap strut caps on in the rear. That leaves you with more money for buying bigger tires.

Is there a reason why you need to run the EJ18 block? Class restrictions for racing? An EJ18 block bored out and resleeved would be the same thing as an EJ22 block. Bore it out some more and put a stroker crank in it, and you have a 2.5l block. There's really no reason to put any money into an EJ18 when there's better factory options out there. Plus they bolt right in.

Use a pitch stopper bracket from a phase 1 (pre 99) EJ 5mt. It bolts to the top of the d/r EA transmission just fine. You will need a shorter pitch stopper rod if you're stock height, if you have a 3" crossmember drop the EJ pitch stopper will work too.

If you plow through deep damp snow, you can get enough packed into the belt to float it on the pulleys. If you're lucky like me, it happens in front of a drunk white trash lady's house who spends her time screaming threats at you from her porch while you rehang the belt. If you carry a pre-compressed t-belt tensioner with a grenade pin holding it compressed, getting the belt back in line and set is pretty easy. I never had a problem with sticks, stones, or mud, just deep snow.

I don't know if the 84's have a spot for it, but a clutch switch used for cruise control that replaces the upper pedal stop works well as a neutral switch. I used to have the stalling coasting up to lights issue, and hooked that up as my neutral switch and it fixed it.

You probably dented the pan around every bolt when you overtorqued it with the cork gasket. That's probably also why the RTV didn't work. Use a ball peen hammer and a block of wood on the backside to flatten each of the dimples around the bolt holes back out.

Oddly our 98 Outback defy's that. Best mileage it's ever gotten was 29.7mpg doing 80-85 across Nebraska in the summer with the windows down, 3 people and all their gear in it. As we traveled west from New England, the speed limits increase on the interstates. The faster we went, the better the mpg's got. The car also got worse mpg's with the windows shut and the a/c on while doing 75 vs windows open and a/c off at the same speed. So pretty much every adage I've heard about keeping the speed down and the windows shut on the highway was found to not apply to the wagon. I will admit the mpg's dropped off when doing 110+ for stretches in Wyoming. Anyway, if you use a cable clutch trans in a hydro clutch car, you need to move the pivot ball to the other position in the bellhousing and use the hydro release fork. Other than that it's a direct swap.

I can tell you for certain that the DOHC heads are much wider than the phase1 SOHC heads that were on 90-99 2.2l's. The phase2 99+ SOHC heads are much bulkier, so that may be what you're thinking of. Keep it simple, swap the 90 legacy engine and trans in and drive it. I think you'll be suprised at how well it does, and if you need more power later, you can use a 2.5l block with the early 2.2 heads to get a bit more. If you found a 90-94 2.2l turbo legacy, that has the same phase1 SOHC heads that fit in the early bodies. You will have to notch and weld the crossmember to fit the up-pipe.

I don't think an extra 3/4" height will inconvenience her too much.