WoodsWagon

$3-500 for a used 95 engine, $50 for fluids/filters. $180 for a timing belt kit and water pump if you want to add some reliability. Add in the labor at a shop, and round the whole job to $1000 or so.

Springs are the same 95-99 brighton through outback. The height is all in the strut. When you swap a non-outback to outback struts, you have more ground clearance than the outbacks because you don't have the crossmember drop blocks that Subaru put into the outbacks. You will have higher axle and ball joint angles though, but not enough to worry about. Undo the sway bar links when you put the struts in and it will make it much easier. The sway bar really fights you when you're trying to hyperextend the suspension to slip the strut bolts in. Once it's all together it's fine. Don't put the subtle solutions 1" spacers on top of the outback struts in a non-outback without also putting in the crossmember drop blocks, steering coupler, and other outback spacers. You will overextend the lower ball joints if you do.

Fresh gaskets. Be very careful taking the nuts off the studs that hold it to the heads, the heads like to strip. They can be helicoiled or tapped to a standard thread size, but it's best to be really gentle taking them out.

The u-joints on the steering coupler between the rack and the column above the drivers side axle often get stiff. You can spray them with penetrating oil *NOT WD40* and see if the problem goes away. If it does, you need a new coupler which is $70 at the dealer. Make sure to keep the steering wheel in the same place as you replace the coupler, letting it spin will break the clockspring connector for the airbag, horn, and cruise control. If the shudder is felt in the whole car, do a search for "torque bind".

Go buy a new gen civic and hope the block doesn't crack leaking the coolant down the front, or the water pump pulley bolts shear off and throw the serpentine belt off, or the rear control arms being the wrong lenght and causing excess tire wear, or the wiper motors getting moisture in them, corroding and stop working, or, or, or All cars have problems. The complexity of the machine and the pressure to redesign it every 5-10 years while keeping costs low is going to lead to unforeseen issues. Bumping 3 1/2 year old threads isn't going to help solve anything, esp just to complain about a percieved quality difference, when the market response to Subaru's product has been favorable despite the problems.

No need to swap the hill holder over, just undo the cable when you pull the d/r out of the donor car and leave it there. Get the transmission crossmembers AND the bolts that hold it to the body. Flywheel and bolts Clutch Pedal box and cable shift linkages and console cover with boot Transmission with it's section of wiring harness, cut the plugs off the donor Spedometer cable crossmembers with bolts front section to the carrier bearing of rear driveshaft Don't forget to bring a punch for the front axle roll pins other than that no special tools.

Early Bronco (68-77) frame and running gear with a 302. It was built by a member on here, but I can't remember his username.

The rest of those chunks are stuck in the muffler, give it a shake too. Impact or backfiring in the exhaust can do that too. Reminds me that I need to take the cats out of my truck and shake the pieces out, it retarded the timing to TDC when it set a knock sensor code. I was illegally towing a forester home so I just held it to the boards and kept going. The cat got torched.

There's another style of bracket for that radiator, it's a one piece thing that goes all the way across the top of the radiator and has fingers that grab the plastic end tanks at each end. You could grab one off a junk car and swap it over.

This is a very important question. One coolant temp sensor runs the gauge on the dash, that's the blade connector one. The other runs the computer, that's the 2 pin plastic click together connector one. You may have replaced the wrong one. Holding the throttle 100% open puts the ECU in "clear flooded engine mode" so it shuts off the injectors while you crank the engine if you do that. 02 sensors will not cause no-starts.

Yes, a EJ18 block can have the knock sensor put on it, but the EJ18 harness has no provision for it. So, it's better to use an EJ22 or 25d harness with the knock sensor wiring already integrated. That gives you flexibility on what motor you end up switching to in the future.

When you get it back together and working, the satifsfaction will be worth it. I built a 5spd D/R using a transmission I found dumped in the state forest and one I blew up. We mixed and matched and swapped to get the best parts out of each into one unit, torqued it all to spec with an impact gun, and tossed it back in the car. It made it another 6 months before chunks got caught between the ring gear and the case and blew the bottom of the case apart. That was pretty average longevity for transmissions I was pulling out of junk cars, so I was pleased.

That's great, your motor will run with only the crank and throttle postition sensors plugged in too, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't run better with all those other sensors hooked up too. Knock sensor lets the ECU optimise the timing for whatever grade of gas you put in, and the condition of the motor/carbon buildup and intake air temp. More power/better gas millage, who the hell wants that. If you're going to take the time to strip down a harness, might as well start with one that's the best equipped and most flexible, just incase you want to go to a 2.5 w/ 2.2 heads on it, which certainly needs a knock sensor, at some point down the road.

EJ22, just because the harness has the knock sensor wiring and EJ18's don't have provisions for that.

If you're trying to turn big tires, the biggest displacement motor you can get is what you want. EJ25d with EJ22 dual port heads would be a good combo, but you have to buy premium gas. EJ18's are OK, and an improvement over an EA, but you have to wind them up to get good power out of them. Last one I beat on was a junkyard car, FWD only, took it up the access road to the cellphone tower up the mountain behind the junkyard. Came back without the exhaust, instant .5hp gain! Oil pans are surprisingly malleable.

I use a shallow 6pt 3/8" drive socket and my fancy dancy flex head snapon ratchet. It's a finetooth one with a long handle, so with a breaker bar on the crank bolt and that ratchet, it works pretty well. Just got through that with an auto to manual swap on a friends 2.2turbo. Zilch for access to those with the turbo on there.

P0440 is a general evap code, and is usually set when it can't pull a vacuum on the fuel tank. There's a fuel tank pressure sensor, temp sensor, and 2 solenoids in the system to go with the charcoal canister. Unplugging the pcs will set a different code, something about purge solenoid C circuit failure. It's located under the intake manifold right next to the 1" idle air control hose. It shouldn't be hard to re-route the vacuum hoses and reinstall a charcoal canister.

I've had very good luck with multiple transmission fluid changes fixing the torque bind problem if it goes away with the FWD fuse in. I understand that you can get burs in the clutch basket that cause it to bind and you may need to tear down the transfer housing, but most of the time fresh fluid will restore proper operation. $45 for 3 gallons of DexMerc III and draining and filling a few times is a lot cheaper and easier than pulling the transfer housing. If the AT temp light flashes 16 times when you start the car, and the binding continues with the FWD fuse inserted, then you have to pull the transfer housing and replace the duty C soleniod.

I wouldn't bother tearing anything down, esp to fix a low-level oil leak. If the oil level wasn't low at the time of the overheat, it's not a contributor to the problem so don't waste time trying to fix it. Spend your time trying to find out why the cooling system malfunctioned. Bad aftermarket thermostat? Use a dealer one. Blocked radiator? Collapsed hose? Bad fan relay, fuse, or motor? Turn on the A/C and see if both fans come up to full speed. Do check the auto trans fluid, it takes a severe beating when the engine overheats and it's easy to change to save the transmission from more damage.

I'm pretty sure subaru didn't use that strategy on the older ECU's. I know other manufacturers do, it can be a real downer when you're killing a car off in the woods, but I've never had a subaru do that. 92 ecu's for sure don't, I've had them cooking and while the engine was loosing power, it wasn't because the ECU was cutting back fueling or timing. Had a 97 with a completly blocked lower radiator hose (they left the plastic transportation plug in the thermostat housing when they swapped the salvage engine in). It would understandably overheat, and the ECU never backed off. With the starter just going "click" when she tried to crank it, and the engine stalling on it's own, I'd say she heat seized it. The massive cloud of white smoke had been following her down the freeway for a ways, and she just didn't notice it until she slowed down and it caught up with the car. If you're lucky, the starter was overheated enough not to work, but chances are the pistons were swelled enough to lock in the cylinder bores. That leads to intense scoring of the cylinder walls. A compression test would be a good first check on the engine's condition. Is this an automatic transmission car? White smoke can also be transmission flluid boiling out. Check the trans level (the dipstick by the brake booster) with the engine idling in park. Sniff the fluid to see if it smells like burnt celery, or looks black/grey. It should be bright pink-reddish. In a severe engine overheat, the transmission will overheat too because it depends on it's cooler in the radiator to dump heat. The engine oil being high on the dipstick but showing normal when wiped and checked is normal.

Those tow hooks are surprisingly sturdy, I've used them extensively for pulling out other cars and trucks. You can get a run on them with a chain pulling a truck twice as heavy as the subaru and buried in muck, and they don't flinch. They're well anchored in the body structure. Same goes for the rear ones, I've given them hell, broken multiple tow straps off them, and never had an issue. The tow drivers around here use them, they're a lot more sturdy than hooking to a sheetmetal control arm. There's not a lot of other good spots to put a hook on the front of a subaru. The rust on the cut off tow hooks is a non-issue. My dad's car had them cut, no paint, and the the ends of the stumps are rusty, but it hasn't spread up to the body. That car is rusting out everywhere in the back, even the gas tank has rusted through. Northeast living for you.

http://www.northursalia.com/techdocs/pdf/misc/tow.pdf Subaru of America, Inc. has determined that a number of 1994-95 Impreza and 1995-96 Legacy vehicles may experience air bag deployment after sharp undercarriage contact with curbing, dips, speed bumps, potholes, etc. Investigation revealed that in most cases the portion of the undercarriage that made contact was the front tow-hooks, which constitute the point of lowest ground clearance at the front of the vehicle. Subaru of America has notified the potentially affected vehicle owners that they should contact their dealer, who will remove the front tow hooks at no cost to the vehicle owner. Couldn't edit an old post, but ran across this while looking at other techdoc's on NorthU's website and wanted to add it in to this.

Rear brakes tend to go alot faster than front brakes these days for whatever reason on a lot of cars & trucks. They may be under-spec'ing them for the 30% braking force they normally contribute, but I've done more rear brake jobs than front. The same car equipped with drum brakes goes the lifetime as far as I've run across. Any decent tech will put the brake pad thickness measurment on the RO and give the service advisor a head's up that there's a potential brake upsell. The measurement doesn't need to be wildly precise, the tire tread depth gauge held up next to the pad and eyeballed is good enough. Unfortunately the SA may not feel like telling the customer a real number as they disregard 3/4 of the info techs give them in the first place. A few of them cut and paste their version of the generic service description on top of the tech's description of what actually got done. So the description of the service you paid for on your reciept may have nothing to do with the work that was done and documented on your car by the tech. I know of scumbag tech's that keep a box of various worn out brake pads, so they have a set that's the right size for the car they're upselling to show the customer, so the "show me the pads" may not work. You need to look at the pads on the car, and you can usually see the outer one by looking through the wheel with a pen light, and the inner one with the wheel off through the hole in the caliper.

The first gen legacy's kept much of the same driving feel as the old ones. 95 and newer got a kind of numb feeling, not sure what it is because they use the same parts, but they don't drive the same for whatever reason.

I don't like CV carbs. I'm assuming you're talking about the ones that have a throttle plate and a vacuum diaphragm that controls the slide and needle? They smooth out throttle response, nice for a cruiser bike but not what I'd want on a performance bike. Using a slide carb would be cool, and you could make a manifold so that each carb ran one head. Finding a carb for each head rated for a 450 2 stroke probably wouldn't be too hard.