WoodsWagon

Try spraying a quality penetrating oil on the 2 u-joints in the coupler that connects the rack to the steering column. It's above the drivers side half shaft. If the steering really loosens up soon after spraying the oil on, then you know where the problem is. A seized coupler will feel tight, then Ok, then tight again as you turn the wheel around. I have seen lots of seized couplers. I've never seen a failed rack, and this is on cars with 150-250k miles on them. Pumps can go if someone is an idiot and keeps the wheel held hard over at full lock for extended periods, like when doing donuts in the snow. A failed pump will give consistanly hard steering.

Almost all the axles I did on my EA82 I had to sledgehammer out of the bearings and then use 2 different lengths of cut pipe as spacers to use the axle nut to pull it back in. They were all an interference fit from what I found. Would have been faster to just sawzall the halfshaft off flush with the back of the joint if you were going RWD. Want pictures of my shredded rear transfer gears, busted stub shafts and grenaded differential carriers? These drivetrains aren't built for RWD shenanigans.

Oh really? I'd like to see a dyno chart of a stock EJ18 vs EJ22 where the torque generated by the EJ18 excedes the EJ22 at any corresponding point on the RPM's. I used to use an EA82 with 30" tires and a d/r 5spd, just because the car could be driven didn't meant it couldn't be a lot better. EJ18 would have been 1 step up from that, EJ22 was much better. Even with the EJ22 I still powered out on some hills in the woods. I'd have to get a run at them to be able to keep enough momentum to make it up. But that's a factor of traction being higher than the torque of the motor. With snow wheeling I would commonly have the engine get pulled down from redline to stall by the resistance of plowing through, and that was in 1st 4lo. Starting out with an EJ18 is fine, if you run an EJ22 harness with the knock sensor. Then later you can upgrade to the EJ22, EJ25, or an EJ25 block with EJ22 heads, depending on what your needs are.

The seat heater grids get busted from people kneeling on the seat or people with exceptionally boney buts. If the light on the heater switch lights up on high but not on low, then at least 1 of the grids is still working (usually the one in the chair back). You have to remove the seat from the car, then take the plastic trim off and cut all the hogrings holding the upholstry on. Replace the heater grid, then redo all the hogrings and "assembly is the reverse of removal". Aftermarket heater grids are available and cheaper that the factory ones. Heaters are nice if you have a bad/sore back. Other than that they're pretty pointless.

Piston slap will be a steady tak tak tak when it's running. It may quiet as it heats up, but not go away. My mom's EJ25 has been loudly slapping away for the 50k we've had it. Sounds like a diesel when you start it up. Depending on different oils it may get louder or quieter. Rod bearings will change tone if you rev it up, then snap the throttle shut. As the rpms come back down a rod bearing will make a very distinct back-rattle. Honestly if it is bearings it's not worth replacing them. Just grab a known good shortblock or a EJ22 from a 95 automatic car and drop it in. For the $300 good used EJ22's go for it's cheaper than replacing rod bearings and head gaskets on the EJ25. Sometimes they just spin bearings. Did you fill the filter with oil when you changed it or did you dry start it?

They're decently peppy if you wind the ************ out of them all the time. If you're offroading it you will notice the lack of low end. But heck with enough gearing even the 1.3l samurai's do well off road. If you have a car set up to run an EJ motor, then you can swap to a 2.2 or 2.5 later easily.

Yeah, none of the options we have really are great for a wheeler. Welded, clutch, viscous or open. I had heard some talk of an air locker being available for R180's as they were used in the front of nissan pickups. Not too sure about the details on that. The outback in question isn't really a wheeler, it's a fire road/gravel pit car. The viscous LSD should work fine for that. Oh, and Dfreeman take a look at this I just ran across: http://www.subtle-solutions.com/product_info.php?products_id=107&osCsid=2edcdf8bb437960c218160416cac0204 Kinda pricy but looks like good quality.

While true for areas where you're lifting rear wheels off the ground and crawling on rocks, the viscous LSD will help plenty in mud, snow, and loose dirt. Remember that the center diff on an EJ 5mt is a viscous LSD and it responds plenty fast to keep the power spread to both ends. You can get stuck with 1 wheel up in the air if you're on a serious grade or wedged against something, but the torque transfer of the VC is pretty good. The problem around here is finding a clutch pack LSD, the last RX or GL-10 rusted off the road by the late 90's. Then if you found one you'd have to do mix and match with the CV cups on the rear axles to switch from the male splined plug in axles to the stub shaft and female splined inner CV cups of the older style. Viscous LSD's are what's available, and they are certainly better than the open diff he's got.

The H6 diff is free, it's been sitting in a parts pile for a while. Swapping ring gears across carriers isn't hard, I've done it with the clutch pack LSD's before into a 3.9 housing. Wheeling and dealing to get the right ratio diff is more work than swapping the carrier into the other housing. Free is free, can't get much cheaper or easier than that.

The no power was caused by a failing fuel pump that couldn't make more than 20psi. We replaced the pump with a used one, 32psi at idle and 60+psi with the return hose squeezed shut. It runs much better, but There is still a cyl 3 missfire. Tried swapping coil packs, ignitor, new plugs and wires, spare known good wires, injectors, checked crank sproket reluctor teeth for damage, checked t-belt timing, swapped out MAF. Swapped crank sensors. The O2 sensor could probably do with replacing, it was the one that was downstream from a 2.5 with blown headgaskets for a while. We might switch back to the 2.2ecu that we swapped in for a while before we figured out the fuel pump issue. We've shotgunned pretty much every known-good part we had available, to no luck.

It's a limited slip diff, not a locking. Locking is better but not offered for subarus. There's a bunch of pictures of swapping the internals here: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=66430 Make sure the shims between the bearing side covers stay on the same side and with your 4.44 housing. They set bearing preload and gear alignment. Use the carrier and the ring gear bolts only from the H6 diff, everything else from your open diff. The H6 differential is a 4.10 ratio.

Yeah, don't trust any torque wrench to be accurate after you use it as a breaker bar to loosen something. Buy a 3/4" drive breaker bar and a 3/4" to 1/2" impact adapter. I've never had my set break, and I've broken plenty of Mac, Matco, and SnapOn 1/2" drive breaker bars.

You have to cap the lines that went to the rear struts, the air pressure is controlled by the solenoids at the struts, and if you took those off and left the line hanging, that's why the front went down.

Oh yeah, it'll never be the same again, but you could make it drivable and street legal in a weekend of yanking and hammering. Might make sense just to get it drivable so you aren't in a bind for a car. Then keep an eye out for an acceptable replacement. That way you won't be in a rush and won't be stuck without wheels. Sure, it may hurt pride to ride around in a wreck, but transportation is transportation. The control arm and the strut rod can fold up really bad without trashing the body or crossmember. I've folded up a few offroad, and with a fresh strut rod and a bit of tweaking on the crossmember your good to go again.

The flexable portion (rag joint) in the pictured forester one is a retrofitted coupler put in because the customer complained of rack clunk when going over bumps while turning. It's meant to dampen noise, not add additional flexability into the coupler.

That'll teach you to argue with her! Technically you didn't roll, you just layed it on it's side. Rolling can be much more violent, so you got way lucky on that. I'd suggest taking a "performance" driving course. There's ones offered where you spend a weekend thrashing the ************ out of fwd and rwd cars on obstacle courses and soaped pavement for car control. Can do great things for your reflexes in responding to a skid like that.

When the ujoints started to bind on the PK extended shaft in my EA82 3" crossmember drop lift, I used a spare 98 outback shaft I had around. It fit the splines perfect and is still working great. We go through ujoints all the time in the northeast, the seals don't hold out the salt and rust well enough. You can buy a new outback coupler from the dealership for about $75.

Thats why you do a leakdown test before ripping stuff apart. Compressed air into the cylinder and see where and how much is leaking out. Could have just been some bad carb problems. Did all the rockers move the same distance while you turned it over? Could have a wiped cam. Are all the pistons coming up flush with the top of the deck or are a couple lower than others at TDC? You could have bent rods if you hydrolocked it.

The glass tranny is a crock of ************ as well. Sidestepping the clutch at redline, pounding second while initiating a donut, or any of the other abuses typical immature WRX owners commit is what kills them. One of my friends bought an 02 wrx that's been kicked around the neighborhood for years for $2200 last fall. We dragged it home, replaced the rear ouput gears that had been stripped during a dirt to pavement transition while sideways, and he's been beating on it since. Same 1-5 gearset it came with factory, and it's been running at the 275hp level since 03. It has 165k on it of hard miles.

http://www.bbs.legacycentral.org/ That's where you want to be if you have a turbo legacy. Great cars. The auto will hold the power fine, IF you keep it cool. Add an external transmission oil cooler, and change out the fluid a couple times. You can also move 1 wire/pin on the TCU connector and have the "power" shift map on command by pushing the manual button. front mount intercooler is reccomended, but a top mount will work, just not as well if you're going for power. Snorkus-ectomy and coffee-cup mod for more turbo whistle and slight improvements in performance. 45 degree airbox from a 2.5l legacy can be made to fit and straightens out the air flow path quite a bit. Reuse the velocity stack inside the airbox from the turbo one. Anthing you need to know is covered on legacycentral, they're the best resource for those cars.

Just unplug the connectors from the ECU, it's attached to the bottom of the steering column right above your shins. If it starts and the tach still works, it's fine. The feedback computer did nothing with the ignition as far as I know. It only diddled with the hitachi carb.

There aren't really any bolt on performance parts for the EA82t. Most of what you want to focus on is making sure the cooling system is in top shape. It can be a fun engine, but what you have to realize is that it makes less power than a non-turbo 2.2l out of a legacy or impreza, WITH a turbo. It's not a performance engine. I don't reccomend RWD for a subaru. They handle surprisingly well in RWD, donuts are effortless and the front stays planted, the front e-brake makes for an awesome variable pressure line-lock so you can use it to keep the car from picking up too much speed while your frying the tires off. The problem is that the rear driveline of the subaru wasn't built to take the full power of the engine. All the power has to go through a set of rear output gears to a short shaft that the slip yoke of the rear driveshaft goes onto. I've stripped a couple sets of those out, one set I was in 4wd when it went. Then the R160 rear differential has some weaknesses, stub shafts break pretty often, and the spider gears/carrier aren't too strong either. I've blown the teeth off a few sets of spider gears and one crosspin sheared and split the carrier. Of course you can upgrade to a R180 out of a STI or a R200 out of a 300zx but then you have to have custom axles and driveshafts built as well as fabbing up mounts to support it. But that still leaves you with the rear transfer gear problem, and the only way to fix that is to put a propper RWD transmission in. So then you need adapter plates that noone makes yet, and fabricate crossmembers, driveshafts, and shifter linkages. At that point you might as well have started with a normal RWD car. What I'm getting at is there is a lot better choices for a drift car than a subaru. What subarus are good for is great "performance" daily drivers and weekend autocross cars. Realistically the best performance gain you could get for your $5000 budget is buying a running but totaled WRX from a salvage aution. You can get them for around 3k now pretty easily. Swap the engine, transmission, wiring harness and front hubs out of that into your RX. It's a well documented recipe, makes for a great improvement in power and reliablity, and gives you a unique car with a great power/weight ratio.

I'm cutting the firewall clip out of a white 98 RHD legacy. Saving that the rack and the motor for an outback with a blown 2.5l. The car was really clean until the junkyard lifted it up by the roof with the loader. So now I get to cut the clip out and I traded an F250 carcass for it.

I've had hydro lifter 2.2l heads burn valves twice, different heads, same intake, same shortblock. That shortblock did burn oil though, but that was because it never got a chance to break in. The hood latch broke on it's maiden run, which was across the country. So no oil added between Buffalo NY and Lander WY, on a brand new engine. My assumption was a lean burn in that cyl, #3, due to a clogged injector. I swapped engines and never got around to diag because another motor fell in my lap for free. Next motor ran fine, and I beat the piss out of it just as hard as the first one. Same wiring harness and computer, so that's eliminated. Seen one EJ25 with a burnt cyl #4 that we threw a 2.2l at to fix. Worked fine, got rid of the skip! 97 or 98 outback.

You could probably run a FWD 5spd end cover and shifter, you don't need the transfer assembly anymore and the d/r part is in the front of the case. That would shorten up the tranny under your knees.