WoodsWagon

You have to swap the 2.5l flexplate onto the 2.2l motor when you do the swap as the TC's are different sizes between the 2 motors. Flexplate has to match TC, so you've got a bunch of 2.2l flexplates on the wall. They're deeper dish than the 2.5, as the 2.2 tc is shorter and smaller. The engine won't bolt down if you have the 2.2 flexplate on it and try putting it on a 2.5l tranny with TC.

They're OK, but don't transmit power very well. Which, when you only have 90hp to start with, isn't a good thing. They like to apple-core the governor drive gear, which puts them into first only, no upshift ever. It's a 3.7 to 1 final drive, the transmission is direct drive in 3rd, you have dinky tires, so yeah, the motor is revved way up to make any speed. But for around town driving, they're fine. Just don't expect great MPG or easy highway cruising.

Unbolt the torque converter bolts through the access hole below the throttle body. Push the TC back into the tranny, it should move back 1/4" inch. Then, try wiggleing the flexplate around and see if it can pop loose from the center. It should be hard to move, if it's sloppy or pops loose, thats a definitive diagnosis.

As a side note, in what way did the original transmission fail? Slipping, missing shifts, AWD not working or binding, lost fluid?

If you have the alt or a/c belt too tight they can hum.

If it was a rod bearing making that much noise, you wouldn't have made it 90km home. The flexplates do crack right around the center hub, and will make all sorts of racket that sounds terminal. Also check the bolt on the front of the crank. If it's loose, the crank pully will hog out the keyway and the pounding of the key cutting a slot into the pully makes a noise a lot like rod knock. EJ25d heads can be tapped for the normal EJ20 turbo hookups for coolant and oil. The SOHC heads can support horspower, but it's so much better to go the the DOHC's. Less boost, heat, and more power. You know about the Legacycentral BBS right?

NO NO NO on the ATF in the tranny. That works fine for most transmissions that have all helical gears in them, but with the hypoid ring and pinion in the front differential, you have to have hypoid gear oil. The shearing and pressure forces in a hypoid gearset is way higher than in helicals. Any other tranny, you can get away with running ATF. Not a subaru though, it would burn up fairly quickly. Pulling the rear CV's off of the hub stub shafts is a great way to improve the MPG though. You could make some straps/hooks to hold them up and back to the mustache bar so the axles would be out of the way of the suspension but you could re-attach them if needed. Running tires at high psi is a sketchy way of trying to get more MPG. Yes, the rolling resistance goes down, but the traction needed when braking and turning goes way down too. The gamble of getting in an avoidable accident vs getting 1-2 better mpg isn't worth it. You can try advancing the distributor a couple more degrees. Listen closely for "ping" or detonation, but it may help the part throttle mpg.

Seems odd to replace fairly expensive parts when the steering was working fine already? I don't usually replace pumps on a whim. You can run racks without fluid and they will work fine, you will burn the pump up though. He should check to see if he kinked a hard line when he pulled the pump. The ones that run from the pump across the head to the flex hoses could get bent if you tried removing the pump without unbolting the lines from the head.

I know Honda does it. Take a look in the warantee booklet that came with the car and the owners manual.

Do the "power" shift mod when you get it. You move one wire from one position to another on one of the TCU connectors so that the clicky button on the side of the shifer puts the TCU into power mode and changes the shift points. I've done it to both of my friends turbo legacys, and it works well. Makes the auto livable. We got partway through a 5spd swap with his wagon, so he has the extra pedal, but we never swapped the transmissions out because he had to go to florida. So, he's driving around with a spare pedal. When people ask, he just says it's semi-automatic.

Why was the pump replaced in the first place if the old one was working fine? Stiff steering is usually the u-joints on the coupler between the rack and the column. Spraying some penetrating oil on them can loosen them up for a bit, but it tells you they need replacing. If the car was in an accident, check for kinked lines on the rack, the engine crossmember, and where they run over the head to the pump. Hoses don't usually collapse, they're under pressure. The metal lines can get crushed though. Racks rarely fail, and when they do, they leak. Using the wrong fluid, PS vs ATF vs Engine oil won't hurt anything. Honda's are finicky about that, and subaru XT6's with the Cybrid steering are, but the rest have no issue with it. Turning the steering lock to lock a bunch of times is the usuall way of bleeding it. The bubbles surface in the resevoir and fluid gets sucked into the pump.

The EA 5spd is just as strong as the EJ 5spd, that is to say they're equally weak. So, unless you're going for an ej one with a RA gearset or something like that, EA or EJ doesn't make a difference. Going 6 spd would be best, but that is expensive. The clutch availability is the big one on the EA vs EJ tranny. You can get better clutch disks, but the pressure plate is the limiting point. You will actually swap your lsd center section into whatever ratio diff you need. The pinion and ring stay with the diff housing, the center section gets swapped. Easy enough to do, possibly a little grinding on the case to get the carrier to fit through with the ring gear on it. That and checking the pattern and possibly moving shims from one side of the diff to the other. Not usually necesary but good to check. Do you already have the EG33? An EZ30 would fit a lot better. If you move the radiator forward, you can remove the hood latch and verticle brace and use hood pins at the corners. That opens up a lot of room to move the radiator up to the back of the grill and front bumper.

I used BFG a/t's on my wagon, and honestly, they kind of sucked at everything. Zilch for grip when wet, instantly packed up with mud or snow and became slicks, and not very grippy on rocks. I also didn't get much life out of them. They wore evenly, just fast. Snow was really a joke with them, I'd be trying to go up inclines without having the belly of the car near touching the snow, so just tires touching snow, and it couldn't make it. A guy with a jeep commanche pickup, who had his front bumper plowing snow and his axles dragging was cruising up the same hill. He had cheapo snow tires. There was lots of times in the winter when the tires just couldn't keep traction and let me down. Which really sucks when you're in the bottom of a valley and are trying to get out. Now, for sand and gravel, pretty much any tire will work. You actually don't want much of an agressive tread pattern because that will dig you into the sand. Get the widest tire you can fit, and find one with a lot of sidewall ply's. Wide tread aired down is what you need for running the soft powder sand. Get a couple small air compressors, the one's that plug into the cigar lighter. Cut the cigar lighter end off, and put on alligator clamps that you can hook directly to the battery. Make sure you have enough reach between the battery and the rear right wheel to be able to fill it. A portable jump pack might be a good investment too. Gas milage with big tires doesn't go down as much as people think. The bigger the tire, the larger the distance it covers per rotation. So, your odometer indicates less miles than you've actually traveled. You need to figure out the percentage difference between the stock tire and new tire, and multiply the odometer reading by that before using it to figure out MPG. Oh, and I'd recommend an EJ22. Even set up with a carb and distributor, it will be miles better than the EA. Sometimes having more power can keep you up on top of the sand, and get you through the really sifty spots where you would otherwise bog down and sink.

1/2" drill bit is the one to use. Drill one all the way through, and it leaves the tip of the 02 sensor flush with the end of the anti-fouler. Stacking 2 is a waste of time, I've seen cars with NO cats working fine with just one. Replace the front 02 sensor while you're there, if you did the rear one, the front one's not far behind. Potentially better MPG and cleaner running could result.

You seem convinced it's worth it, and as long as you're prepared to overhaul everything and own the car for the rest of it's life, go for it. It's your time, and your money. Everyone's heard of the guy with the flood salvage car that had no problems and was great. Mabe you can be that guy if you're lucky. But, I had first hand experience working in a Honda dealership on multiple salvage flood cars and I can say that they were all screwed. If it went dash-deep, you'll be doing lots of work. I felt bad for the people that had been suckered into buying the cars, as they were excited that they were getting them for less than market value and it was going to be a quick fixer-upper. People buying salvage cars usually have limited resources anyway, so pouring money into a junk car isn't usually included in their budget.

Flood waters often have a lot of silt in them, which lurks in bearings and will slowly eat every bearing out of the drivetrain as you use the car. Connectors in the engine bay are weather-pak so they're moisture resistant. Connectors inside the car are not, so the water will get into all of them and they will start to corrode. All the printed circuit boards in the car will start having problems unless each case was opened and flushed with clean water and dried immediately after the sinking. The problem is that the cars sit in salvage lots, and the sun heats them up and the moisture percolates off of the windows and everything is damp and corroding/rusty. The state I live in, New Hampshire, is a "As Is" sale state. So, we have people selling flood cars online out of their NH dealership. People from all over buy the cars, because the pictures look good online (they do pressure wash the mud out of the interiors first). They then send them sight unseen to the local real dealerships to "Put in a PCM, that's what they said it needs" The local dealership tells them the car needs a new harness, all new sensors, new switches, new cluster, new electrical everything, they get all offended. "NO, all it needs is a PCM!" So we put in a PCM, and guess what, the PCM works. Nothing else does. So then they get pissed off, and try to go after the salvage cars place, but HA HA you bought it "As Is" so you're screwed. There's a very good reason flood cars are TOTALed by insurance companies. Unless you're interested in using a body shell for swapping everything out of an accident damaged car, don't even consider messing with one. It's a long, expensive trail of tears and it only ends badly. I watched one of my neighbors go down the primrose path with an Audi A6 he bought from them. It was only 6" above the floor in water, and he was blinded by the V8 AWD with RS6 suspension and brakes, tiptronic shifing and whatnot. He poured THOUSANDS into that car, 7k into just the transmission and TCU, plus lots more having a guy hand-rewire all the corroded connectors, plus a body control module because the sunroof would randomly open it's self while parked and the car alarm would go off at random times. And while he pissed away his hard earned money trying to get it all fixed, the car would keep throwing random missfire codes, so he could never get it to pass state inspection. He had sold his WRX to pay for the repairs to the Audi, and ended up driving his 500hp fox-body mustang all winter because his AWD Audi wasn't street legal. After pouring all this money into the car, how much was it worth? Nothing. A salvage title kills the resale value of any car, no matter how nice it is. So there it sits on blocks in his yard, as he slowly parts it out to other Audi nuts online. Salvage cars due to Hail, fire, or theft can be OK with a little work. Stay very far away from flood cars or "storm damage"

Go through one of the capped ported vacuum sorces on the top of the throttle body. Pull the cap off, hook a vacuum hose to it, and use the hose to suck the seafoam out of the container. You'll have to manually open the throttle while it's running to get a vacuum signal on the ported vacuum line. Don't put any in the oil, and putting it in the gas won't do anything either. It's most useful in the intake, and probably detrimental if you put it in the oil and drive the car. Use a bottle of "Techron" by Chevron fuel system cleaner, it's the only stuff I've found to acually work for cleaning the injectors. Though, I'm afraid that horse has left the barn so to say as the injector on the dead cylinder was probably running lean for a while before the valve burned. You can't bring burnt valves back from the dead with seafoam. 25psi indicates a serious problem with that cylinder, and not one seafoam will remedy in all likelyhood.

Hydraulic clutch right? You need to track down where the squeek is coming from. The Clutch pedal pivot can squeek, the clutch master cylinder can squeek, the slave cylinder can sqeek, and the clutch fork can sqeek. The last one is the most likely, the fork sqeeking on the pivot. You can pull the rubber boot up out of the bell housing and drip some heavy oil down the backside of the clutch fork (the side away from the engine) to see if it will help for a while. Find the source of the sqeek first.

The problem with having too much oil in the engine is that the crankshaft is now spinning in the oil sump. It normally spins in open air, with oil draining off of it. When it's submerged in oil, it works like a giant blender, and turns the oil into a froth (think Capachino foam) All the air trapped in bubbles in the oil gets pumped around through the bearings by the oil pump. Air doesn't lubricate very well, and it's nearly as bad as running it with no oil. The pressure surges of the waves of oil being beaten by the crank can blow out the front and rear main seals, valvecover gaskets, ect. as they're not meant to hold back a lake of oil, just oil mist. Drain it down before you drive it. How many quarts of ATF did you put in? As for the drive distance between ATF changes, you want to drive far enough that the transmission oil gets hot, so at least 10 miles of hard driving, and do lots of tight turns. Doing tight figure 8's in a parking lot at low speed helps exercise the clutchpack and get fresh fluid through it.

Did you read what I posted in the other thread? I gave you the solution to the shuddering problem. Your already halfway there with having drained out the transmission pan, now you just need to drain the engine oil (all 9 qts at this point:rolleyes:) and fill the engine and transmissions back to their proper level. Then drive it, drain the transmission and refill it, drive it some more, drain and fill it, and the shuddering should go away. Take out the FWD fuse after you fill the tranny back up the first time or the new fluid won't circulate through the clutchpack. I even gave you directions on which dipstick was where and went to what. This is all covered in the owners manual with pictures if you still have it. You wil KILL this car if you drive it with too much oil in the engine and not enough in the transmission. Thousands of dollars to repair the damage being done, to the point that it would be better to junk the car. So, DO NOT DRIVE IT until you get your oil levels sorted out.

A new head will never "blow out" a tired bottom end. However, a tired bottom end that has oil consumption issues can leave oil/carbon build up on the exhaust valve, causing it to hang open and burn. I chucked a replacement head on my heavily abused bottom end, and burned the valves out of it too. Now that's a chicken and egg situation, was that cyl running hot and burning valves and rings because it was running lean due to a faulty injector, or was it burning valves because the rings were toasted and leaking oil though because I ran it out of oil for a while? A head either works or it doesn't. If the valves are leaking enough to affect combustion pressures, they will burn. They depend on a tight seal on the seat to dissapate the heat out of the valve into the head. I'd chuck a used engine in, just because it would be cheaper if you count in all the parts you end up replacing when you do the headgasket and it's less work. The EJ22's are easy to slap heads on and off of because the headbolts are all external to the valvecover, but still, by the time you pulled a head in the junkyard, dropped the exhaust, pulled the intake, drained the coolant, removed and replaced the timing belt and swapped heads and new headgaskets, you could have thrown in an engine with 100k on it for the same effort. It all depends on the body. If it's a rustbucket, like holes in the rockers and over the rear wheel wells, then don't bother. If it's in good shape, spend the $300 and a weekend and get it swapped out. It's not hard. One other alternative is pulling the plug off of the injector feeding the dead cylinder. It won't harm anything, and it helps keep the cat from being cooked. All the other cylinders will run rich because of the extra air giving a lean signal to the O2 sensor, but I used to commute 80 miles a day running on 3 for a few weeks before swapping heads or engine. 30" tires and 3 cylinders kind of sucked, but it was probably making more power on 3 cylinders than the origonal EA82 made on all 4.

The rattle at startup may be a bad oil filter. If the anti-drainback valve in the filter isn't sealing, the oil in the oil gallerys will drain back to the sump, so the oil pump has to re-prime and pump oil to fill all the gallerys in the block and head before it starts to build pressure. Not good, esp on a turbo car where the turbo depends on being floated on a film of high pressure oil.

Probably a burnt exhaust valve, I've done in a couple. You can chuck a head on that side off of any other pre 96 2.2, or you could throw in any 90-98 2.2l in and use your intake manifold on it. 96-98 you will need to grab the single port y-pipe for the exhaust. Used engines for these are cheap, $200-400. With some basic metric tools, a rented engine lift and a mechanically competent friend you could have it swapped out in a weekend. Use the fuel injectors off of the replacement engine on your manifold, and send yours out for cleaning. I suspected an injector on my 2.2 as i burnt an exhaust valve, chucked on another head, and a couple months later burnt another valve on the same cylinder. Granted I beat the piss out of that engine every day of it's life but still, to have it go on the same cylinder seemed suspicious.

You can retrofit just the tach out of the other cluster into yours. Don't pull any of the needles off, you shouldn't need to. Putting the tach into your cluster will keep your spedometer and odometer reading the same. Take the donor cluster apart first, figure out how it all goes together, then take yours apart and swap it in. High idle can be a sticky idle air control valve, sometimes taking the hose off of the IAC and spraying carb cleaner in can help clean it out. You can also unbolt it from the manifold and spend some time cleaning it and working the valve back and forth.

Repeated experience has shown replacing the rear 02 sensor to cure the P0420 code on subarus. I recommend replacing both of them at the same time because they've been in the same environment for the same time and probably have equal wear. OBDii scan tools are pretty basic, and the amount of testing I could do with the HDS on the newer Hondas vs what I could do on the same car with an OBDii tool made for a pretty huge gap. While it may be fun to spend lots of time obsessing over potential causes of the PO420 code, it's pretty cut and dried when it comes to Subarus. Replace the sensors, if it comes back the cat is cooked *very, very rare* and you put in an anti-fouler or replace the cat. Or, you skip doing the sensors because you just want the light to go out and want to spend a minimum, and put a fouler on the rear one and call it a day. Other manufactures, it's a different story. Cats do fail on a regular basis, odd fuel trim/missfire problems destroy the cat, or pinhole exhaust leaks set off the P0420 code. Not so much on Subarus. I see a lot of subaru cat's replaced because of the P0420 code, often with inferior aftermarket cats, and 10 months later the light is back on and the customer is out $600 or more. Spend the $200 on the pair of sensors, see better gas millage, and have the light stay out. That and the cat's being replaced because the flange rusts off the end of them when you could spend $20 on a split flange kit and fix it in your driveway. I don't see the point in reviewing all the available data in a case that's pretty much open and shut and has been repeated on thousands of cars. Christ, between replacing sensors (the right way to fix it) and putting in anti-foulers (the wrong/cheap way to fix it) I've fixed PO420 codes on at least a dozen Subarus. I'm not a high volume subaru mechanic either, it's all been friends and families cars. My volume was all with newer Honda's, which are a different bag of worms. They rarely threw a P0420, and when they did the cat was most definiately finished. Mostly people that drove with a missfire for long distances. As for the freeze frame confirming nothing else was wrong with the car, yes, of course the rest was fine, otherwise it wouldn't have been running the Catalyst efficiency monitor. It has to have a set of parameters met before it will run the self test, and if the fuel trim is way off, you will see a fuel trim DTC as well as the P0420 DTC. It won't run the monitor if the engine isn't up to temp, it's in open loop, or you're not a cruising speed. So none of the freeze frame info is usefull, unless you're confirming a DTC related to one of the sensors recorded in freeze frame. I'm sorry to get snippy, but I don't see the point in wasting the posters time having him play with his scan tool so that you can look elsewhere when he could be fixing the car and moving on with life. Oh, and one extra thought popped into my head. The subaru board and collective internet knowlege works as a TSB for a lot of common problems. Spending lots of time (and diagnostic money potentially) to definitively rule out a catalyst failure, when a "TSB" of sorts is available is a disservice to the customer IMHO.