WoodsWagon

Keep the gas engine in the leaf blower, and electric motor will use up too much energy too fast to be practical. Having a 2stroke motor screaming under the hood at the same time you're accelerating would be badass! You will have to build a box around the carb that the leafblower will blow in to, so the whole carb is in a pressurized environment. Otherwise it won't work. That's called a "blow through" carb setup. There's also the old belt-driven supercharger, but that takes away some of the allure of having a leafblower under the hood, or better yet, sticking through the hood. Pull up at the drag strip, hop out, yank the pullstarter on the leafblower, and get ready to race. You'd probably win, if only for the fact your challanger would be laughing too hard to drive.

You got rid of the car because you blew the diff? An 03 would have been worth it to fix. I had a front diff let go on my Loyale wagon, it started whining on the way home from the woods one day, it would whine louder when coasting than under load. I figured it would make it to work and back the next day, but no.. It let go the next morning. Blew chunks out of the case. I was able to nurse it back home, but it was ugly.

Get a used turbo for $150 and either put it in yourself if you have tools and ability, or pay an independent shop to do it. It's not a hard job. I'm not sure on the Baja's, but the WRX's had a catalytic converter in the up-pipe leading to the turbo. The cat would disintegrate and jam the turbo. So it's a good investment to get a catless up-pipe and put it in at the same time.

He has an impreza center diff, so no moving with no driveshaft. I've killed a few diffs in my time, and when something gets caught between the ring and pinion, it all stops fast. Popping it in reverse and going backwards can sometimes get the offending piece to drop out and you can continue on your way, but the piece can get wedged and you're SOL. Had this happen on a woods beater ford truck. One of the welds on the spider gears had popped, and the clump of weld/bolt got caught in the R&P. Truck locked up solid. We were illegaly road ripping at that point, so I grabbed reverse, rocked it a couple times, it popped loose and we were on our way. One open subaru diff I had to keep loaded the whole way home with the handbrake. I was running RWD and the spider gears let go. I almost made it, but I let off on brake on the last hill and it all went to hell. Carrier broke on that one. 4.5 miles on a thouroughly grenaded diff is no joke, but it got me away from the scene of the crime. Same thing happened to the front diff of one of my D/R 5spds. It got loud if it wasn't loaded, and came apart between gears when I was shifting. Blew a piece out of the bottom of the case, but there were enough gear nubbins left that I limped it home leaving a trail of shame. I was only 15mins late to work because of that one.

You can get the CTS out without removing anything else. Leave the radiator cap on, pull out the sensor, put the new one in as quick as possible, and rinse the top of the block down with a gallon of water after you're done. Fill the coolant back up, you only loose like a cup if you do it right.

Replace it with a wheel bearing out of a legacy. The foresters used a ball-bearing rear wheel bearing while the legacys used a tapered roller. The tapered roller holds up much better. Read this: http://www.endwrench.com/current/Current6/03/WhBearRep.pdf

With 31'' tires and a 2" lift, you're going to run into problems with the clutch pedal not having full travel. You will need to bash the floor and the base of the A pillar to the point the clutch pedal will hit the floor. Not that that's really a problem. Get a real sledge going and put that a-pillar/floorpan in it's place. You will also rub on the framerail at full lock, but I don't recommend hammering that.

My 86 MPFI turbo did the same thing. What mine was doing was cycling all 4 injectors on and off while it was sitting there with the key on engine off. It was making a click mabe 2 times a second? So it would feed in all the residual fuel under pressure in the lines. It also wouldn't run when it was doing this, you could get it to idle off of the fuel it was injecting, but couldn't drive it. Sometimes it would run fine, then like someone flicked a switch it would go into this mode. Whenever power was going to the ECU, it would be cycling the injectors. I never got around to fixing it, my origional intent was to crank the boost and blow the engine, then do my EJ swap.

Automatic transmissions use a complety different AWD system than the manual transmissions. However, doing 5k rpm clutch dumps will break the manual transmission. Don't. It's an AWD car, it's not meant for burnouts. Go buy a pickup or a camaro if you want to do that. You don't have traction control. It only came on Fwd subarus in the late 90's, not AWD. The manual transmissions can have the same type of torque bind issue that the automatics have, but thats when someone overheated the center differential by towing the car usually. Quit worrying about it, and for christs sake stop doing clutch dumps. It will grenade the tranny.

#1, Why do you want it RWD? They don't handle better in RWD, and if you plan on beating the crap out of it in RWD, it will break. It's also going to be a 1wheel wonder if you're planning on doing burnouts and drifing, unless you weld up the rear differential too. #2 Is the wagon an automatic or manual transmission? That changes what you have to do to make it work. What engine? 1.8 or 2.2l? #3 You have to take apart one of your front halfshafts, leave the outer CVcup and spindle in to keep the hub and bearings together, and weld the center differential. So it's not a RWD for a week and then swap it back to AWD when you get bored kinda thing. It's a fair bit of work. #3 The rear differntial is a R160. I've personally grenaded at least 3 R160s, and that was with a stock 2.2l. I'm talking shattered spider gears, ring and pinion teeth sheared off, cracked carrier housing. Plus lots of snapped off stub shafts, but those are easy to swap. The differential is not built for abuse. It's only meant to take half the engines power, not all of it. You can upgrade to R180's out of a WRX Sti. Or do a custom job using a R200 out of a nissan 300zx. Or a ford IRS 8.8. But then, if you have a manual transmission, you have the rear output gears to worry about. They also aren't meant to take the full power of the engine. I've torn up 2 sets of those in my lifted wagon, stripped every last tooth off of them. Looked worse than west virginia when I got in there. I've seen AWD wrx's tear those up while still AWD by doing donuts and catching traction with the rear end. So, if you want to go for it, and you're prepared to replace a lot of broken parts, I can give you a walkthrough.

Did they run it out of oil? It's unusual to see a rod escape. I hydrolocked my EA82, bent the crap out of the rods, and it still held up to high revs (7k+ rpms). I figured if you can bend them and have them still hold together they must be pretty rugged.

Wholy wall o' text! Paragraphs help with reading alot. So you drilled a spare head and the hole went into the exhaust port without hitting a coolant passage? What year engine was the spare head off of?

The yellowing is from UV radiation discoloring the outer layer of plastic. If you polish it, it will clear it up for a while. Clearcoating the lense can help keep it clear for longer. Or, you can repolish every couple years. Where's that sister at and do you have pics?

You have to try driving in a tight circle on dry pavement after putting it in FWD mode. If the bind is gone, the solenoid works and flushing will most likely fix it. If the bind is still there in FWD mode you will probably have to pull it apart because either the clutch pack is borked or the solenoid is sticking. If the car was towed with the front wheels up and the rears rolling, it can burn the clutch pack to the point it's too warped to release. But, if putting in the FWD fuse makes the symptoms dissapear, then that isn't the case.

You will also need a turbo front crossmember or modify the crossmember your car has. What country are you located in?

Yup, real drag to not be able to set it and forget it above 90mph:rolleyes: Looks like you're having lots of fun with it, great pictures.

yup. The legacy must have had cruise control? The 4pin brake switch is usually on cruise cars.

Brake light switch is a Normally Open switch... not sure if the clutch switch is normally open or closed. If you have the diagram is should say NC or NO next to the switch or show the connection in the at-rest position.

Clutch switch will get rid of the drivability complaint. The stop bolt at the top of the clutch travel is what you want to put the switch in place of. The one on the bottom of the travel is for clutch-start interlock. It's to make sure the pedal is all the way down before the starter can work.

The svx is the only car it will fit in, however legacys and imprezas will take the motor, but you will have to find a new spot for the radiator. Taking out the AC condensor and putting it as far forward as possible may work.

The ECU uses fuel cut during decelleration to give better engine braking and save gas. If you're going down a long hill with your foot off the accelerator, it's not injecting any fuel. If you push the clutch in while it's doing fuel cut, the rpms drop way off and sometimes the ECU catches it and starts injecting fuel in time, sometimes it doesn't and it stalls before the ECU can start putting fuel in. This is the reason that the ECU is set up to have a neutral postition switch, and a clutch switch. The clutch switch gives the ECU a heads up that you're about to uncouple the engine from the drivetrain, so it can start injecting again before you even have the clutch pedal to the floor. The neutral switch lets it use a different idle map when you're sitting at a light. Missing these switches won't turn on the check engine light, however, if you plug the read code connectors together, it will give you clutch switch and a neutral switch codes. That's if you still have the diagnostic connectors and a check engine light wired in your swap.

Dowels are needed so that the center of the crank and the center of the transmission input shaft are exactly the same. If they aren't it puts sideloads on the transmission bearings and is generally not good. The bolt holes have slop in them, they're only there to provide clamping force, not allignment. I've got dowels in mine. If you go to the trouble of machining the plate, poke the 4 extra holes and have it done right.

Front crossmember gains you the space for the up-pipe to go to the turbo. You can butcher and box in your stock crossmember to make it fit but it makes more sense to swap the right one in.

For an offroad setup with big tires, keep the flywheel heavy. It will stall a lot easier if you lighten it up.

You can use any subaru disk you want. The 6spd stuff may be different but all the 5spd 4wd or AWD disks are the same. Use an XT6 pressure plate.