WoodsWagon

You've definately snapped one of the front cv's. When they break, you can grab the axle shaft and it will be noticeable loose in the two boots. Replacing it with a remanufactured axle, or even a new axle from any of the major parts store chains is a gamble. I've had some be trouble free for years, and some that had binding issues from the day I put them in untill they failed a couple months later. MWE is known for doing quality rebuilds of subaru axles. The other sources are from subaru $$$, or pulling one out of a subaru in a junkyard. This is more proof that the automatic subarus can lock the rear drive clutchpack hard enough to make the car drive on RWD alone. Do not drive the car like this. Replace the broken front axle and it should be good to go.

Ignoring all these "negative nancy's", The 2.2l with 2.5l DOHC heads on it is a fine motor for forced induction. The DOHC heads are the same basic casting as the turbo 2.0l subarus, and as such can be drilled and tapped in the same spots as the turbo heads, so that a factory EJ20 turbo, bracket, uppipe and oil and coolant lines can be used. There's a writeup on the bbs.legacycentral.org forums on where the heads need to be drilled and tapped. You will need either a engine crossmember out of a turbo subaru, or notch the passenger side of your crossmember and box the notched area so that the uppipe can fit through. At wastegate pressure so no boost controler, just a hose hooked from the pressure side of the turbo to the wastegate, then engine should run OK untill you can get some sort of fuel management. Depending on the ECU you have, the factory timing maps may work ok too. Go over to forums.nasioc.com/forums and go to the "N/A motors with bolt on FI" forum and take a look around. There's plenty of support there.

I worked on a 99 forester with the SOHC 2.5 yesterday that the same idler had failed on. It had been driven that way for a while, so the cogged teeth of the ilder had cut into the oil pump pressure relief cap. It wasn't leaking and hadn't cut all the way into the aluminum sealing washer under the cap so I let it be. Clean all the metal shavings off of the cam and crank sensors, they are magnetic and attract the pieces, which then shorts out the magnetic sensor and it gives a bad signal back to the computer. The forester had been run long enough that the bearing races on the pully had worn the races on the pully hub flat on one side. It was only 2 teeth off on the drivers side cam. I put everthing back together and it runs great. The DOHC may not be as forgiving. Do not compress the tensioner in a vice if the cylinder is part of the arm that holds the ilder pully. It will kill it. It will still put spring tension on the belt, but if you turn the crank backwards you will see that the tensioner can't hold tension, it will move right out of the way and the timing will skip. If the tensioner cylinder is separate and held on with 2 bolts, compress it slowly in the vice and it will be good to go.

Sounds like the front differential is toast and bits of metal debris are getting caught in between the ring gear and the pinion. Backing up lets the chunks fall back out and the gears will work for a while untill they catch another piece. Where are you located?

That's correct. Struts AND the rear trailing arm mount bracket off of a 97-99 outback. Gets at least 2" of suspension lift out of an impreza. Here's a thread on the brackets with pictures: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=86178 Reuse the tophats and springs. I have had one 94 legacy that the strut wouldn't tighten down on the rear tophats, it turned out the shank of the strut that goes through the tophat was a bit longer than the origonal legacy one. I made a washer that fit inside the bore of the tophat and over the shank of the strut and it tightened it up. Just something to keep an eye out for. They were monroe struts, I've never run across that with kyb's or stock struts.

I had cut fenders, they were rusty before I cut them and it looked pretty junky with cut fenders. I noticed that early 90's chevy cavaliers had a decent fender flare at the front wheel wells, so I grabbed a couple bent fenders for free from my local yard, cut out the flare part of them and welded them in. They actually fit the contour of the fender pretty good. Some black paint and they looked like they belonged. Adds a lot of strength back to the fender that you loose when you cut the opening larger. Half of cutting the fenders is pounding the base of the A pillar in where it comes into the wheel well. I had to pound the floor up too, so much that the clutch pedal looses a bit of the travel.

Your air intake should already have a scoop that runs over the top of the upper radiator support so it is pulling in fresh, cold air. If you put in a standard aftermarket intake, it will most likely have a cone airfilter inside the engine bay, with warm air that's already been through the radiator, or a cone airfilter inside the wheel well, just waiting for a deep enough puddle to hydrolock your motor.

I have both a stock EA82T and a swapped N/A EJ22. When the EA is running, it's kinda fun, you stand on the throttle, it pulls and then wham it comes alive when the boost builds. It adds entertainment value, but the EJ has the same pull as the EA under full boost all the time. And it runs all the time. Even when I had toasted the EJ, burned an exhaust valve, and it was an oil burning 3 cyl, it still had plenty of power for me to commute for 2 months like that. Swap in an EJ22, get the stock exhaust piping, turbo, oil and coolant lines off of someone with a EJ22T who's upgraded, and run it at wastegate boost pressure. It will make plenty of power, and be dead reliable.

Pulling the abs fuse disables it and turns on the ABS light on the dash, which is a good reminder that it's not functional. Modify the fuse so that it goes through a remotely mounted fuse and a switch and you will have control over it without modifying the wiring harness at all. That way if you loan the car out you can pull the adapter dummy fuse and plug in a normal one and not worry about it.

Problems under boost are usually ignition related. The higher load stresses the ignition system and if the spark plugs, wires, cap, rotor or coil are marginal they won't reliably fire. Having a large amount of unburned fuel in the exhaust could maybe heat the turbo up more, but that almost sounds like a clogged exhaust. But then you wouldn't be building boost, so I'd be back to ignition issues.

I'm not sure that a resistor will work, the ecu probably looks for a drop in the MAP sensor signal to reflect the vacuum leak created by opening the egr valve. It would probably throw a egr flow DTC. With a manual transmission car, you could proably put in a older ECU and have it be fine. But with an automatic, the ECU will always be expecting the EGR system to be in place. That's why it's recommended that you source the 2.2 out of an automatic car so that it has the EGR system.

Outback or forester struts will work, you probably want outback ones though because the spring seat is situated differently allowing more space for wheel/tire. Reuse the original springs and tophats, cut the bracket where the brake line goes through, bend it so you can release the hose, do the same thing to the new struts and bend the bracket back flat so that the clip holds the line in. Saves braking all the brake lines and bleeding the brakes and all the nightmares that go with disturbing old rusty brake fittings. Pick up the bracket that the rear trailing arm attaches to the body with from a forester or outback. If you don't, the wheel will move forward in the wheelwell when you lift it. The forester or outback ones move the attachment point for the trailing arm down so that the wheel stays centered. That's the bracket right under the rear doors.

The key in the crank nose is not there to keep the pully from spinning on the shaft. It's only function is alligning the crank sproket and pully on the crank at TDC. With the crank bolt properly tightened, all the force transmitted though the sprocket and pulley goes through the static friction bond between the faces of the sproket, pulley, and crank flange. This is why the key, pully, sprocket and crank keyway get destroyed when the bolt is loose. None of those components are designed to transfer the power through the key. You could theoretically run the car without the key installed if you lined the crank sproket up on the crank and tightened the bolt without rotating the crank. When the bolt loosens, the pully gets rouned on the face that contacts the crank sproket and the bolt head. When you retighten the bolt, it squishes the no longer flat faces together. They settle over time and the bolt comes loose again. If you have a wobbly pully due to the crank bolt being loose, you need to replace the crank pully, bolt, key, and crank sproket. The problem will come back if you don't. You usually have to dress the crank with a file around the keyway so the new sproket slips on, sometimes you need to grind the keyway so that the new key will fit down in. It doesn't have to be perfect, all it's there for is to hold the sproket and pully lined up while you tighten the bolt. I've seen too many subarus listed as "needing the crank replaced" due to the keyway being trashed when it's not the keyway that transmits the power so it doesn't matter if the keyway is beat.

I'm not sure if the spfi ECU's have an A/C on input, but many fuel injection systems do. When the A/C compressor is commanded on, it signals the ECU to up the idle a couple hundred RPMs. You could wire a switch to that input so that you could up the idle speed when needed.

Actually no, the 4eat's will lock up the transfer clutches hard enough that the car will drive in rwd with only the TCU controlling it. I had a friend come to me with his legacy, said he was worried that he'd trashed the transmisison. He had heard a bang, and after that it would hesitate to move forward from a stop for a moment, then drive fine. It would spin both rear wheels fine on hardpacked dirt, so it was putting the power of the 2.2 turbo through the transfer clutches just fine. We replaced the front CV that had blown and it was back to AWD. With the broken front cv, the power would go to that axle and spin it, TCU would see that as wheel spin and lock up the transfer clutches, car would lurch forward and drive fine after that. I'm sure with continued use it would smoke the clutches as the TCU would constanly be trying to reduce drive to the rear, see more "front wheelspin" and reaplying rear drive.

Nope, I was able to bring the allignment back in with the stock adjustments. No problems with the axles either and it's been a couple years since I lifted it. My dad's back isn't so good anymore so I used that as the main justification for switching to outback struts when he needed new ones for inspection. The GR2's are a bit stiffer shocks than stock, but the ride is fine. It's the same weight held by the same springs. Handles good, does better in the snow, and is easier to get into and out of. I put the skidplate off of his old 86 gl on it so that he won't bash the pan if he gets adventurous but I doubt he will.

Original legacy springs will work fine with outback struts. It gives you the same amount of lift. Here's my dad's 95 legacy with legacy springs and gr2 struts with outback sized tires and rims on it vs my mom's stock 98 outback:http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s171/calgearhead/LegacywithOutbackstrutsandtiresonly.jpg

Put the matching tires on the same side of the car, so one type x on right front, one type x on right rear, type y's on left front and rear. That way differential speeds will match and the tire size won't effect the binding.

There was an FF1 in the woods of Connecticut so what's so unthinkable about there being one in new york?

Wooooo back from the dead in time for haloween! I ended up getting a set of tempo V6 springs, but i never did get around to installing them and now the poor old loyale is retired due to ungodly amounts of rust.

I've done outback lifts to a lot of pre 1999 subarus, but I didn't know if it was still a simple strut swap on the newer legacy's. The rear suspension is a multi-link instead of the mcphearson. Is the only difference in ride height still the strut or do the outbacks have a different subframe and links too? A friend has a 2000 legacy brighton that her daughter put oversized tires on, they rubbed on the fender liner, tore that out and took out the right front impact sensor harness too. Having a little more space in the wheel wells would be a good thing.

When we first got it, my mom's 98 outback had really bad torque bind, but it went away with the FWD fuse in. I drained and filled the fluid, drove lots of figure 8's on dry pavement, and drained filled and ran it a couple more times. It's been 30k miles since then and no problems. ATF is subjected to a lot of shearing forces in the torque converter and a lot of friction between clutch plates, pressure between gears and lots of heat. The fluid wears out over time, no one ever changes it, and so it no longer lets the clutch plates do progressive engagement so you get bind.

Head gasket fix in a bottle only works if the gasket is leaking coolant to the outside of the engine, like the phase II 2.5l's. They weep coolant out and it steams off of the exhaust, miracle in a bottle will fix that, pinhole leak with only 14psi behind it. Leaks into the combustion chamber can't be fixed without replacing the gasket.

The main problem is not the corrosion going down into the sensor but the corrosion going up into the wiring harness on the other side of the connector that plugs onto the sensor. You cut back the wire untill it's not green anymore, then solder on a new section of wire and a connector to replace the old one.

Wow, three years later! You need the wiring that runs from the map light down the A-pillar and plugs into the dash harness behind the fuse box. When you remove the harness from the GL, make note of where the plug is in the dash harness, use the same on on the loyale.