WoodsWagon

My tires rub at full lock on the "framerail" as it is in the front. That's after hammering my floorpan and doorpost back so far that I can't put the clutch pedal all the way down. There's been extesive "trimming" and welding. I realy don't see as how you could put on the tires I run without a lift and actually have any turning ability or suspension travel. My carrier bearing is on mabe 2" blocks, crossmembers on 3", and struts on 4". I made the exhaust so that it is tucked up tight against the body, and even so I crushed my flowmaster 40 with it tucked up flatwise in the back. Here's an example: You come to a stone wall, a notch has been opened for a quad bike to fit through. so wall is like so \__/. Wagon is wider than quadbike. There is no "line" you can take through the wall, so You have to put your wheels on it, drop onto the rockers to pass through the gap, then run your back wheels over it. No lift= no rockers. Or doors. A trail isn't just a road with higher grades than normal. A trail has terrain and obstacles. You may be in luck of seeing a real trail. Some of my friends have been talking of filming a "retirement" run as it is of my wagon. Kicking some rump roast with the old beast before she's written off for good.

I'm dropping the compression in the EJ25, so I'm doing headgaskets anyway. I'll go rip out an obd II harness.

I'm not offended by you not having a lift in your car, but I gaurantee that your car would not be able to tackle the terrain that I regularly took my wagon in due the to low ground clearance. My 4" lift only gained me an extra inch of ground clearance with stock tires on. But the extra space to fit oversized tires was crucial. Yes, I lost a lot of gearing by going to 235/75r15's, but I made up for it with an EJ22. The tire size is key to your ground clearance. Sure, your car and mine would be equal in the sand, loose but even gravel and light mud, so in those circumstances my lift would be a waste. But in the northeast, the trails are narrow, with big, angular, sharp rocks (it ain't called the Granite State for nothing), lots of trees, roots, brooks, ponds, and mud. Not just spin donuts and have fun mud, but deep rutted bury-a-fullsize-truck-to-the-axles mud. Oh, and snow. Getting the body of the car up out of the snow makes it that much harder to get high-centered. I'd break trail with my wagon so that tacoma's and jeeps could follow behind, and when I blew my tranny, the trucks didn't make it 20 yards beyond the subaru before they sank, and that was in the flat. The other thing is when your going down a trail and there's a rock sticking up in the middle, but the only line you can take is to straddle it, you have to have clearance. Sure, I made it some places in my stock parts legacy before I used it for the ej swap. It's amazing what the car could drag its self through, but in the process of dragging the exhaust got ripped off, the gas tank got thoroughly mashed, the front bumper shredded, the rockers crushed, the floorpans pushed up. It was just plain destructive, and that was on the mild trails. A lift is a nececity for the terrain I offroad in. It may not be for yours.

The last EJ swap I did I used an obd 1 harness out of a 92 legacy to run a ej22. My next swap I'm putting a EJ25 in a 86 T-wagon. I'm planning on putting a turbo on the EJ25, and running the AWD tranny out of my 92 legacy. I have an extra obd1 EJ22 harness and computer for a FWD auto EJ22. I could pull a harness from a 1998 outback, or a 98 forester, or a 95 legacy. I could try and source another one if there's a specific harness and computer that would be best, but that's money. What's the best pick for running a low boost turbo 2.5? I know people turbo N/A subarus, at least the OBD II ones and it seems to work out OK.

I hit a lady in a ranger at a yeild sign. She stopped, then went, then stopped again. I was looking left, thinking she had gone, and tagged her at mabe 15mph. Bent the left front frame of my subaru, but no real cosmetic damage due to the bumper I have on the car. Rumpled her tailgate, bumper, and a taillight. The laptop that I'm typing on now was on the passenger seat and survived the accident. There were no skidmarks. She had bucket seats in the ranger, so she had a headrest. She was fine untill she called her husband, then she told the emt's her neck hurt all of a sudden. She came back a year later with a lawer, and got 200k out of my insurance company because she had pain in her left thumb due to the accident. Pray that the person in the cherokee has more honesty.

My secret weapon in my kit (all of which fit in the smugglers hatch in the back of my wagon) was these fold out traction aids. It folds out into a kind of flexible ladder, has teeth on one side, and you put one end under the tire. I have 4 of them, and they work amazingly well. Snow, mud, you name it, the things can help the car walk out. Unfortantely, you can only buy them by the case from a company in quebec. They even worked to get my neighbors excavator back over the snowbank he dropped the front wheels off of. I think I used my winch on other peoples trucks more than I ever used it to pull the wagon out.

Not true at all. I have a 2 1/4" cat back on my EJ22. It was straight pipe to a cherry bomb at the end. It was annoyingly loud, but sounded ok tone wise. I decided to take the cherry bomb off and put a flowmaster 40 series on. Surprisingly, it was louder than the cherry bomb and sounded worse. So I cut the pipe right by the rear u-joint in the driveshaft and put the cherry bomb there. Nice burble at idle, good tone under WOT, and not too loud. It's the perfect setup in my opinion. As one of my friends said, "It's amazing that two things known for being loud and annoying can sound good when put together."

First off, anywhere you see it refered to here is as a radius rod. I've bent a few of them, but large rocks and stumps were involved, not curbs. If it bent, it was from physical damage like a hard impact on a curb. It's not a normal wear and tear item. I've never seen one crack because the metal isn't being worked unless you way overload it, ie a curb. Replace the one with a straight one out of a junk car. Take a quick look at it, if it's straight to the eye, it's straight enough to allign. Spend your money getting the radius rod bushings that are at the end of the rod where it attaches to the car body. Those will give you way more of an improvement in handling and tire wear than putting a brand new radius rod on will vs. a good used one.

I literally did this same swap yesterday. Using a 1995 legacy 2.2l, swap the a/c compressor bracket from the 2.5l onto the 2.2l. Make sure to swap the FLEXPLATE from 2.5 to 2.2, they ARE DIFFERENT! Power steering pumps/brackets are interchangeable, however, the 2.5l lines will not bolt to the bracket on the side of the manifold. You can swap out the hoses and lines from the 2.2l car, or make a bracket extension. It's not crucial. I used the 2.2l intake pipe, just like the way it looks rather than the 2.5, but not sure whether the throttle bodys are the same size. Depending on what your evap system is like, you may have to run an extra vacuum hose. It's easy enough if you look at it. Wiring plugs in, exhuast bolts on, and away you go.

1997 outback 2.5l, automatic Spark on the rear half of the coil pack, none on the front. Plugged in spare coil pack, same thing, spare ingitor, same thing. Won't start, but will cough and backfire. the front coil will generate one spark when you first crank it, and one when you stop, but won't fire properly like the rear coil is. OBD2 data list says the pcm thinks the motor is turning 25 rpm when its stopped and when its cranking. Doesn't change. Front o2 is listed at 0.35v, even with the sensor unplugged. rear 02 is at 1.25v. cam and crank sensors both seem to be ok, so does the timing belt and the pullys all line up. the manifold ground and the starter ground seem to be ok. I'm thinking the pcm may be done. Any thoughts?

Bull. Use a 1995 EJ22 out of an Automatic car. The autos have EGR like the 2.5's. Exact same emissions systems, same sensors, pretty much plug and play. And there's a lot of 95's out there in the yards, at least on this side of the country.

Well, the only way I've ever done it is fairly dangerous, so be warned. EYE PROTECTION IS A MUST Take a cut off wheel and cut a diagonal cut across the race. Try not to cut into the hub. Do like a 30 degree diagonal, shallow enough that you get a good cut into the outer face. Put the hub in a vice, gripping it between the studs. Put a chisel in the cut you made, put a rag over the area, and split the race with the hammer and chisel. Once you crack the race, it will slide right off.

I look at it this way: Rally= car ends in quick death when you roll it or put it into the woods. Offroad= car dies slow death of a thousand cuts untill you are so sick of patching together whats left of the body that you finally retire it. You can rally the piss out of an offroad car. My lifted wagon used to put plenty of cars to shame on the backroads. All depends on the driver and the level of remaining sanity. You can't offroad the piss out of a rally car...

Or you put a tapered stone in your die grinder and go to town like I did. I just always tightened the two origional holes firest and then cranked down the "custom" hols. Nevar had a wehel come off. Course mine wer steel, don't know if youre doing aluminum ones.

No, the 3AT's all have 23spline axles, like the N/A Dual range 5spds. Only the 4eat's and the turbo dual range 5spds have the 25spline. Yeah, as long as you don't engage 4wd, you can run mismatched diffs. If you're in snow or mud, you can run the 4wd too, it's not then end of the world. The rear will tend to push though.

I'd personally avoid starting with a dry shot. Why not just start with a wet shot system and small jets? Dry is just asking for trouble. You don't need a stand alone to run a wet system.

Yup, 5spd is the way to go. I swapped my 86 t-wagon in an afternoon. You need the flywheel bolts too. I brought everthing I thought I needed out to wyoming to swap it, but had to wait for my dad to send an envelope of bolts because I forgot them. You will need the manual tranny x member and mounts and the bolts that go throught the x member to the body. But it is easy. Drop the steering column out, makes it way easier to swap the pedal box.

What I was most surprised about was that the rods didn't snap. I wasn't easy on the motor for the couple of weeks of driving after that, I couldn't be, big tires and and a motor way down on power meant you had to beat on the motor to keep it moving. I gave it the ol' redline test before I pulled it out, it used to be able to free rev to 8,200, but I don't think it could go much past 6k. Lot of internal friction and lost compression I'd say. Oh, and I drowned the motor back in 2005 mabe? Then I ej-swapped the car, drove it for a number of years, and took it off the road this december, too much rust. Had a lot of fun with that car. I finally got to see inside the engine because one of my friends showed and interest in seeing what an engine looks like inside, so I let him take it apart. we had to split the case and take the rods apart because you couldn't pull the wristpins out through the access holes anymore.

I was planning on EJ swapping it, I already had the motor ready, but I was still working on the harness. This incident kinda forced the issue. The damage was done as soon as the water was pulled in. The intake was full with water to the top of the throttle body. 4k rpms to 0 in one crunch. No tools, middle of the night, couple miles out in the woods, you do what you have to. And at that point, who cares if the oil is diluted with water, the engines junk anyway.

pull the governor out first, its like a 10 minute job, look at it and see if it needs a gear or cleaning. i would assume its a dealer only part.

I finally took apart the EA82 that had been in my loyale. I had drowned it in a pond at 4,000 rpms, then used the starter to bump it slowly, a few degrees at a time untill the water leaked past the rings. Once we got the water through, it started up again and I drove it out. Drove it for a couple weeks after that, it sounded like hell, was down on power, but it ran. Well, here's the pics of the rotating assembly: The shiny marks on the bottoms of the pistons are where they were hitting the block at BDC, or hitting the cranshaft counterweights. That was the bad rapping noise it had. 3 out of 4 bent rods.

This is a sure sign that your governor gear is apple cored. On the transmission up by the bellhousing end there is a 4" diameter "can" sticking off of the side. It's held down by 3 bolts. Remove the bolts, pull the can off, and then pull the governor out of the side of the tranny. it will look like a piece of pipe welded at a 90 degree to a spiral gear. The spiral gear should have a profile like this [], not like this )(. If it looks like the second one, the gear is apple cored, and the govenor isn't being spun, causing the shifting issues. If the gear is still straight, then the governor needs cleaning. There used to be a how-to on this in the usrm, but I can't find it anymore.

Here's our dog. He's fairly old now, completely blind, loosing sense of smell, and his hind end is getting weak. He doesn't let it get him down though. Seen him walk full speed into trees, trailer hitches, ect and get back up and shake it off like it didn't even happen. Takes longer to go on walks now that he's blind, you have to shuffle as you walk so that he can follow the sound of your feet on the trail. Otherwise he ends up in the underbrush. Can still catch food like you wouldn't believe. As long as the piece brushes his whiskers he'll snatch it right out of the air. He'll stare you down just as good as he could when he could see, he uses the sound of you eating to know where your face is. That's a rear seat out of my old 86 3-door that he uses as a bed. Low enough to the ground that he can hop in and out fine, and it reminds him of the car rides he loves so much.

Well, as a little closer to this thread, I found out why it was so dang hard to start. The injectors were apparently not closing fully due to the sludge going through them, and fuel washing the cylinders. I would have to crank it untill enough oil got up to the rings so it would have compression, then it would start. Drove it untill I used up all the old gas, filled with fresh and a bottle of Techron. Changed the engine oil (really thin and stank of old gas), and it runs right again. Chalk that up to a momentary lapse of judgement.

I started with a 92 loyale. Same everything yours has, including the leaking intake manifold gaskets. Instead of fixing it, I just threw some stop leak in the radiator and called it a day. Stopped the coolant clouds going out the exhaust. However, I would recommend replacing the gaskets, they're way easy and cheap. Then I checked the timing and found out someone had retarded the distributor. Advanced the distributor back to specs and got a lot of power back. Engine would still bogg out before the tires would loose traction though. The first big mod I did was swapping in a dual range 4x4 transmission. Came out of an 1986 3 door that had been my first car. Biggest single improvement you can make to those cars. If you do the twin stick mod to it, you can use the low range in two wheel drive. Might be helpful for paper delivery. Having the lower gearing makes up a LOT for the lack of power. Enough that you won't want to swap the engine. Hell the stock engine could still pull my loyale up to 97mph with 30" mud tires and a 4" lift. It's not really that bad if it's running good. Make sure that the rubber intake boot still has the part right on top of the engine that says SPFI in big letters. If it's missing, the tube will collapse at higher engine rpm and smother performance. The EJ swap isn't a quick fix. I'd wait untill after you have big tires and a lift to even think about swapping. Do the dual range transmission out of a 86-89 gl. it can be carburated or spfi like yours, but it can't be turbo. Make sure it has the timing belts. It has to be an EA82 to fit. Put a remanufactured clutch disk in while you have the transmission out. With that and the intake gaskets, you'll be happy with the car for a while.