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I disconnected the cat, replaced TPS and Knock Sensor. Nothing helped.

I have a 96 Legacy Outback Wagon 5spd 2.2 with recently rebuilt motor (25k ago). I have had problems since day one with it when it comes to acceleration. If I floor the pedal it takes maybe a 1 second to really respond. When I try going off roading up a hill I can't get it to go because of this. I have had 5 subarus and they never had this problem. My 91 legacy climbed way better than this. I've also been getting 20 to 22 MPG which I usually get more with these cars. No check engine light. I have a donor car so I've been swapping parts. So far I have swapped Front O2 sensor, all 4 injectors, MAF sensor, New PCV valve, New Spark Plugs, pretty sure I did a fuel filter 25k ago, New wires and I've done a fuel system cleaner. What else should I do? Thanks

I'm using 5w30 full synthetic. I used regular during the break in period and changed the oil 3 times. I know coolant smokes white and thats what my fear was for a while but I haven't added a drop. I am leaving the coolant tank empty and that radiator full. I'm doing this so I know that I'm not sucking coolant in from the tank. Everytime I open the radiator cap I have coolant dripping off of the cap so I know it hasn't used a drop. I will ad my old catch can when I get back out to colorado to pick it up. As far as the rings go I am positive I got all the rings installed the exact same way. I was so freakin anal about this rebuild as it was my first. I took way too much time making sure it was perfect. I will take the intake off as soon as I am able. Thanks for the advice yall

So it's happening more frequently now. I took the plugs out and stuck a cotton rope in the hole and found a small amount of oil on the end in the 3 and 4 cylinders. Although it didn't smoke after starting it this time. I opened the throttle body butterfly and looked in and it looks pretty clean so I doubt any oil is getting sucked thru the pcv. Whats weird is that it slowly got worse after the rebuild and then the same after the head gasket replacement and valve stem seals. I'm thinking the oil is breaking down and getting thinner so it's seeping by something. Whats your thoughts. Could the rings not have set properly and sometimes it gets by them ?I highly doubt it but I also doubt the valve seals are leaking again or even leaked in the first place considering that they hardly ever have issues on these motors. No coolant loss and no oil loss that I can tell but it wouldn't take much I'm gonna add a bottle of Lucas to see if it thickens the oil up and stops it. Ugh its pretty frustrating considering I have a Mobile Mechanic sign on my back window and I have a huge puff of white smoke when I start this thing up.

Morning starts or after sitting a hour or so. What's weird is how it's only happened once in the last couple or so thousand miles. And when it was doing it more frequently before it could go a week without doing it then everyday for a while. That's why I thought maybe a fuel injector not shutting off all the way at times EDIT it happened again today, a smaller poof of smoke but still enough to notice

I most definitely replaced that oil ring. The whole engine was spotless when I put it back together and I cleaned the valve covers both times I had them off. The breather tubes are clean. The pcv hose and Y are clean. I replaced the Oil Separator with a aluminum one. It's only happened once that I've noticed sense I did the head gaskets and valve seals, where it i was doing it at least once a day when I decided to redo the heads. Weird

Yep. Everything is exactly as it should be.

Ugh. Another poof of white smoke today

Check the back side of the passenger head. There is a cam shaft retainer cap thingy that has to bolts holding it on. Inside that cap is a a large o-ring. That will get cracked and leak a lot of times and it will drip on your exhaust.

You are supposed to adjust it. It sounds like it needs to be backed off. If its too tight then your clutch is not fully engaging. Loosen the 14mm nut and 8mm locking nut at the end of the cable all the way. Tighten the 14mm nut. Watch the cable cantilever on top of the hill holder. When it starts to move the cable is tight so back the 14mm nut off till the cantilever doesn't move. tighten the locking nut and try that out. To test it get your car on a 5 degree incline and push the clutch in and put on the brakes. Let off the brakes and see if it rolls. If it does then you need to tighten the cable. Release the clutch slowly. I find that at about halfway the car starts to roll. if it doesn't roll back after that then you probably have it too tight. I absolutely love a properly functioning hill holder especially when on mountain roads or in hilly cities. If you really want to disconnect it just loosen the nuts enough so that you can take the cable out of the cantilever. You would have to move the cantilever by hand clockwise until you can disconnect the cable barrel out of the slot. Good luck.

So I checked the PCV and it looked clean and moved freely. I had cleaned it when I did the rebuild so I figured it was good but I decided to replace it with a OEM one because $10 aint bad. So far it hasn't smoked once and that was over 1200 miles ago. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I hear everyone always say to check you pcv valve on a variety of problems but until now I never realized how important it was. Thanks for your help guys. I'll let you now if it smokes again

Yeah I thought that was the problem but as I said I replaced them along with the head gaskets and no luck. As far as I can tell the intake valves could leak into the cylinders on these

Just had another thought. If it was coolant it would probably only be a few drops that would cause it to smoke like that and I might not notice a fluid level change. I just noticed that the IAC valve has a coolant line running thru it for whatever reason. Any chance it could be seaping into the intake thru that?

Good thought. I did check that the other day though and it was bone dry

I have a 96 Legacy Outback with a 2.2 from a 94, heads from a 97, and a intake from a 96. I rebuilt the engine a few months ago due to massive oil consumption caused by bad rings. The engine never smoked at all. The rebuild went great and it runs smooth but once in a while I would have a big puff of white smoke on startup after it sat all night of for at least a couple hours. Pure white smoke, no sweet smell at all, definitely not condensation and it would last about 3 to 5 seconds and the cloud would linger for a while. It didn't use a single drop of oil or coolant from what I could tell. After 7k I decided to tear it apart again and do what I should have done in the first place which was 1 use oem head gaskets and not Topline gaskets that came with my rebuild kit and 2 replace the valve stem seals. I had the heads checked and they were still flat. Got everything back together and after maybe the 10th time starting it I got the white cloud again. I'm at a loss. Could it be that I have a injector sticking open and that extra fuel gets burned off? . Been working on cars for most of my life and never had this problem before. I'll try to take a video when I get a chance.

I ended up just replacing the gasket and I remembered I had a old engine so I took the bolts off that. Yeah I'm surprised I didn't strip the block but it seams to be just fine. Stupid late night mistake. I think I'm going to do a test on the old block and see how much you can over torque them before they break or strip. I just need to get a torque wrench that will show that. I also plan on re torquing some bolts a bunch of times to see if they ever break or lose there clamping strength,

So I was doing new head gaskets on my 96 Legacy Outback with a EJ22. I wasn't paying enough attention and instead of following the proper final 2 torquing steps which is 90 degrees on all bolts then an additional 90 degrees I did 180 followed by another 180. I loosened it another 180 after I realized what I did. I figure I will have to redo the head gasket but what do you think? They are supposedly not TTY bolts but should I replace the bolts too?

I believe 02 to 07 wrx and 05 sti will interchange. Might want to research that

I'll second the brake pad rattle. I had this happening a few weeks ago and couldn't figure out why it would stop or not happen when braking but after a bunch of inspection I finally noticed my brake pad would move up and down and side to side by hand. The anti rattle retaining clip just needed to be bent back against the pad and problem fixed. If not that I would say sway bar link or ball joint

Well the pads are definitely looser than other subarus I've checked out but I bent the anti rattle tabs in a lot and put some new grease and its no longer rattling.

I use the Torque Pro app that cost 5 bucks and its unbelievable. Way better than any auto parts store scanner I've tried in my opinion and it has much more info you can pull. It has a ton of real time info like speed, temperature, sensor voltage, 0 to 60 time, g force, and of course codes and a lot more. It's very accurate too. I had my speedometer stop working and I was able to get a gps speed dial in the app. For the price you just cant beat it. Plus you can just throw the dongle in any car you use and not have to worry about a big device with wires. There are cheap Bluetooth dongles out there but they dont work well with it. If I had the money I would go with a 100 dollar or more dongle but if you are cheap like me just get the BAFX ELM 327 for 22 bux on amazon. Mine sometimes takes a bit to connect or I have to read the codes twice to get it to work but it always works eventually. Mine is a few years old though so I think the newer model may work better. It's the BAFX 34t5 and has better reviews

Yeah they seem to be fine. Whats weird is that they both started doing it at the same time. I just got this car and this is its first real road trip so I'm just getting used to all its noises so I say it just started but it's possible I'm just hearing it now

I've seen a couple posts about this but nobody ever says what fixes it. So my 96 Legacy Outback has a very annoying rattle. I can hear a rattle coming from the front while on a bumpy road and now its even on a street. The noise stops when pressure is applied to the pedal. After some investigation I found that my front pads are loose. I thought maybe the wrong pads where installed by the previous owner so I tried putting new pads (different brand) in there but the same thing is happening. Here's a video of the issue. https://youtu.be/RRWVON6SNXc I have taken out the ABS system and installed a master cylinder from a svx to keep the same specs. I don't think it has anything to do with that though because the pads just move up and down and side to side and not in and out. The pads dont require shims. The retainer clips dont seem to have wear but there is a small gap between the shim and the pad as you can see at the end of the video. Any help would be great. Thanks

I've done ones from autozone before and they fit even though they are smaller. They're supposedly more efficient than the originals. Mine came with 2 crimp connectors. Just cut the old wires and spice, don't disconnect.

Ferret posted this on another thread yesterday:This is a switch on the side of the manual transmission, like the backup light switch. Dealer only item, pretty inexpensive and easy to change. High enough on the trans that you will not leak any fluid. Purpose, , to tell the ECU when you are in Neutral, so either you are decelerating or the ECU must control the Idle. Example, you are driving WITHOUT your foot on the gas, Car in gear, The ECU doesn't have to control the idle. You shift into neutral, NOW the ECU MUST control the idle. It's detected as a fault when the switch is bad ... you are IN GEAR, without foot on the gas, but the ECU DOESN'T KNOW IT, so the ECU now tries to control the idle AND IT CAN'T. So it thinks it's at a HIGH UNCONTROLLABLE IDLE. Older manuals usually call out IAC , TPS and other Idle controls for this error.