GeneralDisorder

Not likely if the upper hose nipple sheared off. That radiator was questionable when the repair was done. That's OFTEN how these radiators fail - almost never having been in an accident. I replaced a 2014 radiator a few months back where the same thing happened - upper hose nipple got soft and turned a brown color and just sheared away from the tank. The Super Blue coolant in conjunction with higher temp thermostats is causing this to be a more frequent occurrence. Radiator lifespan is down to about 8-10 years and 10 is pushing it. GD

Changed 3 years ago and they didn't do the (obviously questionable) radiator? Zero confidence in that repair.... GD

Why waste all that money and time when it needs head gaskets? You don't make any sense. Pull the engine and do the HG's or swap it. Don't waste time and money doing a bunch of sh1t you will just have to redo to replace the HG's. That's just stupidity. Koyo or CSF for the radiator will be fine. Get the hoses from Subaru. 99 was the first year for the phase-II automatic. They are known to have delayed engagement issues. Some people have luck with Trans-X additive. As far as how smooth it is - it's a Subaru not a Cadillac and you don't really want an auto to just lazily mush into gears - that causes friction and heat and wear. A positive, crisp shift that doesn't snap your neck is what you want. GD

Inexpensive converters usually last 1-2 years tops. Factory Subaru converters often last 150k+ miles and several decades. So yes there's a qualitative difference. 3x-5x the price for 10x to 20x the lifespan. Regarding if they have more precious metals - we can conclude based on the recycle value of OEM vs aftermarket that they most certainly do. GD

Plain old green anti-freeze. The cheapest stuff you can find. Mix it with distilled water at 50/50 concentration. Why on earth would you put expensive dealer anti-freeze designed for 10 year newer cars in a car that *you know* has head gasket issues? And yes - the blue OAT coolant eats plastic. Especially plastics not designed for use with it. Subaru says you CANNOT mix the coolant types even if you flush out the system completely. IMHO the blue coolant is junk - it's 3x the price and we never had any issues running green coolant in Subaru's for 40 years prior. With all aluminium engines they are not demanding with regards to anti-freeze. GD

Wiseco and JE both have options for requesting custom pistons. I'm quite sure Manley does also. Shouldn't be difficult to have some new pistons made. Not surprising it's been gone through before - the wet sleeve engines were a NIGHTMARE for the dealerships - my old parts guy that had started in the 70's at the same Subaru dealership I still buy all my parts from to this day had nothing nice to say about them. He absolutely loved the dry sleeve engines - EA71 and EA81. Had an EA81 wagon that he daily drove and passed to his son when he got a first gen Legacy. GD

That shop doesn't know what they are talking about. So many flaws in that quote. High Points: You don't buy a head gasket "kit". You buy the parts individually - it's much cheaper. About $100 cheaper than their quote. Or more. And that's OEM Subaru retail pricing I'm talking about. Subaru only sells a complete gasket kit and those are not a good deal as they cover multiple engines and include many things you do not need and will not be using. Head bolts are NOT TTY and do not require replacement except on an individual basis if they are damaged or corroded (not typical). At least they got the pricing right. But they don't understand these engines. This engine does not use Super-Blue coolant and never did. That came 10 years later in 2009. And it eats plastic cooling system components. I would avoid it at all costs on vehicles not designed for it. It is NOT better than standard green. Subaru oil filters are junk - made by Honeywell/Fram (lowest bidder) for the USDM only. Even Subaru Japan will not allow their use on the newer engines. WIX is much better with an up-front bypass valve design. Amsoil is better yet although right now the EA15K12 filter is back-ordered due to production delays related to the short supply of steel to make filters. Valve stem seals are a good idea and resurfacing is absolutely required but they make no mention of the need (and it IS needed) to check and adjust the valve lash on the heads. Many of the shims are NLA from Subaru and this may require grinding the valve stems to adjust the lash, and also the shims are generally not in stock for the 25D - requiring often a 3-5 day wait to get these parts. They have too many hours for the head gasket replacement, and insufficient labor/parts for the cylinder head work. They have 6 liters of oil listed for an engine that takes 4.3 liters (4.5 quarts). There's likely more if I want to read between the lines but I've already started drinking and IMHO this shop is not qualified to work on this engine. GD

Certainly possible. This is happening a LOT with 25+ year old electronics. My old loaner car was a '90 legacy that had about 6 codes that would never clear. We installed a LINK ECU and never had another issue. Car has 340k+ on it now. Aging electronics will continue to be an issue going forward. I would investigate and pursue any options for replacement NEW electronics. I know for a fact the LINK ECU's support the Subaru 360 optical distributor since it's identical to the Nissan 360 opto. GD

CEL is just from wheel spin - the car is pissed about differential wheel speeds. Should clear on it's own in a few miles. Battery light is an indication that the voltage is higher at the battery or the alternator - this lamp is in series with the field flash circuit and comes on when there is a higher voltage potential at one or the other. Either the battery is bad (which can damage the alternator) or the alternator is bad. Cheap alternators are junk. See this a lot. Brake lamp is on because the alternator's bridge rectifier and smoothing caps are not generating a smooth DC current. You have AC ripple on the charging circuit and this is defeating diodes in the gauge cluster causing the brake warning lamp to illuminate. Or you are low on brake fluid (pads are worn). GD

That's a mildly-high quote. And I fear they have no idea what they are talking about..... An EJ22E swap from a 1995 automatic takes no more time than pulling and installing the original engine. This is generally about 6 hours. If you also figure a complete reseal of said engine (good idea), then you can probably figure about 14 hours. Doing HG's on-up. A qualified tech can probably do this in half that. But we consider the worst possible scenario - heli-coil many threads, lots of cleaning and prep, etc...... 251 bottom end swap is similar - should be about 14-16 hours at MOST. Shops do quote high. Hell.... I know this better than anyone - people ask me for quotes on the most outlandish things you can imagine - we are really a high performance speed and tuning shop that does repair and maintenance to keep the lights on in the winter, etc. Many of my customers don't trust any other shop because I'm honest to a fault - I charge what is needed to pay my employees a proper living wage and keep my lights on. I'm also not in the repair market in your area of the country so it's really hard for me to determine an "honest" quote. GD

You can feel free to email me at my shop. Go to the contact us page - it has both the shop phone number and the sales email (this goes to me as well). We get a LOT of phone calls so it would be better if you emailed me. http://superiorsoobie.com/ Rick

There's no good options for retaining the power of the 25D without using another 25D. If it's just head gaskets that's the problem - swap the pistons out for 2000 - 2004 pistons, and use the 642 STi head gaskets. I would seek QUALIFIED professional assistance. Tell them what you want (EJ251 pistons, heads properly resurfaced, and STi 642 MLS gaskets installed) and if they don't IMMEDIATELY know what you are talking about - call another shop till you get a place that's reputable and understands these common modifications. I wouldn't jump into doing this yourself given the limited experience you have. GD

2 years is nothing. I wouldn't do any of that - just start it. Get it hot THEN do the oil change (before putting the engine under a load). Don't worry about the fuel. Run it under light load down to the gas station and put in some premium. Don't try to pull any trailers up 5,000 ft grades before you run that low octane gas out of it. But don't bother draining it. It will fire. Change the fuel filter with a FACTORY Subaru filter AFTER you get new fuel cycled through the old filter. Is the coolant green? Betcha it is. Run it. If you like you can unplug the crankshaft position sensor and crank the engine till the oil pressure idiot light goes out. Reconnect and start it. Optional IMO. Will be fine either way I recon. You are putting way too much thought into this. Run it. Bubbles in the overflow that never stop are a sure sign of impending or current Head Gasket failure. Basically inevitable on that engine. The 25D has gaskets that are too thick. The best solution is 251 pistons and 642 turbo head gaskets - along with proper prep and installation of course. GD

You fundamentally don't understand how any of this works. You just need to have a remote start system installed that works with a '17 Outback. Any stereo shop should be able to do this for you. The "starter" doesn't change for a remote start system - that's just additional electrical and wireless transmission systems that activate the existing starter once all the proper interlocks are satisfied. GD

No CANBUS for 2004. They started with a half implementation of it on the 2005 Legacy chassis, but really full implementation of CANBUS wasn't till about 2006 - later for some models. GD

It's extremely frustrating. You can go down the path of fixing every poor connection and ground only to arrive at no solution and have to throw computers at it because of course there's no way to actually test anything when it comes to the CANBUS - you can look at waveforms on a scope and potentially see something that's being pulled high or low - but if the problem is intermittent - lotsa luck with that noise. And since the packet data is considered intellectual property and not published you would have to spend literally 100's (if not thousands) of hours sniffing the packets on a known good chassis to reverse engineer the CANBUS signaling and then build a data logger that could identify an intermittent bad packet and who sent it, etc. Who's going to pay for this? Currently I have no takers. And yes I have people at my disposal that can do it. The tools and expertise and the hours it would take FAR exceed the value of a 10+ year old Subaru. In consumer products there is not enough redundancy, not enough pre-release testing, insufficient on-board diagnostic equipment and software, and then on top of all that the manufacturer is actively trying to thwart your repair efforts by hiding how it works behind the curtain of "intellectual property". Basically they expect us to repair something that is essentially "PFM" (Pure F*cking Magic)..... what the really want is the car off the road so they can sell someone a new one. I'm entirely over it - why continue to fight this fight? It's one thing to fix something that's broken with proper documentation - it's another to have to HACK your car and play reverse engineer against a team of engineers that are paid to thwart your efforts...... yeah screw all that. GD

We have seen multiple occurrences of the ground straps from the frame rails to the bottom of the cylinder heads killing the ECU - either it doesn't run or runs REALLY bad and undriveable. We had about a 2010 or 2011 Outback that was towed in..... barely would idle and idle was horrendous. After HOURS of testing we made up new head to frame rail ground straps and it ran fine again. I told the customer it was a rusty mess and to get rid of the car - which they did not do. A year later almost to the day the car once again showed up with nearly the same problem. This time after more HOURS of testing we told the customer - can't find anything wrong going to have to throw an ECU at it. And after ECU replacement the engine ran fine again. Going through a similar problem right now with a 2008. Engine runs but heavy throttle produces a flashing CEL and misfire codes even though it doesn't appear to be misfiring. Another shop recently replaced the engine and never attached the main ground from the battery to the starter ear/bell housing. It also had a bad rear hatch harness where multiple wires were broken and shorted - put the car in reverse and it would blow illumination relay control fuses and the headlights would go out. The other shop couldn't figure out either of those issues after the customer had returned reportedly 15 times to have them diagnose it. In frustration the customer brough the car to us and we immediately identified the missing ground point and after a bit of investigation replaced his faulty rear hatch harness and now we are just left with the collateral damage of the previous shop's ignorance. GD

Well those tests would seem to indicate the new sensor and possibly the old sensor are both faulty. The gauge going to full cold when disconnected would seem to validate the wiring. All parts - across the board - have fallen in quality and quality control. It wouldn't surprise me if you got a bad "new" part. This happens to us all the time now and it's extremely frustrating from a shop owners perspective. I have to warn customers who I have sold reman alternators to that we are currently seeing about a 50% failure rate on every brand including Denso. GD

Radiator fan is ECU controlled and will not come on till 204. Temp sensor is a 3-wire and is actually two sensors in one housing. One for the ECU and one for the gauge cluster. Sounds like possibly a wiring short. A short to ground in the gauge circuit will peg the gauge all the way to hot. Resistance of the sensor drops as it is heated so a short to ground (0 ohms or close to it) will cause the gauge to read full tilt. Unplug the sensor while it's running - should drop the gauge to zero and the ECU should throw a circuit code for it's side of the sensor and will kick on the fans till the circuit is restored and the code cleared. GD

Welcome to the hell that is planned obsolescence consumer products coupled with highly integrated CANBUS and non mil-spec wiring. These cars are EXTREMELY sensitive to grounding problems. I would suggest not just cleaning them but actually taking EVERY ground apart that you can find, clean or possibly even replace the ring terminals after cutting back into good copper, and then cleaning the landing pads and using NEW properly sized star washers to ensure paint, corrosion, etc are successfully pierced and good contact is made. Coat the whole mess in dielectric grease. GD

Plastic radiators have a useful lifespan of 8 years. After that they should be replaced. We are already seeing 2014's fail. Usually the upper radiator nipples get soft and shear away from the tank. Seems to be a shorter life with the new blue OAT coolant than the green stuff. There's obviously some chemistry going on between the plastic and the coolant and the heat cycling. Meanwhile my '69 GMC C2500 still has it's factory 4 row heavy duty radiator. Copper/brass FTW. GD

It's possible to install an R180 but you really don't want a Torsen for off road. They don't lockup unless both tires have some traction. If you lift a wheel or it's just in really sloppy mud, etc the Torsen won't do anything at all. A clutch style LSD would be better but the STi R180 is designed for street and rally not slow off-road so it's far from ideal. GD

Then you would assume wrong. GD

Very unlikely. I've never seen it in practice. GD

I wouldn't worry about it. You are not likely to need a rear locker. You can use the parking brake to help with power transfer on the rear or just modulate the service brakes to keep wheels without traction from absorbing all the power. The rear locker isn't cheap, takes quite a bit of knowledge to install properly, and make on-road driving a bit annoying since it will ratchet, pop, and bind around sharp turns. I would leave this mod to people that are doing 4"+ lifts and don't care about on road driving. You can do the modification for the duty-c to lockup the transfer clutch - it's easy and inexpensive so worth your time if you are interested. GD