GeneralDisorder

You have a typical SPFI (single port fuel injection) engine. Your car almost certainly never had a turbo. Could be a VIN mix up. Check your valve timing (timing belt alignment) and check your ignition timing, etc. Check the plugs and wires, cap/rotor, etc. GD

Passenger valve cover goes to the air filter. Drivers valve cover T's and goes to the PCV valve one direction and in the other direction it reduces to 1/4" ID and goes to the air filter for a vacuum breaker. GD

Ah - no wonder I haven't seen that. Never seem to see any XT's at my shop. GD

Interesting - The '85 MPFI auto I just worked on has it's timing marks on the flex plate and doesn't have that whole front timing timing index. Well that's certainly strange then..... could it be an automatic *XT* thing? GD

Don't bother doing the valve grind. Just resurface the heads on a sheet of glass with some 220 grit and WD-40. Reshim the valves. It will easily go another 100k if the bottom end doesn't take it out first. GD

I hate to be the one to say it but you are asking more than it's worth. Even in good running order the first-gen Brat's are difficult to sell and usually are in the $1500 range. With a borked tranny, some body damage, and not in the best cosmetic condition.... put it this way - I SELL first gen legacy's for that AFTER I've gone through them and done timing belt/WP and checked them out fully. With a bad tranny I will buy them for little more than scrap value. Now a Brat may be worth a bit more than that because it's intrinsic collectible value but you are in the land of plentiful Subaru's..... $750 would be a much more reasonable (firm) asking price. Start at $1000 and come down. You won't get any real interst till you get below $1k... not on the board anyway. But just about anyone that would be interested in one knows more or less what they are worth. Good luck though GD

That never really works out well in practice. The problem is that the bar (the axle shaft) is hardened and unless you anneal it, weld it, and then re-harden it.... high likelyhood of cracking and stress fractures later on if not immediately. I've talked with CV axle specialists and have considered that option with many of them. The consensus is that it's not safe and should not be attempted. Welding of hardened steels is very tricky. Generally speaking it's a bad idea. Custom bars in any length with any desired splines are in the neighborhood of about $200 each for onesy twosy type jobs. $60 each for 50 or more from one source I talked to. Even at $200 each - cheaper than most people's 5 lug rims per-unit cost. Really not that bad in the scheme of things. And the bar itself is not a wear item or likely to ever be damaged. For that price - you couldn't pay a good machinist to try and weld two seperate axles together... consider the cost of the axles and the labor! Not worth it. Just buy custom bars... or... I am in the process of having custom inner CV races (the "star") made up by RCV Performance so a Legacy outer joint (specifically NTN# 87LAC) will mate with a Brat front axle. We are having 24 races made - 12 cars worth. We will be offering about 8 sets for sale here within a month. The price per-unit is much more manageable than making custom bars so we opted for this approach. XT6 hubs are not that hard to source. There's at least two sets for certain on www.car-part.com for about $50 each piece and a couple possibles - might be XT4 units. Have to call and confirm. Very little reason to do what you are proposing. I've been researching the EA81 five lug swap for several months and I've pretty much got all the details worked out. GD

LOL. You're off your meds pal. You're not worth that much of my time. Conspircy against some washed up, over-50 crackpot with too much time on his hands? I think not. You need to get out a bit more . GD

You can have a filler neck for a radiator cap TIG welded into one of the aluminium 91 to 94 turbo radiators by any radiator shop. Koyo and Mishimoto both make all aluminium turbo radiators for that generation body. Better cooling too. That's what I would do - but it's about a $250 fix - give or take depending on what your radiator shop charges to install the filler neck. For that matter you could have it done to a brass tanked turbo radiator. Shouldn't cost more than $50 to have a filler neck installed. A good radiator shop can do just about anything you like including build you a custom radiator that actually fits properly and has as many cores as you like and can fit between the mounts and the engine pulleys. I had my radiator guy build a tripple core all-metal radiator for a Brat with 90 degree downward pointing 1.5" inlet/outlet for an EJ swap. Cost was about $320. It's not cheap but it can be done. GD

You will need the driveline as well. The 99+ transmissions are a different length. The 97 should be a hydraulic clutch so you are ok there. It may not have the exhaust hanger in the correct place. And it almost surely will not have all the bolt holes for the air-box mounting arms if it's equipped with that style.... It can work. But it's going to be something you will just have to do and find out what the catches are once you have the tranny in place. GD

You don't have to do it that way. The way to do it on the EJ20 WRX's is to use the EJ22T short block only. And then everything else stays EJ20. Or use the EJ22T block and EJ25D heads. That's a popular combo. There's a lot of parts that can be machined and reused. The pistons get bead blasted and skirt coated, the crank gets undersized and polished, and if a rod needs replaced there is a such thing as good used parts.... etc. I did say "rebuilt" not remanufactured. Sure if you bore the block oversized, replace the pistons, rods, and crank so everything is factory new and perfect then you will spend over $1k in parts. But I don't do production rebuilds - I hand build all my engines and I don't throw away a crank if it just needs to be undersized. I *have* done remanufacturing and I understand the mentality - crank is scored so we toss it in the scrap metal and order a new one! That's fine as a production policy so you don't have any one-off builds. But I don't personally do that. Ultimately the parts costs for a bare long block will likely be about $150 for bearings and rings, $150 for head gaskets, block o-rings, valve covers and rear main, and possibly $20 for a used rod if the knock has destroyed it. The rest is machine work and labor. Maybe the odd valve here and there and about $2 x16 for stem seals.... but my machinist does those for me when he grinds the valves. And as I said that's a bare long block. No pumps, no timing components. He may not need or want those. A good used oil pump is probably a must but the rest of his stuff could be recent. That's up to my customer - I can do that since I don't ship out engines on pallets ready to drop in. You offer a product - engines that can be dropped in without having access to someone that can hand build one and or without the time investment that this takes. But people will end up paying more for that product than if they have someone like myself do it in-house. The result is probably the same either way - but I'm catering to the budget concious while you are catering to people that want faster gratification or just have no clue and have taken their car to the wrong place. GD

I steam clean engine bays day in and day out. I dry them with compressed air and run them (if possible) till the radiator stops steaming. I've never had a single problem from this practice. When i worked industrial machinery and rebuilt 480v+ electric motors on a daily basis they got the same treatment. 2500 psi near boiling water and soap. We meg-ohmed the windings and sometimes had to leave a fan on them overnight. But otherwise they were just fine. This was SOP on high voltage electric devices. The key is properly drying them. Don't let people scare you. If you do it right its not a problem. GD

One bottle should do. I have no idea what Walmart sells - I refuse to shop there. Distributor - but you can dry it out with WD-40 after the fact. I don't bother covering anything. I avoid spraying directly at the alternator. Don't want to saturate the windings. But other than that it's never been an issue outside of the occasional wet disty. GD

Steam cleaner or your hot water heater into a pressure washer and lots of simple green. GD

Timing marks are on the flywheel or flex-plate. Those are the ones you want to use. Sometimes the crank pulleys don't have the pin that aligns them and they also have more play in them than the flywheel/flexplate has. GD

Perhaps a bad connection at the coolant temp sensor. ECU thinks the car is warm and isn't fireing the injectors long enough to do any good on a cold start. In other words - no cold enrichment taking place. Plugging and unplugging that connector or just being in a warm dry environment might have helped.... etc. Hard to say for sure. GD

Agree with all of that. GD

What CV axle? Are you going to use a Legacy rear outer CV? Hhhmmm..... maybe but I doubt it will work. Then you have to consider the brake parts.... What backing plate will you use and what rotor/caliper bracket, etc? Shaving off 1/16" of OD on the hub will probably not be a concern.... but you are making a one-off part here. Replaceability is a concern. GD

Heh. If you were closer I would buy it. I think it was a great idea and it payed off for you. Prior to this post I hadn't ever considered that brake fluid was so chemically similar to glycol. That being the case - if the HG's were replaced and the system flushed with clean water it shouldn't have hurt anything. Something that's been on my mind - since they are so similar could I dump used brake fluid in with the used anti-freeze? I mean I'm sure I *could* but I wonder if it would be a huge problem for the guys that recycle the stuff or it it really wouldn't matter either way.... GD

A lot more expensive than coating or knurling. Hell if you coat the original pistons you have basically the same thing. Of course the turn-around time is longer to have them coated than to buy new ones. The coating can potentially take up more clearance also as the thicker coating is "adjustable" via polishing it down. Not so with the stock replacements. GD

Use the Subaru coolant conditioner. Works great. Does not hurt hoses or gaskets. Not sure where he got that idea. I've used it sucessfully a number of times. Coolant will sometimes leave a white residue when it dry's. You sure it's not oil? I've seen oil leaks on as new as '06 with under 100k. GD

93 will not have the right flange bolt pattern. You will need a 96 to 99 rear section and you may need a 99 specifically for the front section as the auto's chagned in design in '99. I do not know if the '00 and up use the same driveline as the '99 even though the tranny is the same because the body style changed and thus they could be longer. I'm fairly confident that a '96 to '99 rear section will work - just probanbly not the front. A Subaru dealer could tell you for certian what part numbers will interchange, etc. GD

99 should be 105k interval. GD

It could definitely work. Another solution to getting the skirt clearances up is to coat them with teflon, or whatever it is that SwainTech uses and is calling PC-9.... looks alot like a Teflon variant to me. :-p. The PC-9 is about $24 per piston plus shipping and can take up .004" of additional clearance. I have gone this route and have installed these in a 25D based frankenmotor (with careful fitment by adjusting the coating with 1200 git till the clearance was acceptable) and there wasn't any piston slap so I guess it worked Knurling could potentially take up a lot more than that. Easily in the neighborhood of .010" but I hope you wouldn't need that much on any Subaru engine. This is more of a "trick" to avoid boreing oversized and buying new pistons. But it does work. GD

Right on! *Real* machine repair is what you just did. Anyone can hang parts and that's what the automotive industry has been leaning toward for the last couple decades. Easier to find monkeys to do it and easier to train them when there is nothing more complex than bolts and hose clamps. That's why most manufacturers have gone to sealed bearing/hub assembies for the wheel bearings - you just remove a few bolts and put in the new pre-loaded assembly. Dealerships don't rebuild engines or transmissions anymore - they just order new "assemblies" and swap them out. It takes the variables out of the equation and means they can hire unskilled workers for lower wages. You know that at one time people actually rebuilt things like water pumps? The world of industrial machinery where I come from this is still the SOP. You can't get away from it in that setting since there is not the volume to warrant that type of a system. GD