GeneralDisorder

We are located in Portland, OR. Yes you need an AP to apply a safe tune for the SF intake. In the meantime it's only safe to drive if you STAY COMPLETELY OUT of boost. Drive it like there's an egg between your foot and the accelerator pedal. If you have a scan tool check the fuel trims. GD

The AOS does nothing useful. It doesn't prevent anything. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Are you burning oil? If you are then your engine or turbo is blown. An AOS isn't going to help it is just a band-aid for a blown or poorly built engine. On cars that don't have excessive oil consumption the AOS is really an "Air Liquid Separator" and just captures a bunch of condensation which mixes with crankcase gasses and turns into a thick white milkshake like substance that coats the inside of all the breather hoses, and AOS or catch can, etc since the engine cannot burn off the acidic gasses and condensation from cold starts. This just fouls everything. The Subaru crankcase design already incorporates an AOS - it's built directly into the back of the engine block casting and is covered on the back side by the Separator Plate (see the irony?) this box inside the engine block is safely located where it will be heated by engine block heat and thus will not create problems with condensation. If Subaru thought it would be a good idea to put that component external to the block they would have done so. Same goes for the "cylinder 4 cooling mod". If the hundreds of engineers that spent thousands of hours designing and testing the EJ platform for the last 40+ years had found this $5 fitting and hose package would make a measurable difference in combustion chamber temps then it would have been included in the factory design architecture. The reality is that *even if* (and it's arguable) it resulted in 3 or 5 degrees of difference in the coolant jacket temperature - this would make no measurable difference to the 2000 degree combustion temps when the engine is at WOT full boost. 3 degrees in the cooling jacket, if that were to translate 100% into combustion temps (it doesn't) would be a change of 0.15% - likely not measurable and definitely not going to make any difference in detonation or piston longevity. PROPER TUNING is what prevents pistons from breaking. And that's hard to come by. Our tuner has 18 years of Subaru tuning experience and has the 3rd COBB Pro license ever issued back in 2003. He was one of their beta testers for the AP version 1 and COBB offered to buy his maps for inclusion on the AP (off the shelf maps). He drew the line at that and to this day his maps are only available through him at my shop. GD

You don't need an AOS. Worst idea ever. Get an Access Port and a proper tune. That vehicle CANNOT BE DRIVEN SAFELY without a tune using the COBB SF Intake. Is that clear enough? GD

If it has a COBB intake it MUST be tuned for it. Does it have a COBB Access Port? Make sure it has the correct map loaded for the COBB SF intake. The fact that it now has a cylinder 4 misfire, and has at times ran rough, AND the car came from a used car lot...... it's very possible that it does not have a proper map loaded or possibly hasn't been tuned at all for the intake if someone unmarried the AP and traded the car in..... without the map for that intake loaded the car will run very lean and with a lot more timing than it should have. Cylinder 4 is often the first cylinder to break a ring land in those circumstances and it's quite possible that you will need to install some new Forged Pistons, get an Access Port, and a PROPER dyno tune. Expect that to cost around $5,000-6,000. It is highly unlikely to be a spark plug. They come with laser Iridium plugs and they really don't fail. GD

That's simply an uneducated statement. EGR has been in use for 50 years and it's benefits are well known. The "appearance" to your untrained eyes notwithstanding, the SCIENCE of EGR is well documented and it will result in better emissions and improved fuel economy. GD

If you can hear detonation on a Subaru engine, you have already FAR exceeded the point at which you are potentially causing damage and really Subaru engines should be kept below the point that any detonation is audible by the knock sensor. GD

Still - things have changed so you should check it with a shop gauge. Could be an issue with the sending unit. And the FSM and Owners Manual both state that seemingly zero pressure at idle on the "trim package" is "normal" and expected operation. The General Rule for oil pressure is 10 psi per 1000 RPM. Of course we generally like to see it higher than that, but that's the generally accepted number for operation without damage. GD

The "trim package" on the dash is not an accurate "instrument". Check it with a shop gauge. GD

Yes - timing belt/water pump service would be indicated and you should change the radiator, radiator hoses, and possibly the heater hoses and any other cooling system hoses that look suspect. I would do the fuel filter and pull the pump/sending unit and have a look in the tank before startup to ensure you aren't pushing some nasty fuel to the injectors. GD

Most of the newer Subaru's explicitly disallow chains. You can run traction tires and those sock things but that's about it. GD

Go to the dealership and buy a new set of manuals. GD

Throw it as far from the car as you can and replace it with a Weber. I spent a LONG time learning to rebuild the Hitachi's and make them run right. Was a complete waste of effort. For the $300 price of the Weber kit - you can't beat the reliability and performance. It's not even worth looking at a Hitachi. GD

AC condenser tubes can be too small to accommodate trans fluid. Bad idea. Older R12 units may work, but newer stuff has such tiny passages that it would never work for ATF. GD

Why don't you just leave the EGR? It helps with emissions and fuel economy and really only requires a single vacuum line - can route it through a thermo-vacuum valve (which you likely already have) if you want to be one of the cool kids. It doesn't have any effect at all on WOT performance. It has only benefits and no drawbacks. Deleting it is silly. Also there's no need to block the port off. If you don't want to use it just don't give it vacuum and it becomes it's own delete. GD

The trans module is separate. The ECU can be changed from auto to manual mode by grounding a pin. Look for wiring modifications and perhaps (hopefully) they just unplugged the trans control module. Locked in 3rd gear is what happens when the transmission computer is unplugged. Subaru, as a general rule, does not use PCM's (powertrain control module) to control both engine and trans. GM has done that since the beginning of the 4L60E, and I think Frod and Chrysler are similar. Japanese stuff tends to have separate modules - which honestly is a pain with the newer stuff since half the problems we see on CANBUS cars are module communication codes. Would be better if they were in one unit. GD

You can still get those filters from Subaru and they are cheap. Just FYI - they are better quality than any of the aftermarket stuff. GD

Welcome to the EA82T. And this is why there are none left. They are - compared to the simpler engines like the EA81, and even the EA82 without the turbo - unreliable and troublesome and it takes a concerted effort to fix and maintain them. In my opinion anything fuel injected that is 25+ years old needs a standalone. We use LINK ECU's. Maybe you would have more money for a standalone if you didn't spend money on mods that accomplish nothing. Just sayin. MegaGarbage works terrible on Japanese applications in general. Doesn't handle most Japanese style triggers and too much timing drift and screwing around with circuits and serial communications. Absolute trash - we remove them constantly due to poor (literally and figuratively) installations when they just can't do what the customer wants. I think the EA82T is just likely beyond your skill set and patience. The fact that you can't communicate with the factory computer makes them a really tough diagnostic problem. GD

Unless you can read live data with a Subaru Select Monitor, or you happen to know the conversion from MAF voltage to grams/second, you are left with checking the MAF input voltage, output voltage (at MAF and at ECM), grounds, and of course everything else - like the ignition system. One of the many problems with these old systems is they have basically zero support and that can make troubleshooting difficult. As I have previously mentioned - you need to move to a standalone that can handle your "mods" and also removes the black box barrier to proper troubleshooting. Not to mention deletes expensive and difficult to source components like that MAF. GD

Charge light is just the field flash circuit of the alternator and indicates if the voltage potential is higher at the battery or at the alternator. If they are the same (battery charged and alternator operating) then the light goes out because there is no potential. Doesn't matter either way for operation of the EFI - the EFI can operate down to about 5v and as high as 16-17v by design. The ECM has to be live when cranking and in the case of a marginal battery and considering starter motor draw you may be down to 8v or lower and the EFI still must function and trigger the injector. You need to determine if you are losing fuel, spark or air when it dies. Your problem isn't likely to be the ECM - at least you shouldn't jump to that old cliché right off the bat and blame the computer. In the end it might be the case but you have a LOT of homework to prove that before you can confidently call out a bad ECM. GD

You aren't detonating at light load unless it's VERY lean so this is very likely false knock. Remember the knock sensor is just a microphone tuned to a specific frequency. It can *hear* anything though and anything that is rattling or loose will set it off. Knock modules of that era will often output a square wave pulse to indicate a knock event to which the ECM will respond by pulling timing and then adding it back in at at a specified recovery rate. I doubt a simple voltage gauge is going to be all that useful. And at light load like that it's not actual detonation anyway so chances are you are "reading" meaningless data and just confusing yourself. The real answers are to see what the ECM is doing with timing, and how much it is pulling and in response to what input from the knock module. A voltage gauge tells you basically nothing. You need at least a scope trace but even then you really don't know what the ECM is doing with that data. GD

Amsoil, Blackstone, etc. Many options out there. In general a single test is about $20. If you use quality oil, which is expensive, you can absolutely pay for the analysis by not changing it more often than needed. And I'm sure you can guess at the cost of a replacement engine. All branches of the military, virtually all government agencies, and most corporate fleets do regular analysis. Why? Because it saves money and effort. Do you hate money and love effort? Then by all means just wing it. No one here can answer your question. We aren't you, and your car isn't in our driveway. Your engine is subject to ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS which are unknown to us and probably to you as well. Without that data the best anyone here can do is a blindfolded dart throw. As far as expensive racing engines go - we don't do analysis on those. They get what's called the "maintenance rebuild" when the power drops, they start using fluids, or they go boom. They are purposefully loose, burn oil as a necessity, and run REALLY EXPENSIVE oil that doesn't last for $hit in terms of TBN and detergents, etc so it gets changed every event regardless of condition. Oil is WAY cheaper than a race engine so that stuff gets dumped long before it is ever "worn out". GD

Then it either isn't a wagon, or it isn't a 1600, or it's not an original engine. Subaru DID NOT produce a 1600 wagon in 1985 (for the US market). The only 85 model available with a 1600 was the STD Hatchback (2-door)...... which I don't believe was available with an automatic - 4 speed FWD or 4 speed single range 4WD only. Lets see some pics and we can ID this unit for you. GD

We use the Amsoil EA15K12 filters as they are rated for the transmission pressure, etc. Been using them for MANY years and have never experienced a problem. They are $16 or so. GD

Do some oil analysis and find out what THAT ENGINE wants. NOT what a manual says, NOT what anyone else *thinks* you should do. Get oil analysis and use SCIENCE to determine a proper interval. GD

Garbage. Not worth $1 let alone $1200. GD