GeneralDisorder

The oil doesn't know if it's in a European engine or a diesel engine for that matter. We use the 5w40 Euro on essentially every change we do. We use the 5w50 signature series or dominator 15w50 for high power engines. GD

The wires should be at the large connector for the main harness to manifold harness at the back near the passenger side of the bell-housing. Get a pinout and wire colors and just jumper them at that point. It's probably just a single pin on the ECU to a ground. GD

Ditch all the covers. Waste of plastic. 20 minutes to change the belts without them. Carry spares. IIRC (and it's been a while so maybe I don't), the oil pump sprocket has the lip that keeps the inside edge alignment on the DS belt. Should at least look to make sure that's intact and in the correct position. GD

Likely correct for stop and go. The XT has no advantage with it's aerodynamics in stop and go city driving. Get an AFR (wideband) gauge and watch it. See what it does. GD

Bravo! Someone that's not completely helpless. Tip of the hat to you sir! GD

It's a 20 year old car. It's going to have issues. Just make your peace with that if you are determined to have one. The EZ30 isn't a bad engine but many suffer from poor maintenance at this point. They leak from the chain covers (outer and inner), and somewhere between 175k and 225k they typically lose a HG - at which point you just dump them overboard and pickup a JDM replacement. Personally I would suggest you AVOID anything that's 20 years old and has "all the options" - especially old sun/moon roof's. They are plastic, prone to breaking and leaking, and basically none of the parts are available anymore. All the electric options and gizmos will slowly die off and it's expensive and sometimes nigh impossible to repair. GD

It gets fairly involved if you split the block. That's where they get the nasty reputation for being complicated and unforgiving. I've spent the better part of a decade making a career of figuring out exactly how to perform that process. It's not information that I'm particularly interested in sharing because of the difficulty. It's almost a "trade secret" if you will. In fact in all the years (about 11 years now) I have managed to train only 2 people successfully to rebuild short blocks. And they both essentially just go through the motions per my stringent guidelines. We have essentially a 100% success rate but it's not cheap to do it The Right Way. It makes rebuilding them basically a lost cause unless you are building a performance engine for high horsepower. Otherwise we just get new or reman blocks from Subaru. It's cheaper and Subaru backs them with a warranty. The very slight advantage that a rebuild has in cost is consumed real quick when you consider the warranty advantage. We build engines at my shop - quite a few in fact. But they are ALL built from brand new parts - new case halves, new crank, new rods, new pistons, and new bearings. GD

Why don't you just make one? GD

The twin turbo is another dead end I might add. Those had The Valley Of Death and were a tuning nightmare.... they basically sucked so hard that Subaru abandoned the idea. Also those OLD twins are such ancient garbage and so much progress has been made in compressor wheel design and turbine housings that they are entirely obsolete for their original intended purpose. A single new style Blouch 16GXT will eat them alive in every category - not even considering the twin scroll stuff being made. Any of them will spool faster, carry higher, and without the crazy high compressor to turbine pressure ratios. When you have 10 psi in the intake, you have something on the order of 3x that much pressure in the exhaust with those - much like the VF22 which is also hot garbage. AND AGAIN - you choose a platform that has no support, no parts, and no love. Why? What's the point of revisiting the past to play with abandoned, orphaned hardware that was not that great when it was new? I could understand something that was a really amazing product - but those usually have a lot of support. I do a LOT of vintage stuff - but mostly non Subaru because there just isn't enough time to mess with that stuff and still ENJOY it - since the bulk of the time spent is spent spinning your wheels and getting nothing done - looking for parts, re-engineering to use parts you can get from something else, and a lot of frustration. When the GOAL should be to build, drive, and enjoy the car - not to stare at it all the time in pieces. As for restoration or resto-modifcation..... from the pictures I have seen you post and the general lack of detailed understanding of the underlying principles and ROI of suggested modifications.... it doesn't appear you have the skills for that. Not as yet anyway. GD

With plain old MAINTENANCE they already last 250k+ What more do you want? The PROBLEMS are due to parts availability, and in your case a determined effort to not leave it alone which has been proven to CAUSE problems. You will run up against the Waddington effect because you can't keep your hands off the machine: https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2014/01/14/the-waddington-effect/ If you really want to make a difference - increase the oil capacity (don't bother cooling it or anything silly like that - run quality synthetic - it doesn't need cooling), and adapt some kind of dry sump to the thing so you can bypass the stock oil pump which tends to aerate the oil because of a poor seal design, and in any case is no longer available for purchase. Of course doing this would be purely academic and an exercise in design and engineering because the EA82/T is outdated JUNK and an EJ22 swap would be cheaper, far more reliable, better on fuel, and a LOT more fun. There's just ZERO reasons to put ANY effort into that power plant. Look - I understand the enthusiasm. And that's great. But you REALLY need to consider what efforts will best make use of your enthusiasm, your time, and your money. I didn't get where I am today with a respected performance shop, a chassis dyno, and some of the best tuners and technicians in the NW working for me by making poor choices. I give my wisdom and experience freely here and I suggest you consider it carefully. I'm not making a dime typing responses to you. I'm here to help you not make the mistakes of thousands of people that have come before you and to which I have also replied with helpful, corrective and economical advice (see post count to the left <-). GD

Unless you have no power to the pump when cranking, the relay is not likely your problem. They virtually never fail. GD

Yes that is the igniter. GD

Could be a bad external ignitor. The 97 and 98 turbo engines were wasted spark - they typically have an external ignitor mounted on the firewall. GD

Yep. In the realm of turbocharging..... the old saying "loose is fast"..... absolutely true. GD

It's a waste of effort, and adds needless complexity and additional leak points. Adds nothing for reliability. GD

Use all the manifolds, turbo, etc off the LGT (rebuild the turbo if necessary), and then everything is the same as before. There is basically zero aftermarket for the 20X/Y as installed in Japan. GD

A, B, C, etc doesn't matter. Just stuff them and run it. It will probably have some level of piston slap when cold but really - it's a 20 year old car. Who cares? Aftermarket pistons aren't even offered in the A, B, C sizing like Subaru runs from the factory - they are 99.5mm..... and that's all you get. So just treat them like a set of aftermarket slugs and pay no attention to the factory sizing options. Get new rings. You need 251 rings for 251 pistons. Standard size shouldn't require any gap fitting but you should check the end gaps anyway. You are WAY overthinking it. The pistons and cylinder walls are of the least concern in building these engines. Don't touch them. Don't worry about minor scoring on walls or skirts - just run them and forget all that. It won't make any significant difference to your end results. 1. Use pistons that match the heads - put whatever piston in whatever hole - doesn't matter. 2. Use new rings. 3. Turn key. GD

You just haven't seen an EJ swap done the right way. We run them with LINK standalones. Makes it a lot easier. GD

You can put it on the dyno - we run it nearly every day. Baseline runs are $120. The EA82 is an evolutionary dead end. It's got the heads and manifold of a tractor and the cooling system won't handle hours of WOT and full boost. Not to mention you can't get enough parts to keep up with the failures you will experience should you attempt that. Rebuilds aren't even meaningfully possible since no one is setup to main line hone the blocks and you can't get an oil pump from anywhere. It's a really poor choice of platform for a vintage/retro build. It's a wasteland out there for parts. The engine was just barely adequate in the 80's in stock form - now it's flat out garbage with EJ22's making significantly more power without a turbo and doing so with better fuel economy. My 1990 Legacy loaner car has 336k on the original drivetrain. GD

The ECU doesn't control the ignition relay - that is controlled by the ignition switch. Fuel pump relay is controlled by the ECU. The ECU is not your problem. It can't draw enough power to kill the battery on it's own. Whoever did the swap has wired it wrong. GD

As long as you use a matching rear diff for whatever you get, you can use basically any AWD Subaru 5 speed up till they switched to hydraulic clutches - after that things get questionable as to having the clutch fork ball mounting boss..... For sure up through about 96 on the Legacy, and through 2001 on the Impreza. GD

Honing hasn't been a good idea on any engine since before 1980 or so. If the bores are wrecked then you have to bore it oversized, and you finish with a plateau hone of about 600 grit (very fine). Subaru engines do not wear out their bores and if they need to be bored oversized you may as well just throw them in the trash as the machine work to do a main line hone (absolutely required), bore with a deckplate and re-finish the head mating surfaces is about the cost of a new set of case halves once you figure turn-around time and transportation costs. DO NOT split the block. If you do that you may as well just find a used block. The level of success an amateur is likely to achieve with a block split is very low. High probability it will fail in short order, and almost a certainty it would have a much shorter life than if it were just left alone. There are techniques required to properly reassemble them (or even one composed of all new parts), and very accurate measuring tools and procedures must be followed as the tolerances are much tighter than something like a GM small block due to the nature of the aluminum blocks. GD

Waste of time, added weight, and will just get wet with water, oil, etc and smoke when it gets hot. If anything the aluminum manifold is a heat sink for pulling heat out of the cylinder heads and radiating it elsewhere. The EA82 heads already have enough of a hard time rejecting heat with their dinky cooling systems and tendency toward cracking. By wrapping and insulating everything you are keeping the heat IN. Which is good for turbochargers, etc - but bad for just about everything else. I see people like you come through every so often. Think they are going to re-engineer the world and there's all this amazing room for improvement. It just isn't there. And to really stop wasting your time on stuff like this, you need to TEST - which I doubt you have the capability to do. Mostly you're just going to turn everything into a heavy, sticky mess by doing all this and accomplish absolutely nothing. If there was economy, free performance, or overall reliability to be had - the Subaru engineers would have done that. These cars (when you could get parts for them) would routinely go 250k-300k+ miles with proper maintenance. Exactly what aspect of "reliability" are you trying to improve? By the time these kinds of mileages are registered on the vehicle - the body, suspension, and interior are pretty much garbage. And usually they were scrapped because they weren't cost effective to repair based on their value at the time. Not entirely because their "reliability" was suffering. Reliability is directly related to availability of repair parts - it's a machine and it WILL break. That's an absolute guarantee. So if you really want to improve reliability - get a lathe and a mill and whip up some replacement oil pumps and sell them. Spend your time on things that matter. You are spinning your wheels and wasting your energy on pennies and nickles. You should be picking up the dollar bills that are laying all over the place. GD

I agree with Carfreak85. I see this kind of wasted effort all the time on my DynoJet and it never does anything measurable. Under power the airflow through the manifold is so fast that it doesn't have time to pickup any significant amount of heat. It might allow slightly more ignition timing and a slightly leaner mixture at the start of a pull from a low airflow RPM - but as it climbs out the air would be moving so fast it wouldn't have time to pickup any heat. And in any case you would need a tuning solution that would allow adjustment of timing and fueling. Not likely to notice the 1 or 2 HP it would make through the midrange. It won't do anything at all at peak. GD

Having a boost control solenoid with a tiny baby turbo is often useful as you can run the boost a little higher than WG and you can pull the wastegate closed at high RPM when the engine is pulling the boost of the turbo down. Of course you need a programable solenoid to do this and the appropriate boost pressure transducer, etc/ But yeah you can increase the boost and hold it longer - most Subaru ECU's will handle a few psi above wastegate. 10psi total would likely be fine. GD