pontoontodd

First thing I tried with the exhaust was cutting the driver's side most of the way, cutting the passenger side completely, and thought about extending that side. That might have worked but it put the rear O2 into the tunnel by the time the exhaust cleared the crossmember. Then I thought it would be simpler to just flip around that section of the driver's side exhaust. It bends right away coming out of the front cat but is straight for a few inches before it goes into the rear cat. That straight part is why it wouldn't clear the crossmember. Here is what it looks like flipped around and tacked back together. Still hits but seems like the flanges bolt up flush to the heads. Welded back together. Pipe in the bottom middle is what I flipped around. Back in the car. It was pretty loud with just the three cats, so I tacked the section with the next two silencers back in and wired it up for now.

Nope, haven't done anything with it yet. There was sparkly stuff in the coolant too, considering that and the 187k it has on it, it might be best to just buy a lower mileage engine.

Thanks, just meant I don't know much about the EA cars. You're probably right, a lot of work to get an extra couple inches of travel is probably not worth it for trail riding. Being able to tune real offroad shocks for higher speed use is good even without increased travel, but not worth it for crawling. Seems like it might be possible to get 10-12" even with short arms with enough body lift. If we did a 4-6" body lift on an EJ we could probably get 14"+ travel with the stock links/arms. Following to hear how the axles work out.

Rallyru just mentioned in this thread: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/162379-long-travel-front-suspension/ that these type of axles are available on Rockauto. Looks like they're about $93 each, front and rear for some cars.

1996 Impreza EJ22 with 255k and still going strong. Been overheated countless times, first time hit a deer and lost all the coolant, then had no fans for a while since the rad had been pushed back, overheated a bunch more times. Only one time in the years I've owned it that it wouldn't start, usually sits for a week or two at a time outside. Planning on getting an Outback starter for it eventually. Had to replace the clutch and trans over 200k, other than that it's been a great car. The best entertainment per dollar of any car I've ever owned.

Guess I missed that this is an EA car, sorry.

Full build thread: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/144953-long-travel-outbacks-or-making-subarus-faster-and-more-reliable-offroad/ The start of the long travel build starts on post 81: http://www.ultimates...-4#entry1266961 Fairly current pictures of the long travel struts on post 218: http://www.ultimates...-9#entry1307908 Reader's digest version, we made inverted struts for the front and rear. It is a fair amount of work and expense. If someone wanted to buy a set I'd probably have to charge about $5000. You'll probably find this to be the case for any set of rally struts and springs that are well regarded. The axles were sort of a limiting factor in droop, but various other things were binding up at that point also, it would take a fair amount of additional work to get more droop. Bump travel more limited by spring height (solid height vs travel) and tire to body clearance. A body lift would help both of those factors. Hotbits I think sells 10" front / 12" rear travel struts for about $2000 with springs. I have heard they bend when pushed hard, so we've never tried them. I know a guy with a used set he'd probably sell, PM me if you're interested.

For the most part, mechanically this swap is simple since it's Subaru into Subaru. I had some difficulty removing the engine from the trans in the donor car. I think they were corroded together and/or the bellhousing dowels and torque converter pilot were tight. I used the hammer and chisel sparingly on the parting line and threaded some bolts into the engine and hammered on those. Make sure you unbolt the torque converter, there is an access plug at the top of the block under the intake manifold. It helps to put a jack under the front of the trans so the engine isn't holding it up while you're trying to separate them. Make sure you have both bellhousing dowels in place in the engine or trans. One thing I did before installing the H6 was to RTV that plastic cover for the torque converter bolts back in. Also duct taped both sides of the flywheel shield, there were some slots in it. May not last but it's a nice thought. If you're not running in a lot of dust like we do, you can skip this. Flywheel and clutch from the 99 bolt right up to the H6. Transmission bolts up. Starter works. Engine mounts line up perfectly in the 99 crossmember. Throttle cable hooks up, even has the right amount of throw.

Are those Heri axles? Curious to see how they hold up when you start beating on them. How much travel are you trying to get? We got 11-12" of travel out of a custom built strut setup. There are a lot of limitations beyond that unless you're making all new arms and links or making major body modifications/lift.

Fuel lines/filter are the same. I'd recommend using the H6 radiator as the radiator hoses will be much simpler that way. But we already had a 2" thick core Mishimoto in the 99 that I really wanted to keep. The H6 is definitely longer, maybe only an inch, but there is no way any Subaru fans are going to fit between the radiator and the engine. Even if they did, I don't know where the air would go when it came out. Piece of 2" square tubing pictured in between I was using to check for clearance. I think the only reasonable solution is to put a pair of pusher fans on the front. Exhaust from the H6 almost fit the 99, some modification will be required. H6 exhaust hits the 99 trans crossmember on the driver's side. Almost bolts up flush to the head, back end of the cats probably has to go up about 1". Exhaust will go to the driver's side anyhow, so I'll just tweak the stock system for now to fit. We wanted to use the accessories on the H6 since the pulleys are different and it would make things much easier. The high pressure (short) AC line from the 2002 and the low pressure (long) AC line from the 1999 seem to connect the 2002 compressor to the 1999 evaporator and condenser. Power steering lines at the top of the crossmember thread right in.

We're swapping an EZ30 H6 out of a 2002 Subaru Outback sedan into my 1999 Subaru Outback (EJ25, five speed manual). For more info on the car, check out my build thread: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/144953-long-travel-outbacks-or-making-subarus-faster-and-more-reliable-offroad/ This is the most helpful thread on this swap I've seen: http://www.rs25.com/forums/f145/t155496-dynes-1999-2-5rs-h6-ez30d-swap.html You will also want to download the factory service manual (FSM) for your donor car, and probably the car you're putting it into: http://jdmfsm.info/Auto/Japan/Subaru/Legacy%20Outback/2002/ There are four ways to get a running H6 Subaru. For engine or trans swapping purposes, the 2001-2004 non VDC cars are the simplest. The easiest is just to buy a decent H6 Subaru. I would recommend this, if you want a manual trans, swap one in, you'll probably need to swap the rear diff too, still less work and expense than an engine swap. This post and the links above will help with the wiring side of that. The next easiest is probably to buy an engine from a junkyard and use a standalone ECU. The money and time you'll save by not buying a complete donor car and removing the wiring will probably pay for the standalone. As I understand it, this is the only way to use a later EZ30 or EZ36. I bought a donor car and we pared down the wiring to the minimum needed to run the engine with no codes and keep the cruise control and alternator working. It seems like a lot of people, including in the thread above, do a harness merge. This involves taking the harness out of both cars and combining them into one. This would definitely be less wiring to fit in the car than the way we did it, but you'd really have to know what you're doing and be confident you're not going back to the stock engine. This first post will cover the wiring. By far the biggest headache is the wiring, especially since it means removing both dashboards and HVAC systems to get at it (and putting one of them back in eventually). This part of the swap took us at least two weeks, but a lot of that time should be reduced if you follow this guide. Starter wiring is the same. The wires for the ignition switch on the 99 plug right into the harness of the 2002 even though one is four pin and the other is six. The transmission and instrument panel wiring do not match the FSM, so that added to the challenge. Seemed like the main reason to have the dash plugged in was the alternator wouldn't charge without it and it would cause the fuel level code. The FSM showed one of the wires going through the battery idiot light. So I wired a resistor instead, alternator charges and no fuel level code (usually) with this. Spliced the green/white wires coming out of that blue plug in the front of the 2002 interior fuse block through a resistor to that second pin over on the SMJ (black/white wire). Bottom line, you need to have 12V (switched on with ignition) going to pin 1 (black/white wire) of the alternator. I had a 47 ohm resistor between the 12V ignition source and the alternator. I believe that circuit opens when the alternator starts charging, which normally turns off the battery idiot light. When we put this in the 99, I wired the black/white wire from that instrument panel (pin 8 i10, about the middle of the left hand connector) to the black/white wire coming from the 2002 alternator. Even if the battery idiot light burns out, there is a diode going to one of the other circuits in the instrument panel that will keep the alternator charging the battery. One of the last things I did before we pulled all the wiring out was to figure out the feeds for the various gauges and idiot lights. Debated putting the 02 instrument cluster in the 99 but physically it's surprisingly different and electrically it will probably be simpler to keep the 99 instrument cluster. So, again using the FSM, figured out the CEL/MIL, oil pressure idiot light, and temp sender (for gauge). The 2002 FSM seems to have the right wire colors but the pinouts for the instrument cluster are different than the actual gauges. Some of them were easy to confirm by testing for continuity on the well labeled circuit board to the pins on the top of the instrument cluster. Final confirmation was cutting them and then grounding the CEL/MIL and oil pressure to see them light up. Also put a resistor between temp gauge and ground to see the needle move. Do not ground the wire for the temp gauge, it will cause the gauge to shoot all the way up and stick there until you take the cover off the instrument panel and unstick the needle. Oil pressure switch is green/orange, MIL/CEL is red/white, and temp is pink/white for the 2002 EZ30. Also figured out which wire to cut to kill the tach but still read on the OBDII scanner, same with the speedo. Near the ECU I spliced those to the wires coming out of the 99 EJ25 ECU. The black blue wire at pin 64 (third row) of the EJ25 ECU goes to the tach. I wired this to the output of the tach adapter. Pin 9 B136 of the EZ30 ECU is an orange/white wire that I ran to the input of the tach adapter. The red green wire at pin 58 (near center of third row) of the EJ25 ECU is grounded when the MIL/CEL is on. So I spliced that into the red/white wire coming from the EZ30 ECU. I cut the wires going to the oil pressure switch and temp sender for the EJ25 and spliced wires from those to the corresponding senders for the EZ30. They both are on connector B21 going to the EJ25 engine, the pinout is as follows: - - - - - - - - 9 10 - - Pin 9 is green or green/white depending on which side of the connector you're using. It is grounded when the oil pressure is low. Connect this to the green/orange wire for the EZ30. Pin 10 is violet or white/green and goes to the temp sender. Connect that to the pink/white wire for the EZ30. I didn't wind up doing it this way, but since the 2002 FSM is inaccurate regarding the instrument panel wiring, here is a little info on that. Looking at instrument panel where i12 plugs in: - - - 3 - - - - 12 - - 9 8 - Pin 3 is green/white and has 12V with the ignition on, powers the various gauges and idiot lights. Pin 8 is pink/white and goes to the temp sensor. Pin 9 is black/blue and goes to ground. Pin 12 is red/white and goes to the MIL/CEL pin on the ECU. The main code we kept getting was the fuel level code, P0463 I think. Eventually I just wired the brown / white wire that went to pin 27 of the 99 EJ25 ECU to pin 25 B135 (brown/black?) on the 2002 EZ30 ECU. It seemed with everything hooked up this would get 3V but when we tried to just give the EZ30 ECU 3V at that pin we'd still sometimes get the code. The picture below also shows the tach adapter. That was very easy to wire up and works great. At the top of the picture are the 10W resistors we wired to the TCM so it thinks it's still hooked up to solenoids. I would recommend 1000 ohm 10W or they will get pretty hot. If you want the wipers, power mirrors, and other accessories to keep working on the Subaru you're putting this in, you'll have to power both the ignition and accessory circuits. Easy way to do this is to go from the big green wire in the 2002 harness (see below for a convenient place to shove a spade terminal in that) to the harness of the car you're putting this in. The 99 has a four pin connector B72 for the ignition switch. Since we'd plugged the ignition switch from the 99 into the 2002 harness, the 99 harness end was just hanging loose. It has four big wires, black yellow, red yellow, red, and blue red. Red yellow and red are for accessories and ignition, so we plugged 12V ignition into both of those. On a side note, the turn signals won't work if you don't have the hazard switch plugged in. Another code we got before we were done was P0452 (evaporative). There are four important wires going to the back in one connector that will cause trouble codes aside from the fuel level. We traced them back to the ECU and wired in some resistors as follows. If you don't have the red/light blue or black/yellow wires hooked up, you will get P0183 fuel temp sensor A circuit high. There is normally about 3.5k ohms between these, so I wired in a 3.2k ohm resistor. The green/black wire disconnected will cause a P1400. The brown/yellow wire disconnected will cause a P0447 evap emissions vent control circuit system open. These both seem to want voltage. There are various green/black wires running around the harness that are 12V with ignition on, perfect for this. Make sure to get one of those and not the VSS though. I went from the green/black 12V to a 3.9k ohm resistor. I spliced the green/black and brown/yellow wires to the other side of the resistor. After we put the 2002 harness in the 99 my friend realized we only needed a few fuses on the interior 2002 fuse block, so we cut that down. Here are the fuses we needed: 13 fuel pump 14 15 16 17 fans 18 fans & cruise 11 ignition 19 gray connector 1BR - - - - 6BL - 8G - - ignition connector - - - - 5GR - - - - - - - gray connector 1GL 2GL 3GB - - - - white connector 1GL - - - 5GB - - blue connector (front of fuse block) 1GB - - - - - - - - - - - - - The big green wire, pin 8 of the first gray connector, supplies fuses 11, 17, and 18. The black red wire, pin 1 of the same connector, supplies fuse 13. The other side of fuse 11 goes to the green red wire, pin five of the "ignition" connector. I forget what color that one was. The other side of fuse 13 goes to the black blue wire, pin six of the gray connector for the fuel pump. The other side of fuse 17 goes to the green blue wires, pin one and two of the other gray connector. This is for the fan relay and sub fan relays 1 & 2. The other side of fuse 18 goes to three green black wires. One is pin three of the gray connector for the main fan relays. Another is pin one of the blue connector for the cruise main switch. The third is to pin five of the white connector for the cruise control module. Main fan is driver's side, sub fan is passenger side. To test the fans, you can put a resistor in place of the temp sensor. This is the pinout looking at the harness plug: black/brown brown/red brown The black/brown has 5V from the ECU, the brown/red is the temp signal to the ECU. The temp sensor reads about 3k ohm at room temperature. I put a 1k ohm resistor in the harness plug and the ECU reads 109F. Anything under 120 ohms seems to read 210F and should turn on all the fan relays. The brown wire at the bottom of the plug is just for the gauge. That pin on the sender reads about 1k ohm to ground. Didn't wind up cutting or splicing any wires for the OBDII connector, but there are really only four pins on it that matter. A few times if we didn't have the grounds for the TCM hooked up it didn't work. Here is the pinout looking at the connector: BR - - - - - - - - - VG - W W - - - The black/red is 12V with the igntion on, comes from the main relay I think. Violet/green is the signal wire that should go to pin 21 B134 on the ECU. The whites should be grounded. It was somewhat difficult to keep the cruise control working. The brake pedal switch is normally closed going to the cruise control module (CCM). Easiest solution is to short this. I did eventually wire it to the 99 brake and clutch pedal switches so it turns off if you hit either of those pedals. The green black wire that goes from the transmission control module (TCM) to the CCM pin 3 is for vehicle speed. I cut this at the TCM and connected the VSS from the 99 five speed to it so it sends a VSS to the ECU (pin 1 B134), speedo, and the CCM. The 99 VSS has three wires, I believe they are red/black = 12V, green/black = signal, and black/red = ground. The speed sensors in the auto trans must have a different output. Originally I'd wired the VSS from the manual trans to VSS1 for the auto trans and never got a VSS out to the speedo/ECU. Didn't keep the cruise from working, but we'd get a cruise set code with black orange wire connecting the TCM to the CCM pin 3. So I cut it and so far cruise works and no codes. There is quite a bit of wiring involved to keep the TCM, and therefore the ECU, happy. One of the big hassles with figuring this out is that the 2002 FSM only shows the wiring for VDC cars, and that TCM has three connectors whereas ours has only two. So the pinouts are completely different. The 2001 FSM seems to have the right pinouts in the circuit diagrams but some of the wire colors are different. To top it off, the TCM I/O signal chart in the 2001 FSM shows the pinouts for three connectors. If you have some of this stuff disconnected, you'll get a P0866 and/or P1698. The TCM needs to be grounded, so ground pins B9 and B19 (brown/white wires) of the TCM. If these aren't grounded I think it causes the OBDII port to not work. One thing to do is to wire resistors in place of the solenoids. If not you will get codes P0743, P0778, etc. I would recommend 1000 ohm 10W or they will get pretty hot. This is a lot more resistance than the solenoids but seems to work. I got a terminal strip from McMaster. I also kept the dropping resistor which was bolted to the passenger side strut tower. That is wired into the circuit for some of these shift solenoids, see page WI-52 of the 2001 FSM supplement 6 cyl. I wired a 330 ohm resistor in place of the ATF temp sensor. This is in the middle of the normal range according to the FSM, and I've read other people have done this. This resistor goes between the light green and yellow/white wires at the TCM. The ATF temp light flashed when we still had the 2002 instrument panel connected, but never gave a trouble code. I guess if you're doing a manual trans swap into an H6 car, just pull out that bulb or cut the wire to the idiot light. If you're not going to have a Subaru automatic, you need to get around the inhibitor switch. The main thing you need to do is bypass the neutral/park switch for the starter wire. The easiest thing to do is to splice the white/blue and white/green wires together near where they plug into the trans. Once you take this all out of the car you'll see there's a lot of starter wiring going on, it goes through a harness plug that just has a jumper, and where it goes to that inhibitor switch it goes from being about 10 gauge to 20 gauge. So I cut a lot of that out. I cut the wires that are grounded in various gears, at the TCM these are B22 light green/black, B17 red/blue, B23 blue, A1 blue/black, A10 yellow/blue, B18 red/green, and B8 green. We haven't had any codes in a while but just have it wired to think it's in drive all the time. You do that by grounding the green wire to pin 8. I actually have that and the neutral wire (light green/black pin 1) on a toggle switch so I can ground one or the other, but just leave it in drive. It has stalled a couple of times, which I've read is a side effect of it thinking it's always in drive, but hasn't lately. I have read that pin 8 B134 should be grounded in N, 5V in drive. I think I just cut that wire and haven't had any codes since. If I do flip my toggle switch to ground the neutral wire I do get a park/neutral code (P0851?). One of the last wiring projects was the air conditioning. The 99 system is pretty simple. There is a wire for the AC compressor relay the ECU grounds. The ECU also runs the radiator fans. There is another wire that goes to the ECU that I assume tells it you have the AC switched on. It goes through the temp sensor on the evaporator. The 2002 system is much more complicated. Four pages in the FSM versus one for the 99. There are at least five wires going to the 2002 ECU related to AC. Long story short I couldn't get it to ground the AC compressor relay. The 99 is pretty simple so it was fairly easy to hotwire the AC. I plugged the connector from the 99 that goes to the compressor into the H6 compressor. There is 12V going through the pressure switch and the thermal overload and then to the AC compressor relay. If the pressure is too low (or maybe too high?) or the thermal overload is open, the relay won't have 12V. The 2002 H6 compressor seems to have different thermal overload wiring than the 99, so I hotwired that. Take the yellow and red/white wires at the compressor plug and splice them together. The yellow/green wire going to the compressor energizes the clutch, it's the only one really needed. I wired up a four pole switch to ground the AC compressor relay, fan relay, main fan relay 1, and sub fan relay 1. This seems to throw a fan code on the ECU if the coolant temp starts to get hot, I assume when the ECU sees the fan relay is already grounded when it tries to turn them on it gets confused. So now the AC works. One good thing about this setup is that we could just unplug the compressor or compressor relay and turn the switch on to run the fans if it's running hot. The biggest downside is that it doesn't turn off at full throttle. That wouldn't be too hard to do, but I haven't bothered. The next posts will cover the plumbing and mechanical issues.

One thing I did before installing the H6 was to RTV that plastic cover for the torque converter bolts back in. Also duct taped both sides of the flywheel shield, there were some slots in it. May not last but it's a nice thought. Clutch out of the 99 was pretty dusty but not terrible. Another thing I did while there was no engine in the 99 was to fix this. I think it's been like this for a while, I think it's just from the crossmember bolts being overtightened. Cleaned off the paint and caulk, hammered it flush, welded it, and repainted it. H6 went in fairly easily. We hooked up the wiring and the fuel lines and it fired right up. Still a lot of work to do but a relief to hear it run. Only trouble code was fuel temp, we had taken out the resistors for that. It is definitely longer, maybe only an inch, but there is no way any Subaru fans are going to fit between the radiator and the engine. Even if they did, I don't know where the air would go when it came out. Piece of 2" square tubing in between I was using to check for clearance. I think the only reasonable solution is to put a pair of pusher fans on the front. H6 exhaust hits the trans crossmember on the driver's side. Almost bolts up flush to the head, back end of the cats probably has to go up about 1". Exhaust will go to the driver's side anyhow, so I'll just tweak the stock system for now to fit. Tidied up the 2002 wiring a bit more. Still a mess, but most of it seems to be needed for the engine, fans, cruise, etc.

I'd think there would be a way to tap into the stock power steering rack to operate some kind of valve to the rear. A simpler way would be to wire it into your turn signal stalk, switch it right and it opens a 12V DC hydraulic valve to steer the rear to the left. I'm not sure how you'd easily re center it when you're done. You'd probably want some kind of paint mark on something so you know it's straight. Maybe you'd be able to tell just by driving it down the road. I'm trying to think of the times when we've been on super narrow trails that are probably mainly traveled by ATVs. I'm not sure rear steer would have helped us navigate many of those. You guys seem to have more technical trails with big rocks and trees to avoid though, I could see it coming in handy.

This is the wiring we removed that seemed to be necessary to run the engine and cruise control and radiator fans with no trouble codes. Inside of car mostly free of wiring. This is the harness after we traced back a bunch of the plugs we weren't using and cut those wires out. Labeled the wires we will need to splice into the other car with pieces of red tape. Most of those are for the gauges and idiot lights. Wiring we took out of the car that we don't think we need, but I'll hang onto it for a while to be sure. I got the H6 out of the 02 donor sedan yesterday. The entire exhaust system is one piece, so it's pretty heavy. I was able to disconnect the power steering lines at the crossmember, so with luck those will hook up easily. Only thing I hadn't done when I checked the FSM for removal instructions was the torque converter bolts. Those are not as bad as I thought they'd be. I did unplug a few things and move the wiring out of the way for the ratchet. Only four of them and once they were broken loose I could thread them out with my fingers. Then the converter pilot and/or bellhousing dowels were stuck, but nothing a hammer can't fix. Today I'll start removing the H4 from the 99.

Made a decent resistor bank for the TCM. Used 47 ohm resistors, the solenoids measure 4 or 15 ohms, but I've read online that people who've done this swap have used much higher ohm resistors without problems, I will probably go higher still in the future as the 47ohm resistors get pretty warm. I'll probably get a screw terminal banks at that time as my soldering is not very good. Poked a few strands of each wire through the breadboard and bent them over to keep the wires from pulling out. We've been able to drive the car with the transmission completely unplugged (except VSS jumped across the plug) and everything seems to work fine except the cruise. Only transmission code is the neutral circuit low. Still either flashes or lights up steady the ATF temp light on the dash but no code. Speedo (and OBDII mph) doesn't register until you get up to about 20mph but then works all the time. So I started the diagnosis procedure for the neutral circuit low code. One of the first tests is to see if the harness is shorted to ground on that pin. It is grounded whether I have the toggle switch to the TCM in N or D. So I cut that wire near the ECU. No code with the toggle switch in N or D. Probably not the right way to do it, the FSM says that should be 5V in R or D/3/2/1, but the only code I'm getting is that O2 sensor. That even seems to be the case with the dash unplugged too. Noticed in one of the wiring diagrams for the cruise that one of the wires to the cruise module goes through the inhibitor switch. I have that all hotwired now so maybe that was making the cruise think it's in neutral. Cruise works now with that wire to the ECU cut, dash plugged in or not. Seemed like the main reason to have the dash plugged in was the alternator wouldn't charge without it and it would cause the fuel level code. The FSM showed one of the wires going through the battery idiot light. So I wired a resistor instead, alternator charges and no fuel level code (usually) with this: I guess I don't understand exactly how this works, wouldn't the battery idiot light come on when the alternator is charging? One of the last things I did before we pulled all the wiring out was to figure out the feeds for the various gauges and idiot lights. Debated putting the 02 instrument cluster in the 99 but physically it's surprisingly different and electrically it will probably be simpler to keep the 99 instrument cluster. So, again using the FSM, figured out the CEL/MIL, oil pressure idiot light, and temp sender (for gauge). The FSM seems to have the right wire colors but the pinouts for the instrument cluster are different than the actual gauges. Some of them were easy to confirm by testing for continuity on the well labeled circuit board to the pins on the top of the instrument cluster. Final confirmation was cutting them and then grounding the CEL/MIL and oil pressure to see them light up and putting a resistor between temp gauge and ground to see the needle move. Oil pressure switch is green/orange, MIL/CEL is red/white, and temp is pink/white. Also figured out which wire to cut to kill the tach but still read on the OBDII scanner, same with the speedo. The only other thing going through that super multiple junction that we're using is the main cruise switch, so wired around that and test drove the car again to make sure the cruise works. Now we've got all the wiring out of the car and working on paring it down. I'll put up some pictures of that soon. Once this swap is done I might make a separate mini thread with the basics of how to do the wiring. Someone suggested I get the car tuned once this is all done, should be able to clear some of these persistent but unimportant codes and make 10% more midrange torque for a few hundred bucks. So far I have not been able to find someone who can do that to the EZ30. Anybody know of a good tuning solution for these engines? I can see after spending two weeks already on this wiring, having to buy a whole running car, and not having an easy tuning solution why a lot of people who use these engines just use a standalone ECU.

Finally, what I've heard is the hardest part of making this swap work, the transmission control module (TCM). We figured the easiest way was to keep it and just trick it into thinking it's still connected to an auto trans (again, thanks to the rs25 thread). First thing I tried with the trans was to unplug the passenger side plug on the top of the trans (B11/T4). Car won't start. Plugged that back in and unplugged the driver side plug (B12/T3). Engine started but had a P0866 TCM Communication circuit high code, the fuel level code (probably because the VSS wires go through that plug so the speedo doesn't work), and the engine seemed down on power. Plugged that back in and unplugged one of the plugs from the TCM, got a P0866. Unplugging just the other connector to the TCM gives the P0866 and P1698. With either or both unplugged you can still drive the car but it seems to be very low on power, won't go over 2000RPM in drive, but seems faster in reverse. Only so hard you want to test that in the alley though. It was about at this point that I realized the 2002 FSM shows three plugs for the TCM and ours has only two. Three plugs appears to be for the VDC model. It does seem to show the right colors for the plugs at the trans. I downloaded the 2001 supplement for 6 cylinder which seems to show the right plugs and wire colors for our TCM, but the colors for the plugs at the trans are the wrong colors in the 2001 FSM. Car was built 10/01. Figured the easiest thing to start on would be the gear selector. There is a mechanical cable going from the shifter in the car to the trans. There is a wire plug going to the top of the trans known as the inhibitor switch that tells the TCM what gear you're in. This also lights up the reverse lights and connects the circuit for the starter if you're in park or neutral. So the first step is to splice the white/blue and white/green so that it will start no matter what. Next step was to wire in a three position switch so we could ground neutral or drive to the TCM. One position grounds the reverse pin of the TCM, the middle grounds nothing and causes a code, and the other position grounds the D pin. Took a bit to figure out to cut all the other gear position wires so the trans didn't think we were in say reverse and drive at the same time. Yes, this is semi posterior, keep in mind we're just trying to make the car fully driveable with no codes and nothing attached to the trans, eventually this will be wired to some kind of clutch and/or neutral switch and not this crudely. Plus, if you think this wiring is questionable, you haven't seen anything yet. So now we can drive the car with the passenger side unplugged from the trans. Still seems to be anemic in drive, won't go much over 2000RPM, but seems to keep slowly accelerating, but fast in reverse. First thing we did after unplugging the plug on the driver's side was to splice wires across it for the VSS. This made the speedo work, and we never got codes for the other speed sensors. I think at this point the OBDII port stopped working. We grounded the pin for ground at the harness and it started working again. How would you ever figure that out if you just had the harness and were trying to get it to work in a different car? Various solenoid codes started coming up, and we started just jamming resistors between the sockets of those pins to duplicate the resistance of those solenoids. That basically worked but some of them started going up in smoke. Fortunately I had some appropriate resistance 1W and 10W resistors we were able to put in place of the main two shift solenoids. Another small one smoked and all we had were 0.25W resistors, so I just took about a dozen of about 12x the resistance of the solenoid and wrapped them all together. These eventually discolored but seemed to still have the same resistance we started with. At least once we were able to drive it without any transmission codes (switch in N or D, didn't seem to matter). Still anemic in drive but quick in reverse. We looked up the ratios in the FSM to find that reverse was geared taller than first. So maybe it will only go to 2000RPM but that is faster in reverse? Tried it again and I got over 2500RPM in reverse (which is plenty fast in the alley). Maybe without the electronics, the cable manually shifts it through 1,2,3,4. Tried it in first, still won't go much over 2000RPM. Keep in mind this is with everything unplugged from the trans. So there is no way the TCM or ECU knows what gear it's in, or even if it's in gear, except for that switch I wired in. With the driver's side plugged in, got over 3000RPM in drive pretty quickly. Finally it dawned on us that it must be mechanically in third or fourth and the solenoids are downshifting it. Unplugged the driver's side at the trans again and put our resistors back in to the harness side. We figured out that the 1 and 2 shift solenoids were hot when the switch is in D (to the TCM) and wired those to 12V with the ignition on. Now it seems to accelerate much better, but might be in second based on RPM/mph and seat of the pants. Here is that masterpiece of electrical engineering: FSM says the ATF temp sensor should be between 275 and 375 ohms, so we put a 330 ohm resistor in the harness plug. Never got an ATF temp code, but the ATF temp light comes on (flashes) in the dash. Sensor reads 600o through the harness plug, so we tried a few around there, and a 220o, still no code but light on the dash kept flashing. Reads about 3.5k ohm cold. Speedo has stopped working, wires for that have probably come loose. I'm going to get a breadboard and some 10W resistors to wire close to the TCM to get rid of that mess. Need to get a solid connection on the VSS too, that still isn't working but shows continuity on my DMM. So I think my main conundrum is that fuel level A code, and how to get rid of it without the dash / instrument panel wiring. Anybody know how to do that?

I still can't quite figure out the fuel level circuit. The fuel level sender(s) are definitely through a blue plug going to the back with about a dozen wires (I've cut all but three). If you unplug it the fuel gauge reads empty and the code is on. I can wire those through resistors to ground to get the fuel gauge to read over half a tank, but the code still comes on. After I cut the fuel level wire (according to the manual) at the ECU that code does not come up with or without the connector unplugged. Problem solved you say. This is all with the dash harness plugged into the interior fuse block. If you unplug either of those dash harness plugs from the fuse block, the gauges don't come on and you get the code. Only after many hours of messing with this did I look up the code in the FSM to find that the first troubleshooting step basically says if the speedo/tach aren't working, you'll get the code. So I don't know of a good way around that. Certainly don't have room to stuff the 02 instrument cluster in the 99 somewhere just to keep one code from coming up. The wire that goes to the ECU that's supposedly for fuel level did read 3V before I cut it (stripped a little insulation off). So we wired two resistors between 5V and ground so that in between them was 3V and spliced that to the ECU. Still fuel level code comes up with the dash unplugged. I could definitely use some help here. On the plus side I figured out the fuel temp circuit (P0183), evap (P0447), and code P1400. Just started cutting wires leading to the back of the car. For the fuel temp circuit I just had to run a 3.5k resistor between the red/light blue and black/yellow wires. The wires for the other two codes were constant 12V from the rear, even with the ignition off. So I found a constant 12V (should eventually try to find something switched so it doesn't drain the battery). By accidentally touching it to ground and blowing the fuse found out it's for the clock / interior lights. First wired that through a 10 ohm resistor to the two wires for the other codes. Green/black for P1400, brown/yellow for P0447. Smoked that resistor pretty quick. Then put in a 3.9k resistor, didn't smoke, no codes. At this point the only thing going to the back is the 8 wire plug for the fuel pump, which actually looks the same as the one in the 99. I plan on just running a new fuel pump wire anyhow, the one in the 99 is pretty small gauge and corroded. So still have to sort out which of those wires goes to the fuel pump. I had unplugged over half the connections to the underhood fuse block when we were on our unplugging spree the other day. Had to plug most of them back in to get the alternator back to charging 14.5V. If you unplug one of them it goes to 15.5V! Before we started on the rest of this, I drove it around the block. The speedo only registered over about 30mph, but then it and the cruise control worked. We messed with the P0051 H02S heater control circuit low code. Figure if nothing else it would be nice to get the check engine light off so if it came on we'd know we have a new code. This appears to be the driver's side O2 sensor heater, which has no continuity between the two adjacent pins (pass side OK). Tried putting in several different resistors but can't get rid of the code. Seemed like only the passenger side fan would come on, so I messed with that. Got a temp sensor so I could plug it in and heat it up to get the fans to come on. Sort of worked, but it would cool back off quickly, especially with the fans on. The harness end has +5V on one side of the pair of pins. The third pin gets 10V from the harness and is 1k ohms to ground through the sensor. I'm just going to start using a lowercase o for ohms. The temp sensor across the two pins is about: 3k ohms = 55F 1k ohms = 109F 120o = 210F 47o = 210F So I left the 47o resistor in, which made the ECU try to turn the fans on. Each fan has four pins, two hot and two ground. One of the ground pins is always grounded, although I think the resistance was high (18o?). The other one gets grounded by the fan relay on the firewall, but that was high resistance, about 18o. The two hot leads are switched on by relays main 1 and main 2 (or sub 1 and sub 2). There is also a 30A fuse for each fan, the one for the main fan was blown so I replaced that. Main fan is driver's side, sub fan is passenger side. Relays all seemed good, ground pins are getting grounded (more or less), hot pins are 12V. What's strange is that unplugging the temp sensor will cause the fan to run on low, high, and seemingly higher than normal and cycle between those for a while. Driver's side never works, so I assume that motor is bad. When we wire this up to the fans in the 99 we'll make sure the ground is low resistance. Plan on just using the fans in the 99 and this wiring.

I've learned a lot about Subaru wiring in the last ten days. I'll try to leave out a lot of the trial and error and just describe what we've done that seems to work. The goal is to trim the wiring down as much as possible but have no trouble codes and functional cruise control. After going through this I see why some people would just pay someone a few hundred dollars to do this or even go standalone. But it's been interesting. This thread is great, I need to sign up there to give thanks if nothing else: http://www.rs25.com/forums/f145/t155496-dynes-1999-2-5rs-h6-ez30d-swap.html Far more helpful though is the FSM. Fortunately I've seen links to them online. More about that later. http://jdmfsm.info/Auto/Japan/Subaru/Legacy%20Outback/2002/ This is one of the things I noticed when removing the dash. Some micro switch just below the hood release. I think it was attached to the remote start. I took the dash out in about three hours at a relaxed pace. Much easier than the 99, mainly since there wasn't a roll cage in the way, also since we'd just done the 99, and this one did seem to have a few less things connecting the dash to the car. On the 99 I unscrewed the stalks and slid them off the steering column, which was kind of a pain and still didn't give the dash a lot of room to get by. On this sedan I just unbolted the steering column from the cross beam with the two bolts and it drops to the floor. Much easier. Passenger side air bag is pretty heavy, might wind up leaving those out of the 99. Especially since the wiring will be far from stock when we're done. Took the cross beam, HVAC, and ABS stuff out. First step was just start unplugging stuff until codes came up or the car died. Cut/peeled most of the electrical tape off the harness too. Labeled where various things plugged in. The first thing we decided to attack was the wiring to the front. It goes out under the driver's fender and then back in under the hood by the battery. That would clearly prevent us from getting the harness out of the car in one piece so we unplugged everything and got it inside the car. Laid out on the ground next to the car. These harnesses are all hopelessly tangled and often have splices in the middle of wire runs, so it's not like you can just take the wires from a certain plug back to the fuse box or something and cut them off there. Spread out for easier trimming. So then I cut off all those wires laying out on the floor. They go to the various lights, horns, and ABS. The ones going out the car to the front are for the fans and the underhood fuse box.

So here's my current Subaru collection: Here's the rusty front bumper beam I mentioned: So we were working on this sedan and my friend noticed the LF CV axle was pulled apart. The shaft was out of the outer joint and the inner joint (boot holding it on) and the inner CV was pulled mostly out of the trans. I thought I heard some noises like that when we first drove it, but most of the time it was pretty quiet. The spindle nut wasn't staked: Here's what the axle looked like: Put in an axle I picked up off the ground at a junkyard this summer. It drives better now but the AT oil temp light comes on right away, I don't remember seeing that much before. Also, the speedo doesn't seem to register in first gear, and it stays in first longer than you'd expect. Once it shifts into second, speedo works. We've gotten a lot of the wiring exposed and some of it removed. I'll post up pictures of that when we make more progress.

You mean because it's the lightest car you could get with an EZ30? We probably won't because: It would be a lot of work and expense to do the fuel cell and pumps, cage, seats, belts, window nets, bumpers, etc on this one. And building a cage in a sedan would probably be harder than a wagon. It would be hard to fit all the stuff we want to take in a sedan. This thing is pretty rusty, so not worth keeping and building up (I know, I did that with the 99 but going to try to avoid ever doing that again). You can't really tell from the pictures, but I'll put up a picture of the front bumper beam sometime. It's about half steel and half air/iron oxide. For years now the Impreza will randomly lose coolant. Hard to say if it leaks since it's normally parked on a porous surface. After the first time it overheated last week, I had waited a few hours and tried to add coolant but couldn't add much. The second time it overheated it was bubbling in the overflow. This morning I was able to add a quart or two to the radiator and overflow. I just drove it for an hour and a half (with some stops, maybe driving half the time) and no overheating, no bubbling. So maybe it was just low on coolant before. That would be nice.

Looks like good progress "cleaning". Definitely better than before, hard to tell on the hood exactly with the different paint colors.

Thanks to everyone else for sharing your experiences. Definitely makes me hesitate to buy a newer Subaru. I also vote for the EJ22 being an excellent engine overall. Those charts don't really show an increase in reliability, at least for cars 2005+. If the average age of a car in 2013 was 11 years, that would be a 2002 (2003MY?). If anything it shows an increase in reliability in cars built during the 90s. It also says nothing about how many repairs or tows per year those vehicles require to stay on the road. One problem with things like the JD power quality surveys is that they show problems per 1000 cars. That problem could be a glovebox light burned out or an engine seized up. Is some portion of this due to reduced maintenance or even simple things like how often people check their oil, like Numbchux said? That doesn't explain things like power windows or starters that (should) require no maintenance. Also, as grossgary said, most people who buy new cars are more concerned about performance and styling than fuel economy and reliability. Just look at the graph above, if the average new car owner keeps their car for 6 years and it makes it through the warranty period with few problems, what does the manufacturer care? Sure, some of them like Jeep and Honda brag about resale value, but I'm guessing that's a very secondary concern.

Got the 02 OB power seat working, it was the switch. Put in the one out of the sedan and it works fine. After swapping over the front/back mechanism of course, which was a pain. Drove the Impreza a couple of times today since it's been sitting for a few weeks. Did two ~30 min trips in town with a short stop in the middle of each. Both times the temp came up normally, held steady for most of the trip, and then the last five minutes or so started creeping up, even with the heat all the way up. It's 20F today and the radiator fan was running both times when I got home. The first time the overflow bottle was overflowing. It was empty before the second trip, so I filled it most of the way up, but the radiator was still full. At the end of the second trip the overflow was still at about the same level, but the hose was bubbling. So the head gaskets are probably starting to go, right? On the plus side, the starter and trans have been working.

There is a big difference on these cars between 8 o clock and 9 30 as you put it. The temp gauge sits at about 8 o clock from about 150F to 190F and then starts climbing again over 190F (which is about where the fans come on). I don't know if the motors are serviceable, but you can easily just replace the motor itself by unbolting the motor from the shroud and removing the fan. It might be worth replacing the relay(s) too. Good to hear it's probably not the engine itself.

Below follows the saga of purchasing an H6 donor car. The only nearby junkyard I could find on car-part that had a decent engine and it was still in the car wanted $1500 for the front clip. Not sure how we'd get it home or what we'd do with it once it was here. Seemed like just buying a running car wouldn't cost much more. I've been watching co part, and even bid on one car a while back. I haven't found a good way to see what cars actually sell for, but it seems like anything that runs and drives is at least $1500. There were two listed on craigslist in Milwaukee with 6cyl, so I arranged a time to meet the guy with the cheaper car and we drove up there. Address he gave us turned out to be a Wells Fargo branch. I called and he said he'd just sold it, then had some story about how he just sold a 2006 but was coming to meet us in the 2001. He pulled into the parking lot a few minutes later and said there were a few other guys who had called him. They'd been waiting in other cars in the lot. My friend quickly noticed it was a four cylinder. We drove over to a McDonalds so we could use the bathroom and I looked up the other Milwaukee ad. Different price, pictures, and wording, but same phone number. Not sure what kind of scam was going down there, but he did change the listings to four cylinder. Texted a guy in south bend Indiana who had one for sale for $1200 and he texted me back quickly that it was still for sale. I sent him a few more questions and have never heard back. Ad was gone the next day so I assume he sold it. There is another one in Chicago that we have not been able to get a reply from all week, so we went back home. There was a 2002 OB H6 sedan on co part for $550 buy it now. Runs and drives, 187k miles, dent in hood and fender. Called the M97 broker and it's about $1100 with fees. So I had them buy it now. Wired the money over in the afternoon. Confirmed with the yard that I could just drive it out (I've read online that some make you tow it out even if it runs). I had called a tow service in Rockford a shop I deal with recommended. They go in and out of Chicago all the time so they'd tow the car to Rockford for $110. We drove into the auction in Wheeling the next afternoon. Got the paperwork pretty quickly, had to give them the buyer number (make sure you have the buyer number if you buy a car at auction through a broker), probably waited a half hour or so for them to bring the car out. They have a ton of cars which they move around with two giant forked wheel loaders (whether or not the cars run) that are in constant motion. The guy who dropped it off asked me what our car's license plate number was. I didn't have mine memorized, not sure if that's really what he was asking, but he eventually just decided to ignore it and left the car. I hopped in, found the key, and it fired right up. Drove it back and forth a few times, it made some clunking and scraping noises, but seemed to be mostly functional. We drove it out of the bullpen and out into their visitor lot. The trans clearly wasn't working well but seemed like it would be good enough. Coolant was definitely bubbling into the overflow, so probably bad head gaskets. Popped the radiator cap off before it was warm and it was full. Idled rough, check engine light on. Engine oil, PS, brake fluid were all good, even had ¾ tank of gas. Could not remove auto trans dipstick. My friend followed me in the 2002 OB wagon and I headed west. Only made it a few miles until the trans in the sedan started acting like it was in neutral. Pulled into a parking lot, got the dipstick out with a vice grips, and put in a quart of ATF. May have been slightly low. Added ATF didn't help. Basically you can drive it up to about 35mph normally, if you try to go 40+ it's like the final drive disengages or something, but it doesn't make any noise. The speedo and tach swing around freely when you hit the gas. Between that and the likely bad head gaskets, we figured we wouldn't make it back to Rockford. Spent a bunch of time calling various tow companies near there that wanted $300-400 to tow it to Rockford. The tow company from Rockford wasn't able to pick it up on short notice though. Eventually we left the car at my friend's parents' house, which was about ten miles away. By the time we got there the temp gauge had gone all the way up a couple of times. Left the floormats under the front end to catch the coolant and went home. Tow place picked it up the next day and towed it to Rockford for $150. I was barely able to drive it halfway in the garage since the trans was mostly not engaging. Had to push it the rest of the way in. Here are pictures from the auction site: So if anyone wants parts, PM me, I'm definitely keeping the engine and associated wiring and computers. My friend wants the radiator and fan assembly. I plan on keeping the wheels and tires for summer use on the 02 wagon. Other than that, I will probably scrap the rest by the end of the month. I will try to see if I can use parts from this seat to fix the 02 wagon, but this one moves back and not forward.