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Buy the rebuilt axle from a good source, I've had two defective ones (new) from Kragen.

Just as a PS I soldered mine on this advice seven years ago and it still works.

I do suspect the cat is slowly on its way out but so is everything else as she nears 150,000 miles. I have to keep an eye on the oil but as long as it goes though smog I might get a few more years out of the car.

Nice to see you are still a Subie owner Olnick. When I first got the old 99 I was on here all the time to figure out how to fix her up. She's been running without a glitch other than a transmission rebuild and a little service for a few years now.

I think Cougar is right, if the equipment was available it would be best to check. I would think it would have come back on if it was going to, it's a thousand miles now and today I drove it on the freeway to SF twice, that's about 55 miles, slow though SF traffic twice (a lot of lights on 19th ave at rush hour), a trip down to lunch, a couple of miles, and San Bruno, maybe fifteen miles of traffic and lights. I'll be disappointed if it comes back on but I have gotten three years more out of it, and it does look like I may make more yet. I think this total repair has been about $150 which fits my pocketbook better.

Just a follow up in case it healps anybody else. A few years back I got a PO 420 code on my California 99 Forester. I think it had about 125,000 miles on it then. A couple of places told me I needed new cats at big bucks. I fitted a new front oxegen sensor and the code went away until a few weeks back at about 147,000 miles. I figured it was the front sensor again and ordered the wrong one from a place I could not take it back to. CA and 49 state are different. At that point as soon as I shut off the warning light it would come back in just a few miles. Then I remembered when I bought the front sensor I had also bought the back and not fitted it to see how long it would last. I put that on and the car has been cured for several weeks. The lesson seems to be to change the ox sensors before the big bucks cats (over a grand quotes), and the rear can last a couple of years longer than the front. Oh, and by the way don't order an oxy sensor with out the serial number from anybody who won't take it back.

If it does not touch the gasket surface it should run. The machining seems quite rough if it is not the picture. Was it done on one of those giant beltsander type surfacers? It's not something I'd care to use on anything where combustion volume was critical and you should make sure there is nothing that can make a hot spot, keep all edges smooth. On an around town mom's car that will never see more than 5,000 rpm or so it is unliky to be a problem.

Tow it with dolley and disconnect or on a trailer. As a guy who has blown a head gasket on a mountain and paid through the nose just for 10 gallons of water (wrecker call for the water) a trailer is much better. Climbing mountains is going to put all kinds of changes and strains on an engine you don't get around town. I suspect CCR is going to charge you for a core if you blow it up and it is not rebuildable.

Gary, Are the bearings about the same size? In other engines I've seen an increased rate of bearing failure with more displacement. I can think of one motorcycle program in which the leap from 750 cc to 900 cc ended up being cancelled because of the rate of increased bearing failure. Those dudes went to an entire new power plant.

These Subaru gasket problem is a bit of a bear to diagnose compared to other vehicles I've seen. The good part is that yours is probably not all that bad and some folks would pull the thermostat and limp by for a while. No heat though and in your area that would be shivers. A kid did it over here in CA a while ago and limped by for a couple years of short college trips. After one downtown SF over heat it limped to Lake County by running at night, where it became a parts car. If it were my car from what you say I'd take it to CCR or is that the band? Let them decide how the clutch is, they have to take it our after all. I had 30,000 miles or so on my Forester clutch and we put it back in after the tranny rebulild. It looked good for a long time. This is the same reason I put a lot of money in my Forester this year. Avoiding car payments, higher insurance, registration, etc. when we seem to be going into a recession might be a good idea. I usually get laid off when the republicans are in and get a better job under the Democrats.

It would be pretty hard to tell exactly how many revisions there are as WA says. I have heard three for both, but when you just change an element of a coating how can anyone tell? The switch to the four layer gasket on the DOHC at least appears major.

I'd still wonder about the temp sensor. If it was telling the engine to go to warm up mode a bit early stalling is common. The switchover may come at a higher reading. Vacum leaks can also cause screwy symptoms as can bad grounds.

I've seen in done on a VW but not on a Subaru.

Both my Forester ones were tight but one was a two or three day battle. Sure run the die over the stud and if its not too screwed it will work. I used an afermariket axle twice and I'm a sorry camper.

I have avoided this on by the fact that I can be somewaht anal and label thing I take apart. I can just see myself doing this and going nuts as Nipper trying to find the reason. for it.

An exhaust leak could throw off the ox sensor. If the manifolds were leaking I'd start there.

Sure wish you the best on this one. It seems if it had spun a bearing it would have shown up again by now.

The worst enemy this car has is me not rust. I've managed to get a few few tiny scratches and dents but at 30 feet and polished up it looks pretty good.

It's a hard call isn't it? I just put a couple grand into axles and transmission. On the other hand a new car would be around $3,000 down, taxes, license, and maybe $4800 in payments for a year. My car has had about 18,000 miles since I replaced the ox sensor with no codes and it did very well for a couple of years until the rare transfer case spacer problem. It does have a leaking cam seal and I think I really should change the left axle one more time to a real Subaru one to get rid of the last little noise. The battery is really timed out and I should change it, but that's not big bucks. Brakes are fine since I did them a few years back, and I did struts then too. I'd like to get a couple of more years out of the thing after all the recent money. Like you say it's only worth a few grand at this point so anything I get out of it is free. The thing about a mostly in CA body is that there is little rust and it does not look much worse than when I bought it several years back.

When I would reset mine before I replaced the O2 sensor it would stay off for months. See if a parts store will reset for you and take it in for inspection quickly. Back east you have so much corrosion on wires and and the exhaust that a car that old can easily give you a PO 420. It can be anything from a leaky exhaust to the cat. If you can get through inspection at least you have another year.

I'm sorry to hear that but your time was not wasted. This is something that needs to be done every several years and now you have done that part. If the slave is doing full travel it must be internal then.

A lot of Subaru automatics do that, I've heard a bunch of explanations and fixes that even involved an incorrect axle. Do a search here and you may see several ideas. I might just put it down to a Subaru kink myself.

I don't lnow how yours is wired but some cars have a fusible link that will blow.

When you rebuild an engine you have the head surfaces of the block remachined. I have seen two systems for this. One is to mount the block in a fixture that holds it precisely in place and mills a new surface. Another system which is more modern, drops the block deck surface on what looks like a giant ultra flat belt sander. When you remove surface material from a block to straighten it, clean it, or raise compression it is often referred to as decking the block.

Take other folks opinions too, but mine is you never get those areas quite perfect with decking the engine in a machine shop. The plate glass method gets it as flat as you can without decking, but tiny corroded areas are often still visable and feelable. To be 100% certain it is best to deck the block or resurface it. On the other hand since the gaskets seal 99% of the time most head gasket jobs only have the head resurfaced. I only had sealing problems in two engines in the five or six hundred I did as a mechanic. If is an area over a coolant passage it's a no worry anyway unless the edge of the gasket overlaps the corrosion.