98 impreza obs, no luck finding ej22

[nvu]

Hi again, from my previous post, I have a 98 obs with a bad shortblock.  The plan was to look around on car-part and visit the local yards for a complete EJ22 but so far that's been turning up empty.  I do see a lot of EJ18 SOHC's around, that seems a little too small for an awd wagon.  Still searching for the EJ22 in the meantime.  Are there other engines that will work with the 98 OBS ECU?

The other option is refreshing the heads and putting another shortblock on.  I have one from an EJ257, the heads are the EJ22 with external headbolts, single port.  Will this combo work with current ECU?

This is a california car so the ecu needs to remain original for smog.

[lmdew]

www.car-part.com

I've had engine shipped for $200 or so half way across the US.

[idosubaru]

there's a bunch of EJ22's in california.  expand your search options. 

search further

look at all 1996-1998 legacy's and impreza's, not just impreza.  all of those are plug and play, you may need to work around EGR issues depending if yours has EGR or not. 

1995 legacy and impreza EJ22's will also work if you also swap the exhaust manifold as well - it is then plug and play and bolts right in (address EGR accordingly)

any 1990-1998 EJ22 block will work - bolt your heads to it. 

same thing with EJ18 - get the EJ18 exhaust manifold with the engine and bolt your EJ22 intake manifold to it.  plug and play.

you can bolt your EJ22 heads to an EJ25 block - so you can look for EJ25's (i would avoid 1996-1998 EJ25's though personally). 

this probably means there are JDM engines you can use as well....