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I'm running DRW bushing as well. I forget what the factory bushing durometer is but if I remember correctly the DRW bushing are slightly stiffer. I make it a habit to relube the bushing every spring/summer when I descale and treat the rust that forms during the winter. May be overkill but I'm going for longevity. I'm using good quality KYB strut mounts. Took a lot of searching to find them but I trust them more than the typical chinesium parts.

There's the buffer and a buffer cover Covers are discontinued, but there are still a few buffers in the Subaru of America warehouses, Any Subaru dealer in the US can order them. $15-20 ea

I run 45PSI all around, on 13" wheels... I load my wagon heavy and drive hard, and lower psi always gives uneven tire wear, with the edges (especially outer edges) wearing before the center tread. I've been running Tornel Direccional 205/60R13 lately. Not a common size, but I've been happy with them. Been tempted to get some 15x7 Diamond Racing wheels so I can run much easier to get 15s... What brand bushings are you running? I have DRW everywhere up front except the lower control arm bushings, which are now the odd-shaped Trupro ones. Have been wondering if other brands get better life than DRW's. I still need to find a source of Gen II rear outer bushes - DRW said he can make them if I give him specs. I might mail him the shells from a worn-out factory bushing.

A lot of ebay parts are listed for Leone II... I think they're borrowing the UK nomenclature for stuff. Others are done by 1400/1600/1800, which seems extremely imprecise. AU5/AM5/AJ5 seemed to be the most accurate way to find parts... but ebay's fitment tables were *all over the place*. Doing overly broad searches and filtering by hand seems to be the way to go.

Tires are typically ran at the stock 30-31 PSI. Granted I am on the factory 13" wheels. If I did a 5-lug conversion and got some 15" wheels under it, the ride would improve. I also am running stiffer poly bushings and all my rubber components are less than 2 years old. I don't have a decade or more of use to soften the ride. I'd say I have about 200 pounds of weight added to the car and I plan to add more. The weight, as mentioned, does definitely help. In comparison to a modern USDM (we love soft suspension and cup holders here, neither of which I have) vehicle though, it's almost at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Okay, my thread hijack is over. Thanks for this write up! Any assistance getting parts on these cars where they belong is greatly appreciated! :]

Awesome write up @bushytails! Also look into https://subarino.com.au - a local guy that loves the MY models and will ship internationally. Just email for a quote on shipping. The years of the brumby will be different to your brat. We got them up to 1992 and I heard of several that were sold new from the dears late as 1994!! We don’t talk in generations - it’s either MY or L series; EA81 or EA82. No estates - station wagons GL and DL are the trim levels of the L series, the MY seems to only get the GL but I could be wrong there. That forwarding service is like one a mate used to use over in the states, they used to call them a virtual mail box and did the exact same thing you did, just the opposite way around. And good old Australia Post… they do their job well but take their sweet arsed time doing it! I usually use DHL for incoming packages and if they don’t do it to my address I either get it sent to work or go with FedX (which I prefer not to). I have king springs on my lifted and EJ’d L series with civic springs in the rear. I like the ride quality of the HD springs, but mine probably need replacing since they’re about 20 years old and probably not holding like they used to! If you drive an empty vehicle these springs will most likely not be nice to ride in. I also wonder what psi you’re running in your tyres as this will have an impact too. Thanks for sharing Bushytails, glad you got your parts and you’re happy with them!

So far I'm loving mine... but my recent experience is sitting on the bump stops with my seat being the primary suspension... I also have an EJ, lift, and various other accessories making the front of my car a bit heavier than stock.

A note on the "overload" King springs. I've had mine for about a year and I'm not sure how I feel about them. The Pros: They benefit high-speed handling, they improve the weight capacity (cargo for wagons or utes, more passengers, etc), they're yellow - they give proto wilderness trim vibes. The Cons: The ride, oh my goodness the ride. It is very unforgiving in terms of comfort. I live in an area that sees significant seasonal freezing and thawing and the buckling of the roads makes for a truly bad ride. Think sitting at the back of a school bus going over railroad tracks bad. I've been debating replacing them with my worn stock springs. The ride isn't bad enough to buy new stock rate springs but that's just my opinion. I forewarn any passengers that haven't ridden in the car about the ride. I do worry about the long term stress on the mounts, bushings, strut towers, etc. However the benefit of better weight capacity and better handling has me on the fence about whether or not they're worth it. I'll be keeping mine for the time being but I will be replacing them at the first sign of excessive wear to suspension components. If you're thinking about getting them, they do what's written on the tin. But be forewarned, they do so at the sacrifice of comfort.

Here's the parts I got: KYB 333227 Struts: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/335669990575 These are the most common/available with tons of sellers. Trupro lower control arm bushings: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/143967618417 Also available as a few other brands. Fuel filter with vapor vent nipple on top: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/132887997822 Trupro outer tie rod ends: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/132430778076 King standard height heavy duty coil springs: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/232612195500 Not an endorsement of any of these sellers; those are just the items I purchased. I got KYB SB103 boot kits and Mevotech MP902931 strut mounts from rockauto. The Mevotech strut mounts are substandard, but seem to be the only thing available if yours are torn. The included bearing plate (if you can call a piece of greased plastic that) does not fit the upper spring seats. My original ones were in re-usable condition. If yours are cracked or worn too thin, you'll need to enlarge the hole in the spring seat with a large step bit to use the new plastic ones. Also, the D-shaped stamped hole for the threaded part of the strut shaft is either the wrong size or too poorly formed, and the strut shaft spins freely in it so you can't tighten the strut nut. I shimmed them with strips of copper roof flashing to adjust the fit to where the shaft couldn't spin. Copper is easy to cut, and I could have it slightly proud and it would squish with the nut, unlike steel. Also they don't have the markings for which way they should face, so look at your old mounts. The FSM is backwards compared to the markings on the mounts! The lower control arm bushings pressed in without too much work with a large C clamp. Put your 36mm on one side as a spacer, then press the bushing in from the other side. You have to press it in until end end you're pressing is almost entirely in the hole, then flip the clamp and the 36 around and press from the other side, to get both end pieces in place properly. Will see how long these last for. Got less than six months from each set of DRW bushings, so figured I'd try something new. There's also two brands of polyurethane bushings on .au ebay. The KYB struts are indeed 4wd length, even though they have a fixed spring seat. They're identical in dimensions to my other 4wd struts, and longer than 2wd struts. If you normally run your height adjustment all the way up, and it's for ride height and not just to compensate for worn springs, you might want to opt for the 25mm/1" lift coil springs. The free length of the coil springs is shorter than my OEM coil springs, but the end result is still standard ride height, because the heavy duty ones are much stiffer being made with much thicker wire, and so compress less with the weight of the car on them. They even came with a sticker on the side reminding you of this. lol Some other items that I did not purchase, but may be what people are looking for: Sachs 317002 struts. Cheap but supposedly great quality. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/226638327659 Also available from several other sellers ranging from slightly higher price to vastly higher price. Gabriel G55726 struts. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/205853986218 Also available from many other sellers. Some sellers show these with an adjustable spring seat, some with a fixed one. I emailed one of the sellers, and they checked with their supplier, and it sounds like they're moving to non-adjustable ones and you'll probably get a non-adjustable one even if they have a picture of an adjustable one. If it matters to you, you should email each seller you're looking at and check in advance. There's also Monroe struts available, but the seller with them is charging so much that I'm not going to link to it. There's "Protex" struts that may or may not fit. No one has a photo and fitment info is useless. Silly expensive caliper rebuild kit: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/154070387492 Lovells Standard Height: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/143552513395 Lovells Raised: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/133357720022 This always makes me laugh: https://www.ebay.com/itm/336366210724 Things I wasn't able to find: New calipers, either front or turbo rear, late '84 clutch cables, steering racks, proper steering rack boots, torsion bars, rear outer bushes, ...

There's been several threads lately about options for front struts, now that they're entirely unavailable in the US. With one of mine getting really wobbly, and my springs so flat that I've been sitting solid on the front bump stops (and ruining tires with the resultant camber) for the last year, I decided it was time to really look into my options for new parts. It turns out that ordering from Australia is a lot easier than I expected! This post will mostly focus on Gen II parts, since that's what I drive, but the info in it applies to all vehicles and anything else you want to order. I've looked in the past, and even emailed several places, both ebay sellers and local businesses, and very close to absolutely no one in Australia will ship to the US. There's one person on ebay with a small selection, charging a very hefty markup, and they have poor feedback. Australia has many parts options available - all of KYB, Monroe, Gabriel, and Sachs struts, both 4wd and 2wd and for every generation, two manufacturers of new springs, King and Lovells, in standard height, heavy duty, 1"/25mm lift, and lowered (are there people this silly?) versions, at least four options for control arm bushings, new copper-brass radiators, caster/camber adjustment kits, complete front caliper rebuild kits, fuel filters with the third nipple on top, brand new tie rod ends,... and no one will ship to the US. So what to do? Freight forwarding! I used AUSFF, https://www.ausff.com.au/ but there's other options. For a small fee, you have sellers ship them packages, then they ship them to you. All the steps I provide will be for AUSFF, but I assume the other options have a similar process. My experience with them was about average, so other options could be better or worse. Here's a little writeup on the whole process. First, you sign up, and pay a fee for the "plan" you want, which starts at AU$5 for one package. I got the AU$20 plan, which will ship up to 10 packages a month, with various extra services. The signup process is fairly typical. They talk about verification documents, but their faq mentions these are for high-risk transactions, and they didn't ask me to provide any of them. I guess no one scams people for old subaru parts. Next, if you're shopping on ebay, go to https://www.ebay.com.au/ , and log in using the same login you use for the US .com site - no need to create a new account or do anything special. Go to your profile, and add a new (additional, not primary) shipping address. Enter the address AUSFF, or your chosen freight forwarder, gives you. This will be an address in Australia that you can ship all your stuff to. AUSFF gives you a unique number you should ship things care of, like "C/O R123456", that you enter as the second line of your shipping address. If you don't do this, they won't know who the package is for, so make sure you enter it. Enter AUSFF's provided phone number and everything else they give you, none of your own address info. You can also order from local businesses. For example, Sparesbox, https://www.sparesbox.com.au/ , also has a good selection and significantly lower prices than ebay sellers (and they sponsor 4WD 24/7, so I'll give them a shout-out), and I would have ordered from them except they were out of stock on the springs I wanted. You should probably stick with sites that use shipping services rather than local store delivery, but you can also get local deliveries if you talk to AUSFF beforehand. Ship everything to your AUSFF address, of course. If you can't enter a second address line, put the c/o number on the end of your name, i.e. "John Doe C/O R123456". Note that AUSFF will not ship food, so no snacks, alas. Now, go shopping! I'll put links to some of the deals I found in a reply to this post, since they're probably transient, but here's an ebay search for most of the strut options I found. When shopping, you need to keep in mind the naming/model differences, and the currency differences. The latter is easier - at the time I'm writing this, an AUD is about 0.70USD. So, as a rough mental estimate, figure your USD cost is about 2/3rds of the AUD price. An AU$300 part is US$200. etc. The exchange rate will likely be different by the time you read this, so look it up before shopping. And then shipping and tariffs bring it up to about the same number again. Then, there's model names. "Brat", "GL", etc are US names (and one is a trim package that for some reason is used as a name, for reasons I still utterly fail to understand), and won't find any parts anywhere else in the world. The Brat is the Brumby in Australia, while other models were Leone, with Leone II being Gen II vehicles. There's also model codes, for example AU5 is a Gen II Brumby, while AM5 is a Leone II Estate (Gen II Wagon). You'll need to search with these names/models to find parts. Take note that ebay and other sites' fitment information is often **very** random. As an example, the fitment table might only specify a part fits the Sedan version (looking at you, Lovells Springs!), while it's identical on Wagons and Brumbys. Also common, parts will only say they fit Brumby (Aussies love their Utes!), while they'd also fit every other model of the same generation. Or the year range will be wrong (King Springs this time). Or they might be listed as fitting both your Gen II vehicle and a Gen III vehicle, but you know the parts are different. So do very wide searches and mentally filter based on your subaru knowledge rather than trying to search for exact model parts. Also remember some parts are still available in the US - you can get the KYB boot kit locally without paying international shipping and tariffs, for example. Add all the items you want to your cart, and go to check out. First, make sure to switch to your AUSFF (or other forwarder) address. It will then show correct shipping (usually free) and let you pay. When you pay, ebay will ask if you want to pay in AUD or USD. If you pay in USD, they will do the currency conversion for you, at a rate that's slightly worse than the current rate found elsewhere, and bill your payment method (credit card, paypal, etc) in USD. If you pay in AUD, they'll bill your card in AUD, and your bank may charge a foreign transaction fee in addition to using an unknown exchange rate. I used USD and let them handle it. If you pay with paypal in AUD, paypal will ask you the exact same question again, with a similar but slightly different exchange rate - again it's probably easier to let them do it, especially if you're using the pay later options. With non-ebay sites you'll probably pay in AUD and the rate will be up to your card issuer/bank. And now the waiting begins. But not much waiting. Most places ship AusPost or Aramex. Aramex has a rather spoob reputation, but I don't think the actual experience is worse than the budget couriers in the US. Both will get parts to AUSFF pretty quickly. Every time AUSFF gets a package, they email you with the tracking number of it. When AUSFF has all your packages, the next step is consolidation. Log in, select all your packages, and click the button to consolidate them. They'll open up the larger boxes and try to stuff the smaller boxes in too - for example, they stuck my tie rod ends inside my springs. This saves you a lot of postage getting them to the US, by shipping one package instead of several. They'll then wrap everything with plastic and tape it up. You can also ask for pictures of the items you got, scans of printed information, etc. When you get the notice that they've consolidated your parts, log in again, and select to ship your new consolidated package. You'll be given several options for how to ship it. FedEx Express was only a few dollars more than AusPost, and was 3-5 days instead of 3-5 weeks, so that's the one I went with. You'll need to provide the tariff information for your items, which is a short description of each item, a tariff code which you can look up at https://hts.usitc.gov/ (for example, 8708.80.1300 is McPherson Struts for non-agricultural vehicles), the value (price you paid), and country of origin (enter Australia if unknown). You can estimate the tariffs at https://www.simplyduty.com/import-calculator/ and other sites. At the time I write this, the Australia special rate for automotive parts seems to be 10%, but that might change in five minutes. With FedEx, they deliver your parts then bill you for the tariffs - I'm still waiting for my bill, so I don't know how paying them works yet. AUSFF has a box to check if you want insurance; I selected it. And now for more waiting, which is maybe little or lots depending on the service you selected. And then installing! Overall, the process was fairly painless. I spent a lot more time selecting parts than with the actual shipping. And with how much nicer my AM5 is driving now, I regret not doing this long ago!

Not super important. If you were dead bent on a dealer new part I’d say try a west coast dealer. And if you’re in the rust zone ask your dealer to use the west coast distributors. 26 years old it’s not likely any dealer will have one. So junkyard or one of us. I probably have those in a box. I parted out a couple of those wagons. I’ll check as I can but it’s killer cold here now. Name of the part? Buffer - according to the hatch on a 95-99 so I assume it’s the same name through the generations.

Like the title says.. the part is located next to the tail light on both sides where the liftgate comes down. They look like they are supposed to adjust or something but tried to move one the plastic just broke.

Winter freeze bump. Temps at the bottom so it’ll gradually be warmer each coming weekend. I think it’s a good deal as shown. Show up and I’ll likely donate more.

This brings me much joy, I was beginning to worry I would need ro rip apart another darling ER to do what I wanted.

Glad we could help! 🤣 I once purchased some super tuff suspension bushes for our Pajero from your side of the world cheaper delivered to me than I could buy them anywhere locally (including the extra for the exchange rate!). Thing that got me was they were made in Oz, sent to the US then sent back to Oz! How does a car part travel halfway around the world and back end up being cheaper than buying it where it started from??

They're from your part of the globe!

Whole gearbox swap = easier than repair. I find it easier to pull the gearbox out from under rather than pull the engine from above. The drive shafts can be left to slide off as you take the box out, no need to pull them off first. Once the gearbox is clear of the bellhousing of the engine, push it left, remove shaft then push it right and remove the other shaft. Lining it back up if stub axle is a little tricker but possible. I’ve done it several time now and it works a treat!

^ very nice!

yup, swap out the trans. you mentioned noise was only in 2nd gear. bad diff would make noise according to speed of the car regardless of gear

So shiny... I'll do a writeup later, maybe this weekend if I have time.

Changed the gear oil and sparklies were in the oil but no chunks...tried to feel in the drain hole and nothing there...The differential is 'part of' the transmission, correct - I may as well replace the whole trans vs. just the differential?

On the 3rd gens the outer seal is smaller, it fits around the inner boss of the hub. The inner seal is larger. It snugs up against the outer CV joint. The outer cup of the CV is the sealing surface so the seal is quite large.

I forgot it had electric power steering. So that's one less thing to worry about. lol 99% of the time the AC won't turn it, it's because you're low on refrigerant and the low pressure cutout switch is tripped. There's no point in doing any other diagnostics until you get a set of gauges on it and check the charge. An ER27 is a big EA82 engine, with the same bellhousing. A newer engine will need a bellhousing adapter and redrilled flywheel, unless you run a newer transmission too, which is its own whole set of adaptations. Pitch stop is the link on top of the engine to the firewall. You have to fab brackets for it for an engine swap.

Yeah I understand the back and forth version would be a project in of itself, i just like the idea of being able to enjoy my new Gen flat 6 without sacrificing my darling ER Anyways could you help me understand my powersteering situation a little better? Since its got the electric power steering, I dont see why i cant forgo the power steering pump on the EZ entirely, are the custom hoses for clearances purposes or? Also what's a pitch stop? Do EA transmissions fit up to the ER? I've seen conflicting things here Also you remind me, i don't know how or how to make my AC pump turn on, it hasn't bugged an inch nor have I been able to root around and find whether or not the thing is hooked up,

This is my end goal, when I have more money then time and no limit to what im capable of