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The belt set up of the FB engines looks very similar to the EZ engines which frequently have bearing failures - do the FB engines also have that issue?

Hey mike! The tone ring is the ring that has "teeth" that the wheel speed sensor are "looking at". on a 95 the teeth are part of the hub (newer models they're intergrated into the axles). If you find the wheel speed sensor - the only wire going to the knuckle - the tone ring will be just millimeters away from the sensor tip, which may or may not be visible without removing the wheel. 1. clean the wheel speed sensors - they get dirty or debris on them and can get flaky. there's one at each wheel poking through the rear of the dust plate/knuckle. Have to pull the 2. look for warn/damaged ABS wheel speed sensors. or replace the faulty one - there is a way to do a self-test of the ABS system where the light blinks the code and tells you which sensor is bad...if it's registering as bad, yours sounds intermittent. 3. some 90's models had flaky ABS pump relays that would cause noises even when the car was off - doesn't sound like your issue but worth noting as you trouble shoot.

OEM EJ front struts mounts rarely fail. So if you find yourself stuck thinking you wouldn’t need to replace it but the bearing isn’t good - you’ve got an option. If it’s not rusted terribly and the bushing/mount material is good and only the bearing is an issue, you can regrease the bearings. Today I did one on a 190,000 mile Outback strut that’s sat outside for a while and the bearing was seized, then hard to turn, very lumpy and catching. Doing the following, it was perfectly usable by my standards when I was done. For practice and to get a feel for what you’ll be doing you can use a tiny pick or spludger device to pry the edge of the face seal up on the under side of the mount where the face seal meets the inner race. I’m not all that delicate with these, the OEM ones I’ve done the seal materials are highly pliable and resilient. Use a needle fitting for a grease gun and insert it very roughly about 30 degrees incline from the seal face and between the inner race and the face seal. It’ll take a few times to get it to actually go down into the bearings. It often “stops” right away and you can’t push it in. If it stops - Pull back. Slide down the race a little or pull it all the way and rotate and try again. Eventually the needle slides in a solid 1/2” and notably goes down into the bearing. Before you pump grease press down where the needle enters and “seal” that entrance up with a finger so less grease just comes back out of that area when you squeeze the grease gun Give it some grease and pull the fitting out. rotate the bearings a few/couple dozen times by hand. Wipe up any external grease. repeat those steps 2-7 times depending how much grease you put in. Smaller shots of grease multiple times would be ideal and best. dont overfill the bearing or pump quickly or the face seal can be push out If that happens just press the face seal back down by hand after a few times the bearing will feel much better. Every other bearing I’ve done (timing pulleys and others) feels indistinguishable from new after doing this - tight and smooth just like a new bearing , strut mounts seem to retain a little less smooth feeling but still feel much better, turn freely, feels greased, and good enough for me for a strut mount. Ive done this to timing pulleys?and they do just fine even after 50,000 miles of high rotational speeds and localized temps. And I’ve done it to older subarus with unavailable pulleys and unavailable bearings where the face seal cracks and gets more damaged than normal due to age/design - not ideal but options are limited - and still no problems 10’s of thousands of miles on probably 10-20 bearings like that. So it seems like this should be a reasonable option in some cases for EJ strut mounts

NKG I mean NGK . I always mix up those letters!

I have a 93 and an 87. I intend to run them indefinitely. Plan on stocking up on NLA parts. Getting creative with adapting generic parts when needed. Plan on doing all your repairs, unless you are lucky enough to live near another one of us crazys who run these EA82s. Plan on continuing to have ridiculously low tax bills. No emmisions testing hassles. If it runs and drives you might get 1000 for it from a just anyone kind of buyer - who will be screwed the first time anything real breaks... If it's near mint and no rust you could get more, but there are not a lot of us around... my 2 are very low rust, so I'm not looking for another one. The only trouble I consider "fatal" is when the rust gets out of control.

Nice to see another classic added to the New England contingent. Welcome.