Leaderboard

The best NA combo we have found for 90's cars is a 257 bottom end, shaved 25D heads, 257 head gaskets, and eccentric timing idlers to correct the belt length. Slot the 25D intake to bolt it up if needed. About 10.6:1 compression. Probably very close to 200 HP and tons of torque. We have one in a lifted Forester with big tires and still gets 27 mpg. GD

Update on this issue. The H6 is loaded up and headed to the repair shop to be fixed after all this time. All OEM parts ordered. Updates will continue.

The first weekend I bought it up at the top of the mountain I go hunting to now with 6 lug 2" lift and some 27" mt tires

Buy a whole vehicle - ensure it’s running! Pull the harness and cut it down to just the engine management wiring. Test run this with the engine still in the donor vehicle. If it’s starts and runs without any codes you’re good to go with the rest of the conversion. The gearbox and driveshafts aren’t touched unless you fit the EJ AWD box. Cheers Bennie

Or it may have lost compression when it was started cold and moved a few feet. Cold enrichment washes the oil off the rings. Combination of both perhaps. GD

Might have had it flooded.

any difference with cold vs warm engine? any smell of fuel under the hood? You can check the charging voltage with a voltmeter. rev a little and it should be around 14 - 14.4 or so I think (others will correct me if I'm wrong) voltage while cranking should probably be about 10 or so. nothing wrong with having the battery and maybe the alt checked at the parts store - but MANY people find typical parts store rebuilt alternators to be very poor risk. If your alt is really bad, a used one from car-part.com or having your original rebuilt locally is a better wat to go. Or check into DBW or Maniac for an alternator. An 08 may have the Mitsubishi planetary starter - they can be noisy/slow to release sometimes but, I haven't read any complaints of 'dragging'. used car lot may be installing very cheap batteries to get cars out-the-door.

Cheap coilovers make me sad. Modifying control arms without doing geometry modeling first also hurts my heart...

There is no center diff. It is just 2wd or 4wd not AWD.

Welp I feel like an idiot haha, but for any future readers I'll share what the problem was: I went to pinch off the front lines per crazyeights recommendation to narrow down between MC and front calipers and noticed the inner pads were sitting at a slight angle relative to the disc, on closer inspection I hadn't fully seated them in the notches, so the pad was sitting on the caliper brackets on the top side meaning the piston was flexing the pad when the brakes were pressed. Pulling the handbrake would pre-flex the pads thereby stiffening up my brakes. Pads took a slight curve from all this flexing so I replaced and everything's good now. Thanks everyone for the help.