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Nice rust free 99 Outback with a low mile 2.2. Trouble free retirement and great body style.

Over here, we used to swap in Nissan transfer cases as part of an 8" to 10" sub-frame lift. Such as my hatch has. Has 20 forward gears and all the crawl ratio you could ever want. Alas the parts to reliably wheel it just don't exist and if I take it out I'll just break stuff I can't replace so it's just a nice ornament at my shop that people occasionally offer to buy. And yes. In any case my 1984 K5 Jimmy with 35's and 350 HP will wheel circles around any Subaru including my hatch and you can get ANY part you want for it including any gear ratio. Not that I need it with 350 HP and an auto....' So yes - buy a truck. You'll just break that poor EA81 and you can't get any parts to fix them anymore. Sadly it's a dead platform. GD

That engine needed synthetic from day one. The use of non-synthetic has plugged up the oil control rings. There is no fix for this but to replace the rings and clean out the piston skirt drain back holes behind the oil control rings. GD

It never was backfire. It's afterfire, there are youtube videos explaining it. The noise comes when you let off the gas and it's over rich. It seems to happen around 3k for your car. I wouldn't worry about it, it's common on all older cars. The soot issue sounds like something better to chase since it's a california car. Basic maintenance, plugs, oil, o2 sensors. Also 2012 probably falls into the weak piston rings recall, has the car been consuming oil? Going back to what other shops said, what tests have they done to confirm this. Backpressure, did they drill a hole before cat and measure? Valve timing, take off timing covers and match timing marks.

legacy spec B 6-speed would be awesome