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Howdy, Just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Karl and I have owned a few Subaru cars over the years. We currently own a 2018 Crosstrek (Jurassic World themed, still a work in progress...Have decals on and the UpTop rack will go on soon, pic included) and before that owned a 2010 Outback which we put over 180k miles on driving all over the US. I joined this forum though not because of those cars but more for the fact that I am looking at getting a XT or XT6 as a project / fun weekend car. I love the 80's design aesthetic and feel the XT cars have it in spades! Would love to know more about them... how hard it is to get parts for them? Common issues? Will they fit someone over 6ft or is it a tight squeeze? How hard are they to work on? &tc, &tc. Other non-Subaru vehicles I have owned in the past include a 72 VW Beetle, 93 Ranger, 01 Mazda Protege Mp3, 87 Toyota 4runner Turbo, 05 BMW f650 Dakar, and a 15 JKU. There are a few others in there as well. I have done my fair share of work on cars (mostly on the 4runner and VW), and am not afraid to get my hands dirty. I know this was a bit of a ramble but thanks for reading and hopefully some of ya'll will pop in here and impart me with some Subaru wisdom. Can't wait to learn and contribute. Have a great day and stay safe out there in this crazy FN world. -Karl

I use Amazon a lot, for a lot of things. But as mentioned you have to be very careful about counterfeit parts. Basically if it's anything that I care about brand or quality at all, I avoid Amazon. With the fleet of cars that I own, and fact that they all need parts, I'm constantly shopping around. I keep a spreadsheet with all the upcoming parts purchases, and a separate page for each car. I ALWAYS start with OEM part number and price. www.partsouq.com has complete, VIN specific parts diagrams. They also sell a lot of parts, OEM and quality aftermarket for a good price. It does ship from the UAE, though (pretty reasonable price and time frame, although should you need a refund for some reason, you are at the mercy of exchange rates to get back what you spent). www.subarupartsdeal.com to check price and availability (looks like partsforyou has similar information. I've ordered from Toyotapartsdeal many times, so I also use their Subaru site). www.rockauto.com. I make a several hundred dollar purchase from them about 3 times a year. I wait until I need a big list, and order all at once to save on shipping. Lately I've been using www.carid.com more and more. They have some really good prices on genuine Mitsuboshi belts, NSK bearings, Aisin hard parts, etc. I just bought timing parts for my Lexus 1UZ engine for about a third the price of OEM. Wiper blades are a huge profit source for brick and mortar stores. I've been buying Bosch Evolution beam blades on Rockauto for about $5 ea, and they're ~$15 in stores. Dealership parts departments generally use one of 2 pricing structures, Matrix or Velocity (sometimes a combination of both). Matrix marks up above MSRP on low-dollar parts, generally anything under $300 or so will be ~15% over MSRP. Velocity marks up slow moving parts above MSRP, and fast moving/easy to compare parts below it. The dealership I worked at sold 4-cyl oil filters for $4.95 for that reason. It's a good idea to compare your parts to MSRP, and get an idea of their pricing structure so you can use it to your advantage.

Oil choices will do very little to prevent expensive repairs on a lightly used daily driver. The best thing you can do is to check the oil and coolant level often. Every fill up, schedule it monthly, etc. Low oil is the chief oil issue by many orders of magnitude.

One of my '96 Legacies was trickling oil from the front of the engine. We opened it up, and saw it was time to change the timing belt. The oil was obviously coming from the driver side cam seal, so we went to pop off the cam pulley, and the bolt wouldn't budge. We tried the rattle wrench, we tried heat and oil and the rattle wrench, we bought a new, compact 1/2" drive rattle wrench to rattle harder. That thing was STUCK. We finally put u-bolts around two spokes of the pulley, and fastened them to a 2 foot piece of angle iron to hold the cam and pulley still. Then we put a pipe on the breaker bar, and hammered on the pipe while we heaved on it. It broke loose without breaking anything! The bolt had just a dark shadow of corrosion on the bottom 3/8" or so. The bolt on the other cam was bright all the way down, and rattled out easily. We put them both back in with a bit of blue loctite. Blue loctite will come loose without heat, and it seals the threads to prevent corrosion. Once the pulley came off, we could see why the oil had been streaming out: the cam seal had come out of its recess, and was probably 1/8" clear of the head, spinning freely on the cam! The other cam seal and the crank seal both looked very good, so we left them alone, and just put a new seal on the driver side cam. I'll add a couple of pictures later.

okay, feeling a bit dumb here, but i ran a big ground cable from the block to the frame just for piece of mind, and BAM!! SPARK!! cranked over and started! WTF i want to shoot myself for lack of sleep and 2 full days of tracing this spark issue... there was a ground wire from the starter to the battery and another from the right head to the frame but apparently thats not enough... from now on i am grounding every subaru engine with a big rump roast cable from the block to the frame.... i hate myself right now... cheers and thanks for the suggestions. im gonna go put this thing back together now.

usually age, aftermarket seal quality, or both. 90's seals, or aftermarket seals, are not as high quality materials as newer stuff. in the 90's it wasn't uncommon to replace seals with a timing belt replacement or engine swap. the newer seals are so good that's not as common now.

water pumps are available, oil pumps are not.

A leak can also cause it to not pull from the overflow. Leaks and there becomes more and more air in the system which prevents the overflow system from working right.

i am aware of the triangle notch on the crank pulley, it sits at abut 3 o clock. i actually have tried both sets of pulleys out of both engines, visual inspection looks identical but switched them out as well just to try, nothing

Sweet ! Right on Karl ! And the 650 Dakar , cooool. When you have a few minutes I suggest you check out this blog I guess it is , of an old rider who favors the 650 as his best to ride for his incredibly lengthy “career” of adventure riding. http://pietboonstra.blogspot.com/?m=1 Looking at your rides I see a few we also had through our family. My dad’s 92 Ranger is still going strong same as my 92 year old dad. Enjoy ! Quick quote from Piet’s blog: During my 67 years and 1¼ million miles of riding, my records show that I owned and rode 33 different motorcycles: 2 1947 Harley Davidsons 74 cu. in. OHV 1 1949 Harley Davidson 74 cu. in. "Hydra-Glide" 1 1986 Harley Davidson 80 cu. in. FLHT 1 1955 Harley Davidson 125cc Hummer 1 Used 1957 165cc Harley Davidson/Puckett 1 Used 1929 Harley 74JD 4 Triumph 500cc T100C ('62, '64, '66 and '68) 1 Triumph 250cc Single 2 Triumph 500cc TR5T Trophy Trail 1 Triumph 750cc 3-cyl Trident 1 1977 Suzuki GS750 1 2003 Suzuki VStrom 1000 1 2007 Suzuki VStrom 650 1 1971 Suzuki TS250 1 1976 Suzuki PE250 1 1982 Honda 1100cc Gold Wing 2 1986 1200cc Gold Wings 1 1987 1200cc Gold Wing 1 1979 Honda XR500R 1 1982 Honda FT500 Ascot single 1 1984 BMW R80ST 1 2001 BMW R1150GS Boxer Twin 1 2003 BMW F650GS Dakar Single 1 1997 Yamaha 750cc Virago 1 1992 Yamaha 225cc Serow 1 Used 1956 250cc Maico 1 1957 250cc Villiers-DMW Of all the adventure touring motorcycles that I owned, the two with the best handling on unstable surfaces were the BMW F650GS Dakar and the BMW R80ST. Of those, the F650 Dakar had the best reliability and lowest repair and maintenance costs.

Don't forget the ground for the fuel pump. It needs both hot and ground to run. It will be the other big wire on the connector at the pump. If you see voltage on that ground wire when the pump is supposed to run, then the other end of it is not making good contact to body ground. When you have the pump assy. out the 2 wires from the pump have a connector that plugs into the bottom side of the big connector. I found one of those pins burned off one time. The ECU controls the relay for the fuel pump. If the engine is not cranking or running it turns off the fuel pump after a few seconds. The Load Pro that lmdew mentioned can be a useful tool. I don't have one. It can apply a half amp load to a 12v circuit which can be very helpful at times but not always. Remove the panel under the steering wheel and lay it on the floor. Look for two green (test) connectors. Plug them together and turn the IGN SW to ON. The ECU will cycle the fuel pump, relays, solenoids and the radiator fans on and off. The cycle will repeat until you turn the key off. Very helpful to see if those things are working. When you hear the fans go off the fuel pump should cycle on and off. Remember to unplug them.

Yes the fuel pump is only powered for a short time when you first turn the key on. Once the engine is running it's always powered. Sometime your meter may lie to you. If you have no load on the circuit you can read voltage but still not have what you need. You Tube search Load Pro. You might want to try the relay under the dash. If you can back probe the connector and leave it hooked to the pump that would also give you a better voltage reading. Check the circuit under load! When this happens you could also pour a little gas in the intake. If it fires you have confirmed it's a fuel issue. Gas water Free?

With a car this old, surely you are doing the environment some good by not choosing a new car and all the negatives of manufacturing it with environmental impact in mind. This alone should allow some leeway with other things such as cat or no cat