Leaderboard

Still have to disassemble the strut assembly to swap strut mount. Honestly, from what it sounds, I'd probably just use the Impreza ones. They're not correct, but they're likely better than what you have, or any of the cheap garbage you're looking at. Yes, you'll have to swap the strut mounts, but you could buy a pair of aftermarket mounts and rent a spring compressor or even pay a shop to swap them for cheap.

The Forester trailing arm body to arm mount is a little longer. If you are in the rust belt, use lots of Kroil and a breaker bar to work the 3 bolts out. Took a Milwaukee impact to a friends in WI and we broke the welds on the captive nut inside the frame. Solved that one by drilling an access hole into the frame from inside the car so we could put a socket on the nut.

Sadly, the EA82 calipers are not a direct swap as the anchor bolts are about 15mm longer centre to centre measure. They use a bigger surface area pad too - which would be nice in the earlier models. The rebuild kits may be the same, or at least the rubber boot over the park brake bit. Have you looked at rockauto ?

The dog , we wanna see a dingo dog sidekick. Gotta have one.

Yep, guessing rather than not diagnosing, and not familiar with subarus. I could be wrong that it’s the center diff…but I’m not. Haha. Dealer is a great option, another good call on your part. They’ve got this job down, probably have the part and gasket in stock, will use the correct fluid, there isn’t much else job-specific to go wrong or get uncharged for on this job (still might upsell a brake fluid change or something else!), cost will be reasonable (high end but reasonable) and they will know it’s the VLSD as well so that’s a nice triple check (you - usmb - dealership) before going through with it. I’m generally picky about when and how to use a dealer and this is the perfect job and situation to let a dealership handle.

you should really replace those headgaskets again.. i would anyway.. why go thru all that work just to have the gasket fail.. reusing one on such an important area is folly to me.