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Hope all is well with you, family and the Subaru's. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Larry

Just picked up a Legacy wagon project and haven’t spent a great deal of time fiddling with it yet what with the holidays, so I’m hoping yall can help me narrow down my focus. Car was last registered in 2016, PO “claimed” he got it to run with a boost pack and ether but wouldn’t say how long ago that was so I am assuming 8+ years since it last ran Pulled all 4 plugs, spritzed ATF in the cyls and spun the engine with a breaker on the crank bolt, spun easily Stuck a good battery from my Jeep TJ (4.0L) so it should have all the CCA I need Key in and turn it & all the dash lights come on but it won’t crank. Radio, AC fan all works so good electrical contact. Checked the interior fuse box the ignition fuse is good. There was a large (8-wire) yellow plug that was disconnected so I plugged that back in but that didn’t make a difference, still no crank Under hood I can see the wiring from the crank and cam position sensors is chewed/damaged. The plugs are both in their sockets and the raw ends of the wires are there but something decided to chew on them. From what I’ve read that will stop it from running but it should still crank, or am I wrong? When I turn the key to the Start position I am not noticing a significant voltage drop on my multimeter, which leads me to believe the key isn’t “signaling” to send voltage to the starter. Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to test the hot lead on the starter itself to see if it’s getting voltage Is there anything specific I should be checking to get the engine to spin? My next step is to pull the starter off and bump it with jumper cables. Usually with a bad solenoid it’ll still try and draw down the battery/voltage drop but since I’m not seeing that, I’m not 100% certain the starter is the problem, but it’s easy to get to so why not Thanks for y’all’s help, my wife is eager to drive this and considers it an upgrade from her Saturn wagon so I’m lucky she doesn’t want the newest Lexus or something silly.

The series 2 starter motors used to become unresponsive due to a lack of power to energise the starter solenoid. The work around here was to setup a horn relay that’s triggered by the factory starter wire to give a better 12v hit to the starter solenoid via better and shorter wires from the battery (and appropriately fused). Hopefully it’s something as simple as this. Those cam and crank angle sensors will need to be sorted out but they won’t stop the engine from being turned over by the starter motor. The engine just won’t start as the ECU won’t see the crank or cam signals - which means a code or a check engine light won’t be thrown. Cheers Bennie

I found the Haynes manual had a little tidbit that lead me in the right direction. First to come off is the plastic casing that holds the heater vent controls, hazard flashers etc. some of the screws are not identified in the manual and most are hidden from view. when it is loose you can reach behind and disconnect half dozen plugs and move it out of the way. The control cluster screws are easy to access. I wasn't able to pull it all the out but was able to reach around and remove the bulbs. One was burned out and the other may have had a bad contact and they both work now. I had difficulty re-attaching the speedo cable. Ideally you would undo it from the tranny and have lots of slack but mine had siezed threads and the plastic nut would just collapse when you put pressure on it. It was a bit of an adventure but it worked and I have turn signal indicators again and a working speedo.

I did change the auto trans fluid in the white Outback. It seems to be driving as normally as a 4EAT can. Got B's car back in the garage. Timing belt is shredded into a few pieces. All the idlers spin free and the tensioner was extended. Removed the engine, took off the intake and heads. All(?) the valves were bent. You can see where a few of them hit the pistons. Since he's had a few of these engines start to burn a lot of oil and we're assuming those were due to stuck rings, while we had the heads off we removed the pistons and replaced the rings. First pin came out fairly easily but we made a tool for the slide hammer to remove the rest. After we made and used this tool B noticed the Subaru FSM recommends using their tool which looks just like it. The old oil control rings barely floated. None of the rings stuck very far beyond the piston either and had about double the gap specified. Bores were within .001" round and taper which amazed me for an engine with about 150k miles on it. Gapped the new rings (they were all good out of the box) and put the pistons back in. B had lapped all the valves and replaced the valve stem seals in a better used pair of heads he had. New head gaskets, head bolts, seals, timing set, etc. Tried the old packing with grease and hammering in a pin to push the pilot bearing out trick. That didn't work. So we replaced the pilot bearing in the conventional manner. When I was tightening down the longest bolt for the PS pump it stripped out of the block. Not enough room between engine and condenser to fit a drill and drill bit so I could install a thread repair. Fortunately I was able to tap the hole deeper and use a longer bolt. Cranked a few times for about ten seconds each with the coil pack unplugged so we could get some oil circulating. Once we plugged that back in it fired right up. Seems to idle a little low and rough to me but I don't know what's normal. Runs smooth when you rev it up a little to 1000-2000RPM. No noticeable leaks or smoke. Just drove it out of the garage and back in the driveway but seems to be ready for another off road adventure.