xrturbo

Have you considered swappping in a 2.2? This could be your cheapest, easiest, most reliable to go. You wouldn't beleive how straight forward and easy this is to do.

The chances that it didn't bend valves isn't in your favor. I have only ever seen two DOHC's ever that didn't bend valves when the belts went. Has the car ever had headgaskets? If not look on the bright side you can kill two birds with one stone. As long as you will be doing the work the bill won't be too bad, just yank the heads and send them to the machine shop. I wouldn't expect piston damage. I deal with reassembling these all the time after they get front hit and break the cam gears and less than 5% ever showed any piston issues.

That is odd for them to take that long, either car shouldn't take more than a few RPMs to kick off. The H6 is an absolutely amazing motor, I have a few customers that have over 200,000 miles and literally havent done a thing to them except change the oil (literally!). The 2.5 doesn't really matter much whether it has 20,000 miles or 100,000 you will still have cat replacements and normally one round of headgaskets.

There are many components to the EGR system that could cause the code.

On the cam bolts I would be careful using anyones specs. It would be a good idea as stated above to replace the bolts. I tighten them by feel and it has never failed me. I have torqued them and had them break a few times.

Make sure when you reinstall that you are not going over top of the fuel rails. And also 97 will have a few different plug wire configs. one for the early cars will have a female coil pack and the laters have male.

Is this car a necesary daily driver? If not you may want to consider pulling the motor and tearing it down. If the cam journals look good and all else looks good I would consider finding a shortblock to go with. The big money in these things are the heads. You could get any shortblock from any 2.5 engine (00 on up you will gain a little in C.R. dept, but nothing major) for a decent price on the boards. If you go with a used motor it would deff be advisable to do the HG's while the motor is out so why not save some cash and just cut your heads and use them. I really can't see throwing that much money into a rebuilt, I don't know exactly what they are going for now but you have to start considering the value of the vehicle before you throw $3-4000 at it.

It isn't completely bad overall if you are comparing to other makes but as far as Subaru goes it isn't one of their best. Things I have seen and experienced: obviously headgaskets, bottom end failure (seems to be mostly in the 99 blocks and some 98s), and I have also seen a few problems with cams locking up in the head. In my opinion they couldn't come close to any EJ22

99 Is Not The Same!!!! Do Not Buy!!!

How bad are your symptoms? A transflush (not a drain and refill) with additive can fix this if in the early stages. If it is that bad it it fairly easy to do. Drop the exhaust, drain the trans, remove the drive shaft, put a jack under the pan, remove the crossmember, mount and exhaust bracket, lte the trans hang down, remove the speed sensor and then it is just the bolts that attach it to the trans and be careful when removing that you don't break the connector for the C duty. Once removed be careful to note where the park pawl and the bearings are all placed..... don't let them just fly apart!!!! Once everything is apart start inpecting the parts. Check the C duty sol. for proper resistance, check the housing where the output shaft goes for any grooves cut into the bearing journal by the seals and check the clutches for play. If any of these are bad you must replace. You will also notice where the clutches ride on the hub you will see some grooves cut in, it is hard to explain how bad too bad is. The 99 will not work if it is an external filter trans, any will work from an internal filter setup from an EJ car. If you would like you could pm me if you have any further questions or need any good used parts that may be hard to come by.

I did 205/75/15 on the same setup you are doing. That is about the tallest you will want to run. I ran a General Grabber AT2 which work nice and can be had for a little over $60 ea. And also a couple tips in case you didn't know: you will need to use the 91 strut mounts and also it would be adviseable to smack in the wheel well behind where the lower spring seat would sit, I had problems with a banging noise from rubbage. You can get away without them but I would also strongly suggest the outback lateral control arms with brackets, otherwise it will pull the wheel forward and rub the lip on the lower rocker panel.

Just follow the big hose (about 3/4" onside diameter) that runs from the middle of your intake tube, it runs right to it. It attaches with 3-4 10mm bolts and is normally grey or tan in color.

It is pipe thread. When I did mine I cut the EGR tube right by the nut and welded the end of the tube shut.

Just block off the EGR and use the 95 heads.

You aren't going to really know untill you get under the car. Generally I have found the best way to check leaks is to have someone ball up a rag and hold it over the tailpipe while the engine is running while the other person checks for leaks.

The viscous coupling shouldn't cause a noise like that. It is probably your front diff the way you described it.

It is very common. It is 98% of the time a seal on the forward drum. 95 transmissions are a close runner up.

I have heard mostly that people seem to like 2.25" behind a NA 2.5 with minor mods. Just gutting my 2nd cat helped my setup both sound and power. And by the way with my setup (with the un-el, single cat, and magnaflow) it sounds soooo much better than my 00 RS that had a borla header, random tech. highflow cat and greddy cat back. Just try the magnaflow..... you won't be dissapointed!! I provides great sound and tone without getting too loud.

For the header I would stay as far away from Borla as possible. I got one for free that had been welded from prev. cracks, I hung it and had to pull it down to re-weld it. And now it is finding new places to crack. I would just go with a Borla style ebay header. Un-equal is the way to go as far as sound. I first used an equal length and it sounded like a Honda. I am not sure what is out there for a cat back setup but I just gutted the rear cat and hung a Magnaflow muffler. The Magnaflow with the Un-el header sounds amazing, and there is no annoying drone on the highway.

The oil leak is probably going to be an inner axle boot on the pass side, or the cam support o ring on the back of the pass head. The noise when you let off sounds like it may be a front diff. What type of code reader are you using? Is it one with a read out? If not just stop by an advance auto or auto zone and they can give you a better idea of what is in the computer if a code is stored.

I wouldn't try to split it, they never reseal if you can get it apart.

What year is the setup from. You have to be careful because alot of the early setups such as the 20G's are such low boost setups and take alot to mod to get the power up.

98 was the start of the 2 peice headlights. I don't think I would worry about the adj. diff. It will work for your application

The funny thing is both of them that are over the 260K mark are still on the original plugs and they run so smooth.

If the CEL is on there should almost deffinately be a code in the computer. Did you try to read them? If so what was it?