dxrflyboy

Older Subarus (pre-Legacy) are all extremely rust-prone. Solid ones are hard to find up in the snowbelt, and they won't last long as winter beaters. And yes, they do rust away in structural areas. Also, all 1981-up US market cars, carbed or FI, are computer controlled. Places like Autozone will scan your car for trouble codes at no cost. Spending $200 for an OBDII code reader that will scan both your Impreza and your wife's Legacy makes more sense to me than buying another car. Get yourself a shop manual for each car and a digital volt/ohm meter, and you should have what you need to diag/repair most EFI problems. Follow the diagnostic flowcharts in the shop manuals EXACTLY, and you should be able to repair most problems you run into without buying a bunch of unnecessary parts.

Something else will probably give before all 4 tires do. I see plenty of grenaded WRX trannies from punk@$$es dumping their clutches, trying to spin all 4. First, put four bald drive55/80R13s on before you try a 4-burn. If that doesn't work, you can always try cyclones!

Older generation Chevy S10/T10 Blazers rust almost as bad as Brats do, so if the wheelbases are right and you have a solid Brat body, a chassis swap might be cool. Granted, you are adding a substantial amount of weight, but I think we've covered that subject.:horse:The combo would probably weigh about the same as the Blazer with the 350, and a 350 swap in an S10/T10 Blazer is a BIG power increase. And swapping in a BUILT 350 is a given!

Unplug the switch. Jump the two wires in the connector. The fan should turn on. If not, the ground connection is faulty. If the fan turns on, the switch may be inop.

Anything is possible with sufficient ambition. My advice would be to drop the Brat body on a 4WD chassis with the correct wheelbase. None of the Subaru running gear would be compatible.

That is the cam sensor. It tells the ECU whether the #1 cylinder is in the intake or firing position. It uses this info to fire the injectors in the correct sequence. Since Subarus don't have a failsafe mode (batch fire injection), it won't run without it.

Another possibility (I saw this happen recently) is the camshaft oil feed was clogged with machine shop debris (I think this was also mentioned) during the valve job/cylinder head resurfacing. Fortunately for the customer in the case I saw, the car never left the shop.

The crank sensor monitors engine speed for ignition and fuel injection timing. It's located at the front center of the engine, just above the timing cover. You may be losing RPM signal from the crank sensor at higher engine speed.

The erratic tach makes me think you may have a problem with the crank sensor.

If the cat is plugged, it won't make a difference whether you're in 5th or not. If it has enough power to pull the hill in a lower gear, the cat is probably OK. The feedback systems in these cars are notorious for leaning out the mixture too much and killing power. They lack the sophistication of today's systems and overcompensate to the lean side by creating vacuum leaks rather than precisely meter the fuel mixture. Combine that with an engine that doesn't have a lot of torque at low speed and you can understand why you have to downshift on a big hill. If you can find a steel ball of the right size, you can put it in the main vacuum hose that leads to the air suction devices and fool the smog police. Just take the ball back out to pass your emissions test.

If the fan is getting power all the time, it's probably "ground side switched", meaning it's grounded through the fan switch. The engine usually does get hotter than normal before the fan turns on. Sometimes they don't turn on until it reaches 230 degrees F.

New HGs and machining the heads should suffice unless the block deck is damaged, which you won't know until the heads are off. My advice would be to pull the engine, take the heads off, and check to make sure there is no burn-through at the top of the cylinder just above where the iron sleeve ends. The head gasket job is best done with the engine out of the car, so you might as well take it out and apart, inspect it, then make the decision to repair/replace.

Best to bleed MC with engine off. If the pedal is still soft, go ahead and bleed the wheels afterward.

You will need some help doing this. Have someone step on the brake pedal while you loosen each line fitting on the master cylinder. Fluid and air will be forced out. The brake pedal will go down to the floor, so your assistant needs to maintain pressure on it. Tighten the fittings. Have your assistant take his/her foot off the brake pedal. Repeat this procedure until you have no more air coming out.

The seal surface on the camshaft may also have a gouge or scratch in it, causing it to chew up the seal prematurely. That can happen if proper care isn't taken when removing/installing seals.

The outer joints can be removed from the shaft. Lock the axle in a vise, angle the joint sharply to the side, and smack the outside of it with a BFH. It's OK to swap an entire CV joint onto a different axle as long as the splines are the same, but mixing the joint's internal parts isn't recommended.

Being a former Ford mechanic (still a part-time Ford mechanic since we sell lots of Fords), I learned that BFH stands for "Big FORD Hammer"!:lol:This thread reminds me of how I "fixed" the shifter in my '85 hatch. My mother borrowed the car and brought it back with a broken shifter. She said she couldn't shift into 2nd or 4th. The mount that holds the shifter up in the tunnel broke and the shifter dropped down onto the exhaust pipe. I used a zip tie to hold it together. That held until I scrapped the car (it was rusted to the point that it was ready to break in half). Long live redneck engineering!

I'd like to see Subaru permanently solve their head gasket problems with GAS engines before they move on to diesels. Diesel cylinder pressures are much higher and put much more strain on all components, including head gaskets. They would have to have a good track record of well over 100K miles before I'd buy one.

Is there any way you can rent/borrow a labscope? That will tell you if you have 12V at the coil and whether or not it is switching while you are cranking. A test light will tell you there is power on the negative side, but there needs to be adequate voltage as well, which the test light can't indicate. If the labscope indicates a good "square" wave, switching from 12V to 0V and the coil isn't firing, then the coil is bad. Otherwise, you will be troubleshooting the rest of the primary ignition components. If you have a good square wave but low voltage, the amplifier is probably bad.

Allow me to qualify your statement about the riskiness of Phase I 2.5s by adding the word "modern" to "any other Subaru motor". The 1400s of the 1970s were also notorious for chewing up head gaskets, but Subaru didn't sell nearly as many of them (at least not here in North America) as EJ25s. My father had ongoing head gasket problems with his '76 before the engine was replaced. I will also add that although you can replace head gaskets in the car, it doesn't make sense to do so, due to the ease of engine removal and installation. Also, Phase I EJ25s have the plastic cover in the flywheel area, that tends to leak oil. If you blow a head gasket, it makes sense to remove the engine and fix this problem at the same time.

I don't have a problem with the way it looks, it's just that with the new headlight design, I think it has an ET look. In fact, I LOVE the 2.5XT because it's such a sleeper! See my subsequent post.

I wouldn't put too much stock in Consumer Reports. They are biased, despite their self-proclamations of objectivity. Driveline problems are few and far between. With that said, keep in mind that with all wheel drive it is crucial to have four identical tires on the car at all times, properly and evenly inflated, and rotated regularly (every 6000 miles) to prevent torque bind. And NEVER tow an AWD vehicle with two wheels on the ground.

The holes are standard 8mm. You may even be able to thread the caliper bolts in there (I keep a couple 8mm bolts in my box so I've never tried the caliper bolts). I'm pretty sure the thread pitch is 1.25 (designation is 8x1.25). 1-inch bolts are more than long enough.

Struts and lower control arms are the parts most commonly bent in accidents such as yours. If one of your front wheels is further back in the wheel well than the other, the control arm is probably bent.

I'll also add my .02 on the K&N air filter. The only benefit to this filter is that you never have to replace it. It does NOT filter or flow any better than a standard paper filter. Also, you run the risk of atomized oil droplets contaminating the MAF sensor.