Virrdog

Your drivetrain will be fine. Use your stock tranny and OEM clutches. The ECU part will be the biggest hassle. Just beware... its the dark side and you might never want to go back.

Once again peak horsepower does not matter that much. The stock EJ22T numerically is putting down more torque to the wheels than the EJ22 can put down in HP to 6000 rpm with every bolt on mod you can get. We went through this on the Legacy BBS. A turbo allows you to make over 180 lb/ft at ~2200 rpm in mere stock form on the EJ22T. Its a little four banger, if you want a lot more power, you need displacement or forced induction (or a sky high rev limit )... that's physics. You can't really cheat physics. 20-25% drivetrain loss is, ahem, THAT much. At only 200 hp, 50 hp would be spent in spinning the drivetrain stuff.

You can't really say your car is faster unless both vehicles are at the same drag strip on the same day. You can rarely be 100% sure the other person has the gas pedal buried.

Many many problems with your reasoning. Crank horsepower is not the whole story. Wheel horsepower actually moves the car. Wheel horsepower to weight ratio is very important. 300 lbs is a lot, even if that is how low the difference is. And PEAK horsepower doesn't tell you very much either. I guarantee the 160 hp I have in my '93 Legacy Sport Sedan is faster than your 165 hp all day. Not to mention, we haven't even gone into gearing, rotating mass, and many other factors yet. If you want to be that much faster you need a turbo engine or a different car. Otherwise you have to accept the car's relative slowness. GL's for the win!

A good trick for tight but squeeling belts is to pour some liquid dish washing soap on them. Its an old-school trick and it works great.

Random power issues scare me. I still don't know why my amps will spark across a screwdriver with the battery disconnected...

Yeah, everyone covered most of the changes. I'll just add the new pumps and bearings might be working themselves in and might cause a slight parasitic loss of power. Give it a couple of more tanks and you might start seeing your old mileage numbers. And then they should go higher when they stop pumping winter gas. :-\

Jay, I do not think these are great for Auto-x... and probably not legal even in mod classes!

What part of Ohio? That's funny, I buy Subies from the East Coast and bring them here.

I would work all the rotation points and move things manually to hopefully get things aligned under there. My car would do the same thing on occasion when it was really cold. Ever since I had to replace the heater core (subsequently pulling of all the HVAC stuff out and putting it back in) the noise has disappeared.

Cool, people have been known to find the wrong engine / transmission in their cars... :-\ I think one guy found out he had an EJ18 in his Legacy

To find out for sure whether you have 4wd look behind the rear wheels and see if there are half-shafts going to them. You should also see a driveshaft going to the rear into a pumpkin shaped thing that the half shafts would connect to.

All seasons are OK in the winter with AWD. They are a compromise like has been mentioned. Snow tires are great if you can afford to get a set. I get 2 sets of wheels for every car as soon as possible to have a set of summer and winter tires.

If he is having the problem I think he is having, the factory paint does not stick to the spoiler to begin with. So taking it all off and redoing it might make sense. Unless the only problem is where they sanded through, then they could just respray it. I'm not sure what he means by desolve.

The overall diameter is the critical measurement. Otherwise one of your diffs will think one side is constantly slipping and heat up, leading to premature wear. I have run 4 bald summer tires with my turbo... but I would not recommend it!

I had this exact same problem. Mice had made a nest. They also busted out the vent tubing in spots throughout the dash. I was fiberglassing forever and continually finding broken spots.

My Oil fill cap does the exact same thing. Is a new cap needed or is there a seal missing?

Look for play in the bushings. I would just go ahead and replace it with a solid aftermarket one if possible, or at least some new ones.

I would never think that changing a 20 year old rubber piece would be a waste of time. I plan on doing this in my '89 wagon after seeing what it did for my '93 Legacy. It's a shame they don't make Group-N mounts for the EA chassis's!

Take it back and tell them to do it right this time. Remove all of the old paint and scuff up the spoiler so new paint can stick. Then use a paint adhesion promoter before priming and then before putting down color and clear.

Bingo! They know they messed up that tone ring. They should fix it.

Wow, it didn't screw up the threads in the head?

Take a picture of the odometer. 199999 and 200000 and try to get the trip to say something funky, like 123.4 or something great right when it hits 200k. I've done this for every car that has turned big numbers. I snapped 177777 on my turbo leg. Will be shooting 200k on it within the next year . Sitting on 193k and it will take a little bit to get there because it gets to sit, waiting for weekends and more track days in the spring.

Yeah, if stuff froze... don't you have to check your ice plugs to see if they popped?

If you look on http://www.nasioc.com they have many threads about fixing the dash rattle in the 02+ WRX's. I don't if this is similar or not, you just might find a thread about your chassis also.