Numbchux

struts are "dampers" for a macpherson setup. EJ subarus use struts at all 4 corners.....springs are not part of the struts. Air suspension doesn't have springs. It has a strut assembly with airbags in place of springs. So you'll need struts and springs (and spring perches, and possibly top hats) to convert to conventional suspension. If your air struts are blown and riding on the bump stops, stock suspension for a standard legacy will give you an inch or 2, easily. But you can mix and match standard legacy parts and outback parts. OB struts will gain you a couple inches, springs will probably get another.

Really? You get all butthurt when he criticizes your "rig", and then you go out of your way to instigate something? Wow, you're a special one. On the topic....I'm curious to see if this one makes it to trail-ready

heh heh heh.....Cool!

There's a few different torque converters that were used over the years....so there might be some combination of flexplate/TC that would work. But modifying a flywheel is not hard, and a flex plate is about a tenth the thickness.....I wouldn't even bother beyond a quick test-fit of parts already in arms-reach.

What did you use for wheel bearing seals? I know the EJ inner seal has completely different dimensions than XT6 ones. We're working on this right now with the loyale formerly known as the FrankenWagon. It's been 4-lug since I put a non-turbo transmission and such in it 2 years ago when I sold it. Current owner is re-5-lug swapping it, but keeping the non-turbo trans. With 3 XT6 axles, 5 non-turbo EA82 axles, and a bunch of other random parts, we managed to make one 23-spline XT6 axle. The one 23-spline inner cup that worked came off a remanufactured axle that had a larger shaft than any of the other EA82 axles we have. Also, the 3 complete XT6 axles are not the same, and the broken XT6 shaft that came out of my '89 after the accident is different still. I'm not sure exactly what cars they all came off of, but they were definitely all AWD. I know with about 99% certainty that FWD Legacies got beefier front axles (DOJs and shafts), but they are completely interchangeable with AWD axles. I suspect the same is true of EA82 FWD axles, and since they are interchangeable, aftermarket companies superseded them with the same part number. Meaning, when he went in a bought a remanufactured axle for his 4WD subaru, they gave him a FWD axle. It worked completely but is actually slightly different. *breath* This means a few things. While there are only 2 different outer splines (4-lug and 5-lug), and 2 different inner splines (23 and 25), there are a whole lot more combinations of joints, races, and shafts. This means that there are many axles that are different, but interchangeable, so, who knows what you might find. At the end of the day, we made one axle with the parts we had, but I have no clue what those parts are originally off of, since they were obviously different than the other axles that were on the same donor cars.

Yep, they are being imported...still very expensive though. I've been on the hunt for a FSM that covers the diesels, haven't found one. I'm VERY curious how the fuel controls and such work, and how hard it would be to transplant one. I WILL have a diesel subaru.

Hehe, AWESOME!! I absolutely love those Pinzgauers!! An OM617 would be sweet, but a VW TDi would be amazing!

Yea, if the boot is torn, stuff a bunch of chassis grease in there.....if the problem goes away, get that axle re-booted while it's a $10 fix instead of a $100 fix.

both probably stiffer than you'll need, but might work out OK. 2.5" springs are easy to come by if you want to change it up.

Yes, because magazine automatically = awesome. I've had my 4" lifted '88 wagon in 2 different magazines (SubiSport and 4WD And Sport Utility). I might have had a grand into it. We know the COG is too high to be useful because those tires are completely, 100% below the body work. You could fiberglass over the wheel wells entirely and still not have any tire clearance issues. You're obviously just building this thing to put a mod list on the windshield and park it on flat ground at a car show and impress people with how much money you spent on it. And if that's what you want, than cool. knock yourself out. I could build 5 or 6 dream rigs for the money you've put into this. And it's probably not any more capable than it was when you bought it. It would look good on some Thornbirds!

To any future members that search for the 5-lug swap and find this thread. Thank you so much for searching, you're on the right track!!!! But this comment is entirely false, continue your search for correct information elsewhere.

I had a DOJ (inner joint) fail on my '88 on a camping trip years ago. It was a very strange thing, shook the whole car. It could be "felt" in the steering wheel, but it didn't actually turn the wheel or cause the car to pull at all. It was not, however, intermittent at all. Whenever I was above about 40mph, it started to shake. I ended up diagnosing it through elimination...it was obviously coming from one corner, everything else seemed fine....had to be that. When we got back to the campground, I pulled the axle, pulled out a maul and broke the outer joint, slipped the spindle back through the bearings and drove home in RWD smooth as could be. Now, there was no noticeable play in the axle, nor a torn boot in that case. BUT, that was on a car with about 5" of lift (4" kit, plus adjustable front struts for another inch), which put about 2" of strain on the front axles. I think similar failure would be very unlikely at stock ride height, but still possible.

So, you know OF the write-up, but chose not to read it, or even look at it? I have nothing to add here

the doj. Sounds like you're just trying to swap the cup itself. Have you tried the whole joint? From what I've been able to tell, you should be able to swap an EA82 inner race onto an XT6 shaft. And then the whole joint will swap over. of course, I'm sure not all EA82 shafts are identical. I think FWD ones are a bit more beefy and such. So some experimenting will be necessary to find the combination that works. Sorry, but answers like this are why this thread was created: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=119430 It's '93-'94 impreza FWD 5MT that have 23-spline inner joints, but the outers are partial to EJ knuckles (it's possible to mix and match EJ/ER knuckles and axles, but some fancy bearing seals will be needed).

Many different opinions....for sure. Pretty hard to go wrong with straight gear lube, but there are better options. +1 for GDs #1.....Subaru Extra-S is amazing! Expensive, and hard to get, but amazing. I think subaru only technically sells it by the drum. But I've heard of people getting together and splitting the cost. Also, it'd be worth asking your local dealer if they'd be willing to sell it by the quart. 2 of the dealers in the Twin Cities do it that way, although we've got a number of enthusiasts in the parts departments there. They have to pump it into other containers, so you might even consider bringing some clean 1-quart bottles. If you search around, and hear about something called Uncle Scotty's Cocktail (there's a member on NASIOC who's screen name is uncle scotty), STAY AWAY. It's 2 quarts of gear oil, a quart of pennzoil synchromesh, and a quart of red line lightweight shockproof gear oil. I repeat, DO NOT USE THIS. The synchromesh and shockproof are too lightweight. Your shifting will be like butter, but your bearings will be crying soon. I used it in 2 transmissions, and began hearing bearing noise within 10k miles. I've had very good luck replacing about 1/2 a quart of the gear oil with some Rislone engine treatment (yes, you heard me right, it's an engine treatment). My dad's '94 Legacy would not go into second gear when we got it. Fresh oil didn't do it, then some fresh oil with rislone, and he got about 100k miles on it after that. To be fair, it was transmission failure that finally killed it (well....the rust made it not worth fixing...). But it was listed as needing a transmission when we bought it. As for straight off-the-shelf gear oils, I've run many different things, and I've become pretty partial to Castrol HypoyC 80W-90. It's pretty heavy weight if you're in a cold climate, I had to let the car idle for a couple minutes before I could get it into gear, but it took great care of the bearings and gears, which is what's important.

false. Nothing wrong with it. Besides, even IF it were to fail, what's the worst that could happen? It's not a strut, it has nothing to do with the alignment. If that lower spring perch broke, the spring would move about an inch or 2 and rest on the trailing arm, and the car would be just fine. It'd make some racket, but certainly not dangerous.

Yikes, those A-arm angles are scary before you hook up any springs or anything, cycle that through the travel a couple times and see how much your camber changes. Also, with the upper arm that short, you will probably still have issues with that upper joint binding. Ideally you should move that pivot point in and up. The upper and lower arms should be pretty much identical and parallel. yep coilover shocks are dirt cheap compared to struts of similar quality.

The High Clearance kit that AA did was for an EA82 only. EA81s require torsion bar reclock to do the same thing (possible, but was not an AA kit The diff is still dropped some, but the suspension crossmember is not. The goal is to avoid this (BYB/Ozified 3" lift on an EA82): My brat thread is here. Most of the info on the lift is in the first post. It doesn't live at my house, so I can't easily get more pictures. http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=123367

I'm curious about the transmission compatibility. It's been awhile since I had the shifter off my W56 transmission, but I didn't think it looks like this: mellow65....that looks awesome! Should be sweet.

fair enough. do you know what the compatibility of that shifter extension will be? Off the top of my head, I'm thinking that looks a bit different than the shifter on the W56 that came out of my '86 4runner.....

IAC is the Idle Air Control Valve. Some more information, please. What year/model was the donor? Did the ECU/harness/engine all come from the same car? Was it a running car before you pulled it apart? Does it change if you touch the throttle? Help us help you. Shooting in the dark, though. If something in the intake isn't hooked up right, this kind of thing will happen. You'll get a bunch of un-metered air coming in the engine, and the ECU won't be able to correctly match the fuel, and the engine will stall. Here's an '86 wagon with a '96 impreza 2.2. The first startup in the video (the one with no exhaust) was without the IAC hooked up. You can hear the engine cutout when I touch the throttle, and then it dies.

it could maybe be plugged, but it looks like it overlaps the stroke of the piston....which means if it's not perfectly smooth, it'll chew up the rings. ideally, it would be welded shut, and then bored smooth...... Sorry Kosta.....that sucks. Wish I had something helpful....

I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to fit it to use a cable shifter. I started looking into using a Subaru transmission in a mid-engine/rear-drive application, and found a number of people that adapted cable-shifter setups without too much difficulty, which gives you just about infinite flexibility as long as you have cables long enough.

No, they will create zero bump steer problems. Honestly, it sounds like the problems that Uberoo is describing are symptoms of really abused, out-of-whack and worn-out suspension, and as the alignment changes through the travel of the suspension, it is getting "better". "Better" saying more about how bad it is at ride-height, than how good it is at compression I would take his experiences as an isolated incident. I daily drove 4" and 3" lifted EA82 wagons for years. The combination of oversized tires, and more control arm angle (better roll-center) means the body-roll is not bad, even without sway bars. It is worse than a stock car, and takes a little getting used to the feeling, but they're very stable and safe, even at freeway speeds.

IMO, flipping just the TRE over is a bad idea. If both sides compress simultaneously, the tires will toe-in equally, and it will stay fairly stable. But if one side compresses (you hit a bump on one side), that wheel will angle in, and the other will stay straight. Some simple geometry calculations could tell you exactly how many degrees the toe would change. It might only be half a degree, but it might be 2 or 3. Full disclosure. I have not tried it. I love suspension geometry. I play with it in simulators (common driving games like gran-turismo and forza, and I do some ground-up vehicle design for the open-source PC game Rigs of Rods), and in real life. I love having soft suspension with a ton of travel. I run 17x8 wheels with low profile summer tires on my celica, and the only suspension mod I've done, is disconnect the front sway bar to reduce understeer. And as crew-chief for a stage rally team, I have some experience with suspension tuning. This is not something I would even consider on a vehicle that I planned to drive more than about 20mph. I might do it on a go-kart or something....but that's it. Nothing easy. Honestly, IMO if you're reaching the edge of the TREs travel on a fairly simple build (nothing like what this thread is talking about), you have too much suspension lift. Having the control arms at that angle will help your roll center, but effect the way the suspension transfers force into the body, and amplify the positive camber on the front end (none of these things are dangerous, but will hinder the way the suspension works). Also, you're probably pushing the range of the axle joints. Couple options, but you're getting into drastic fabricating territory. The fundamental idea behind the front geometry is that the control arm and tie rod stay parallel. So if you want to ease the angle on the tie rod, do the same to the control arm. You could flip the TRE like that, but then modify the crossmember to lower the control arm pivot the same distance to keep the 2 arms in phase with each other. You could also raise the steering rack. Obviously engine/oil pan clearance will make that a challenge, but I think some changes could be made. You could combine both. If flipping the TRE raises that by 2". You could raise the steering rack by 1", and drop the control arm pivot by 1". This would ease your angles AND improve the tie rod clearance without sacrificing control arm clearance much. Another option, would be to cut and re-weld the TRE tab on the knuckle with an angle so that the TRE itself doesn't need to compensate. This is no small project, and IMO only for a VERY experience fabricator and welder. But I have seen someone shorten that arm to effectively increase the steering ratio and range (IIRC it was on a RWD-converted subaru for going slideways). Or, use a heim joint. This would be the easiest to do, but you would gain no clearance, and you'd also gain the noise of having heims in the suspension. As well as the increased maintenance (keeping them lubricated). This is not a viable option for a Daily Driver, especially if you're in a part of the world that uses chemicals on the road to combat ice.