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It sounds like you have a combination of bad contacts in the stater, and/or a sticking plunger causing the gear not to stick out into the flywheel/torque converter. If it's a manual/auto. You can either take the starter apart, replace the contacts and lube all the gears, or just replace it. I wouldn't jump to conclusions about the headgaskets immediately. First, a hydrocarbon test will not show headgasket failures on that motor, it's an external leak, so there's no coolant mixing with exhaust or oil. Sometimes they also leak oil, but almost never mix anything inside the engine. Put some UV dye in the cooling system and clean the bottom of the engine really well. If you see the yellow/green leaking out of the head gaskets under a blacklight, yea, that's the problem. You can do the UV dye test yourself, just dump it in the radiator, and check for leaks with a blacklight. But you could also have a leak in the heater pipes, on the crossover pipe, etc. There are a few places for a leak to happen besides just the headgaskets. Just a note, you said you passed 100k miles, you're almost at the timing belt interval (105k miles), so you should do that as well.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. If I ever want to get them out of the head again, I want it to happen peacefully without taking the threads. If the stud rusts and needs to be replaced next time I remove the header, I don't want to fight getting the stud out of the head because I glued it in two years ago. I'm not sure what you're talking about with the lock/spring washers. You put the studs in, put the gasket on, put the header on, THEN you put the lock washers between the nut and the header flange. You don't put anything but the gasket up against the head. Maybe you're misunderstanding how it works?

They stay in on their own if you just use a lock washer. I actually usually put a dab of anti-seize on mine so they WILL come out at some later point. Say I drive over a rock and destroy my header, need to remove the cat, have a rusty exhaust system. Need to pull the drive line, replace the oil pan. I dunno, I can think of numerous reasons to remove an exhaust manifold. Make it easier for yourself next time and anti-seize them.

I just use a new lock washer and gasket when I do those. I've never had one back out.

No, they won't. Every rotation the crank will obviously be pointing straight up. Since the cams spin half the speed, they'll only be straight up every other rotation. Since the subaru timing belt has somewhere around 220 teeth that means all the white marks and all the cam/crank marks will only line up every 440 or so revolutions.

Not entirely sure what you're saying here? Since the cams spin at half the speed of the crank, they'll all line straight up every other rotation. When they're not lining up, the crank will me straight up, the cams will be straight now, next rotation they're all straight up. If you're saying your belt broke and you just replaced it. And now the motor won't run, you have bent valves. The 97 is an interferance motor.

Pretty much nothing from the legacy will fit the loyale. They're entirely different cars. What happened to the engine in the legacy? If the rest of the car is good, I'd fix/replace the engine over buying a loyale.

Some outbacks have the wood trim, some don't. Your best bet is an L model 2nd gen anything. All the trim pieces are the same sedan/wagon. The only difference is auto/manual.

Find one in the junkyard that has black trim, and just swap it out. I did that when I had my 98, I hated the fake wood trim.

If you're good at removing the drain plug you won't drop it in the bucket or get oil all over your hands. I've smunched enough oil pans on rocks that I'd be worried about breaking that expensive thing off, too.

I have an ea82 header on my ea81, it still even has the stupid spacers on it. I keep meaning to remove them to improve clearance a bit, but eh, effort. It works fine. I like how clean your install looks with those gauges. Where did you put the sensor probe for the outside temp sensor?

I'm gonna second NEVER EVER USE EZOUTS!!!! I used one once. It broke off, and I spent hours with a die grinder fixing my mistake. These things are evil.

I almost never take the crossover pipe off (on a motor going back into service). I've never seen one leak, so I don't touch it. But on the motors I've torn apart because they were blown, I've never had that happen. If I had to guess on the size, it looks like it's m8 x 1.25

If you have a good meaty pair of vice grips, it'll grab right on. It threaded in there, it should thread out with some heat. Personally I'd probably weld a nut onto the stub sticking out. The heat of the welder would help break it free, and then I could zip it out with an impact. But if you don't have those, vice grips will do it. You'll likely have to tap the threads out ofterwards.

You're lucky there, it's not snapped off flush with the block. At this point your best bet is to heat it good at hot, and spray it with PB blaster, or the like. This will hopefully suck some of the oil into the threads. Then heat it up again and clamp good and tight with vice grips to try and unthread it. Whatever you do, don't break it flush with the block or you'll end up drilling. Also, tape over the intake ports, you don't want dirt, nuts, bolts, etc falling in there!

What is the coolant bolt?

The louvers are amazing! They're so 80's they're perfect on that car. You have an ej awd trans on the er27? How did you do that?

Get some beefy tires, like general grabbers or whatnot. You should be able to get light truck tires in outback size.

It still randomly does idle weirdness, but it's lower... I dunno. It's pissing me off. haha.

So weird update. Since I have an ea81 with an ea82 flywheel I don't actually have timing marks. So I pulled a plug, found TDC and transposed the angle from the stock location to the new mark I made. Did a double check on the timing, and it was maybe 2 degrees retarded. Not enoguh to cause problems, I thought. But I messed with it anyway. The disty was a bit stuck, so I gave it a lovetap with a hammer to budge it on time. After I did that, it pretty much idles fine. Sometimes it'll stick high, but usually it won't. I set it back a few degrees retarded, like it was before to see if that caused the change, and nope!! How does the advance in these distributors work? Do they have mechanical advance along with the electronic advance, or is it all electronic? It really seems like something was sticking, and when I gave it a tap, whatever it was came loose. It has more power now, too...

Is this it, the background image from your profile? It looks good, not sure about the front bumper square thing, though.

Honestly your best bet is to replace the cover. They can be found pretty cheap. Get a new gasket and you can forget about it for the next 105k miles. I ran an EJ without timing covers once (it was an experiment high compression motor with POS parts). I drove it on a lot of dirt roads, and horrible conditions. The belt was worn a lot faster than I'd expect, very dirty, greasy and grimy. With an interferance motor in every day conditions, I'd advise running covers. On my DD I'd be constantly worried about stuffing it into a snowbank, clogging the belt up and jumping time, getting a rock in there, spilling oil on it during a change or topping up, etc. Not worth it to me. But that's just my $0.02.

Nice brat and loyale! Welcome aboard. Those lugs look like they'd work to me, and they're marked as 60 degrees. Wait till someone else chimes in, though. They don't have the swivel base on them, but I don't think that really matters too much. I'm also not a fan of open ended lugs. But regardless, It would be really sweet to have a source for those. They're pretty hard to find otherwise.

What's wrong with your heads? They don't usually have issues. Also, if your donor heads are from a 96 you probably don't want to use them as they're different from 97.

Thank you! I have garage access this weekend, so I'm determine to get this fixed. This is helpful info!