impostor

Somewhat common. The relay is stuck. Pop the cover off and replace relay.

Update. Ended up being the flywheel and/or pressure plate. I found a better flywheel somewhat locally and had it resurfaced and balanced with the pressure plate.

Gates kits changed somewhere around two years ago. I spoke with a gates rep at the trade show in Vegas (same time as sema) in 2016 and he said they had started to offer the Japanese made kit again, just add an 'n' at the end of the kit number. Their water pumps always have been and still are Chinese garbage.

+1 for replacing the washer every time. I've got better things to worry about than a washer that costs so little. To the op, the dealer is partly right. There are still places that screw up an oil change. I still see one, sometimes two cars a year that come in with 10 quarts of oil in the engine and a slipping transmission. I've even seen the t70 torx plug for the front diff chiseled loose (thinking it was the engine oil drain plug.) I wish I knew what people were thinking sometimes.

That long bolt is known as the Jesus bolt, if you live in the rust belt.

I co-own my own Subaru repair shop and we see these FB engines will oil leaks all the time. I've sent several customers to the dealer for the consumption test, and all of them ended up with a new shortblock under warranty. Everything needs to come apart and gets resealed anyways, so there's no sense paying for it out of your pocket. Of course I'd rather do the work at my own shop, but there's no sense in taking the customer's money when SOA is still footing the bill for these. Find the time for them to do the consumption test. Even it it passes your're not out anything. When you go in, don't reveal any information voluntarily. Just tell them it's using a bunch of oil.

Thanks carfreak. I managed to find a yard a couple hours west of me that claims to have one. We'll see when it gets here.

Dang. Those coincidental failures are the absolute worst. Thanks for sharing the solution.

I use the right stuff regularly and I've never had a problem (including on the cam cases)

They've been NTN for as long as I can remember. At least with the the dealer you know its a genuine Japanese made bearing. With Ebay it could go either way.

I've had several cars towed to the shop with a broken fork. Slide the boot up and check where the fork rides on the pivot ball.

I need a flywheel with good teeth on the ring gear, if you have one. Jim

No worries. I think I figured it out. I ordered what I think is the boot and bushing.

Whatever you do, don't buy an svx transmission.

Thank you GD, there is at least one other human that agrees with me on the conditioner bs.

I'm late to the party, hopefully you have this resolved by now. I'm not much help on the axle seals, but I can tell you the shifter rail seal is actually an oring. I replaced mine a few years ago. Unfortunately the only way I could disassemble everything to replace it was to remove the transmission from the vehicle. Paul, would you happen to know the part number for the bushing and the rubber boot?

The n/a baja is drive by cable. The 255 was the beginning of drive by wire.

I've never had one apart, so I'm not much help in your situation. We had a nice few days here so I took mine for a drive and did the same test. Still vibrates. Mine is completely engine speed related. Sitting still in neutral it really picks up above 3k rpm whether the clutch is engaged or not. I will add that right after I got the brat, it had trouble starting due to a worn ring gear, so I removed it and rotated it to where the un-worn teeth would do the engaging. It also had blown headgaskets and a worn thrust bearing, so it didn't get driven much before I had the bottom end rebuilt. I have eliminated the water pump and alternator as a possibility by running it without the belt. The distributor shaft feels nice and tight still. The tranny mounts are new, and the engine mounts are presumably original but not oil soaked or broken. I have a vibration analyzer so the next step for me is to spend some time playing with it.

Clean your throttle body.

I would give it a nice home and leave it the way it is. Even the 'jerk' sticker.

My 80 brat does the same thing. Did you ever figure out what it was?

I had a customer do this on a 2016 WRX with 600 miles on it. Ended up being cheaper to replace the engine. When he went to start it, it sheared off the key and the timing chain jumped, breaking teeth off the crank sprocket and bending valves on at least both the intake and exhaust sides of the RH head. Hopefully your luck is better. But you're at least un-timing it to replace the woodruff key and possibly the crank sprocket.

Manual I assume? There is a little screw on the front that holds the button to the handle. I used a number 1 Phillips bit without a handle. It's not very tight. You can then pop the switch up just enough to work a qtip around in there. Don't force it up too far. I also took various grits of sand paper to remove some material from the button. If yours is like mine, some of the binding comes from the fact that the handle's rubber has lost some of its shape over the years.

The only thing I noticed that sent me down the right path was the battery voltage parameter on the scanner. The ecm was reporting voltage around 2v less than what was at the battery, while the tcm was within .2v.

Don't feel bad. Its at an angle where its difficult to see sometimes. When I worked at the dealer, you wouldn't believe how many times I had a salesman come back and ask why the lights won't turn off. And they're the ones selling the thing.