WoodsWagon

Enough metal shavings can be generated by the wobbling pully that it shorts out the magnetic field on the crank and cam sensors. I had one where the pully hadn't come off, but the check engine light was on because the sensor had so much metal debris stuck to it. Do the JB weld positioning of the key in the crank, it doesn't carry any load once the bolt is tight. I'd replace the crank sproket, the face of it where the pully buts up against it is usually trashed, and a new (used) pully won't seat against it properly so the bolt comes loose again.

Probably cause for a seperate thread... rather than hijacking this one. We should send the Federal Marshals on you! If the tranny is not clicking off redline shifts, it's not getting the load/throttle position inputs it needs. An 88 could be either the 4eat or the 3at. The 3at uses a vacuum modulator to operate the load circuit, if the modulator is jammed or the hose is miss-connected you'll get early shifting. With the EAT, it uses a TPS signal to determine load, so I'd check that the TCU was getting the right signal.

Hey now! I got my most expensive speeding ticket in a honda. They're good cars, though I woudn't buy most of the new ones. They've gotten way to damn big. An old accord is the size of a new civic, a new accord is the size of a grand marquis. Screw making fun to drive economy cars, lets make overpowered luxo-barges. True on the FWD being less strain on the transmission, but I found the EA front suspension to suck as far as putting the power to the ground. Something about the geometry of the front, it rises way up when you accelerate, the camber goes too far positive, and the tires loose grip.

How overfilled? Half a liter? Liters? One other thing to check is your PCV valve. Replacing it with a subaru one can help if it hasn't been done in recent memory. Check the tube that leads up to it. Make sure you can see down into the pipe going into the block by the bellhousing. They get carboned up sometimes and a good cleaning can help a lot. If the PCV system isn't working properly, the positive pressure in the crankcase can push oil past seals it wouldn't otherwise.

A "clutch" is a flywheel, disk, and pressure plate. A WRX disk will fit on an EA input shaft. That's the only part that swaps between EA clutches and EJ clutches. The flywheels and pressure plates are completly different. Clamping force is generated by the pressure plate. This is what determines total grip. Friction atributes are set by the disk, a ceramic puck disk will apply quickly, and not like to be feathered. An organic stock disk will let you feather the clutch. It's more progressive in it's lockup, which reduces shockloads. Different disks have differing static friction, so they will change the max torque transfer for the same pressure plate tension. What we're saying is use the best clutch disk available (which is not stock WRX, it's aftermarket high performance for a WRX) in an EA flywheel with an xt6 pressure plate. OR run an EJ tranny and use a high performance clutch for either a 2.5rs (push type) or WRX (pull type) depending on what EJ tranny you have. If you need lo range and selectable 4wd, use the EA flywheel, xt6 pressure plate and disk of your choosing. If you can do with AWD, permanent 4WD(welded center diff), or just need a rear output to run into a transfer case, use an EJ tranny.

Were you in Laramie for school? That might have been Russ's brat (he's Cabobaroo on here)

I'm liking the cross linked strut rod bracket blocks. I had to do that on mine after the individual blocks toppled and ripped the nuts out of the body. I don't thing the pitch stopper will hold up like that but I may be a more abusive driver than you. Mine folded up like a wet noodle. The pitch stopper bracket from an early legacy fits on to the EA tranny and lets you use a shorter pitch stopper. I used the stock pitch stopper out of either an EA or an EJ, I can't remember which, but it fit perfect. That's with a 3" crossmember drop though.

I believe the XT-6 guys have more experience with this as more xt-6's came with the 4EAT than loyales. Most loyales got the sucky 3AT. But, I believe that I remember someone swapping the EA front diff and bellhousing onto the EJ 4eat when the origional EA 4eat let go.

Getting the cooling jacket plug out of the bottom of the block can be hard. Get a proper sized hex key in 1/2" drive and put a breaker bar on it. Breaking it loose while the engine is still warm helps, then drain the coolant and unthread it. It's a 14mm allen key by the way.

Not much to leak on the drivers side except the valve cover gasket or the front cam seal. Automatic transmission? The cooler lines run on the drivers side and they could be leaking. You could check the levels in the auto tranny (not the front diff) and the power steering to see if they're the culprit. On the turbo cars the oil drain hose from the turbo back to the head can start leaking, but that would be on the passenger side.

I used a 45 degree tapered grinding stone in a die grinder and countersunk the holes a bit. I tighten the two stock holes first, which centers the wheel, then the two drilled holes which helps clamp it down. Remember that the studs only clamp the wheel to the hub, it's the static friction between the hub and the wheel that takes most of the load.

There is a solution, and people do have experience with it. I ran an EA82 d/r and clutch behind my EJ and I replaced clutch disks a couple times a year. I was buying the $30 reman clutch disks from autozone, I belive for a 91 legacy was the car I would look it up under. I was cheap and the labor was free (me!). So that's one solution. An xt-6 pp will help with the grabbing force and lengthen the replacement intervals. Swapping in an EJ AWD transmission is covered pretty well, a bunch of people have done it. Upgrading the internals of an EJ 5spd is covered intesively over on NASIOC. You could also use a 6spd, but it would have to be a 88 or newer EA body to have a tranny tunnel large enough to fit it. You also need a DCDD controler of some sort. That takes money though, and most of the people swapping engines into older cars don't have a lot of extra cash. One other thing to consider is that the older cars weigh less than the WRX's that people are blowing the 5spds out of, so the transmissions may last longer. They can't take shock loading though. No AWD burnouts, no speed shifting, no clutch dumps. All the stuff that makes high power RWD fun is a no go with AWD.

MPFI means dual port heads. Getting EA81 turbo heads is going to be hard to come by. Any turbo setup would need to be custom built unless you have a donor car to swap everything out of. It is quite do-able though. Honda guys do it all the time on cars that never had a turbo on them. A SPFI swap would help, so would a weber carb swap. What's the emisions testing like there? If you can't take it out of 2nd on hills I'd say there's something more than altitude wrong with the engine. The hitachi carbs are often in poor shape by now so I'd suspect that. Either a weber or SPFI would help a fair bit.

The internals of an EA box are pretty much the same as an EJ box, so what one will take the other will too. The problem is that both will grenade behind a stock turbo motor if driven abusively. So. What it comes down to is clutch selection. Flywheel and clutch go with the transmission. If you use a pull type EJ transmission, you need a pull type flywheel and clutch. If you use a push type, you need a push type flywheel and clutch. If you use an EA tranny, you need an EA flywheel redrilled to match the EJ crank pattern. You have to use an EA pressure plate, either custom or an xt6 one which has better than 4 cylinder clamping force. You can use whatever clutch disk you want, EJ and late 4wd EA ones are the same size and spline count. By using an EJ tranny, you get EJ pressure plates and flywheels. That's the advantage. My dad and I made our own adapter plate. We measured the points on the two bellhousing surfaces, matched them up on the lower stud's centers, checked against the crank and input shaft centers, and machined it out of 1/2 aluminum plate. If we can make the "plans" you can make the plans. Bust out a ruler and a pair of calipers. And Brian, there's not a lot of "ifing" going on in the thread. Numbchux has been giving sound advice and he certainly has the experience with his wagon. While you may belive that you're xt6 pp wrx disk is the best recipe, the xt6 pressure plate clamping force is nothing compared to the aftermarket pp's available for EJ trannys.

A highbeam/lowbeam switch out of an old truck would probably work great for that. They're meant to be foot actuated, and they would have both poles to feed the two solenoids.

There are multiple series of 1.8l engines, EA81's Ea82's, and EJ18's. You have an EJ18, they are the same EJ series as the EJ16's, EJ20's, EJ22's and EJ25's. You can swap any EJ for any other EJ, however the EJ18's don't usually have a knock sensor. The casting on the block under the alternator is the easy way to ID the motor when you go and buy it.

LSD vs Open diff is a huge improvement. I mostly noticed it in mud, wet loose ground, snow, and climbing the car up out of pits. The rear end of the car would push much harder and help the car get up stuff without using near as much momentum. Once a rear wheel comes off the ground you are SOL though. You can shock load the rear diff which will momentarily lock it up, enough so that you can get the car back off of whatever obstacle you got stuck on. You will be replacing the rear output gears in the transmission shortly thereafter though. I snapped 2 stubs on my LSD. I snapped 0 stubs on my open diffs but I grenaded the spider gears out of 3 of them. LSD's wear. Finding one in good shape is a crapshoot, though you can adjust the preload on the clutchpack to some extent. I think a lot of people that say they're worthless probably had a badly worn one. When I was running RWD for a bit, I could do effortless donuts on dry pavement with 30" tires. So they can lock up pretty hard if they're in good shape. I commuted 350-400 miles a week so a welded diff wasn't an option.

They look like this? Nice meaty rims, and the perfect offset. I used to run some chevy 6lugs and they stuck out from the body a lot more. Had to beat the base of the A pillar a lot more to stop the rubbing. The D-50 rims line everything up nice.

I'd be suspect of the struts, if they are shot the front wheels won't have good contact with the road and the car will understeer. RWD subarus are fun but the balance isn't right. You can burn the tires off and do great donuts and be sideways everywhere with a LSD rear diff but it's not a handling improvement. I could drive my loyale faster in Fwd than Rwd, and faster still in 4wd. I tell you 40mph on dirt is nothing, you're not really pushing it till you're doing 65-70 or faster. Having friends holding onto the oh************ handle with a deathgrip and swearing helps. A 4wd powerslide at 60 beats anything a RWD or FWD can do.

I've retrofitted the 95 one piece headlights into a 98 outback that had the 2 piece setup, so they're deffiniately interchangeable. The wiring for the bulbs is different so you have to do some cut and splice. I would take a close look at the body where the headlight attaches. I would suspect that the radiator support area may be pushed in a bit. It looks like the headlight is recessed in in relation to the hood too. Mabe stacking some washers between the headlight assembly and the body and useing a longer bolt would work for you?

What's the rear diff tag say on it? What transmission do you have? Think someone could have swapped the wrong ratio transmission or rear diff in at some point? Are all the tires the same brand and model? Different brands, while they list the same size on the sidewall can be different diameters, up to a half inch in some cases.

Why bump it? You got your answer, it's a tire size issue. There's a difference in size between the front and back tires, so the drivetrain gets wound up by the different speeds of the front and rear axle. That causes the engine to bog because the wheels are fighting against each other, and the bang when it shifts out of 4wd is all that tension being released. The wandering is caused by the front wheels forcing one of the back wheels to skid to release the tension. YOU HAVE MISMATCHED TIRE SIZES. End of story.

D-50 rims are about the best steel rims you can get for an older subaru. I ran a set on my wagon, they fit perfect, don't stick out and cause bump steer or wheel bearing issues, and if the chrome is still good on them the look nice.

I'd also argue that the subaru engines aren't "known" for eating oil. If the engine isn't beat and the PCV system is in good shape, it shouldn't use a noticable amount of oil between oil changes. The 3 subarus in my family go 5k miles between oil changes, and unless they're leaking oil, the level on the dipstick hasn't gone down between oil changes. Loosing a quart every 3k is excessive in my book. I had an EJ22 I'd hurt bad, I had freshly rebuilt it and drove it cross country the next week. The hood latch cable broke part way across, so by the time I got to my destination it was down to under a quart of oil left in the pan. When the rings are seating it's normal to use some oil. Unfortunately I seated the rings and ran them out of oil all at the same time.. It used oil ever after that, and would burn exhaust valves due to the carbon deposits. The last few months I ran it I put a quart or more a week through it, with me commuting 300 miles a week. That was way bad. I actually had oil slime stuck to the back of the car due to the amount running out the exhaust. I'd just pull the plug on the injector of the dead cylinder and keep going.

You want the pump off of the framerail of a ford EFI truck from the early 90's. Not the lift pump in the tank. Subaru pumps are located below the tank, so self priming isn't much of an issue. The pump should run 90-100 bucks. You will need adapters for the inlet of the pump, the subaru hose is close to a half inch in diameter while the ford inlet is like 5/16" or 3/8". A pump won't leak because it was run out of gas. Pumps don't usually leak either unless they're really badly rusted. I'd remove the pump platform and check all the hoses before I went out buying pumps.