Redbeard

NoahDL88 mentioned how the GLs kind of got replaced by Legacys, and that reminded me of something I noticed a few years back. Has anybody else noticed that Subaru's flagship line (of sedans and wagons) in the U.S.A. gets redesigned every 5 years like clockwork? As far as I can tell, this has been going on since at least 1980. '7?-'79 = EA71 GL? (the 4wd wagon was introduced in '75, but was that a redesign?) '80-'84 = EA81 GL '85-'89 = EA82 GL '90-'94 = 1st gen Legacy '95-'99 = 2nd gen Legacy / Legacy Outback '00-'04 = 3rd gen Legacy / Outback '05-'09 = 4th gen Legacy / Outback '10- = 5th gen Legacy / Outback I think it's cool that Subaru has been able to stick to that schedule for so long.

I did a little poking around on the net since my last post, and it looks like what I read about the crank position sensor thing must've been talking about the '99+ EJ22 vs. the earlier ones. Even if the pinouts are different (and they could be the same, I really don't know), I would think that you could just transfer the wiring from the EJ25 to the EJ22 like I did. Why would you have orphaned vacuum lines/ports? You should be able to connect everything to the EJ22 that was connected to the EJ25. I remember having to transfer at least one vacuum port from my EJ25 to my EJ22. I think it was for cruise control, and the EJ22 just had a square headed plug in the hole where I needed a hose connector. Legacys used different cruise control than Imprezas/Foresters, but I would still think that you should be able to transfer anything you need from your old engine over to the new one. As for your coil, if the mounting holes on the EJ25 coil are too far apart to fit on the EJ22 intake, then maybe you could make an adapter plate out of flat sheet steel to accommodate it. That's what I had planned to do, but I never got around to doing it. I think you'll also need spark plug wires for a '97 or '98 EJ22 in order to use your '99 coil.

About 5 years ago, I replaced the EJ25 in my wife's '98 Forester 5spd with an EJ22 from a '97 Impreza auto. It turned out successful, and we have put about 30k miles on it since the swap. My EJ22 was also in a front-end collision. Yours probably faired better than mine. I didn't know when I got it, but it seems that the crank pulley must've been hit in the accident. I know this now because I can slide the crankshaft about 1/8" front-to-back. I know that's bad, but it has run fine that way for 30k miles. My EJ22 also sat in a shed unused for almost 6 years. The only problem this caused me was that the 2 fuel injectors closest to the open fuel lines both seized up. I swapped in all 4 injectors from the EJ25, and it runs fine. The wiring harness on my EJ22 had been hacked up, and I didn't get the ignition coil. I used the coil and engine harness from the EJ25. I had to cut some of the tape on the EJ25 harness to get some of the wires to stretch where they needed to go, but I didn't cut any wires. The coil didn't have the same mounts, so I think I just attached it with a single bolt with some thread lock. I could easily be wrong about this, but I thought I once heard that the '96 and earlier EJ22s had something different about the number or placement of the bumps that the crank position sensor monitors compared to later engines. So when you change the timing belt, watch out for that. I'm curious to know if this is true or not. I also had a strange problem with my clutch. I had to fabricate a shorter pushrod to go between my slave cylinder and my clutch fork. I never figured out why that was necessary, but without it my clutch could not fully engage and thus slipped badly.