NorthWet

As long as the engine is running and the tranny's fluid pump is pumping and the duty-A solenoid is not energized... yes. (Duty-A can reduce pressure from "full"... )

The (early) LSDs were all 3.70 (except the mysterious, oft-mentioned but never-documented XT6 3.90), available as an option on any EA82-ish Subaru (87 and later???), most commonly found on turbos, and almost certainly on a vehicle with a locking center-diff. The diff tag quite clearly identifies it as an LSD.

The fluid pressure engages the clutchpack... but, the problem is that the disks and plates in the clutch pack will still drag against each other Without a flow of ATF over them, they will fry after a while.

Manual boost controllers (MBCs) have been a popular topic before. Do a search on "manual boost controller" and you should get a lot of hits.

And the answer is... ...it depends. Everything is a balancing act. If you are willing to run less ignition advance, you can run more compression. If you run the engine cooler, or run the engine faster, or don't use so wide of a throttle opening, or run better fuel mixture control... then you can run a higher compression ratio. If you run a wild/hot cam (one with more duration than stock), then the effective compression ratio will be reduced, so you want a higher static compression ratio. I would guess that you could run 9.5:1 or 10:1 CR with proper mixture and timing control.

Dampener is probably close to right. Any vibration or wobble gets some of its energy absorbed by the semi-fluid, and some of this material is dragged by gravity or whatever to a different spot on the (generic-term) rim. The key here is that energy is getting absorbed (and converted to heat). This energy would not get used for propulsion. Think of dumping a gallon of thick mud into each tire, and what it is likely to do for performance. Kind of an extreme, but helps illustrate.

When the ignition is off, there is no voltage/signal to the Duty-C, but there is also no fluid pressure to engage the clutch pack. The issue when the engine/ignition is off is that there is no fluid flow around the clutch plates and bearings, so no/little cooling and lubrication.

Did you check to see if the LSD was still under that GL10???

+1 on what GD typed. Parts stores that rely on computerized parts lookup confuse EA81 and EA82 parts, so unless you ask for 89+ GL for your EA82 you are likely to get EA81 parts. (The EA81 axles are shorter than EA82s.)

Every newer vehicle that I have looked at (admittedly not a large number) have had torque-to-yield headbolts, so no retorque is practical.

Is that 1800rpm at cold idle? Does not sound too far out of whack, though that 1100 warm idle sounds too high. Could be CTS, could be sticky IAC (Idle Air Control) valve. CTS issues seem to be common on the EA82Ts, though the sensor itself does not seem to fail often (based on comments by others).

Logic.. and physics... would dictate that any loose items being spun would tend to gravitate (pun intended) to the furthest point from the center possible, adding to any imbalance. There are reasons why weights are clamped/adhesed to the rim.

Why, does it sound too little or two much? Seems like a good ballpark amount. Does it look like it is reaching speed, pulling enough air and sounding OK? Install it and enjoy.

Fel-Pro gaskets are the same. I have headsets for both, and same part number is listed for HGs for both engines.

The bubbling you hear from the turbo area is common/"normal": It is the water cooling system doing its job. (Tech info that I have seen says it doesn't matter which way water flows through the turbo's water jacket, or even if it does at all while the engine is running. What matters is that one tube is higher than the other so that it can thermo-syphon after the engine is shut off. The boiling is part of the thermo-syphoning.) I have yet to get an EA82T to keep its cooling system sealed. Coolant always seems to leave them somehow. Sometimes it is the aforementioned "hose from hell", sometimes it is the turbo's outflow hose (to t-stat), and sometimes it is the turbo's inflow hose that runs from the head and under the turbo. I personally have resigned myself to constant monitoring, and considered installing a reserve-coolant tank under the spare tire.

Octane has little-to-nothing to do with idle quality. You could run 15-20 octane fuel and your car would probably idle better. High octane is a waste unless it is needed, and not needed if your car is not pinging excessively. If your car starts to ping on 87, so what; the ECU retards timing a bit and you keep going. I doubt that your sweet wife is lead-footing the car. What you didn't mention is if the idle quality ever returns after a hot-start. And if you don't do a shutdown and hot-start does the idle quality degrade? My guess is that it has the infamous CTS (coolant thermosensor) problem, with either a bad connection at the CTS connector or corroded wires in the wire harness above the connector.

Agreed with seeking remedy from the oil-change shop. If this happened immediately afterwards (as opposed to a week or two), there should be little argument with culpability and liability. I would wait to check over the engine/oil-filter to see if they do the right thing and take responsibility: Anything you do beforehand could produce doubt about thir liability. If the engine was shut down *promptly* after the oil light came on, and if it was not developing power just before (you had talked about it happening on an offramp), there should be little damage. An engine can run a suprisingly long time on low/no oil pressure if under no load. (The light does not indicate 0 oil pressure, just less than a safe minimum... like 5-PSI).

From my recollection of other threads, there seems to be some debate with 95s (or was it 96s?), but 97 and up should all be interference.

All of the US-market 2.0 and 2.2L (EJ-series) engines were FI. I believe that all 88+ EA82 engines (like yours) were FI. Basically, nothing newer was carb'd. That does not mean that you couldn't convert one to a carburetor, but on the EJ-series that would also imply adding a distributor (they use distributorless ignition), and would probably take as long as doing things "right". Not much available to upgrade without some significant work. Others will recommend that you switch carburetors from the stock Hitachi to a Weber.

I honestly do not believe that anything short of replacing the headgaskets (and you should also mill the heads) will fix this one. We are not talking minor leakage here, but major damage to the sealing area. HGs aren't that tough to do, or look for a serviceable used engine to get you through.

I have no experience with sealants claiming to fix headgasket leaks, but I can't imagine any way that a sealant could repair or stabilize a leaking, corroded, dirty, decades-old headgasket. Most of the blown HGs that I have seen have shown either total corrosion of the fire/compression "ring", prolonged leakage past the ring (leaving dirty combustion byproducts and erosive scoring on the ring), or a portion of the ring/gasket was pushed sideways into a coolant passage. How "blown" is(are) the HG(s)? Coolant in the oil? Over-pressurized cooling system? Or just overheating?

Oil rings control how much oil makes it into the combustion chamber, not how much oil gets pushed around by blow-by(compression rings) or by the engine's case "breathing". You said that you had replaced the PCV... I assume that you mean the PCV valve inself? Did you remove both cam-/valve-over breather tubes and check for build-up narrowing the hoses or the metal nipples that they fit over?

Might want to check out this thread in the Old Gen Forum: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=63839

Question answered... problem solved!!!

Yes, the automatics use a clutch-pack to transfer power to rear driveshaft.