idosubaru

sort of correct, emissions issues. it is okay to drive so long as it's not experiencing any immediate issues. check oil level and make sure it's not overheating and drive it. go to Autozone or Advance or other auto parts stores that offer free diagnostics. they'll use your OBDII plug to tell you why the CEL is on. a dealer or shop will charge $50-$100 to do this.

what he said. that's a good call, seen some other confusion in the past. i'm not EA82 expert so i can't help you out. a search will turn up more info as i've seen what he's talking about before.

i was working on an XT6 this summer that i had picked up and was going to sell. it had a brand new bushing in it, so they should be available. the entire part was new, the "top" plate of the rear diff carrier so to speak, not just the bushing. so i guess it comes as an assembly. i swapped it with the one in my daily driver since i had wanted to put one in anyway. the one in my daily driver was broken, cracked all the way through so i grabbed another used one i had lying around to install. Subaru calls it a Support Bracket (it has the new bushing in it like i mentioned): w/o Full Time 4WD Subaru Part Number 741321110 ($62.75) w/ Full Time 4WD Subaru Part Number 41320GA060 ($73.20) kind of surprised they list different part numbers...not sure what that means, but one of those should do you right. those are rough prices, might be able to get better through the online places.

you can pick up used tires for 15-40 bucks. i bought from www.bordertires.com in my college days. good company, check them out.

you're not raining, you're bragging and comparing apples to oranges. congratulations.

if the car ran fine before with the helicoils then they shouldn't be the problem. you didn't remove the distributor did you? is there anything wrong with the helicoils? they have always worked great as far as i know. the cheapest solution if you did need other heads would be to buy a set of used heads from someone. you can pick those up relatively inexpensively. you should have a valve job done ($150-$200). but on a good set of heads that wasn't overheated you could get by just installing them straight up. i'd at least try to have them milled ($40) and new valve stem seals installed ($50), the valve stem seals will come with the head gasket set. if you can remove valve springs yourself you could do the valve stem seals yourself. replacing the heads due to spark plug threads seems overboard to me, but i can't see the problem. might want to get the car to a shop (or machine shop) and see if they can fix it if yo'ure not sure what to do.

wal mart has a connector that works on the old school XT6, very surprising as auto parts store don't carry much for that odd ball car. but they might have something for yours. i will say the connector works, but the color codes they supply are incorrect in the packaging, but i imagine newer/more popular cars would be more streamlined. i've seen people post easy ways to tell which wires are which and i've done it, it's not that hard. you can check for continuity between speakers and the wires at the radio as well. have you searched, might be posed on here, alot of that stereo stuff is generic.

i wrote this as an article for the XT6 website, i think it would be most useful to many on here. the same article resides there, the pictures are larger over there if you'd like to check them out or just load these and blow them up.

The bearings for most of the pulleys on older engines become void of grease, noisey and free wheeling over time. A new or freshly packed bearing will feel "tight" and not spin freely at all. Very few pulleys that I enounter on older subaru's are worthy of reinstallation. It is a good idea to look at a new pulley at the parts store next time you're there if you're not sure what a brand new bearing feels like. It's easy to assume free wheelin bearings are the norm on are older cars if you've never felt a new one before. It is possible to source new bearings and have a shop install them. It will require a machine shop press to install them unless you are patient and have the tools to do it yourself. I destroyed one pulley in an attempt to do that and don't plan on trying that again. When I sourced new bearings about 5 years ago, the cost of the parts and having a machine shop install them was not good enough for me to jump on board the idea. In some areas maybe this is a better alternative. Now I live in a rural area, don't feel like sourcing the parts and machine shop time is expensive. And of course I'd rather do it myself, it's always more fun that way. Tools Needed: Finish nail or other thin/adequate device. Grease gun Needle Attachment for grease gun. While this is a really simple job, I would recommend having an extra set of pulley bearings already packed and ready to install to make your timing belt job quick and painless. You'll never know if you have any bad pulleys until you have it apart. And while it's not likely one is bad you also don't want to be in a rush while packing the pulleys as doing it incorrectly or in haste will destroy your new timing belt in short order. Overall this is a simple job, I've done it to a number of XT6's and extra pulleys. It only takes a couple minutes and some patience. I highly suggest trying this on a spare or junk pulley, not one you need. The job isn't difficult, but better to practice than rely on getting it right the first time you do it for the car you need. The bearings have a thin metal cover over them to retain the grease and protect them from water and dirt. The idea is to pry back this cover as little as possible in order to insert a grease gun needle into the bearings. As in the first picture, gently wedge a nail (or equivalent) into the inside of the bearing cover. Use as little force as possible to gently lift up the cover. It is better to keep missing it because you're not deep enough or pushing hard enough until you get it just right than to overshoot your mark and damage the cover. The needle is very small and wedged shape itself, so you won't need much room to work with to get it in there. Do not pry up excessively, the bearing cover can and will come up with excessive force (more on this later). Have your grease gun packed with high quality grease for this application and a grease gun needle as pictured in the second picture. Insert the tip of the gun under the cover at an angle as shown. You won't go deep as the bearings are in the way, but you can go under the cover further. AFter inserting the needle, keep it flat against the pulley and use your finger to press tightly against the needle entry area to prevent grease from coming back out as you pump the grease gun. I think *roughly* 2 good pumps in with my grease gun set up works well. Pump the gun once, then take the needle out and rotate the bearing around. Attach it to a drill or just spin it by hand is fine as well to spread the grease around the bearings. Then insert the needle and repeat the procedure again. I would use as little grease as possible to tighten up the pulleys and make them feel smooth, one pump will probably do, though i've used more in mine. Again, keep adding little bits at a time until it feels good and smooth. This is important - Don't pump too much grease in. As mentioned before the cover can come off and continued over pumping of the gun can and will push the cover off the bearing as well. Also if you put excessive grease in, it will start to come out of the pulley after the car is in use for awhile, the high RPM's and forces will heat the grease and push it out. That's not necessarily bad except that the grease could get on the timing belt and it just gets messy and looks funny. You will hear "popping" noises as the air bubbles are pushed out and moved around, that is normal. You may also see nasty brown grease come out around the edges or backside of the cover, this is the old grease/water/dirt coming out. Usually not much comes out, but I have had a couple do that and that's good to get that out but they are all that bad. After installing the pulleys you could check them after a couple drives or a week and see if there is any grease that needs to be wiped off from being pushed out after the engine is ran and heated up to operating temperatures a few times. Some will creep out the edges (like where you inserted the needle, if you packed alot in there). This shouldn't be an issue if you pack lightly, I overpacked the first time I did it since I was experimenting. If you'd like, leave the left and right covers off since they are very easy to see how they look. Unfortunately those two covers don't really give you good access to all the pulleys.

check the throttle cables, they can be sticking somewhere along the line. check at the pedal to see if it is physically returning to "idle", maybe it is sticking down. also check in the engine bay that the cables arent' catching or sticking on anything. follow from fire wall to carb. there's probably a return spring on the throttle (not familiar with carbs, never touched one), if the return spring is shot, there's nothing to bring the throttle back down so to speak. i don't know carbs so i think they have something different than a throttle plate, but the principle should be the same with a return spring somewhere.

don't some newer impreza's have limited slip center diff options as well? any chance of those swapping over?

awesome will, excellent work. now...i can't believe noone else is asking this...am i that stupid? i've done alot of work on subaru's but noone else is wondering....what all is involved in swapping an LSD front diff into an EA (or ER) series? i've never taken apart a transmission before. how hard is the swap?

i'm well aware of the lack of a center differential and clutch packs/extension housing application for the 4EAT. i guess his description/semantics are a typo as i know he knows as well. wasn't trying to start a technical debate, just mention that he's built his own TCU that also allows control of line pressure for some reason, what ever that offers. he completely tore down the transmission and had all sorts of modifications done to the clutch packs, valve body, etc. his semantics might be off, but his controller allowed manual control of most of the AT parameters...whatever that gives you.

if only one lifter is noisey, i would suspect that lifter, not oil pressure or main bearing issues. rebuilt lifters or cleaning them yourself is the way to go (but disassembly and reassembly is too time consuming in my oppinion). unless you have an ultrasonic cleaner, that may work better? i would replace the two lifters on the cylinder you say is noisey with rebuilt or new units and go from there.

i started a thread awhile ago about my turbo to NA swap in a 1987.5 FT4WD XT Turbo that i'm converting to NA. the same info may be relevant to you, just opposite since you want a turbo.

should be a very easy swap to turbo then...just swap motors and you're done. keep your MPFI intake manifold. unbolt the intake manifold, hold it up and out of the way, pull block, install turbo block. add turbo intake and header and you're done.

agreed with junkyard axles. the OEM axles are very resilient, i've never broken one in 100,000's of miles of driving. but i've had reman'ed axles blow into bits. i've driven the stock OEM axles 50,000 miles with broken boots and clicking like hell...and still never broke. i retire them once they start clicking while i'm driving straight....i figure that's a good time to get new ones on there.

other subaru's are compatible, though i can't tell you which ones. post in the New Generation forum for more information on interchangability of model years. you can swap 2.2 liter motors into 2.5 cars without changing ECU's, so i'm fairly certain you should have a wide range of options.

so the bellhousing isn't an issue....this rear thrust thing though...what is that? never even heard of such a thing.

ran across this old message from the guy i mentioned a few posts back who programmed his own TCU for a 4EAT, thought some here might be interested. note the added functionality of controlling line pressure as well: "makes it possible to program line pressue (shift hardness) as a function of TPS (throttle position). It also makes it possible to shift by pushing buttons to manually controll the shift points. I am using a sparco steeringwheel that has two buttons in it, rightbutton to shift up, left button to shift down. It can also control front/rear drive bias. Which means that I can balance the car perfectly to get 4wd drifts through the corners. It has a display to show what gear you are in as well, just like the WRC boys."

ha ha, that's a funny way to state the truth. i agree.... diagnosing over the internet is hard enough....give us more details with some hotsauce on top. has it ever ran hot, needed coolant, etc? if i had to guess, it's leaking. pulled over to help a guy today with overheating/coolant loss issues. he was a mechanic, said he's had this car for quite awhile and couldn't figure it out. i laid out the headgasket issues to him, unfortunately.... this should be easy....does it use ANY coolant? if over the course of driving 1,000 or 3,000 miles it has any coolant loss, then it's the headgasket issue creeping up, period.

that's a good, solid motor. i'd replace the transmission fluid if it's an automatic and add an aftermarket transmission cooler if it only has cooling lines running through the radiator. cheap insurance. otherwise not much to look out for until timing belt maintenance around 100,000.

8 bolt bellhousing? aren't bellhousings swappable? i'm confused on that one, as i've only pulled older model soob motors/trans. rear thrust block what is that? the 97 and 98's are interference as well (just to clarify, i realize you know that shawn!)

i wasn't sure about parting out this 98 OBS, but if i do the ECU is there as well if that helps at all. i would need to know soon to get it out by this weekend, i'll be in morgantown the weekend of Jan 18th as well.

it's not a 20mm. 22mm i believe. (small chance of 19...but i think that's just the oil pan).