idosubaru

got another vote for the yellow paint being there from factory from someone else. i'm replacing it.

decided to do my cousins timing belt on her 96,000 miles 2000 legacy. she said nothing has ever been done to the car, just normal cheap stuff. pulled the cover and the timing belt still has SUBARU on it and the part numbers and everything are readable on the belt. it is worn some, but doesn't look at all like i would expect a 96,000 mile timing belt. also - the cam sprocket on the drivers side had an orange paint dab on the outer rim, like someone had worked with lining up the belt before. can a 96,000 mile timing belt still have writing on it? anyone ever seen paint marks on the cam sprockets from the factory? i'm used to older soobs, maybe that's the problem. confused in maryland.....

no way i'd spend that money on 2 pistons. i would only consider new pistons if they are a new design that prevents this problem. no way i'd go through all this with the possibility of a recurrence. if there is a new piston design then i'd be tempted to go for replacing all 4, replacing 2 is nonsense after hearing that others have developed the slap after 100,000+ miles. considering what is involved in replacing pistons - replacing 4 instead of 2 is such a small difference in the overall job time, do them all.

the only subaru wheels that won't fit your car are the SVX and '05 wrx sti wheels and they are not 15" rims so you should be golden.

i don't think you'll get a compression reading by turning the motor over by hand in my experience. maybe different motors, testers are more capable but my standard off the shelf compression tester won't read anything when i turn my motors over by hand. zero. need to use the starter to get the motor turning.

oh and on the oil pans - i wouldn't expect a repeat of that scenario on the rest of the motor. oil pans suck really bad at sealing. some of the gaskets are cheap and suck, but mostly the pans get old and the mating surface gets trashy. dirty, old gasket material, and the biggest problem is the bolt holes become concave upwards and don't provide good clamping force when you install it. the concave gouges the new gasket while not providing for good clamping force between it and the next (also probably concave) oil pan bolt hole. i just installed one of my engines and put sealant on both side of the freaking gasket to hopefully avoid this scenario this time. hope it works, either way the oil pans just suck so you shouldn't have this problem with your cams.

i'll repeat what he said for confidence. fill the groove and have about a 1/4 inch bead sticking up. if you didn't do any head gasket work then this paragraph doesn't apply. did you do the headgaskets and need to retorque the head bolts? if you need to do a retorque there is no need to appy sealant. you'll have to start the motor, get it to operating temp then turn it off and remove the cam towers again to retorque the heads. in this case, don't waste your time with any sealant on the cam towers, leave them bare and then seal them when you go back in for the retorque. with a retorque you only run it for a little bit before going back in, it won't leak (much). good job replacing that o-ring, it is mucho important and don't put any sealant on it. i know a guy who put sealant all around that oring and it got sucked up his oil ports in short order. horrific lifter noise and he pulled it apart shortly after getting it back together and even took pictures of the lodged sealant blocking the oil passage. probalby not much of a problem if you're using anaerobic sealant (which i think you should), but anyway. on the rocker arms i use a big glob of high quality grease on the rocker arm and place it on the HLA, as it's hanging i rub the grease around the edges thick to hold it in place. this keeps it from falling off. engine lube the rocker arms and all sliding surfaces when you install the cams. if you're doing this with the motor in the car (which you should be or you wouldnt need to grease the rocker arms to hold them in place), get everything out of the way that you can - hoses, wires, atf lines, anything that might get in the way. you don't want to be squeezing the cam tower down there and have something in the way and knock a rocker off or scrape off your great bead of sealant while you're wiggling it in place. i personally like to hold the cam just about an inch away and place the first two top corner cam bolts through the holes and partially thread them, just enough to hold the weight of the cam. then check everything as you gradually torque them down and go for the final press into place. it'll likely move the cam as it pushes the cam into the *resting* position so to speak. EA82's aren't bad at all, much better than the ER27, not much room to work with on that thing. good luck

depends what you want. the 2.2 is a freaking beast, it will run forever properly taken care of. great motor and AWD system. at least drive one to see if you really need that extra 0.3 liters of displacement. i'd keep your eye out for one with as low of miles as possible if you want to keep the car a long time. be advised any 97 or later will need the timing belts checked as they are interference motors (unless it's already known the last time it was changed). sounds like you can do it yourself so no big deal, i just did my 2.2 for the first time and it was cake.

already said, but weep holes are classic signs of water pump failure. very common, time to replace. you're doing the right thing, just too bad you did it twice!

that actually depends on final gearing among other things. auto's are worse on mileage, more internal losses but can make that up depending on the gear ratio of the highest gear (particularly in highway miles). auto XT6's get the same mileage as manual XT6's because the gear ratios are better. at 75 they're doing about 750 or so lower rpm's for the same speed. complete tune ups are a good thing. some place just did a mileage comparison and showed that cruise control dramatically increased mileaged, someone just posted the link on the boards here recently. interesting article. showed also that driving with windows down instead of a/c didn't really hurt mileage any (as compared to running a/c). actually the mileage was an itsy bitsy bit better with windows down. in any event, tune up is in order if you're serious about gas mileage. the more thorough the better. have your brakes checked and the slides greased well on the caliper to make sure there's no dragging. my mileage went up in my auto AWD 2.2L OBS after i did the brakes....totally unexpected, everything was working fine i just installed new pads but i'm guessing the calipers were dragging a little bit but they worked perfectly fine, no malfunction at all. after replacing pads my mpg went up a few. i'm probably just lucky though. haven't done anything yet to my OBS, but the auto XT6's get better highway mileage with a better muffler. you can get 2 mpg better or so with a little muffler/intake action...if everything else is working right at least.

anyone figure out the price discrepancy originally posted? and what exactly is Subaru Auto Parts price? is that an online retailer? agreed. after all the searching through old threads trying to decide what to do with my 220,000 mile original coil i still haven't bought an aftermarket one yet. not really much good from what i can see getting an aftermarket substitute. i'd guess any tiny performance gain that *might* be noticeable is from getting the 100,000+ mile unit out of there and probably would have been the same increase as replacing with a new stock unit. i'll get a new stock unit.

are you sure that is all true? i currently have an XT6 that i removed the rear differential, drive shaft and axles from because the diff went bad and i'll replace it later. maybe the legacy is different, but in the EA82 cars and the XT6 you can do it. the axle nut/stub is not needed to mount the wheels. the wheels mount to the hub which is held in place by the entire rear assembly/member. i don't know that the axle's support much, i believe most of their function is to just transfer power from diff to hub and fling grease on your underside when the boot breaks! my XT6 runs fine. if it's an automatic you'll need to keep the front half of the driveshaft in place otherwise transmission fluid will dump out all over the ground. the splined shaft of the driveshaft (the center bearing support, front half of the drive shaft) also seals the rear output seal. the rear half of the driveshaft can be removed, unbolted. manual trans driveshafts can be unbolted. also for an automatic you'll have to splice into the duty solenoid C or put in the FWD fuse to run in FWD mode. in the manual trans you'll have to lock the center diff. otherwise the rear output shaft will spin and do nothing and your front wheels will not do anything. very small weight savings, doubt you could shave more than 75 pounds, not enough to make a noticeable difference. if you did a ton of city driving with heavy foot and brake action then maybe, but for highway miles it won't mean a thing. i load a few hundred pounds in my soobs and for highway miles it does nothing because once you're up to speed i'm guessing the amount of gas to sustain that highway speed is nearly identical regardless of weight. alot of accelerating would likely be hurt more by weight i'm guessing.

converting is easy and cheap. typically a leak can just be a 50 cent o-ring. best to replace them all if you want to keep the air ride, those o-rings are now 10 years old +. i like the air ride on my XT6. but it is more maintenance than a standard strut. best to condition the struts which i've posted about before, but either way there are alot of o-rings, air bags and compressors, fittings that can go bad. mine has been fairly trouble free, but i've done some preventative maintenace to the struts and replaced all the o-rings. requires some research and taking time to understand, maintain and trouble shoot. i've also got a stock pile of extra parts to swap if anything fails, that makes it easy too. convert to standard struts and no more worries.

subyrally, doesn't that suck, just when you think you got an easy solution......DANG IT!!!

a generic "tune up" is the best thing to do. spark plugs, ignition wires, air cleaner and verifying your tire pressure is good. a few pounds over that listed on the tag (usually stamped on the drivers door) is best, those ratings are low and more comfort based than anything else. i add about 4 psi to mine for better mileage and tire wear. i got a couple mpg increase in highway mileage on my 2.2 liter 1997 OBS this summer after i did a brake job. maybe the old brakes were dragging? but i can't imagine that's a very common thing, i've never had this problem on my late 80's XT6's with 200,000 + miles.

what is qman's setup?

i see no reason to not siphon it out and refill with the right stuff. don't drive the car at all if you don't have to so the fluid doesn't cycle through. i have an eye dropper type thing...but it's bigger than an eyedropper to suck out brake fluid and power steering fluid like you're talking about. i would think walmart or lowes/home depot would have something like this for like 2 bucks.

i would so like to give my XT6 a few extra inches as well. the air ride definitely rides higher than every conversion i've done, but you should already have that if it's an AWD XT6 and you didn't convert it to coil overs. dang, how did i miss this thread, must have been traveling or something. tapper - the XT did have that option, some XT Turbo's anyway. the US XT6 never did. i just installed a canadian height switch in my XT6. after testing it (didn't work) and looking into it, it will require a tiny bit of electrical fiddling to make it work. i forget exactly what i need to do, but it's not that radical, need to run an extra wire or something. i can post more later if anyone is interested. you don't even need that button at all, if you just want to install a momentary switch yourself. it's a momentary type switch, not a toggle switch. i posted to shady's thread in the for sale section, who was offering the Allied Armament lift kit for EA82's (and others) and he seems to think it would work on the XT6. at some point i'd like to look into making my own lift kit of a couple inches, retaining the stock air suspension. don't know when i'll have time, won't be anytime soon.

skip - awesome i would definitely like to see that trans info. my email is fine grossgary AT yahoo DOT com if you can't get the link to work from my name. couldn't quite make sense of the gear ratio chart - is that for all EA82's? my car is an 87.5 XT Turbo (i'll be running NA though) with FT4WD and the PT4WD trans is a 1989. that chart doesn't distinguish between FT4WD and PT4WD. there's only one 5 speed option for single range 4WD. i have an XT service manual (at home) with that same chart info, i'll check it out next time i'm home.

the PT 4WD has a button...where is it, on the stick shift? anything else i'd need?

i read through all the archived posts with "transmission" in the title. I currently have a FT4WD (from XT Turbo) but should be getting a push button 4WD from an 89 XT. Any differences between the two? the push button 4WD will be FWD unless i push the button? would that get better gas mileage than my FT4WD? i'm wanting to gear this XT for optimum gas mileage. anyone know what the final drive raio's are in 5th gear for these trans? i don't think my 89 FSM mentioned the push button but i'll check again (at work right now). all offroading, snow driving is done and will be done in my XT6 so i don't necessarily need maximum 4wheel drive capability.

no. but that's not to say it's garaunteed to happen either. one thing that sucks about this issue is that the headgaskets avoid normal detection techniques when they first start to fail making it hard to diagnose or think it's something minor. yes you can replace as preventative maintenance, the newer headgaskets are upgraded to avoid this scenario. as to whether to get the car or not, that's up to you. read up and be informed and make a decision. if you got it for 500 bucks and it's in great shape then sweet, if the head gasket goes put the new ones on and be done with it. i wouldn't pay top dollar for it, i'd include a substantial deduction for the possibility of head gasket issues on any pre-2000 2.5 liter soob.

i don't know about the key, but i'd install the flywheel and go from there. it's straight forward, the 1.8's are very easy. line up flywheel mark on bellhousing (you can bolt this stuff on with motor out). with the flywheel mark lined up, line up the drivers side cam sprocket mark. then rotate the crank 360 degrees (one full revolution) and bring the mark on the flywheel back to the top and line it up again. at this point your drivers side belt you just installed will be pointing down. now line up the passengers side cam sprocket and install that timing belt. the two cams are 180 degrees off. rotate the engine around and check the marks again. when the each cam is lined up with the notch, the flywheel mark should be dead on. verify that before going any further, it's easy to get a tooth off and not notice.

the gear selector mechanically moves a mechanism bolted to the passengers side of the transmissions (can be reached from under the passengers side of the car). the position of this mechanism determines what gear you're in. so if it's not lined up properly (mechanically) it can cause issues. but the shifting of gears is all electronically controlled based on the position of that thing...can't remember what it's called. i do seem to remember it has plastic tabs of sorts on it that aren't the most reliable looking pieces in the world. but it's been a few years since i've had a good look.

i doubt the valves are to blame. i would bet money that you service the valves in that head and nothing changes. sounds like a shot in the dark to me. what were the results of a compression test? misfire all on one side of the motor should point to something they have in common - cam, timing belt, ignition coil pack. could be as simple as the spark plug wires to that side of the motor as well - they could have been randomly damaged by something....mouse chewing them, who knows but i'd have them checked out, verify good spark on that side of the motor.