idosubaru

Depends what you're after. If you want true performance then there's not much you can do except go with forced induction (turbo/supercharger). If you just want to trick it out for novelty and fun, or make it sound/feel different then plug around the internet, there's all sorts of goodies you can bolt on, just depends what you're after. Might want to start with JC Whitney, NASIOC, SUMMIT, Ebay and see what's out there. You can slap on intakes, exhausts. You can get lightened belt components - crank & alternator pulleys. But in reality if you have "the bug", these kinds of mods won't do it for you because they do very little towards actually making the car fast (on a non-turbo vehicle). This is subject very much to the law of diminishing returns...the more you get, the more you want - because what you're getting is so tiny in terms of actual performance. normally aspirated cars just don't have much you can do to them. a quick read of forced induction verses normally aspirated will show you why you can get so much power increases out of forced induction but not normally aspirated stuff. NA cars you can gain maybe 5-10 hp. Turbo cars you can gain like 100.

i've packed other non-wheel bearings too full and that is exactly what happens - the heat causes it to expand and it pushes out through and around the seals. i think the concern would be that it may push a seal out, but with those tight fitting, pressed in seals i can't imagine it doing much of anything.

no, but it wasn't loosing any coolant either. intake manifold would have to leak to cause overheating. the headgaskets are my best guess...but not sure why they wouldn't loose coolant. unless it was akin to the Phase I EJ25's that overheat if exhaust gas gets trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time? i drove it as a daily driver for a couple years and put 40,000ish miles on it. mine wouldn't overheat in the cooler months (says 70 degrees or lower rough estimate), so it was perfectly fine in the cooler months.

there's some pretty good information on here about bearings. in general it's best to assume bearings come in packing grease and just pack them with quality synthetic bearing grease. i would think those come with real grease though. also - they are not supposed to be fully packed. it's been mentioned a bunch of times here how much to pack them but i can't recall the percent. good luck.

Yep - whole car is worth a few extra bucks no doubt. I've only ever pieced them together. I usually have everything I need since I have 5...10...20 cars but there's often one or two odd ball items that are just annoying to get. No one has one, yards won't even mess with it, look at, still have, some little part i need...etc. Trying to piece it together from scratch with no parts stash/cars lying around, that would suck. It's totally doable if you have lots of time but it would be annoying. Good comment above - find a few things to sell, sell the converter and car for scrap for $150 and you're probably not out that much at all and probably come in cheaper for it.

The 99 is a really freaky year for Subaru, i'm not sure why. They have speedometer and transmission issues in this year. I would expect the few 98 and 00's I see with the same issues are just a run over of these oddball 1999 issues. I consider the first step here to do a complete flush of the old fluid. An acquaintance had this issue and i was going to look into it for them. They found out that an old family friend was a retired trans shop mechanic who fixed it for them. So he managed somehow. I'd post more info but i don't know any. If you're bent on replacing it, I would look into a non-99 since this problem is common to that year. Sorry, I'm not sure what swaps with these later years. I would think other 4EAT's like 00, 01, 02? would swap but I haven't done later years like that....yet. Normally I say go used. Used Subaru transmissions are typically not hard to find cheap. They are normally well lived and have few issues if taken care of. Nice to get them from a wrecked car or one with a bad motor, etc - that makes it very likely the trans is good. I too would vote for the additive fix, i think this is about the only time i would ever recommend it. I'm very skeptical and hesitant of any fixes in a bottle.

more info is good, nice hit frank. that's awesome. i second these notions. i think you'll find the folks that have dealth with dozens+ subaru's will agree on this. i think the few cases of coils being swapped out are because they're swapped out as an assembly to include the FET's on the EA82's. i would think something extraneous would need to happen to cause one to fail.

I just did this today to my 2002 OBW which is the same as my 1996 Legacy LSi. It was extremely simple. You can do it without removing the wheels - nice hit!! Rubber plug is just under the rear axle, it's about an inch long and 1/4" wide, just pull it/pry it out. I already had the car up off the ground for doing the rear brakes, so I don't know if you can do it with the car on the ground. Mine being an OBW I bet you could, there's tons of room under it. My LSI and similar lower cars probably would be tight getting to it. The hub on the drivers side of mine had an arrow pointing "up". I assume that was the proper direction to turn the star wheel, and it was. Not sure if they all have that, but "up" will be the right way for them all. Make sure the emergency brake is "off" while you're adjusting it. Use a screw driver to push the gears on the wheel "up". Have a flash light handy to look in there and see what I'm talking about. It was really simple. I just did mine by feel. I kept rotating one side until it started to get harder, there was a point where it did. It doesn't need to be very tight at all, since the e-brake handle in the car is going to pull the slack out. Then i stopped once it got harder to push the teeth. Did the same to the other side so hopefully they're about the same. Might be a good idea to count the number of teeth you push if you want to keep both sides identical. You can of course check by putting on the brake with the wheel off the ground and making sure it doesn't turn. With the car already off the ground it only took a minute or two per side, very easy. But i had also seen the bits and wheel before when doing other work.

the 91 XT6 i'm scrapping this summer had similar issues. i never figured it out. i replaced everything in the cooling system..most things 2 or three times and never figured it out. was fine in the fall-winter-spring when temps were low. would overheat in the summer.

I've heard other folks say hoses can collapse, but i've never seen it happen on a Subaru and you'd probably notice that. Water pump is easy enough to do it's worth a shot. Wonder if anyone knows a "test" for the water pump? I might have a used one I could send if you don't feel like blowing a new one on a "maybe". just PM your address.

Russ that sounds annoying. Have you ever replaced the water pump? Maybe it's just poor at circulating fluid for some reason? Although it sounds like your car is maintaining proper temps? Out of the 20+ XT6's that have come through my hands i've had very few split hoses...I can't even recall any but I'm sure I've probably had one. And this is in rust-o-land where every clamp is rusted and does nasty things to the hoses. I'm with you, 3 sounds excessive indeed on one car in short order. Has it ever been overheated before, maybe before you owned it? If the engine was moved, maybe the 20+ year old hoses were just kinked past their limits?

if you have an affinity for strange things that no one else likes but is fairly practical and cool in strange ways - you better get rid of it fast or not get one. Power steering - it's driven by an electric pump motor. The brushes ($15) typically go bad but no one knows how to fix it. They also take a special XT6 only power steering fluid, folks may add the wrong kind. Radiators - typically in horrible shape because there are no aftermarket sources and they run $500 from the dealer. $300 if you order from the online discount places. Most XT6's have bad radiators because of that. Dont' believe any adds for aftermarket radiators, those will always be improperly listed 4 cylinder radiators which are quite different. Dash trim (around radio) and steering column surround are EXTREMELY brittle and break all the time. If they're not broke when you get it, they will break if you start messing with them! Air suspension. 4WD models only. extremely difficult to work on. compressor, drier, tank, fittings that crack, a couple dozen orings to leak, 5 solenoids, lines everywhere, height sensors, struts with air bags that may leak, etc. Simplest and wisest thing to do is to swap to coil overs which isn't hard. All of that info is on the xt forum rob just linked to. Other than that, if you can do maintenance on them and a thorough tune up they're great cars and will last about as long as you care to do maintenance on them as long as you don't overheat them or run them out of oil (or a previous owner didn't). Very reliable.

yep, that was my guess without even knowing anything: i made that statement because it's true and common. someone on here may have a spare used belt to send you. i probably have some EJ22 belts used i'd give you for shipping to help you test if you'd like.

Forget cost, remann'ed axles are so bad you're better off doing anything possible to avoid aftermarket axles, so you're on the right track. They have all sorts of issues. One of my best friends didn't listen and his new axle is already having clicking/noise issues after a couple months. I'd get the newest boots, they did change around 2000-ish sometime. But the newer axle boots are much better due to having more convolutions on the outer boot. the boots should be interchangeable. If you don't need the car, remove the axle and boot before going to the store and compare diameters of each side.

slapping on a belt (can even be used) to see if the motor is good is a good idea to know for sure. although a leak down test can be performed as is to tell you if you bent any valves. a valve job isn't that bad of a job, will give you another 100,000 miles out of the car if done right (complete timing kit, seals, etc), and might be worth it. ebay sells complete timing kits for around $200 - includes belts, all new timing pulleys, and tensioner. at 10 years old often the belt failure is just a symptom of old pulleys/tensioners. the bearings loose grease over time and cause the timing belt to fail. that's where these ebay kits are so handy, i've bought tons of them.

yes, rear discs definitely have the little star/gear shaped adjusment wheel i was speaking of. i've seen them when taking apart the brakes for wheel bearing work.

look carefully like nipper said. i had a spark plug go bad last year. brand new, ended up cracking shortly after install causing cylinder misfire on a friends car. i have seen things test within factory spec's before but still cause CEL's, so while they are extremely reliable almost all of the time, don't put all your eggs in that basket either. good luck, these kind are annoying.

i picked up a bolt on OEM style cat on ebay for $114 (shipping included) for 96-99 legacy's. 4 bolts to install, i'll go through a couple of these if i have to. a few thoughts for your situation: if you're having a shop install it - ask them how long it's warrantied for and if you have to pay to have another one installed. if the rest of the exhaust is rusty and not in good condition, that would be hard to spend that kind of cash on a dealer unit. i'd be tempted to go cheaper or fix the entire exhaust. might not want $1,000 OEM stuff hanging from rusty pipes that might break next year.

that's not a stock LSD in the picture, so you converted it? what exactly is it doing around turns? have you jacked up the rear and spun the tires or drained the fluid to see if there are other signs?

This is really funny - i have a 1987.5 XT Turbo that i castrated to non-turbo as well. Got a real nice JDM motor "low mileage" complete with blown head gaskets (thanks alot!?). Started 4 years ago and still haven't got it running right yet. What did you get from the engine codes - any current codes? any from read only? any from diagnostic test? All of that only takes a couple minutes to figure out. Are the timing belts and distributor installed correctly - it's very easy to do those wrong even though it looks right. The timing belts are the opposite of the new stuff so folks get those wrong often. Have you check for spark? Vacuum leaks - try some starter spray all around the intake while cranking the engine.

Legacy L - that should be rear drum brakes right? Not that it matters - but just in case i'm forgetting something. Most likely you'll need to get the car off the ground, but I actually haven't tried to do it yet, maybe there's room just crawling around. On the smaller Legacy L probably need to get it off the ground. On the bottom of the hub assembly, looking from the inside out is a tiny rubber plug over an access hole. there's toothed "gear" in there that you can rotate to tighten the e-brake. i need to do this on two of my vehicles and haven't yet.

the cheap-o OBDII scanners won't detect the monitors i don't think so you didn't loose any time there. i have never heard of the green test connectors clearing this issue, let us know if it works, i think i'd guess that it wouldn't. but i've lived in a non-emissions state for 3 years now what do i know?

i think that has adjustable valves and if so it's well past due for a valve adjustment. probably a good thing for it either way. my 1997 has a light tapping noise as well - at 135,000 it's due for a valve job as well. the oil pump backing plate screws can often be loose, but i'm not sure if it can attribute to light tapping noise as well. resealing the oil pump is standard maintenance with timing belt changes, so plan on doing that with the next timing belt. this engine is an interference engine and may need a timing belt job. even if one was done semi-recently the timing pulleys are nearing 200,000 miles and over 10 years old - at least one, maybe all are devoid of grease by now. it's very rare that i pull any this old that don't have at least one bad sounding pulley. once the pulley fails, the timing belt goes with it which means you'll have bent valves with an interference engine. i would be much more worried about those pulleys (bent valves) than the ticking noise. you can find threads and pictures in here of folks that have had them fail. i would install one of the ebay kits that come with all the pulleys, tensioner, and belt for $200. EJ engines can have piston slap, it's most prevalent on EJ25's. it is completely benign and doesn't cause any problems except it's annoying. piston slap causes a tapping sound at start up which gradually goes away or lessens as the engine warms up.

pickle fork is money well spent. ball joints take 13 seconds to remove. i don't even bother messing with them any more, my time and sanity is too valuable - i have a new one on hand and am done in no time.

it will work. 98 had a minor bellhousing change that's why they say that, but the swap will go fine as planned for you. and the gearing should be identical too, sounds like you're all covered.