idosubaru

i wouldn't even bother. if you have to pass inspections, try to find someone that will pass the thing. the rears never break...well im' sure it's happened but i'd leave it. my last XT6 - broken rear boots for who knows how long at 220,000 miles. it was broke at least 50,000 miles and never made a sound. actually...i've owned like 20 XT6's and every single one i've used as a daily driver for any significant amount of time had broken rears...the one right over the freaking exhaust always breaks. anyway, the axles never make a sound and there's no reason to replace them. i bought my most recent DD XT6 last year, i've put about 25k - 30k on it so far and i got it with broken boots and they're staying. i got a brand new one and one good used one that will go in before winter just because i'll be installing my LSD rear anyway. i've destroyed some things trying to get them off and still have a set fused onto the diff at my house. so take it easy and slow. soak with as much liquid wrench or PB blaster as you can. and yes, hammers will need to be used, just go easy with them. maybe heat might help?

an update - i'm trying to splice the rear wheel speed sensor signal into the speedometer vehicle speed sensor. yes, there's a 30:4 ratio they will be off. but...if it works it should quit the rare stalling, the cruise may work, the power steering should work better and the trip meter might work (but it'll be inaccurate by 15:2 of course). i found the wire for the speed sensor in the instrument cluster and i'm trying to figure out which of the three wires in the rear wheel speed sensor may work. i have it installed but not sure of the results yet.... i guessed sort of on one of the 3 rear wheel speed sensor wires.

good job nip. i like the idea of some more testing, drifting, in neutral and accelerating without the engine (down hill) through the vibration range. that it's mostly speed related would lead me to think that it's driveline related...wheels, tires, bearings, axle in the front. if it were engine or trans related i'd expect more variance than 20-25mph.

are you trying to fix yours? what do you mean by "random feedback"? have a look at the steering rack bushings, though they shouldn't be anywhere near going bad yet.

i agree, disty wires are easy to screw up. some caps have the numbers printed on them, so have a look and that might make it really simple. you didn't actually remove or move the distributor in the housing did you? some people mistakenly loosen those two 10mm hold down bolts or move it. cylinders are, from front to back: passengers side = 1,3 and drivers side = 2,4 when doing the air filter you didn't disconnect the MAF or vaccuum hoses?

i don't recall the details but kingbobdole (phil) didn't like something about his breathers on his XT6. i think he ended up removing them, maybe mike knows more about that?

you can't beat an EJ22 for price and reliability. only you can make financial decisions for yourself, but the EJ22 is what i would recommend to someone who doesn't have loads of disposable income, it just makes sense...as a hobbyist and a financial planner. if you can afford it, without stretching yourself, then go for the turbo set up now. if that's going to stretch you thin, the EJ22 alone will be an enourmous improvement over your EA82T. add a turbo and i think you'll be very happy with the performance. the beauty is that since you're "dumping all your money" on your hobby, the EJ22 is easily replaceable. have any problems or blow an EJ22T or EG20 and the cost to replace is large. EJ22's are cheap. blow it up and who cares?

good choice connie. make sure you have an excellent daily driver before getting rid of a vehicle.

make sure the fans are coming on properly? they're blowing the proper way too right, they're not wired backwards or anything and blowing in opposite directions? the radiator cap has to be the right pressure or something right? make sure that's right? i've heard that, but i drove an XT6 for 10 months with the timing off by 8-10 degrees. it drove fine and i never bothered to check it. finally set it correctly and it made no difference?

did this start happening randomly or after any particular service, maintenance, incident, etc? i've personally had brand new axles from the parts store explode to pieces and know of others that have had them be noisey, vibrating, and leak grease, i don't know what i'd do. but i'd want to rule out those axles for sure before yanking a transmission. if the vibration is identical to before then i guess that basically rules out the axles since it would too coincidental to have the exact same symptoms from different axles. just make sure it's indeed exactly the same. you're sure that axle was changed? i know people that have accidentally reinstalled the old part...thinking it was the new one and realized it after the fact. long shot...but heck, so is a subaru torque converter failing. what you say about the driveshaft makes sense, but i'd want to pull it off and have a look. they are rather easy to remove. it has to come off to drop the trans anyway, so they can remove it and inspect the ujoints then at least. first step is to check all the torque converter bolts. there is an access hole where they can be inspected and retorqued without any real work being done. i know subaru torque converters can fail, but it is very, very rare. there really isn't much to a torque converter, it's a big hunk of metal with vanes inside. i'm not even sure how they fail exactly, i've never heard of or seen a subaru torque converter fail. there is a snap ring that holds the shaft to the torque converter, don't know about your newer model, but typically 4EAT's have a ring seal around one of the shafts as well and there's a torque converter seal too. i would be prepared to inspect and replace those while it's out. i would also have those shafts that slide out of the trans inspected, just to make sure they're not bent or anything. i'd be completely paranoid to get into a job this big and not have the issue resolved once it's done....particularly if i was paying someone else to do it.

i have late model (97) 2.2's that have EGR and don't have EGR, so based on what i have i wasn't sure what yours would be. more than likely it should have the EGR set up, so it should be a straight, no brainer swap. in researching my EGR issue, it seems the solenoid on the passengers side strut tower will also cause EGR issues when it fails...with accompanying trans shifting issues as well, so probably a good idea to grab that solenoid off your parts car just in case you ever have problems. i plan on swapping mine out tonight when i get home.

the lack of a working speedometer and a VSS signal is definitely the cause of the problem. it slowly died over the past couple months. when it works...everything works, no problems at all. when it doesn't, the speedo shows zero and the power steering is quirky (speed sensitive), the engine rarely shuts off, and the cruise doesn't work. all of that works fine if it decides to start working again...which as of the past week or two is really never. thanks for the info on the rear wheel speed sensor, makes sense. i forgot it was a hall effect sensor. i knew it sounded too easy! yes i've been wondering what that does to my AWD. and you are correct, i have Duty C control if needed.

here's one of those ideas that is probably really, really bad but i'm electrically stupid so i don't know why. what would happen if i fed the rear wheel speed sensor signal to the VSS line in the speedometer? i believe the rear wheel sensor signal will read half the speed of the front VSS, so it's signal is "half" of the fronts, because i can't think of a better way of saying it. anyway, i'll need to verify it's a square wave and in the same voltage range. curious if that sensor/circuit will put any dangerous loads on the ECU as well.

if you do it properly, you can swap struts, springs or whatever without needing an alignment. mark the head of the top strut mount bolt and the strut bracket that it is flush against. when you go to reinstall the strut, make sure the two marks are lined up and you will retain your alignment. it's done all the time for hub, bearing, ball joint, axle...etc work. have a look at one of the bolts, look them up on ebay or a part diagram first if you've never seen one of those cambered adjustable bolts before. once you see it, you'll see exactly how it works and lining it back up will be a cinch. use a coil spring compressor on the struts, they can be very dangerous. the loaner type stores will have them you can borrow for free. i'd imagine any rental place would have them as well and they're probably only a couple dollars.

if your 2.2 doesn't have the EGR valve, i'd work on getting rid of it anyway. actually i'd just get rid of the EGR valve entirely no matter what. my wife's EGR valve has some issue....replaced the EGR valve, replaced the solenoid, then that little disc thing associated with it...still throwing the check engine light and shifting like rump roast. i'm annoyed, EGR's suck, i don't care what EGR lovers have to say about it, i say get rid of it and save yourself the hassle, that's my next step. sorry i'm wounded at the moment! good luck on the swap, you'll find it quite simple.

HC testing positive is a bad thing. i would assume the headgaskets are bad. i looked up autotrader today and found a few wagons under $2,000 in perfectly running condition. i don't know your area but wagons are everywhere around here. that's why they go so cheap on ebay, there are quite a number of them.

have you tried autotrader? i pulled up 6 wagons under $2,000 close to me...running wagons i might add! show stuff like that to the seller.

no joke, he might want to save the $ and hassle anyway since he won't need defrosting depending how often/far he travels from SC. replacing every year seems like alot. it would take heat, driving, and soft tires to need replacing every year. if it was purchased at an auction, just how long did he have the vehicle? i'm more suspicious of vehicles at an auto auction, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything. i picked up an impreza for a friend this year from one. i looked it over, did all the timing belt, water pump, oil pump jazz and had a good look at it. ran great, everything seems fine so far. maybe someone who knows the car market can comment a bit more on it. i'm not sure how/why nice, nicer vehicles get moved around.

gah! thanks a ton for the info i needed GD. this is quickly getting into tasks i'm not good at. electrical work and building circuits is...well, something i've never really done. probably just need to deal with it until i can manage the down time to swap trans. i was hoping for more of an EGR type work around with a resistor and some wire! you are correct, the XT6 set up is identical to the EA82. thanks again, i'm going to post that info at xt6.net.

there's a board member on here, i've seen him personally this year, but haven't seen him on the board much at all. he turbo'ed his NA EJ22 (but it was still in his impreza OBS). he raced it and did very well. he removed all the turbo stuff years ago and is still driving the vehicle. he always comments about how well that car did and it's still running great. i don't know specifics though on the turbo set up or psi. he mentioned that his EJ22 was easy, i believe there is an easily accessible oil port for supplying the turbo, but i never understood where that is.

ha ha, thanks for humor, i like it. not a huge fan of letting the inners go. of course i don't recommend it, but they can last awhile if you avoid off road and depending what your state uses in the winter. i wouldn't risk it on the inner one as much though, they tend to get very bad vibrations and seem to go downhill quicker...at least from what i've seen. the outer ones seem to be better at not causing problems, which is odd since they're the ones that move the most and look most likely to get contaminated. i drove in the sand with broken boots before...talk about a quick way to destroy your axles. i still made the 800 mile trip home, but it was noisey. no need to turn the wheel to hear the clicking! i agree with MWE, i just bought a bunch of them from those guys. i still wait until i go in there for something else though to change them. a number of guys on here rave about the GCK axles as well, they are new and available at auto parts stores.

i tried to talk a guy out of doing a spray can paint job on his RX7. he did it anyway and proved me wrong. it's a bit more expensive, this cost him $64 and looks rediculously good. if cheap paint jobs interest you, take a look at this because i know this kid and saw the car. it was his first time ever painting a car and he has very little mechanical background: http://xt6.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1440&highlight=dollar

subaru's are great cars, that is a good vehicle, but 233k is a lot of miles. you'll need to figure out wants, finances and needs for yourself. risk creeps up substantially at this milegae, there are very few 300k vehicles out there. i'm not saying it's always because they can't make it, but it's note worthy. at least it's a manual transmission. this needs work to be reliable, if that matters to you. the timing belt has to be pulled off. even if it's been replaced, that's too many miles to assume the previous mechanic did the job right. those timing tensioners and pulleys need to be inspected. unless they were replaced (unlikely), it is highly likely that some of the pulleys need replaced. i just did a 83,000 mile 2.5 recently and one of the pulleys needed replaced. this is an interference engine, if the timing belt breaks your engine will be trashed...or need major internal repairs. a new belt isn't enough on a 233k 10 year old vehicle, as old pulleys and tensioners can cause timing belt failure. if you are still considering this vehicle...go look at it and see if the headgaskets have been replaced. you can tell by looking at the exposed part of the headgasket behind/under the power steering pump or under the vehicle. that would be nice, but if it's made it to 233k seems like whatever is in there is holding up well! the other one is way too expensive at $2,000, that's crazy talk. cars that need work do NOT sell for "KBB minus the repair costs". no way. that car is worth $500 - $800. i wouldn't pay any more than $500 for it around here, wagons are a dime a dozen. off whatever you're comfortable offering for it, they'll probably decline. come back in 2 months and if they haven't had it hauled away for scrap they'll sell it to you then. they'll have to get really lucky to get anywhere close to $2,000 for that. i see wagons all the time for $2,000 or less in running condition???

someone else mentioned that what i said won't work. they said the speed sensor works on pulses or something. the FSM shows one end going to ground...then the reed switch...then to the ECU. i was wondering if just grounding the wire that goes to the ECU would be enough? it seems to me i'd need something in there to mimick the resistance of the speed sensor. the speed sensor must vary something right...voltage or resistance, somehow differentiate different speeds? the FSM is very vague on the speed sensor, often ignoring it.

edit - i agree with nipper below - that's a lot of miles for a lot of work.