Gnuman

Hank, what you are facing is the CA Emmissions Test. Sctcrash is facing a safety test (sort of like our brake and light test, only more so. VA also has one that a car has to pass every couple of years as well). Do you need help with the Subie that you are considering? PM me if you would like me to have a look at it for you. Goldfish, Hank meant a 98, which is OBD II. That is called a typo.

Is there any info on the EPA milage for those engines? I'm wondering if the change in '97 to an interferance engine was worth it, and what could have induced the Subaru engineers to do it. . .

Only problem I can see is that it's off to one side, so one side of the engine will get more thaan the other side. Putting it in at the TB spreads it more evenly.

Clue. If you are getting any oil leakage in the area of the oil pump (which is driven directly by the crankshaft, and surrounds it at the front end), I would recomend pulling the oil pump off, getting a new O-ring, retorquing the screws on the driveplate, and replacing the seal. If you are also getting oil leakage at teh camshafts, I would put new seals in there while you have everything all apart. In addition, did you say you were replacing the water pump? If there is any doubt to it's condition, I would.

Bring it to me. I will get the old one out. PM me to set something up. . .

I take it, then, that Marshal was "not particularly pleased" with your advertisement, and pushed Guitar Player to can it?

Interesting. How far back? a link perhaps? You can PM or email it to me if you don't think anyone else would be interested. . .

Blitz, that Avitar of yours has bugged me for a while now. . . What is that character? It almost looks like an O2 sensor, but not quite. . . Can you tell me more about this "cold noise" that you mention as well? This is the first I've heard of it. . .

You too? Not only does my gas guage wander all over the place (mostly depending on how hard I corner), my Low Fuel Indicator "plays peekaboo" at me going on and off several times before finally going on hard, quite a few miles down the road. I also hit the trip meter when I fill up and generally get about 300-350 miles out of a tank with a good reserve left in the tank as well (most I have ever put in the tank was 14.5 gal, and it holds 15.8). I'm also in the Bay Area, and travel all over the place going out to fix peoples Subarus (If I'm lucky) or other cars (if I'm not so lucky. . . Every time i work on annother kind of car, I love my Subaru more). I also do a bit of towing, and I go into the mountains a bit as well. I can get into The City twice (75 miles one way) twice on a tank comfortably. Do the calculations others have mentioned and if you are getting below 20MPG, give me a PM. I can drive out there and help you find the problem.

OK, just how does that fit together? If you want to up the displacement without widening the engine, you make larger bores, without touching the stroke. That much I understand, but how does that require the skirts to be shorter? Or am I missing something here?

Unfortunately, the '93 does not have the Aux port in the front. That ended with '91. I have it in my '92 because I put a '91 radio in there with the factory CD player (works great, and looks factory original, except that I have a port that that year did not have)

I still have enough faith in my country that I doubt that post could get the site shut down, by itself anyway. In order for high gas prices to do any good, however, you need a feasable alternative to the single passenger car. In most of the country, that is simply not in place, and will not be in the near future. By the time it is, it may be too late to do any good. More important than the question of whether Subaru has peaked, look at the fact that oil production has peaked. We are running out. What we need is an alternative to Dino Oil to use as fuel. Preferably one that produces less pollution when burned, and will run in the older cars as well as new cars made to use it. . . Oh, and when Great Big SUV like cars stop being a status symbol, there will be less people driving them, and less companies making them (often with less than optimal results)

Make sure they resurface the flywheel, and have them check the ball joints, CV boots and steering rack boots. The clutch is replaced by dropping the tranny so there is not a whole lot exposed, unless they find a leak somewhere (rare). Oh, and have them check out (and top off) the clutch master cyl, and slave cyl, just to be sure. The back of the engine does not have a lot to be worried about. Most of that is on the front where it is easy to get at.

OK, you guys are talking about a rust problem. . . We dont get a lot of that in California, thankfully. . . When I did mine, it was pop pot the pinch bolt, take a big hammer to knock it out of the knuckle (by banging on the control arm, then take the same hammer and a pickle-fork to knock the tapered part out of the arm (this ball joint is not going back in, so I do not care about the grease shroud. . .) Total time of about a half hour per side. . . Did it the same time I replaced my clutch, in fact. . . Now that was fun. . . Trying to wrestle a tranny jack, with tranny on it, on a sloping driveway and get it to line up with the pilot berring. . . That took two days. . . .

Back to the original question: Has Subaru "peaked"? Yes, they have. Many times, and they will again, many times. All car companies do this, and all will continue to do so. I love my Legacy, and I'm sure that I would love a new one, but not as much. Soon, Subaru will be on the upswing again, when they get the EJ25 ironed out perhaps. . . Who knows, perhaps they will create annother revolutionary car like the Legacy was when introduced? I do know this much, however: You cannot count Subaru out by a long shot. They still have quite a few rabbits left to pull out of thier collective hats. . . and the ability to do the pulling.

That will be a late model EJ22. One notch less reliable than the earlier ones (in a late model, if you loose your timing belt, you will have an expensive engine repair. In the earlier ones the valves do not travel into the area that the pistons travel into, so this does not happen)

16" alloy, IIRC. . . I'll check tomorrow to be sure. I'm sure of the alloy part, not the diameter. . .

Porsche is a German word meaning "Push here". That is why they plaster it all over the back of thier cars. . . .

OK, first the bad news: it sounds like your halfshaft is siezed to the hub. The best way to get it out when it is like that is to pull the whole knuckle off and take it all to a machine shop and have it pressed out. (you will need to remove it from the strut, and the tie-rod end, and remove the inner CV joint as well) On a better note, you can turn the halfshaft so you get a good shot at the pin holding the inner joint to the tranny axle. You need a 3/16 drift punch and a good ball-peen hammer to drive out the pin. Taking off the header pipes will make this all much easier (including taking out the O2 sensor). When you are done, you will need a good alignment done on the front end at least.

OK, the 2.5L engines have gone through three revisions since they were introduced: Phase I engines had an internal head gasket leak problem where the coolant would start leaking into the combustion chanber. Phase II engines had an external coolant leak, with a lower rate of incidence than the problem with the Phase I (which makes sense, as with an external leak there is not the combustion pressures to contend with). The jury is still out on the Phase III 2.5L engines as they are too new to begin having problems. The first gen Legacies used the EJ22 (2.2l) engine, and it was all but bulletproof, with the vast majority going well over 200K miles with no major repairs. in '97 Subaru redesigned the EJ22 to give a bit more power, and boost the gas milage a bit. The downside of this redesign was that they turned a "non-interference" engine into an "interference" engine, in that if tbe cam timing belt broke, the valves could come into contact with the moving pistons (interference) causing major damage to the engine. This lowers reliability a small bit, in that you have to watch the replacement interval of the timing belt a bit more closely on these engines (60K miles on federal models, 105K on CA models) to prevent this type of problem. What year Outback sport are you talking about? The Outback is based on the legacy platform, while the Outback Sport is based on the Imprezza platform (more of a high performance platform than the Legacy which is designed as a family car). In an earlier thread, you asked how the H4 form factor compares to an "inline 4". The H4 and H6 form factors are called Boxer engines, and have been in use since WWII (before both of our times), and they are used in all sorts of vehicles, with a proven track record of reliability across the board. "Bottom end" (crank and piston rod bearing) problems are very rare in this engine, and it delivers a lot of smooth power per liter compared to (for instance) the "inline" or "V" engines that you are comparing them to. On the other hand, I have only seen them in a standard mounting (with the transmission behind them) and not in a "transverse" mounting (with the transmission on the left or right when viewed from the front of the car). In that configuration (which translates literally to "mounted sideways") they would be very dificult to work on as the rear facing head and associated parts (plugs and such) would be very hard to get at. If that is a bit long winded, I'm sorry. I just wanted you to have as much info as you could get to make your decisions with. . .

In the recent past, I have seen both sides of this issue. On one car I was working on many of the bolts were not tightened correctly (well, at all, really) and the car was throwing one holy hissy fit with the CEL (the guy that bought it drove it home on what turned out to be two cyls, as the other two plugs were not even finger tight, and on one of them the plug wire was not connected). On the other engine that I was working on, the crank pulley was tightened way too much, and we had a heckuva time getting it off. . .

OK, all Legacies are MPFI, and this car has a solid engine (well the Ej22 that is in this car is generally bulletproof, but you do have to consider the age of the car). How about a definition of "nice shape"? Rust? Engine run good? Dents? What is the climate like where you live? lots of snow (in which case, you would probably want AWD)? If the car is solid (IIRC, OK is in the rust belt) then 1500 is a good price. You can build it up later. . .

And how many Hondas are there on the roads compared to Subarus? Same question for the Chevy. . . Granted, my 92 wagon is fairly bulletproof in most respects. . . OK, almost all redspects (it will dent just like any other car when hit. . . it just handles better so it dosn't get hit as often Oh, and there is the towing issue, but honestly, how often does that happen. . . With me it is much more likely that I'm towing someone else, as I carry a tow rope in my car due to a really bad stretch of road on my commute ( very dark due to no streetlights, hilly, and lots of curves.) .

When I get real low on fuel, my idiot light plays "peekaboo" with me several times before coming on and staying on. never ran dry. Most I've had room for in the tank is 14.5 gal in a 15.8gal tank. The indicator light is seperate from the guage senders (there are two of them), and is usually more accurate. As for how it could harm the cat? well this is a stretch, but if the battery runs slow enough to not be able to fire the spark plugs (some electronic ignition units are picky about voltage levels), but the injectors are still pumping gas, then you are throwing raw fuel down into the cat, and when you finally get a jump and get the engine started, then that raw fuel burns in the cat and cooks it. Like I said, a stretch. . . Only harm I have ever heard of from running dry was that you could burn out the pump or drain the battery (while trying to get gas to the injectors) on a dry system. This was only mentioned on American Iron, and I'd be willing to bet that our Subies are made of sturdier stuff than that. . . I mean, this was told to me when 100K miles was considered a long time for a car to last. . .

phunlover, please do not let one bad apple ruin the whole barrel for you. Obviously, this one slipped by QC, but generally Subarus are a very good car all around. You may want to try a later model year as well. IIRC, there were a few changes in the '05 powerplants. . .