GeneralDisorder

The EJ pulley/balancer's are not an interferance fit - you should not have to use anything but your two hands to slip it over the crank nose. If it's not fitting then there is a burr or corrosion, etc. Inspect carefully. GD

The 4 speed is the only real weakness of that car (the Hitachi carb isn't great either - swap to a Weber 32/36 DGV ) - if you swap it to an '85 to '89 5 speed dual-range you can get half a million miles out of them with good engine maintenance. GD

When I did my first set many years ago all I had was a dremel tool with a carbide burr and a single-speed 1/2" drill that was older than my father. Patience and attention to detail is what is required. I drilled the holes - piloted them with 1/8" through the center punch and then 1/4", and then up to the lug size. Then I carefully beveled the holes with my dremel tool - I made a small 60* gauge from a bit of sheet metal with my tin snips and checked my work as went. They run straight and true and all my lugs are bevel-side toward the wheel . GD

As SW says - you don't need a press. And you don't even have to remove the knuckle from the car. Just remove the axle, drift out the old bearings (brass punch works well), clean everything and install the new bearings and seals. Then just reinstall the axle. Get your bearings from a BEARING SUPPLIER - not from the auto parts store. They are much cheaper and bearing suppliers know how to handle bearings - auto parts people are much more likely to drop one and then put it back on the shelf. For a couple dollars more you can get 6207-2RS bearings which are sealed and pre-greased. Usually about $12 each. You should be able to do the entire job for about $35 for the two bearings and new seals and it takes about 1 to 2 hours. GD

You have to get the car up high enough to drop it - I use 6 ton jack stands. The tranny's are pretty heavy so it's best if you can get a transmission jack - I use the harbor frieght $80 one and it works fine. I used to wrestle them in by hand but that's just too much frustration. Wrestleing the tranny out and in again is always a chore - this is why most of us pull engines for clutch jobs rather than mess with that transmission . Only time I remove transmissions is to replace or rebuild one. It's just that much of a pain. I can do them in about 4 hours. But I've done a lot of them. GD

Sounds like a ticking hydraulic lifter. An easy upgrade would be to install the '97/'98 solid lifter rocker arrangement and just eliminate them. Acceleration and a cold engine both increase oil pressure - thus the lifter doesn't tick when fully inflated. GD

They may not have surfaced the flywheel when the clutch was done before - leading to premature slippage, etc. I wonder it they also reused the clutch plate and only replaced the disc . Hhhmmmm It's sounding like the clutch job was hokey considering the price and the issues you are having. When *I* do them it rarely comes in under $500 for a full clutch job with new parts, resurfaced flywheel, and oil seperator plate (and occasionally rear main) replacement..... got to figure $250 in parts and then you know my labor rate. I'm cheap compared to most any shop so I can't see how they could have done a quality job for what you paid. Discount Import Parts - see how much a clutch is there. I'll make you a good deal on pulling the engine and installing a new setup. I have an EJ flywheel we can have resurfaced and ready to go in so there will only be an afternoon of downtime. GD

Transmission input shaft bearing - the rear one. Been there, done that. Find a used tranny (not hard). GD

I could see how it could add up to that easily. You have an H6 - that's going to be an expensive unit to maintain simply because there aren't as many of them - thus parts are more expensive from a supply/demand point of view and that engine is very tight to work on - especially around the spark plugs and valve cover area. Add in more labor for the oil cooler, etc and you are right in the ball-park. Is it a rip-off? Absolutely. But of course you have the choice of doing it yourself and it's going to be a frustrating job I'll tell you that right now . You'll spend an entire afternoon just getting the plugs out on your first go-around with that engine . GD

So what is wrong with the knuckle? It's a peice of cast steel and there's really not much that can go wrong there. Is it a wheel bearing problem? They take 6207 ball bearings (2 per side) - $10 each at your local bearing house. If the seals aren't nasty you can reuse them if you use a drift to drive out the bearings and push the seals out - or they are about $6 each. So what's the issue exactly? That car is what we call an "EA81" which refers to the engine. These cars are very near bulletproof - simple and cheap to repair and maintain. There is almost nothing on the road so simple and reliable in the light 4WD vehicle catagory..... GD

The ratio of time in storage to mileage for service and maintenance depends entirely on *how* the vehicle is stored. We had cold-storage procedures in the military that allowed equipment to be stored for long periods of time while suspending the maintenance program on it. An hour-meter would be most helpful to determine when fluids should be changed. As long as all trips the car is used for allow it to reach operating temp and stay there for a good 15 minutes or longer you should be fine. Short trips that don't allow full operating temp to be reached cause serious problems and a more rigorous maintenence schedule has to be adopted. GD

The term "spindle" refers to..... well basically nothing on a Subaru unless you are talking about the rear 4WD stub shaft that drives the hub from the rear axle. That is a spindle in the usual sense of the word. I can't see how that solid chunk of steel would have "failed" and need to be replaced unless you are also going to be replacing a lot of other stuff that got broken in the process of getting hit by that train...... What are you talking about? Front or rear? Axle? Hub? Knuckle? Wheel bearings?!?! No way to tell you what to do since that's not consistent with Subaru parts terminology nor does it ring any bells with my knowledge of machinery in general as it relates to a Subaru drivetrain. More info required . GD

That only applies to '98s - the '99 and up Foresters got the SOHC engine so they are completely different animals. I would avoid the '98s as that is the DOHC EJ25D and has more serious HG issues than the SOHC engine on the '99 and up. It's also more expensive to work on. How you can think the Forester is higher quality (based on the cheap Impreza) than a '99 OBW is beyond me. There's little actual difference except the OBW is a higher end model and better appointed usually. GD

EA82 rear springs are WAY smaller diameter than EA front springs. I doubt anything would swap between the two. As far as stiffer but same height - I would fab up some mounts for an air-shock. GD

Head gaskets and rear wheel bearings. I have a '99 Forester with 242k on it and it's doing just fine. If you change to the upgraded head gaskets and install the Legacy rear wheel bearings it will be just as reliable as any other Subaru IMO. GD

Run it to operating temp once a week and install an hour-meter. Change the oil every 50 hours of operation. GD

When you see that it's getting too hot and in danger of burning through - make your weld wider and bring more of the base metal into the weld path. You want to move faster over thinner sections (like where the joint is located - there will always be a tiny gap here no matter how well you fit them) and get back into the pipe - never stay in one place - you want short overlapping loops that return to the slightly cooled section you just went over (that's now thicker) - it's not going to cool enough in that short time for slag to form and be included in the weld. The devious thing about flux-core is that you MUST run a bead. If you peck at it with little spot welds (which I have done with gas on really thin stuff and things like expanded metal grating, etc) you have to stop and clean each little spot before proceeding and that's just not practical. This is why doing thin stuff with flux core is so freakin hard. Experience with thicker stuff will help - try getting some small peices of 1/8" plate and welding them at right angles to each other - called a T-joint weld. When you can get your T-joints to lay concave in the center with no undercutting on either side and lay down like a "stack of dimes" you are doing good. There should be no "hump" to the center of the weld on a joint like that. A hump indicates staying too long in the center and not incorporating the base metal - this is often accompanied by "undercutting" the base metal - usually on the vertical section of the joint because gravity pulls the puddle down. You have to "wash" the puddle up the side and stay on the base metal for longer than you stay in the center. Travel speed on each section of your "loops" is very important...... I'm probably just confusing you. Did any of that help without pictures? For the exhaust project - it might also help you to get an exhaust pipe expander from harbor frieght so you can make one section slip over the next - this will give you a thicker base metal upon which to weld - double the thickness at the joint. GD

Get the belts and pulley set from ebay - like $65 or something for both tensioners, the idler, and both belts. Get yourself a set of cam seals, a crank seal, and an oil pump seal kit from the dealer. Ditch the timing belt covers. Should be able to do it for well under $100 with parts and coolant. Takes about 2 to 4 hours to replace them and no internal damage can result from them breaking so if that's all that's wrong with it I say go ahead and replace them. GD

That sounds alright actually. Especially when running the machine on a low setting. They generally reccomend a 40 or 50 amp for a 220v machine though. I have a 40 amp dedicated breaker going to mine. I built a 50' 8 AWG extension cord that allows me freedom of movement - best to build your own from SOOW cord. It makes the best extension cords ever! It's so flexible it's unreal. It's less stiff than all of my 14 and 12 AWG 110v cords . You might have an experienced welder check out the machine and give it a quick run - if it's not working right you might never get it to weld decent. It would be good peice of mind to know that it's you and not the machine . Going off your pic there I see a lot of spatter. You need to practice your puddle control and make little loops or C shapes as you move. Pay attention to the puddle not the arc. GD

Sounds like piston slap to me. GD

One thing you may not have considered - your power supply to the welder. With a 220v machine it's very critical that proper wire sizing be used to supply it including any extension cords. What's your setup for power supply to the machine? GD

Ok - so I was cleaning the garage and I ran across a bit of exhaust tubing and my old Harbor Freight 110v MIG welder (already setup with Harbor Feight cheap-rump roast .035 flux core ) and I thought.... what the hell! I'll give it a whirl and see if I can make it burn and encourage you a bit..... so here's the result.... mind you this is with about 5 minutes of setup - I lopped off a couple 4" sections of pipe, ran them on the belt sander to clean off the aluminizing, clamped them to my welding table and went to town. I did a couple passes on a peice of scrap to get the settings down - minimum amperage, and a wire speed of about 1.5 or 2 on a scale of 0 to 10 (not sure exactly since I did it by feel): Not my best work - but reasonable given the cheap junk welder, cheap junk wire, and setup time I gave it. So I take it back - it's possible if you know how to run a welder. If you don't have the skill already it's not what I would sugest learning on. I let a skilled welder (WAY more skilled than me) friend of mine borrow this cheap machine for a job where he didn't have 220v availible and he said the same thing - he could make it run but he wouldn't give it to someone that didn't know how to weld because it would just frustrate them. Doing this under a car, overhead, etc will simply add to the frustration - I did this on a table, with the ability to run a short section, clean it, rotate the tubing, and run another section. I did this in three sections - you can see where I started and stopped and was frustrated with the flux-core's tendancy to not arc well into a cold joint. GD

You are going to have to *make* new lines to delete it vs. going to the junk yard and buying the line you rounded off to replace your's with. Or you could just use vice-grips on it from now on and call it good . Still less work than eliminating it. But if you really want it gone then you might be able to find some lines from an automatic that can just be pulled and installed into your car. I would have to look to see if that's possible or feasible. GD

Yeah - there's just something cool about the MT's. Though I do like the Reeves drive concept - it's a purely mechanical system (minus the electronic controls but still similar to the 4EAT and 5EAT) vs. the hybrid CVT's that have all kinds of electrical stuff going on with motor/generators and such. GD

It's pretty amusing how often broken bolts will just turn right out like that - basically all the tension was being applied by the head of the bolt - once that broke off the threaded part left in the crank was under no tension at all. I've seen this dozens of times. The left-handed drill bit's will often grab and spin the broken section right out. Rust is another issue entirely - different from breakage due to overtorqued or stretched bolts. I still use my left-hand bits but I have much better luck with welding a nut to the broken section - along with liberal application of penetrant, etc the heat from welding will often get them loosened up. Broken/rusted fastener extraction is an art-form all to itself - I like to think I'm pretty good at it but I know the east coast and midwest crowd here has more experience than I do . GD