nvu

slow knocking like that is valve train related; slow pace like sewing machine. piston/rods related knocking is faster like machine gun speed. it doesn't sound like rod knock here.

Yeah, the cover gasket almost never leaks. At least top up the fluid and see how much was missing.

check out some videos about new pad and rotor bedding if you've never done it before. when changing the pads, pull out all the slide pins and discard the plastic bushings on them. reassemble with synthetic brake grease if possible

My bad, the cable is detachable on your model from the hvac unit. You should be able to get to it by taking off the lower drivers side dash only.

The blender door cable is a solid core wire, they last forever. You'd have to take apart the hvac unit to replace the cable anyways. Maybe try cycling the door a lot once it's hot, hopefully it frees up things. Also no way to grease things as the mechanism is inside the hvac unit

I did have a really fubar'ed hole on one block and went with a 12mm stud and 12mm nut. Retapped it to fit the 12mm stud. The water pump housing needed drilling slightly larger, but the fix saved an otherwise usable ej25 block. Luckily the hole was in the center of the pump and barely had enough room to fit the 12mm nut. I'm probably using the wrong terminology, but what I mean was the stud that normally fits in where a 12mm hex head bolt goes. Really not sure the actual size of the stud was, the nut was 12mm hex head. Dug through camera, still have pics

btw, the coolant crosspipe bolts love to strip too, I've had bolts strip or snap when trying to loosen. anywhere there are 10mm bolts in aluminum touching coolant are prone to corrosion and have weakened threads. a little late on water pump tips, but i've had good results swapping a 10mm bolt for a 10mm stud and nut on the water pump. it makes installing with the gasket a breeze. you have to grind down the stud beforehand so it doesn't protrude into the t-belt area, ask me how i know.

It sounds strange the the overflow only bubbles as you start releasing the cap. Did you get the right cap that allows excess pressure to overflow into the bottle, but also lets water suck back into the radiator after the engine gets cold? For subaru OEM caps, the ones with the tabs are for the overflow bottle, they have a one way valve for back flow. The fully circular ones are pressure release only, no back flow. Aftermarket ones you have to check carefully.

For extra fun, those covid worker face shields were like $5 for a 15 pack at local swapmeet. Taped one to a helmet and it's been ghetto fabulous. Skater helmets are designed to be really comfortable for lying on concrete; the default position of many new skaters.

Doesn't look like there's room to get a torch properly in those legacy multilinks hubs, you'll probably make those bushings unhappy. They're 14mm bolts no? 1/2 in breaker bar and 1/2 socket good enough to loosen or break off bolts up to 17mm. Fun Btw, if you're ever under the car or working on your back, get a face shield.

get zinc coated rotors, centric gcx ones are nice, but any coated rotors are fine.

it's still good science

maybe it only works when the oil is tilted between 40 and 60 degrees

It's not a bolt on hub like the newer models so a press is needed. The bearing needs to be pressed in the knuckle first, then have the hub pressed on.

Looks like it'll work fine in dipstick hole. It's $17, just try it.

You can do it in the driveway next spark plug change, a compression tester and a remote starter switch is all you need. Clamp the switch on the starter and press to spin it. The key doesn't even need to be in ignition and you don't have to deal with hassle of removing fuel pump relays. Do the clamping with the battery unplugged, you don't want the starter kicking in while you're reaching behind trying to clamp things.

If you've gotten most of the upper engine apart, might as well do a compression test. Not having blowby and suddenly having a lot of blowby might point to cracked piston ringlands. It's peace of mind to have it done anyways.

While you're there, swap out the metal oil inlet pipe for a braided steel one. Those lines eventually crack near the joints if you fiddle with them to swap turbos.

The old 90's EJ20K turbo used thicker gaskets. The ones numbchux pointed out are the thin MLS ones that should work. When in doubt, measure the old gaskets.

It's the big bushing with the ears. If you didn't loosen the huge nut, it could be put back on car as is. No need marking anything. If you did loosen the huge nut, put everything back on car loosely torqued. Load up the suspension, paint a line straight across the bushing to the arm. Take everything off and torque the big nut 180ftlb with the paint mark lined up. You can reassemble the rest pretty straight forward, and load up the suspension again to get the big bushing ears to line up to the chassis.

Ball joints and endlinks you can full torque since they can swivel independently. The bushing bolts should be fully torqued with the suspension loaded. You can get away with padding wood under the knuckle and raising it with floor jack just until it starts lifting the car. Figure out how to do this without having to climb under the car. The biggest nut for the rear bushing will be a pain to torque on car. There's no clearance to fit a socket and torque wrench on there. You can use a special offset socket. Or finger tighten, put it on car and load suspension with floor jack. Mark the position of the bushing relative to control arm. Take everything off and full torque.

$1200 is kinda steep for a bearing job. These newer style cartridge bearings are easier to DIY since you don't need a press. Probably your biggest sticking point is loosening/tightening the axle nut. Look up some videos and decide if you can do it yourself, it's quite possible. It's probably about $200 in tools. After that you can do a practice swap with any el cheapo $50 bearings, then go oem $150 bearings later. You'd still come in under $1200.

Did your car year come with an oil cooler? Was it replaced during the rebuild? Kinda straying off your main question about the heads but the engine's seen bearing failure, so replacing the oil cooler is a must on the next rebuild if your car has one.

At this point I'm guessing and throwing out ideas since changing the maf made some improvement. Check the connector and wiring itself to the maf. It might not apply here, on my turbo ej25 the fuel trims would drift too rich or lean over the years, I've always attributed that to dirty or failing maf and replaced a couple, it fixed the problem. Randomly on one of the refresh builds, I broke the tab on the connector and it wouldn't lock. Ordered a connector and found that one of the wires felt very stiff, it was the heater power for the maf. I chased it maybe 1ft into the loom until it got flexible like the rest of the wires. Then ordered a premade made pigtail and spliced it in. Haven't needed to replace any maf's since. Then again the loom ran near the turbo area of the bay.

You did mention you had a 96 ecu? Chasing the readiness monitor is near impossible with those as the programming was flawed. If you turn off the engine, it loses the readiness state. Even smog in CA has an exemption for 96 year subarus.