nvu

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.

No, smooth limp mode mainly points to electrical. Well you ruled out most mechanical issues. So fuel pump, injectors, spark, are in good shape. It doesn't rule out vacuum leaks though, in limp mode the car runs super rich and masks any leaks. It's mainly sensor and electrical issues now. It's not exactly the maf though. Unplugging the maf forces the ecu into limp mode, it ignores most sensors at this point. If you really want to make sure, you'd need to throw your maf into another car or borrow one from a working car.

You'd have to turn off the ecu first. With car completely off, unplug the maf, then start it. The car will be stuck in limp mode until you reset the ecu by unplugging the battery though. Then again, maybe the ej22 is different. This method works on later ej20/ej25 ecus. 2002-2005ish at least

Could your ecu still run in limp mode with the maf unplugged? Just as a sanity check, drive the car and warm it up until it does the stumbling in idle. Turn off the engine, unplug the maf, start it up again. It should be in limp mode and running rich, but should be idling smooth. If it's still rough, that could point to basic things like injectors, vacuum leaks, spark.

Not exactly that bolt, but similar issue. I've had bolts seize to the bushing collar. Depending on how accessible they are, my main go to is hammering at them with a beefy socket extension. I have a used impact extension just for punching things loose. The black ones that don't shatter, chrome ones do. They're also easy to grind to whatever shape needed. If you already have the replacement lateral link, you could cut out the old link with an angle grinder.

Is it P12003 and M700154?

https://parts.subaru.com/a/Subaru_2014_Forester-25L-CVT-Base-Premium/_54106_6029067/REAR-SUSPENSION/S13-201-01.html Not sure if this is your exact model, click around and see if you can find it. Or start from https://parts.subaru.com/