nvu

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/

Mark it with a paint pen. Or use a center punch. Then count the number of turns when taking it out. Do one side at a time. If it's really aluminium, it sounds like the bearings are so worn they're grinding away the case.

Are you talking about the stub axles? It's a tossup, some are spring clipped and you can just yank them off. Some are circlipped, no other way than opening the trans. The old one's broken anyways, cant hurt trying to yank them out. Put the cups and roll pin back on, pry at them and see if they pop out.

They look like wave spring washers maybe? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wave+spring+washers&iax=images&ia=images

Second this. If the previous two were composite gaskets and you're going to MLS, definitely have the heads resurfaced.

I'm no expert, but I haven't used copper spray on gaskets and had good results over the years.

The dogbone thing? They've all been the same length as far as I know, at least for EJ series.

Turbo needs a turbo capable ecu. All the turbo ecu's in your era need dohc. It's going to cost more both in money and time trying to turbo an sohc setup than dropping in a dohc longblock/ecu.