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After an excruiating wait from the stealership (and $20 worth of $5 rubber bits), I put the o-rings on the injector and re-installed. Oddly enough, the battery was completely dead (no doors open, and I checked the newbie switch). The car had been sitting for a little less than a week, but I still found that kind of strange. I suppose the battery could just be getting somewhat weak since I'm only showing about .3 amps being drawn with the key off. After charging up the battery though, I couldn't get it to start. I tried to roll-start it and when I dumped the clutch, it locked up all four and screeched to a halt. So, I started pulling plugs and the plug on the cylinder with the formerly leaky injector was soaked in fuel. After disconnecting the battery, I put a wrench on the crank pulley and hand-rotated the engine, causing fuel to geyser out of the open spark plug thread. Hydrolocked. After re-installing the plug, the car started up just fine, if a bit rough at first. I drove it around to charge the battery, and once I got it back to the garage, I pulled the battery cable. I put the battery cable back on this morning, and the CEL was off, and the car runs great once again.

'96 Legacy L AWD Wagon with its original 2.2, 110k on the clock. I started getting a very strong fuel odor in the cabin. I haven't had much time to work with it, so I wasn't able to check it out until after it sat all night. When I checked, there was no fuel anywhere, but once I started it up, the odor was back. I drove it this way for another, oh, 100-200 miles with no noticible decrease in fuel consumption, or any other symptom that there could be a problem. On the way home last night, I used about a third of a tank to go 40 miles and gas was, quite literally, dripping on the ground as I drove up the driveway. Upon inspection, fuel was pooling on the head under the injector. When I turned the key back to the run position, fuel appeared to be streaming from under the cover that holds the injector in place. My first observation was that the bolts that hold the cover on the injector were very loose -- less than finger-tight. I tightened them and tried again with the same fuel leakage. After disconnecting the wiring and removing the bolts, I pulled the injector and inspected it. I didn't see any obvious cracks in the body of it, but the o-ring appeared to have a hunk missing out of it. I put the injector back in and closed it up for the night and vowed to hit KOI today and grab a new set of o-rings and a new top seal for it. This morning, however, I thought it might be a good idea to test *just* to make sure. I put the top seal on, and bolted the injector cover back on. Without connecting the wiring harness, I turned the key to the "run" position, but did not start the motor. No fuel leaking, but I heard the pump pressurizing the system. I turned the key off, connected the wiring harness, and then turned it back to "run", again, without starting it. No fuel leak. At this point, I'm getting a little miffed that it's not leaking, so I start the motor. Still no leak, but the motor was running slightly rough and the CEL was lit. It didn't seem to be sputtering so much as the idle speed was hunting -- it would idle at 1200 for a second, then drop to 800, then back up to 1000, drop to 700, rise back to 1200, and then I shut her down. I don't have an OBD-II decoder in my garage (although, I really need to get one at this point), and I was out of time before I had to get myself to work, but I'm a little baffled by the lack of a leak the second time around. I'm planning on picking up the new o-ring set tonight, replacing it, pulling the negative battery cable for fifteen minutes or so, and then giving it another try to see if that does stops the gush of fuel and the erratic idling. My thought there is that the computer was tripped to a missing injector when I put it to the run position with the harness disconnected, and that by clearing it out via removing power to the ecu, it will start fresh and everything it expects to see will be in place. I'm explaining away the lack of a leak the second time by just a lucky placement of the o-ring when it went back in so that it's not in a position where the damage is causing a leak yet. The reason for this post, though, is that I'm not sure on either of those counts, and I'm looking for any other WAGs or anything else I should check or be wary of. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Try lightsout.org for some tips. They've got some procedures that might still be valid. You might also check out their "studies" link. They've got links to many studies that have been done on DRLs as well as some good analysis of those reports.

I'm not really into slushboxes, but in this case, I'm going to have to give my vote to the auto tranny. With the extra weight of a trailer, you'll wind up burning more clutch than usual to get going from a stop. Especially on those hilly raods! One thing I would consider, though, is looking into a transmission fluid cooler, if the Subaru 4EAT's don't have them already (I've never cared enough about an auto tranny to find out). If you're not doing a lot of work with your trailer, you're probably okay, but you will certainly extend the life of your transmission.

I second the OEM FSM for the car. Chilton's tends to be a little too generic, and Haynes seems to go into excruciating detail on dumb things ("step 574: remove the top left bolt holding the hood to the hinge by turning anti-clockwise. step 575: remove the bottom left bolt holding the hood...") and gloss over really important steps that I need some guidance with ("step 34: put the engine on a stand. step 35: overhaul engine. step 36: re-install engine"). Having both the Haynes and the Chilton's, though, can usually get you through.

Kind of odd. I just bought a '96 Legacy L wagon off of eBay about a month ago. That seller had also listed it as a 1.8l motor. According to every bit of research I could find, the only way you could get a Legacy L wagon was with a 2.2l. Carfax said the car had a 2.2, and when I picked up the car, sure enough, it had the EJ22. Weird seeing that twice, though...

I had an '84 'vette (che-, not cor-) some years ago that had the same problem. The switch that works the brakes was faulty. Should be a easy-to-find switch and a cinch to fix. The switch that nearly every automaker uses is one that's kind of backwards -- when the little button is depressed it's off, otherwise it's on. Try Advance auto, and ask for a GP Sorensen 375039. (That's the stoplight switch for a '96 Legacy. It's about six bucks.)

Much cleaner on this one. =) No problems, no acccidents, only one owner, and it has onstar.

I'd paste in the full report... but it's too long and has too many pretty pictures. Anyway, carfax says it was originally a rental car, 4 owners, and in august of 2001, was involved in a accident in Missouri -- left side inpact with a parked car. It failed emissions in 2004 in IL and was sold a couple times thereafter.

Speaking of headgaskets... be wary of the warranty. I did a lot of research on those 3rd-party insurance policies ("extended warranties") and found that many of them did not cover gaskets unless it had to be replaced during the normal repair of some other internally lubricated part, and that the repair would not be covered if it was caused by a bad gasket. I bought my '96 wagon used on eBay and opted to spend an additional $200 for a 1yr insurance policy on he drivetrain. It does cover gaskets, and, actually, most "normal" drivetrain failures, and since it was an eBay car, I figured it was worth an extra few bucks since I couldn't physically inspect the car myself. I wouldn't have paid much more for the insurance, though, since I could, like someone else said, easily put the money in a savings account and waited for something to break. But I figured that since even with the insurance I was pretty solidly under book value, it was probably a cheap peace of mind.

You can go buy an OBDII code reader... but if you hit up an Autozone, they'll read them for you, gratis. Advance Auto Parts used to do that, but the last couple times I went to the one in Covington, they grudgingly pulled their reader from behind the counter and did it, while telling me that they didn't really do that anymore, since someone walked off with their code reader a while back.

Are you 100% sure that the pedal is travelling at first? I've seen similar problems on other cars where the pedal takes an unusual amount of power to get it moving in the first place and then slams down to the floor all of a sudden-like. In those cases, the butterfly valve in the throttle body has worn a wee groove in the casting so that the valve gets a little bit stuck. When this happens, you can adjust the valve a little so that it's out of it's groove, but eventually you run out of adjustment and have to replace the throttle body. Just something to check...

Without going to any crazy extremes, the first thing I do when I bring in a used car is this list: New plugs New wires Distributor cap & rotor on cars that still have those things Oil and filter change (I use synth, but not for miliage improvements. I've never been able to measure a difference, personally). New air filter Most importantly: Check tire pressure on all five wheels. I use OE replacements for all of those at first since my goal is to get the car caught up on its service when its service history is unknown to me. Once it's operating as the factory intended, I'll run 10-20 tanks of gas on "normal" day-to-day driving and then start trying new products, like better burning plugs or higher-flow air filters, to see if I get an improvement. The two biggest boosts, though, will be making sure your tires are properply inflated, and the way you drive the car. I've been able to stretch a gallon of gas a couple extra miles by using the "progressive shifting" technique. Careful with that though, since finding that line where the car is lugging can take a little bit of time. (If you've got a slushbox ignore that advice because it doesn't apply. The car knows better and will shift when it's ready. )

If you figure that there have been, basically, 5 years and 2 months since Nov. 1, 1999, and that would be about 262 weeks, working 8 days a week, we've got 1310 days to account for. That would be 335 miles a day, give or take, which, given an eight hour day would only be an average speed of 41 mph. That's not unreasonable at all if you're buzzing "all over the state" on a daily basis. Granted, you have to take holidays out of that equation, but when you consider that weekends are completely unaccounted for, I think it becomes quite reasonable! My wife's stepdad is a truck driver, and it never ceases to amaze me how anyone who drives as a profession can rack up an unbeleivable amount of miles. What would be really nice, though, would be to get his miliage checks! Figure the IRS has said about 32.5 cents per mile for the last few years, so if he ran every single mile for work, we're talking about $142k in tax-free reimbursement!

I can't speak to the clutch for the 2.2l, but my old GL wagon got an Exedy clutch kit, my Saturn got on Exedy kit, and my RX-7 just recently got an Exedy kit. When it's time for my Legacy wagon, it'll probably get an Exedy kit as well. They're not anything real special, but they're good OE replacements and they're not real expensive. Do yourself a favor though and get the full kit. It's worth the extra couple bucks and the extra 30 minutes to do the bearings while you're in there anyway.