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I think the way most people like to do it is to cover all the electrical parts you can with plastic bags, use a rag and some Simple Green to scrub, and then rinse it off with low-pressure water. I've never done that though; if I suspect a particular area I often just use brake cleaner.

Yeah, I'm with Laurel -- if the smoke is coming out the scoop it's probably not a dying turbo. I'd expect failing turbo seals to toss oil into the intake airstream, causing smoke at the tailpipe rather than out the chimney. Is the turbo louder than normal? Actually, smoke from any part of the engine bay can find its way out the hood scoop. When my valve cover gaskets on my 97 Legacy GT were leaky the scoop would smoke at stoplights. It could also be one of the oil lines on the turbo. If it's the feed line, the copper gaskets are pretty easy to replace. Valve cover gaskets are pretty easy too. So, yeah, degreasing the engine bay and then seeing where the oil appears sounds like a good idea. I don't want to give you bad advice, so realize that this is a completely unprofessional opinion, but it seems to me that if you can stand the smoke and if you check the oil level often, this shouldn't be a show-stopper for your 3000-mile trip. Of course, it'd be way better for everyone if you could fix it before leaving.

No problem.

Yes, it is most certainly for the drain plug. The only gasket for the filter is the rubber ring that comes already on the filter. Which dealer was this?! Sounds like what I'd expect from Stohlman's, based on my experience...

I'd be wary of any "wet look" product that lasts through rain... that would mean it's oil-based, which makes me nervous about its effect on your tires' grip.

Occasionally, yes.

Emailing you now...

Wait a minute -- I don't think that's right. A higher offset moves the rim further into the wheel well. Look at the diagram; it should make that clear. A higher offset puts the centerline of the wheel further away from the mounting surface. Spacers decrease offset. That's what made it hard to find rims in the US for Subarus before WRX-mania. Subarus use a very high offset, and there isn't a good way to adapt a low-offset wheel.

And the Purolator PCV valve is part number PV1019, at least in North America.

Josh - I'm an electrical guru? Cool. EOppegaard - There are two sensible approaches I can think of (both are untested since I just came up with them): 1) Use the cruise control actuator. If you want to take this approach give me a few days and I'll try to figure out how that would work. I personally think this would be a really cool way to do it. 2) Install another solenoid in parallel with the stock IAC valve. You could tap the brake booster hose (before the check valve built into the hose) and drill a hole in the plastic intake pipe and install a barbed fitting on it. Or maybe just tee off the IAC hose or a PCV hose instead of the latter. Then connect them with a solenoid controlled by a switch in the passenger compartment. If you want a spare plastic intake pipe and to experiment with and some solenoids that look like they might be appropriate, I think I can help you out. PM me if you're interested. If you go this route, you should probably also trick the ECU into thinking the throttle is open (you just need to ground the idle switch wire), since otherwise it will try to adjust IAC valve duty cycle to bring idle back down to spec. Even if the idle speed when it does this is acceptable, it will screw up the learned idle control parameters when you switch the high idle off.