Vargrklaw

Huh, hadn't thought of using the starter to do that job. Will keep that in mind! And yeah, I'd have the plugs out for sure. Can only imagine how badly that would end up should the engine start

I'll have to pick up a socket soon then and take the rest of it apart to get the entire cam cover off since it's one piece aside from the small section on the driver side. Can't do it now, have to wait a while for work to slow back down :/

So, I pulled the fans and driver's side timing cover off and this is what I've found. Didn't pull the whole cover and pulleys off since I don't have a socket and bar big enough for the balancer pulley yet. With the cam mark aligned, the notches on the balancer are around 20-30 degrees retarded? Is that normal?

I was hoping to avoid anything with timing, but might as well check it. Seems easy enough even with the motor in the car. Pull radiator and fans to make more room?

Haha I hate to be that guy, but I again don't know what those mean, STFT and LTFT. This much in depth troubleshooting is new to me.

What do you mean by the fuel trims? As far as any vacuum leaks, I've sprayed all around the engine bay with carb clean to see if anything made the RPM change and never found anything.

Did more poking around looking for anything obvious I may have missed, but nothing jumped out at me. I went for a drive around the block a few times with my phone screen recording Torque Pro as I went along to capture the sensors I have on display. I wish I had added a throttle position display, but forgot. It was about an 8 minute drive, I've sped the video up 2x. To me, the only concerning thing I was seeing was the AFR spiking way up to 20+ when I let off the gas. Could be normal, just never monitored it on any other car before. Engine vibration is happening between roughly 2000 to 3000 RPM. Hopefully this will help out, I'm stumped at this point.

Plugs are also NGK. I do have a BT adapter and Torque Pro already and have used it to see what's going on. The thing that stood out to me most was it seemed to me like it's running pretty lean. AF ratio showed around 14-14.5 at idle, not sure what's normal and not. I'll drive around and screen record Torque to share that, hopefully that'll be helpful.

Hi, all. I just recently picked up an '06 Outback 2.5 (non-XT) and have been working on getting it back on the road. It hasn't sat long at all, couple months at most before I bought it. Previous owner parked it after it wouldn't pass CA smog due to a check engine light, turns out it was a bad oil pressure switch on the passenger side VVT solenoid. Got that replaced, no CEL now, however the engine isn't running quite right. At idle, if I give it gas, it hesitates and shakes some like it's about to stall for maybe a half second before it picks up. When driving, I'll feel the engine shaking/vibrating when accelerating even modestly just about through the entire RPM range. If I let off, the shaking stops immediately, same if I pop it in neutral. It seems to be idling fine around 750-800rpm. There's a bit of blue smoke on start up after it's been sitting overnight, not a lot but a small puff. So far, I've replaced the air filter, cleaned the back side of the throttle body (facing the firewall), cleaned the MAF sensor and put a bottle of fuel system cleaner in the tank. I went through and cleaned my battery connections, ground points that I could find, and MAF sensor. No oil on the plug leads or plug bodies. Plugs themselves looked good, not black or anything unusual. Nothing seemed to make any impact on the hesitation I'm experiencing. I took this short 1 minute video sitting still to show what the RPM does with different throttle input. If you roll on gentle, it picks up fine but quickly pressing the gas makes it shudder and bog some before it catches up. You can definitely hear the shudder and see it by the shadow on the middle of the wheel.