dave833

OK- I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this question, but I'm getting ready to pull an EJ22 from a '97 Impreza (built 6/96) w/auto trans. to put in a '97 2.5GT Legacy Wagon 5 speed. Can someone verify that it doesn't matter that it's coming out of an Impreza instead of a Legacy? Are there any other parts I'll need to swap? Thanks.

So I've got a '97 EJ25 with a rod knock and a '97 EJ22 with bent valves in one head and I'm wondering if I can put the two together- EJ25 heads on EJ22 block. Anybody done this? I couldn't find any definitive threads in my search.

I picked up a clean '97 Legacy GT wagon with a blown engine today and wondered what the options are for a higher performance transplant are. I know the easiest solution would be to drop an EJ22 in, but I'm worried about lack of power. On the other hand, I know there's one guy here (TomSVX?) who's put an EG33 H6 in a '99 OB SUS. What are the other options?

Occasionally at the junkyard I'll see a lower mileage newer car (in this case it was an '01 OBW) that's obviously had an engine fire. Of course the wiring, hoses, and anything else plastic was destroyed by the fire, but would fire cause damage to the internals making the bare engine unusable? The low miles would make it an appealing swap candidate if not for the fire damage. Has anyone reused a fire-damaged engine like that?

Lubing it was the first thing I did after jiggling the key around. Yes, you do have to push it in on the Legacy to turn it all the way off.

Fixed it with a rubber mallet! It was a suggestion I found on a Chrysler board, of all places. The key wasn't 'seated' in the ignition cylinder all the way, so I tapped it in (gently) with the hammer and it worked fine in all directions after that.

Ok, so my key's stuck in the ACC position on the ignition switch. I can turn it forward to start the car, but I can't turn it all the way off to remove the key. (The key actually comes out, but not where it's supposed to!) The car's a '95 Legacy L wagon with a manual transmission. I've tried spraying lube in the lock cylinder and wiggling the key pretty vigorously, but no luck. Anyone ever experienced this problem?

Yeah... planning to do the fronts, too, but somebody got to the front struts of my donor car before I did. (They also got the engine, transmission, rear hatch, carpet, fuel pump, radio, and assorted other odds and ends... all this from a car that had been out in the you-pull yard for just two days!)

OK... I've been reading lots of threads on strut swaps and I'm so confused. I've got a pair of '99 Outback Rear Strut/Spring assemblies I'd like to swap into my '95 L AWD. Is it a straight bolt-in swap, or do I need to change the strut tops and/or springs?

Does anybody know if the rear axles from a '95 Impreza 2.2 AWD 5 speed will fit on my '95 Legacy 2.2 AWD 5 speed? My rear axles are clicking- probably as a result of my recent torque bind episode and I have a chance to get some lo-mile ones from a '95 Impreza. Checker and AutoZone list them as being the same replacement part, and we know they're NEVER wrong, right? BTW: I pulled a rear axle off a '93 Legacy, which was also supposed to fit '95, and found the differential side to be completely different.

OK-yeah, I've seen that wheel size calculator and similar ones. That doesn't tell me whether the tire size I want to use (215/60R16) WILL FIT THE CAR. It just tells me how far off my speedometer will be. Thanks for tryin' though.

So I picked up some '02 WRX 16" alloys to put on my '95 Legacy, and I have a chance to get a set of 4 Bridgestone P215/60R16 slightly-used tires cheap. Will they fit? the current tire size is p195/70R14. Would 50- or 55-series tires fit better?

Not ebay... I found a near-perfect set locally on Craigslist for $100! (That's $100 for all four, plus two fair tires and two that are shot.)

I dropped the entire exhaust system on my '95 Legacy to do some trans work last weekend and couldn't believe how HEAVY it is in one piece! Sorry about your accident- it's the first I've ever heard about something like that.

I've been there too. My first car as a 16-year-old was an AMC that had a couple of broken motor mounts, which I broke driving over some railroad tracks where there was no crossing. This caused the engine to crash down on the crossmember, supported only by the oil pan. The pan was cracked and leaking, so, I decided I would jack up the engine to investigate the leak, and ended up placing the jack on the oil pan. It didn't puncture the oil pan, but when I lowered the jack and started the car, it made a terrible banging noise. After some investigation, I determined it was the crankshaft hitting the bottom of the now-collapsed oil pan! My solution? Drill about two dozen holes in the oil pan, pull out the dent, and seal it all up with silicone! It was definitely a dodgy fix, but I drove it for a few years afterward like that. Oh, by the way, Finsol, the bases of my 6-ton jackstands are about 8-10" wide on each side, so it's not that easy to just put them next to the jack, which is 6"-8" wide itself. That means the support shoe of my jackstand and the support cup on the jack have to be at least a foot apart. The jacking point on the body lip is only 3-4" long.

Will '02 WRX 16" alloys fit on a '95 Legacy AWD wagon?

Sure, jacking is not a problem, but if your floor jack's on the body lip or jacking point, and you want to place a jack stand, you have to find another spot for it.

Okay... ya busted me on that one. It's a separate sound- probably the TO bearing slowly wearing out. I got to thinking it was probably there before the big, nasty, whirring, wheels-falling-off-the car sounds appeared. Still, the metal-to-metal connection of the bent bracket amplified the slight winding-down-bearing sound, too. It corn-fused me at first until I determined they were two different sounds.

Problem solved. See this thread: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=76287

I learned a hard lesson over the weekend about jacking/lifting my '95 Legacy AWD 5 speed. AVOID jacking or putting jackstands under the ear or bracket right in front of the rear wheel that connects the front differential mount or crossmember to the body of the car. It's near the rear jacking point, and looks like a good, solid spot to put a jackstand or floor jack, but it's easy to bend the edges of that bracket up so they touch the metal of the diff crossmember. Normally these two pieces are isolated by a rubber bushing, but if they touch, you'll get all kinds of weird, disturbing noises transmitted from the diff through that bracket and into the body of the car, which acts as an amplifier. It sounds a lot like various bearings going out- rapidly! Fortunately in diagnosing the problem, I stumbled on this thread: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=69753&page=2 If I hadn't, I'm sure I'd be replacing wheel bearings, or axles, or the rear differential this morning (to no avail!) and never would have noticed a problem that took about 20 minutes to fix and ZERO dollars. Thanks USMB!

So I replaced basically the entire center diff on my '95 Legacy L AWD 5 speed including the viscous coupling, the diff itself, and the tail cover, and assorted shafts and bearings, with parts from a used transmission (with 50,000 fewer miles) in order to address the bad torque bind I had. Well, upon replacing everything and reinstalling the rear part of the driveshaft, I'm happy to say the torque bind is gone and the AWD is working correctly. I don't think it was working at all before, even before I removed the rear driveshaft. Now I'm NOT happy to say I now have a pretty loud whirring/scraping sound coming from somewhere when the car is moving in gear. It SOUNDS like it's coming from near the right rear, but it also sounds like it's reverberating along the bottom of the car, so I don't trust my ears. The noise does NOT appear when the car is coasting out of gear, with the clutch in or out. It also goes away intermittently when accelerating from a stop while letting the clutch out and, oddly enough, while turning a corner. It doesn't seem to affect drivability-- the trans shifts fine, the TB is gone, etc., it's just really annoying! I can also hear the noise faintly with the car stopped, out of gear, with the clutch released. When I put the clutch in, I can hear the sound 'wind down' and stop. My gut instinct is that I either put something together wrong (I don't think so since everything went together smoothly and it all works), or I've got a bad bearing in the center diff, OR my clutch throwout bearing's going bad. Any other suggestions? I don't really want to take the center diff apart again! Does the center diff spin when the car is out of gear but the clutch is released? That might be a clue-

GIVE that man an OREO! Yes, I did go on a longer drive after I rotated the tires, and no, there's no mandatory 30-day warranty in Utah. (OTOH, we're not required to hire a real-estate lawyer in order to buy a house.) When you buy a used car here they make you sign an "AS-IS" disclosure, which the dealer waved in my face when I told them of the problem. They disclaimed any knowledge of anything being wrong with the car. The only help they offered was a dealer-discount on the necessary parts to repair it.

No, but I just bought the car last week. It was a dealer trade-in, so I have no idea whether the previous owner did. I took the problem back to the dealer and they were unwilling to help much.

Check! Tires are all the same size, properly inflated and have similar wear. I haven't measured circumference, but tread depth is the same within 1/16" on all four. Guess I'll have to put the driveshaft back in before I put the wheels back where they were.

Chapter 5 in the Misadventures of Dave's '95 Legacy- I got to thinking this morning that my torque bind issues first became noticeable a few days ago when I rotated the front wheels to the back to try and cure a little low-speed steering wobble, which I think was caused by a bent wheel. Moving the front wheels to the back cured the wobble, (well, I can still feel it in the back a little), but that's when the torque bind issues were first noticed. I haven't tried to balance the wheel to confirm it's bent yet, but it's a steel wheel and it feels like it's got a little side-to-side wobble going on. Once again, it's a '95 5 spd. AWD, currently being driven with no rear driveshaft section.