unobtainium

Useful, good pics, thanks. The milling marks can disappear because there's motion or because the hot gases from the cylinder erode them. There was a time when you'd find "gas cutting" on Alfa cylinder heads from an endemic HG problem (2L engines, long stroke, open deck + wet liners). The problem surfaced on the 2L engines because of the increased stroke over the 1750s, making for a longer block. Changing the HG every 60 k miles was just considered preventive maintenance. What year car was this from? There is a vaunted fix for the '03 and later EJ25s and I'm wondering if the problem's going to surface on my '05 LGT in spite of that fix.

'93 L AWD wagon 5MT, 232k miles. Engine never apart; I'm on the original clutch, too. Two helpings of timing belts. This car isn't babied and it has dents and things, but I would drive it on a 1k mile trip without any worries.

I entirely agree. That is such a wack failure that continuing to replace transmissions seems bone-headed. There's another cause, and the dealer's failure to find it says incompetent dealer.

This turned up in a Metafilter thread: http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/52194 "the car downshifted quite suddenly while on the freeway, and then started to make horrible grating sounds at lower speeds. We took it back to the dealership that installed the transmission, who replaced it for free, as it was well within the 1 year warranty. And that's the pattern; transmission is replaced, a few weeks later the car downshifts suddenly on the freeway, and the transmission is shredded." I've never heard of such a thing. It sounds to me like the TCU, not the transmission, is at fault but I only have 5MTs. Can anyone shed light into what's going on here?

It's a common problem. "Bad batch" of bulbs. Subaru has been pretty generous with replacements, if you don't mind going to the dealer for them. http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12570&highlight=headlight+bulb

Looking good. I really like the first generation Legacy wagons. Mine has "only" 230K miles but I wouldn't hesitate to take it on a long trip. I bet you'll like it a lot, backwoodsboy. When you get out on the highway and set the cruise, that car will just eat up the miles - and if you have the room you'll be surprised just how comfortable it is at 100+.

1. There is so much ***************ing about the Subaru nav that unless you're very fussy about the interior look, aftermarket will serve you better. The ***************ing concerns old maps and too much key-pushing. 3. Some injectors make this noise. If the tick tick is much faster than the engine's going around (3x in your case) it might be nothing more than noisy injectors. 4. Your mileage will probably increase by 20% when the car's broken in. You can check some of this stuff out on legacygt.com.

Just broken in, too. If it is your first Subie you'll be impressed with how it goes in the snow. Welcome.

The recommended timing belt interval is 60k. The first one was due on my '93 at 105k for some reason (did they use a better belt? If so, how come you can't buy it from the dealer?) http://www.cars101.com/subaru/subaru_maintenance.html shows maintenance intervals right out of the books. You're going to post up some pictures of this car, right?

First, the Legacy will handle better than the Outback, it's what you get when you trade off ground clearance. The recent turbos from Subaru have fairly careful designs to cool them off. There are no special requirements in the manual. For the sake of being conservative I let the turbo spool down before shutting the car off (2000 rpm or less for the last minute or two of driving) but the manual doesn't even specify that. Good practice says you won't give the car a bootful of throttle when it's cold, NA or turbo. The LGT requires premium fuel, it is a little thirstier than a 2.2 NA (long term mileage on my '93 L is 25.1 mpg, on my LGT it is 22.9, with similar usage) and even though there's no special suggestion in the manual I change the synthetic oil in the LGT every 4000 miles. The main difference is the $7k and the fun you have when the boost comes up.

You couldn't steal it that cheap, backwoodsboy, good one. The 2.2 might need a timing belt. If you have records you will be able to tell. If not look carefully at the oil pump and water pump when the belt's off. If you live someplace where they salt the roads you might look at the fuel plumbing under a plastic cover in the right rear wheel well.

ericem, both of my Subies are Legacy wagons. I expect the LGT to be much stiffer in terms of body flex than the '93 and it is. I didn't expect to spend a month driving a Peugeot 206, which is a terrific car BTW, and then get back into the '93 and notice the body flex, but that's what happened. The '93 has KYB AGXs on it. It's definitely not a weak suspension. It's torsional flex that I feel. The '93 has 229K miles on it, it's getting old and I kind of expect rattles to develop. At this age the car feels much better than I would have expected it to. It's not as though I am dissatisfied with it - it's simply that I do notice the chassis motions.

Sometimes when I come back to my '93 after driving other cars for a while I notice the body flex. My car doesn't make a cracking noise, though. There is a squeak from one of the trailing arms and there's a buzz from the plastic cowling around the steering wheel, but that's about it.

Those Torque Master plugs look a whole lot like the Lodge plugs used in Alfas. http://www.international-auto.com/index.cfm/fa/p/pid/2527/sc/8140 Alfas, BTW, are where I learned to follow manufacturer's recommendations. The Alfa engine really wanted Lodge plugs, and tinkering with other ones was a waste of money.

There are two fuel senders in your car because the tank has a hump in the middle. Your symptoms are like mine were before I took both senders out and cleaned (carefully!) the potentiometers. The needle would point to empty at 260 miles and the yellow "low fuel" light would go on at about 275. Then the car would take only about twelve gallons of the 15.9 it's supposed to accept. After cleaning, the needle points to 1/4 at about 275 miles and the yellow light goes on at 320. That is much more reasonable. BTW my car (the '93) gets 25-26 MPG calculated as discussed in this thread.

<b>rweddy</b>, I did that in May and the first sign of ticking came in October, and that only when the car's cold. As for the prime, the HLAs are fed from an oil gallery and as long as there's oil in the line, and the HLA is unblocked by grime or whatever, it will fill up pretty quickly. The reason you prime HLAs is because you don't want to bottom the piston in its bore, especially in an old one - then it can get stuck and it's really dead. IIRC an HLA from Subaru is about forty bucks, and EJ22s have sixteen of them. <b>cookie</b> is right. Replacing all sixteen will probably end your problem if you have $640 lying around.

My '93 had this for a while and I fixed it for the most part with a pint of MMO in the crankcase. I'm suspicious of stuff like that as well, but this worked in a few miles. It still ticks when it's cold but it goes away just about the time the temperature needle passes the low mark on the way up. BTW my manual says you only need to take the rocker shaft off to get at the HLAs - you don't need to remove the cam.

The engine internals are all the same as the USDM STi's. The heads are different only because of bracketry; the cams are the same. There are STis running around with more than 75 k miles and no issues. If you check around on http://www.legacygt.com you will find quite a bit of engine/turbo/longevity information.

Clean the PCV valve since that is very cheap. Then clean the IAC valve. If you search you will find instructions for IAC cleaning. Next consider changing the fuel filter if it hasn't been done recently. Any codes?

Just wait until you get soap in your intercooler....

227K on my '93 AWD wagon. It uses a quart of oil in 2k miles, and it squeaks a little bit in the right rear suspension. It's still on the original clutch, the A/C is still cold and I did 110 mph for thirty miles continuously in it a couple years back (in case you're curious, it felt as though there was some more in the engine, and the car was very stable and unruffled at that speed). I would not hesitate to drive this car on a 500 mile road trip.

Near my house in the Minervois (southwestern France, not that far from the Pyrenees) there are very, very few Subarus and those are generally STis. There are quite a few more Jeeps and MBz SUVs than Subies, and the need for awd doesn't seem to be as acute as it is here in the US. If I lived in France enough to warrant owning a car (vs. leasing) it would be a Peugeot 206 or Opel Astra, both small diesel cars that fit through all the small streets.

It sounds like a sensor issue. Yes, the throttle is drive-by-wire. There's a known issue with 2006 trip clocks. The 5MT 2.5i has a hill holder, I believe, and there are reports of mis-adjusted hill holders on later 2006 cars. I saw one of these at an intersection: new 2006 Forester would -not- get moving, and there was a loud 'pop' then he started. You should add "check hill holder adjustment" to your long warranty service list.

When you bleed the air from the cooling system it helps a lot if the car is way nose-high. I just park it nose up on the steepest part of my driveway. Then you can do the squeeze-the-hose trick. It's a little tricky to get all the air out of the cooling system but it's important to do it right.

Remember that the turbo's job is to -stuff- the cylinder with way more burnable mixture than you can get into it with a normally aspirated (n/a) engine. That's the reason they specify premium fuel. Octane number is a measure of the fuel's ***resistance*** to burning off. You want the mixture to burn off reliably and progressively when the spark happens, and you especially do not want it burning off for other reasons like hot internal components or because the mixture is hot to begin with (which it is when it comes through the turbocharger). The turbo engines will try to save themselves by retarding the spark when they detect knock - which is poorly controlled burning of the mixture in the cylinder. That means the power goes down. In other words, if you want 250 hp from 2.5 liters, you have to pay to play. My EJ22 ('93) Legacy runs fine on regular, it delivers something like 130 HP. The Legacy GT takes premium. It is definitely more expensive to have the turbo car and it is worth fretting about until you push the accelerator down, that's when the smiles trump the cash flow worries.