Jump to content
Ultimate Subaru Message Board

Front axle/knuckle interchange for '96 5MT AWD


Recommended Posts

Legacy or Impreza? Either way I'm pretty sure you can go interchange within the model version for quite a few years either way. I usually take the old part with me to PAP to be sure I'm pulling the right thing. But it's amazing how many years carry the same parts for our cars.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rick, you can pretty much interchange all sorts of EJ hubs, those earlier years will be fine and even up to 2000+'s. The main thing to keep in mind is ABS verses non-ABS but even then they're interchangeable just one has the ABS spot and the other doesn't.

 

Once you get to the 2000 range though at some point the tone ring set up for ABS changes and they do differ - although *even then* you can still swap them if you know what you're doing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cool - good to know. I snagged one with ABS because I forgot that they were part of the hub and wasn't sure if the car had it or not after getting to the yard. I'll just install it anyway even though the car doesn't have ABS as the tone-ring won't cause an issue and the one I got seems to have the axle stuck in it (I need to replace the axle anyway and the one from the yard has good boots, etc).

 

I'm learning still about the EJ stuff. I like the easy axle swapping, but I dislike the screwball pressed in bearing setup. I've noticed while doing a lot more EJ land stuff in the last year that Subaru really has gone more mainstream with their engineering design's - which may be due to what their supplier's are reccomending they use, but gone are the days of the EA series cars where Subaru's design's were quite strange by comparison to other japanese brands. That's not neccesarily a bad thing either (EA front parking brake's for example :rolleyes:).

 

It's also quite noticeable how cheap the interior's and body are now. The difference between even a gen 1 legacy and a gen 2 is noticeable - the doors are quite a bit lighter on the gen 2. I'm used to EA series doors and that's a world of difference. Even my 91 SS doesn't seem half as cheap as this poor '96 plain-jane L series does.

 

GD

Edited by GeneralDisorder
Link to comment
Share on other sites

GD - sorry to confuse you, there's two separate things going on here:

 

ABS on a non-ABS car is fine.

non-ABS on an ABS car won't work as it won't have the mounting point (obviously you know that).

 

the tone ring deal is a completely separate issue from that ABS comment, though I realize it sounds the same. they changed the tone ring design and it's only applicable to sometime around 2000+ and all that really means is you have to match the axle to the hub.

 

2000+ (or whatever the year change is) hub has to have a 2000+ axle set up.

 

1991-2000 hub has to have 1991-2000 axle set up.

 

*keeping in mind i'm not sure of the date change so the "2000" could be a tad off.

 

 

YES !!! The newer bearings absolutely are terrible! They are far less reliable and fail way more than the older gen stuff. That's ridiculous, but i suspect the additional revenue for stuff that typically goes after warranty periods is rather satisfying. :rolleyes:

 

Another interesting tidbit is the torque bind issue. It's *almost* unheard of in the older gen stuff, but is prevalant in new gen. Very bizarre indeed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

YES !!! The newer bearings absolutely are terrible! They are far less reliable and fail way more than the older gen stuff. That's ridiculous, but i suspect the additional revenue for stuff that typically goes after warranty periods is rather satisfying. :rolleyes:

 

I wonder..... you know I've noticed that all my Gen 1 Legacy's (I've had like 5 or 6 of them now) have NEVER had a wheel bearing failure while I owned them. Even my 91 SS that was totally abused - wheel bearings are fine at somewhere north of 170k.

 

On the other hand I have, in my garage right now, a '96 with 113k and a bad front wheel bearing, and I have a '99 Forester with both rear's going bad for the second, and third times. One has been replaced once, the other twice! Both were done multiple times by the dealer and barely made 50k before failing again.

 

The knuckle I got at the yard for the '96 - came from a '94 with 156k on it. They feel great :rolleyes:

 

So yeah - I don't know what the deal is with this bearing stuff - perhaps it's supplier issues. I bet they get them out of Mexico or Taiwan. At any rate it would seem that trusting a used OEM bearing from a Gen 1 is better even than installing a new one at the dealer!

 

Another interesting tidbit is the torque bind issue. It's *almost* unheard of in the older gen stuff, but is prevalant in new gen. Very bizarre indeed.

 

I've wondered about that myself - the 4EAT's in the Gen 1 Legacy's seemingly never have this problem - despite the majority of them being owned by poor/young/careless folks at this late stage of the game. You would think that it would be rampant due to the tendancy for mismatching tires and poor maintenance among the primary catagory of owner's of these sub-$1000 cars. It's all very fishy really. What it seems to come down to is that Subaru feels that 1. It's not an issue, or that 2. Due to the higher power/torque output of the new engines, design changes were neccesary that had this failure mode as a side-effect..... but that seems unlikely because the 92 through 94 Turbo Touring Wagon's only came with 4EAT's, put down more power and torque than the current EJ25's, and still did not have this issue.

 

Very strange indeed.

 

GD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

must be parts and therefore cost related. shame on them :mad::rolleyes:

 

like you said, the older stuff should be falling apart if it had anywhere near the same trans and bearing failures. but with 10+ years, less likely good maintenance, etc, they almost never have these issues.

 

i wonder if struts don't last as long either, but i don't have much experience with EA/ER conventional struts. who cares, they're easy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...