OK, here it is. Brought it home last night. I didn't snap a bunch of pics, we all know what these look like right?

 

 

 

The particulars:

 

2000 Forester, 204k miles, never any HG issues, solid maintenance history since new. Total cost = zero dollars and zero cents.

 

The problems:

 

bad passengers front wheel bearing, bad rear diff, torque bind, engine needs a nose job, needs a front axle.

 

The plan:

 

Cannibalize my tired '96 Outback wagon for parts. I recently replaced the bearings and did a reseal on my 5spd trans in my outback so I'll just put the whole drive train in. Swap the passenger's front knuckle. The PO ran on that bad wheel bearing for a good long time so even though I'll be replacing it with a bearing that has 212k miles on it, I know that the hub isn't out of round so when it does go I'll be putting a bearing into a known good knuckle.

 

The pain of this is of course going to be the wiring. But this is going to be a long term project so I've got time to figure out the bugs. The hardest part is no doubt going to be getting the speedo accurate. I may end up putting the OBW wheels on it, I dunno. We'll see.

 

Anyway, I'll update as I progress, but again this isn't going to happen overnight, I just don't have that kind of time unfortunately.

 

Will-

If the motor in the forrester is still good, I wouldn't put the 96 motor in. That will save you a ton of wiring troubles. The tranny stuff should be easy.

 

Good Luck

Fully agree. Swap just the trans.

Yeah, not planning on putting the 2.2 in. It's got issues and more miles on it. The 2.5 is in great shape as far as I can tell.