I bought a 1999 outback with a 2.5L engine in it. It misses on cyl #3. 

If I remove the plug wire from #3, there is no change in engine performance. 

Compression on 1,3 is 150 2,4 is 135. I swapped injectors from 1 to 3. And no change, I also listened to the injector with a screwdriver and you can here it click. Also changed plugs, and the plug tubes do not hae oil in them.

So I believe it is coil and wires? am I missing anything?

 

I feel like it is too easy as the guy spent quite a bit of money on it and could not get it to run correctly.

That's about it.  Valve adjustment may be.

Is it possible that he did a recent T belt change and broke a tooth from the crank sensor?

 

O.

is there enough length to swap plug wires with another cylinder?

I could swap the wires from 1 and 3, I did not do that. I have a spark tester where you can open the gap and see if the spark is jumping the gap at a set voltage. But I do not know what that voltage would be. on my ford it was like 

Would a bad adjustment on a valve cause compression to be low?

I do not know about the timing belt. I have not even attempted to remove any covers for that yet. I thought that if something was wrong there it would cause issues with both cylinders on the same side? Is there a tooth on the crank sensor, or on the crank pulley? 

 

I know his biggest issue was that the ECU died and they put the wrong one it in. After I got the correct one, it runs much better, but still has the miss. They got taken by someone that the believed was a Subaru expert (in my opinion). $700 in parts that they gave me a receipt for,  after the computer.

Edited March 31, 201610 yr by whynot162