My tried and true '91 Legacy developed a severe case of blowby as well as HCs in the coolant recently. Started about 6 weeks ago and I started looking for a replacement engine. Last Monday I parked it for the last time since the smoke coming out the back was beginning to bug the neighbors. Picked up a mostly complete '90 wagon with a probably good engine (couldn't hear it run since the tranny was trashed...and starter couldn't be hooked up). Pulled the donor engine myself last weekend and today, with Corky's help, I pulled my old engine and installed the new (to me) engine. Seems to run just fine (whew) and no ugly smoke out the back. I'll do a test run later today. Much easier than a EA82 version and not much harder than a weberized EA81. Now to see what went wrong with the old one; lots of good spare parts there. Thank you Corky for all the help and patience!

Good going Ed and Corky. We need more stories like that.

I took it ifor a drive up to near where rattty2Austin used to live and back on the back roads. Pushed a little smoke out the back until I put 3 or 4 miles on it (must have been some oil residue in one of the smaller hoses that came with the chassis) and then nothing. Engine runs smoothly and quietly....no lifter clatter or anything abnormal. No check engine light until I got home and turned on the a/c with the defroster; but I think that might be bogus. The only minor problem is that it takes a long time to return to idle when I come to a stop. RPM sits at around 1500 and very slowly comes back into the 900 to 1000 range in about 15 seconds. It might be a simple adjustment but I can deal with that in the next few days. Not bad for a used JDM engine I got it from a car with a bad transmission. Engine had 50K on it after it was installed in the donor car 15 months ago, so it's probably in the 80 to 100K range for original mileage. Hopefully I'll get more miles out of this one than the engine that came with my car originally. So tomorrow it's time for brake pads front and rear.

The oil burning may not have been the end of the world. Good you got it swapped though. Konrad's EJ22 burned a quart at least every 200 miles. Starting it cold in the morning was hilarious. Smokescreen! Thing ran like a top even though it threw more codes than you could count and the MIL flashed when you accelerated. Thing has nut too, puts you back in your seat and left me behind on the HWY when I was holding 90mph. So you may have had a fair bit of time left in the old block.

The oil burning may not have been the end of the world. Good you got it swapped though. Konrad's EJ22 burned a quart at least every 200 miles. Starting it cold in the morning was hilarious. Smokescreen! Thing ran like a top even though it threw more codes than you could count and the MIL flashed when you accelerated. Thing has nut too, puts you back in your seat and left me behind on the HWY when I was holding 90mph. So you may have had a fair bit of time left in the old block.

I ran the car with all those symptoms for about 4 months (8000 miles or so) but last week it obviously was not happy and running rough. It was definitely time to park it until the engine swap. I was just lucky that I had the time to locate a decent engine at a reasonable price.