kohlstr

Hello all, So I have an 05' legacy GT wagon with 82k miles. I recently went on vacation down in central Oregon from northern Washington (~ 460mi each way). I made it down and my car was running great the whole trip until a check engine light popped up on my last day there. Car was running perfectly so I drove it carefully to autozone to borrow an OBDII figuring that it was just a loose gas cap or something. BOOM P0021 code (intake camshaft position over-advanced bank 2). Without any of my own resources - being that I was on vacation - I went to the Subaru dealership in town. The tech worked on diagnosing my problem from 7:30am to 4:00pm when he finally "found the fix." This is what he told me: "The ECU is communicating with the solenoid at the OCV. I swapped the OCV's (driver to passenger, passenger to driver) and the the issue was still on the driver side. Your problem is the camshaft gear actuator, it must be sticking so we need to replace that. Unfortunately it is a special order part and will be three days out. Also while I'm in here anyways it may be good to just do the timing as well." I was supposed to leave that day to go back home so this news was very unfortunate, but that's life. So I got an air bnb, and spent three days wallowing and waiting for my car. I got a call later that week that he had finished up and that the car was running great. Diagnosis + Timing components + Cam gear replacement = $2800 (OUCH!) I get in my car the next morning and start driving. 200 miles into my drive and I see my dash light up yet again. After some heavy swearing and a quick ride to the nearest autozone, I had the same p0021 code. I called the dealership back up and the tech said I had two options. Go to the Subaru near me in Portland or carefully drive the car back up to where I live (260mi away). Portland was backed up for about five days, so I bit the bullet, kept my car far far away from boost and drove 50mph all the way home. The next morning I go into my local Subaru and talk to a friend there and he was astonished after looking through my receipts that they had not done anything with my oil at the Subaru in Oregon. They didn't even bother changing the oil to see if it took care of the p0021 code, which he said should have been their very first step. I bought some genuine subaru engine flush, flushed my motor, and changed oil with some 5w-30 Mobil 1 full synthetic and I have had zero codes pop up since. Do I have a case here to maybe get some money back from that dealership?

Nobody replied, but that's all good and I just figured I would reply to myself in case anyone else wants to do this. Taking off the manifold wasn't too terrible. Basically it involved removing the intercooler and its components, pulling the three hoses from the upper coolant reservoir and loosening its little holder bolt and slinging it to the side, loosening off the pcv hardline and electrical harness from the back of the IM, removing three hoses from the back-side of the manifold, pulling one small hose from the driver-side of IM, disconnecting the three gas lines that connect to the hardline on the driver-side (no need for a tool you can use a sharpie cap!), and removal of the throttle body (try to leave the intercooler hose attached to the throttle body if possible, it will make your life much easier). After removing the 8 IM to TGV and the four nuts on the studs, the IM was loose but it wouldn't come out. After multiple tries and head scratches I finally found a small bolt directly underneath the manifold, connecting it to a fuel hose hardline (I did not bother on reinstalling because that bolt made me mad). While I had the IM out, I got four new gaskets (orange O-rings) for where it seals to the TGV's. I also got a new gasket for the throttle body and the intercooler --> turbo as well. I replaced ALL of vacuum, fuel, and coolant lines under the IM that were super hard from the years of heat cycles so that I would not have to go back in there again for the foreseeable future. A few were discontinued so I made my own with vacuum line from my local hardware store (super easy to do). I MADE ONE BIG MISTAKE!! Call me dumb or whatever, but when I was looking up torque values for the IM to TGV, I was only seeing 18.1 ft lbs. This made sense to me because my last Subaru was 18.1. So here I am, torquing away on these bolts. I get to about 12 ft lbs on the first one and it just starts spinning. I tried another one, and another one, and then another one just to make sure. ALL OF THEM WERE SPINNING. So here I am thinking that the previous owner had some work done by a jackoff that stripped my TGV. Didn't I feel stupid the next day when I checked again and saw that the plastic manifold had a 6.1ft lbs torque to the TGV (I was the jackoff). I kicked myself a few times, but the damage was already done. My fix was to buy a tap that was the same spec as the bolt holes and I ran the tap by hand through every hole in hopes to fix them up. It worked relatively well or at least I was happy enough with the result, so I torqued to 6.1 with blue loctite and called it a day. And yes, I know I'm dumb. Anyways, car is back together and I just drove it 1200 miles for a road trip and it ran like brand new so all is well! Hopefully someone can use this post in the future...

Hi there, I am new to the legacy GT community after I bought an 05' GT wagon (very excited!!!), but I am not necessarily new to the turbo Subaru community and have swapped a 1998 outback with a JDM EJ205. Anyways, on my 05' I had a fuel line start leaking on me in the cold weather (common problem as I can see) and to get to it, I need to remove the intake manifold. This is not a huge deal and I can definitely do it, but online resources (videos, instructions, etc.) for exactly what I need to do to remove the intake manifold seem scarce. I have scoured threads as well and have come up short. If anyone may have a link to a thread or video that would be so greatly appreciated to make my life a little bit easier!! Now aside from that... Once I have my manifold off, I figure that I should replace all of my fuel hoses that are hidden under there just to be safe, as well as the 4 orange O-rings, and also replace my intake-block gaskets with a fresh set. While I am in there, are there any other things that I should replace or check? I tried to add an image of the hose as well, but the quality might be bad...