KZJonny

My 500+lb electric impact wasn't able to do it… full charge on the biggest 8ah battery I had. 24” breaker bar was bending under the strain, and it took me basically doing a squat and press to crack them loose! I agree with you in general, but sometimes that just isn’t always going to work. Granted, mine had been sitting under a tarp corroding for quite a while….

Hopefully you have an easy time with all those tools, but I was able to get three with the old timing belt trick and a breaker bar. Drilled out the last one which really wasn’t so bad at all. It would be a horror show in car, but since you’ve got the engine on a stand, piece of cake. Almost forgot. I don’t know the spec for acceptable leakdown loss, but less than 7% is a good place to start. Engine will be cold etc…. So it might be a higher number than you want, but not as relevant as it would be under precisely correct testing conditions. Having consistency between cylinders is still more important (like compression testing). If one of those things is not like the others…. That’ll be you indicator that something isn’t right.

Short of finding the correct informtion about where timing marks are that indicate TDC, you can always use the engine stand to turn the engine on it’s side and use something non-marring (chopstick, plastic rod, etc….) inserted down the spark plug hole and watch it rise as you slowly turn the engine over. When it reaches the top of it’s motion, stop and do the leakdown test. Yeah, it’s totally shadetree, but if you turn the engine a few degrees past TDC, the valves will still be fully seated as long as that cylinder was on compression stroke. You can also pull the valve covers to observe that cam lobes are not touching the buckets. Leakdown test just needs the valves to be fully seated. Piston position isn’t critical since it is pressure *loss* you’re looking for, not absolute pressure generated. (Per compression test.) Fingers crossed for ya dude!

I suspect I would like it in the Winter! I don't care for weather much above the high 20s C. If I could do it all over I would probably have tried harder to find work in the PNW when I was done my contract there... Or maybe have gone underground in New Zealand and never left. Probably NZ. Every corner you turn there is some kind of crazy JDM Subaru of some flavour burbling around.

Man. So clean!! I pulled the heads off the parts donor engine I've had lying around for a while this weekend. so much oil and dirt everywhere... Yuck. Jealous of that nice looking engine, and also the warmth of Florida right now. I generally do love cold weather, but it's annoying when you want to spend a day wrenching on something...

Checked on Nasioc and if you can believe the interweb, they suggest valve lash should be 0.08" intake and 0.10" exhaust. Still a good bet to find the JDM FSM.... there may be enough difference in valve/cam/bucket configuration on the 20X engines that the setup is different?

I wish….. nope. We have the same things you have available, but more years with manual transmissions than the US. Valve clearances should be pretty much the same. They didn’t re-invent the castings and valvetrain entirely…. Setting it up to Ej255/7 standards should net good results. Others who’ve actually done this may chime in, for sure. But interestingly, for a fairly different OHC bucket over shim style engine, my ‘78 Kawasaki uses very similar cam spacing…. All aluminum construction with steel valves etc…

Repping Canada here, Metric system for the win. Maybe it's a cold weather thing, but I've always found multiplying or dividing by 10 to be a whole lot easier than 8 or 32 or whatever. Could be I'm just not too bright as well....

Not exaclty personal expertise, but I think I can save you a couple (dozen?) hours of poring over threads here and on Bob is the Oil guy etc... Use an appropriate oil to your climate/temperature and use scenario. The owners manual has some good stuff in it on that. If you go hard on your car at all, ever, follow the severe service intervals. Hell, do it anyway. If you're willing to up the ante on designer oils and long life filters, which isn't a bad idea. The only realy place you're going to get information on your OCI is by sending off samples for analysis. Pick an oil and filter combo, run it, and send some off to Blackstone or whoever. No amount of internet chatter will ever give you solid, scientifically backed results that what you are doing is working well or not, in your car, the way you use it. Good oil is one that is suited to the task and changed regularly. REALLY don't mean that to be condescending, so hopefully don't take it that way. There is just a literal infinitum of talk about oils and plenty of unfounded personal theory. There is also good scientifically backed information as well. Probably no harm in using the oiling habits of someone who has a car with the same mods as you, in the same climate, who drives it the exact same way, but even then, no guarantees. A couple of UOA's are cheap compared to a YNANSB scenario. I personally use the best quality oil I can get my hands on regularly at my local store, use a high quality OE type filter and change it every 5K kilometers or so, if that matters. But, I also only drive mine in the summer, seldom take short drives in it, and always let it warm up thoroughly before getting aggro with the throttle. My use case may not be the same as yours....

Correct on the second half. Each cam journal has an oiling port fed by the internal supply where it rides in the head. You'll see them when/if you take the cams out to do the tap and plug. If not, I'd be happy to send a pic of the heads I've got torn apart right now, just to see, if you're interested. The oil pressure in the AVCS cam end port is just to operate the cam phasing, it's not lubrication oil for the cam. A failing OCV, while it may cause other problems in your engine (separate issue) will not starve the cam of lubrication causing destruction. P0021/2, which are OCV related will probably result in damage if ignored, but that's not a concern for you now. It would be akin to the non-avcs exhaust cams in our 255/7s. It is perfectly fine without any oil passing into the end of the cam.

The more the merrier. Hell, if I were him, I'd probably elect to take the 3.6R wagon. Nice ride for a long drive, and it would probably do well to keep up with most of the crowd who aren't heavily modified. Only been in a 3.6 Legacy once and while I think the GT would overall outpace it on boost... that torque!! Not a bad ride.

No idea how far away it is, but had anyone shouted this out to@Max Capacity? I do not know him personally, but his contributions here have been very educational for me, and I think he is somewhere in New England?

Not a bad idea to keep track of codes you have then delete in future. May help with further diagnosis here or elsewhere. There are also a couple of codes for our engines in particular which seem harmless enough, but can be indicators of serious problems. Just and FYI.

Yeah. I follow all of that. I get that nobody is making or selling a thing, and the reasons for trying to design this op-amp etc... As much as it might be a "replace engine" light, the CEL light is useful to me anyway, and has pointed me in the right direction a couple of times well before I had a problem. I wouldn't want to have it on all the time and lose the idiot light functionality. Where I live I don't need cats, can have a CEL, and I unless I am selling the car, don't need to pass any kind of emissions testing. I am actually pretty sure even if I AM selling the car, it still doesn't need to pass an emissions test. That said, I bought a catted DP when catless were still available (and much cheaper!) And I spend time and money on all my vehicles to make sure they run clean and have functional emisssions systems. Climate change is real, vehicles are a contributor to it and I personally wouldn't be able to enjoy motorsports knowing I was running catless etc..... (Not a political statement, or trying to ruffle feathers this is just how I feel about my cars.) As the change from side to top feed has no impact on emissions, just that I can get a better selection of parts at lower prices, I do think it's a little silly that accomodations for that aren't being made by whoever.... But, I suppose it's a slippery slope, and if you guys have the EPA putting small shops under a magifying glass, I can see why you wouldn't want to tread there. Since for me this is entirely permissible within the law (Ontario, Canada) I grateful for the discussion at hand.

The diagram doesn’t involve a length of steel pipe and a bag of nails. I think we should be okay?! Really tho. I think lots of people aren’t looking to this to delete TGV’s, but just have the freedom to use too feeds. Maybe I’m biased here, but that’s all I wanted to do. I know a guy with a blown ‘07 engine, and I could get all the bits for cheap. The DIY op-amp would make it all work??!! In theory, a $100-$200 total cost for an OE top feed swap would be pretty good….

Yes. This. I remember the sound that the outer timing cover made when i tried to make it occupy the same space that the Fluidampr was. Was too close to first start up at that point to take it back off and trim it… hah!

Lol! Or car people who are confused when you tell them you have a Legacy GT Wagon. "Oh. What's that?"

You could say hello to one of your turbos if you do.

Yeah. I misread what he was saying in the first post. Carry on…

Cool info man. I just believed what the seller told me.

If you can find the part number of the OE JDM one, you can almost certainty just buy one. Any reason you need it made from AN fittings? The OE lines are generally understood to be up to the task, even on bigger aftermarket turbos. Fewer failure points in a solid metal line than one with a bunch of fittings. Just sayin’

I’m with you on this. I don’t know enough about electrical engineering to design a thing myself. But would be willing to do some soldering and pinning to make this work if I ever need to upgrade to top feeds. I know it was Underdogs proposal to get enough interest to have IC’s printed, but I wonder if there is enough interest 15+ years in, now that it’s getting super hard to tune around TGV modifications. DIY might be the way forward for some of us.

Ah, my misunderstanding then! Boxkita graciously said he would call in and book a site (I don't have a USD credit card, nor anyway to call a US number without a significant international phone call charge....) so I will wait for confirmation on the site before doing anything. If nobody else seems too keen on a campsite, I am sure 3 x small tents shouldn't be so bad if the sites are a reasonble size, so that'd give you an option @BoozeRS05. Splitting costs on a site 3 ways will be better than any one person paying for a whole site themselves, I would think.

I should have been more clear: my BIG tent is a compact 2-man. About 1.2m X 2.1m. It's too heavy to go hiking with it, so I think of it as my luxury-size, car camping tent. If I can't carry it on a portage, it is of no use to me! I din't realize it was a 2 tent/site limit, so my offer to bring my other tent doesn't work as well now. Tho I am happy to loan camping gear to anyone who might need some. It is all just hiking/backcountry oriented type stuff, so light and small. I don't do car-camping/glamping generally, so I don't have any large format camping gear... Sorry!

You'd want to leave all the oil/pcv lines on it, assuming you're putting some oil in before you cranks it. Figure you'd know that, but "bare block" means different things to different people. No need for any of the engine managment of fuel delivery equipment, no.