KZJonny

The downpipe is manual specific, but if you're able to make up some bracketry, I think it can be used with an AT. All else is fine. If you need it to be bolt on, I think there are other options. Since you already have a downpipe, you could always collect the other parts you need/want new or used and save some cash. The GS intercooler is awesome, to be sure, but you don't really need it unless you're really turning up the boost. Same goes for intake. Consensus is that under ~350hp the gains with it really aren't work the money. You can probably get away with a new/used catless up pipe, a tune, and your DP for some noticeable improvement in power. Spend the money having your VF40 done over with JMPs Custom treatment, and enjoy faster spool and more top end all day. Stilll probably cost less than that Stage 3 kit, although that does seem like a decent discount for buying it all as a package... BoozeRS's advice is sounds. Take some pictures of the suspension mods you've got already. Could be useful by way of figuring out what the best next step it. Gotta get all that newfound power to the ground ya know!

I'd start with a visual inspection maybe? Get a flashlight and and eyeball on the seals. Torque convertor is always gonna leak a bit when you're pulling an engine. I you can't see any visible nicks or tears in the seals, I'd have a go at just stabbing it back in and bolting it back together. Unless the seals are cheap? Then just replace them for peace of mind. I can't think of any way to test shaft seals without assembling the parts.

Here are a couple: Just a couple I found really quick. Plenty more out there. Read most of the stickies in the 4th Gen specific forum. Skip the fluffy things about paint colours and whatever. -Read Fahrside's turbo wiki (with a twist!) -Read MaxCapacities engine build thread -Read the 200+ pages of debate about which BNR turbo to buy if you really want to kill some time, and learn a thing. I did, then had JMP build me a custom turbo from a spare VF40 I had... -etc.... If you come up with a plan, and start thread, then people can chime in with their opinions and experiences. It's worth nothing that there isn't much to be learned at this point about these cars and the EJs in them aside from what is beginning to become a pattern failure at 18 years old or whatever. Lots of "known" combinations for 'safish' power. Like I said earlier. Figure out what you're going to do with your car, power goals (unless you've got a major amount of money your want to burn, be reasonable) and budget. Expect to blow the budget anyway, but it won't hurt to start with a maximum in mind and price everything out at the start. I started out just planning on replacing the rusted out stock exhaust system, and ended up somewhere in the $10K CAD neighbourhood all of a sudden... I didn't write a budget tho, so shame on me. Work backwards from what you want from the car/want to use it for. You'll get more focused advice and probably be able to save a pile on parts you don't need.

If you happen to have a dehumidifier in your house, it also produces distilled (deionozed water) for free. Not exactly a big cost savings, but if you’ve got one, it may just save a trip to the store at least.

Sweet. The bracket in my car was rusted beyond recognition, so I removed it, and the carpet hook has ripped out. That’s a neat idea to make a retainer hook for my Weathertech liners. I think for $35 USD tho, I may just bend some aluminium bar and thread a ss cap screw into it…. $4 maybe? (For a thing that lives under a mat, I don’t know I care that it is wrinkle black 6061 series…!)

Removed pump. Cleaned melting paint from the gasket and mating surface and reinstalled with some non-hardening gasket maker on the top flange of the pump. There was a small (old) crack in the top of the pump housing. Torqued to ~40in/lbs…. Seems like a common problem, since the spare pump assy. I have also has the same cracking. Left it overnight to cure, and so far so good. Fingers crossed it stays dry! Doesn’t look like you can buy just the plastic pump housing, and the unit with a pump is like 3 hundo! Wouldn’t need the pump either, so that’s a waste of money.

Many delays later… concrete next Saturday. Getting cool here, so it will at least cure nice and slow, but may need to find some insulated tarps to help it out. The Ash tree in the middle of the photos should be coming down tomorrow, a friend of mine has taken up amateur arborism as a hobby, so has appropriate gear to zip line down the branches onto plywood we’ll set up in the rebar. I hate to cut down a nice tree, but it has some ash borer beetle starting, so it’ll come down on it’s own eventually, and I’d rather it didn’t do so on my garage.

Of course it does. I'll edit them into this post when I find them this evening. Fingers crossed the easy fix is enough. Next up is something that would look like your JB weld job, if there is cracking in the pump housing, or whatever. Bah!

Thanks. I was sort of thinking that maybe for this particular job, getting out the tiny torque wrench would be a good idea. More to make sure the clamping force is spread out across the gasket evenly that anything else. I don’t even know if the FSM will have a torque spec for those studs…

Yeah, it's the rears. The usual Subaru wagon rear wheel rot. I've got a pair of Subiesavers panels in the basement, just been too busy with every other thing in life to get around to it. I know roughly nothing about doing proper body panel work. I figure no matter how it goes, the car is going to be off the road for at least a couple of months while I learn the basics, do the job, redo half the job, realize I should have paid someone in the first place, then come around to feeling satisfied that I did the job myself.... You know, the DIY mentality/illness cycle. I also don't really have anywhere but my crap driveway to do it. So, my solution to not paying the body shop that is *literally* at the end of my street ~$1k/side to replace the rear arches, is to instead spend $30K on a garage so I can do the job myself. Probably poorly.

Thanks man! I actually do have them, but the car was up and down off Quickjacks so many times in the process of doing all the suspension, engine bay and exhaust work that I took them off pretty early in the process, rather than have them get all chewed up. Doesn't look quite right, but I also need to cut so much rust and metal out of the drivers side fender, they might as well stay off for the time being... =/ I need to decide how to address that. I'm still on the fence about whether i shoudl just glue the new panels in, or man up and start practicing my thin metal welding skills....

Glad to find this thread. Started to smell a little fuel recently, and after confirming no drop on the ground and nothing leaking in the engine bay (!!!) I figured the last thing left would be a leak around the pump. So, this morning before work I pulled the seat and pump covers, and sure enough, there is just a little fuel around the pump. Bah!! Cleaned it all up and took a couple loops around the block. It just *seeps* a tiny bit where the pump clamp secures the pump onto the gasket below. Took the OB to work. Yay.... At least I am pretty sure I assembled it in the correct order. Re-reading the thread makes me wonder. Can't understand why I would have 2 months with nothing wrong, then all of a sudden a tiny leak. The only thing that comes to mind is that it appears the rubberized fender/rocker paint I used to coat the tank before install is *not* fuel resistant. So..... maybe there was a little bit of that on the gasket flange, which turned to goo and is leaking a little? Either way, pump assembly comes out tonight after work to take a look. Fingers crossed it is just a matter cleaning everything up a re-seating everything?! I've got a 1.5 hour drive through the country this weekend to go pick up a little hobby lathe I found used and was really hoping to do it in the fun car.

Maybe it's regional? I don't *really* remember what was in my '02 Outback, but I think it was blue. Both of my '05s have always had blue fluid. I sincerely doubt it makes much of a differerence at this point. There isn't a car being made in the world any longer where the coolant doesn't touch aluminium. Probably iron in the mix somewhere as well. The protective additive packages are no doubt better than they used to be, but I think a well flushed system attached to a rad that hasn't corroded away, and is refilled with clean fluid of any colour is going to be fine. The days of the harsher additives that were designed mainly to keep iron blocks from rusting but that caused some problem with aluminium are long gone.

I wouldn’t worry about mixing the two blue coolants together. As far as I know, the colour indicates the type of coolant; it’s ‘chemistry’ so to speak. Eg, all blue coolants should be the same/similar, likewise all ‘red’ coolants should be similar, and mixable. Sometimes fluid types are super important, like atf in Subaru automatics. (Use only Subaru or Idemitsu HP!!!) others are not so much. Start a discussion about oil if you really want to stir people up.

Nothing *I* did, but picked up my car from the body shop, after they took care of the minor collision damage from a few weeks ago. Like it never happened! As a bonus, they did the whole front bumper bar, which was definitely pretty chipped up and in need of paint. Only down side is I now have a quarter of the car that looks great, but the rest is still rusty garbage. Ah well, that is my problem to fix in the future.

The sway bar mounts that affix to the trailing arms were totally fine. Direct bolt up. The sway bar mounting point reinforcing brackets that mount to the subframe points need a hole drilled to match. That can be in either the cusco part, or the subframe. Easy fix. I’ll take some photos of mine when I have a moment, but you’d figure it out fast enough.

Hmmm. That price is a good reason to buy OEM. I'd never considered that they'd be available, and so affordable here. Didn't spent enough time digging in to those, but they're far from the priciest thing I bought in the upgrade project, so meh. Mine are blue tho!!

Don't have a stock part number, but FWIW it's worth considering getting Cusco part # (if you go with Cusco) Cusco 684 316 S Rear Harder Sway Bar Bracket The "S" is the important part, it is the kit which has the sway bar brackets AND the pointing point reinforcment plates. Maybe you'r already on it, but the price is a lot better for both as a kit than seperately, and why not. The bracket seems to be a weak point..... You DO need to drill a new hole in either it, or the brackets tho, spacing of the bolts holes is not the same between JDM/USDM.

Agreed! My Mom always told me “Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.” So, I’m careful about who I implicate as being in league with my not uncommon foolishness!

Ha! Yeah. Guess I'm not the only one. I'll always give credit where it is due, but in this case, it was my first car. A used '91 Toyota Tercel 5 speed. The oil pal leaked a little when I got it, so I put a new one on, as well as some struts and brakes before driving it Ontario to Alberta. (Like 3700km) I didn't know too much about cars at that point, so I just checked the tire pressure after doing those jobs, packed it, and started driving. No real shakedown cruise or thorough checkup before driving across the country. To be 25 again. About 3 hours into that 4 day drive, I noticed a puddle of oil under the car and thought.... crap. Long story, it was the rear main seal, which very thankfully responded to a half litre of rubber seal treatment being dumped into the oil. A couple of top ups later, she held oil, and continued to do so for the next 10 or so years.... That car was ridiculous and started first crank no matter what the weather or how long it had sat around while I worked abroad. If it hadn't succumbed to rust, it would probably still be my winter beater. But the incident did turn me into an oil level paranoid, and I've kept shop rags tucked somewhere "safe" in my engine bay in every car ever since....

I'm not worried about that leak at all! You should definitely keep an eye on it tho, and check oil regularly. Like, at every fill up is a good idea. I keep a shop rag tucked behind the battery and oil in the back at all times. These engines are good, and a heap of fun, but from everything I've read are more sensitive to oil starvation than most, you don't want to let it get too low. The 'which parts for power' thing is a whole different can of worms, and essays have already been written on this site about what you 'need' and do not need. I'll say this tho: figure out what you want the car to be, considering how you drive it/are going to drive it. Lots of considerations here: -is it your DD? does it need to be reliable all the time? -how much money do you have? -technical skills/access to tools/place to work/friends with these things who are willing to help? -how much money do you have? -is your credit card paid off and ready to get a workout? You'll see a theme here perhaps? I can attest that my "I'm just going to replace this rusty original catback so my car is not loud enough to wake my neighbours when I go to work at 0800", turned into a hell of a lot more than that. I'm okay with it, because I had some fun money put aside for another project that got put on the backburner as this one spiralled out of control. I'd be happy to tell you about my build either here, or in a message, whichever works, it's relatively recent enough that the parts are all available and you could price them out. Have a look through some "builds" in the 4th Gen Legacy forum, the OBXT area, which is the same thing. They overlap a little. You'll get a lot of help here if you ask smart questions, after you've spent some time looking for an easy answer than has already been addressed a million times! (I've learned this. I deleted some of my old posts which were silly questions I found the answers to by looking for them casually.) Doesn't mean you shouldn't ask lots of questions, but using the site search functiong on Google helps a lot. (Ie: stage 1 parts list site:legacygt.com ) I'll also add that mine is fully a street car, is only probably only ~260-70 awhp, and is an absolute riot to drive. I've been out with others who own more mechanically stock GTs and they've been pretty surprised by how much the car has been woken up without going insane overboard chasing power. Cheers!

I would think you’ll be okay unless the tuners are lot fussier than usual. That’s a pretty normal seep for older EJs. If it isn’t going to make a mess on the dyno or present fire/smoke hazard, it should be alright. You’re not exactly tuning for mad power with just the DP.

Hm. Supergramps is a 3.6L H6 turbo, so same transmission system, but a pretty different engine. Still be very cool to see them go head to head, but really different powertrains in terms of power delivery and where they generate torque a boost, etc… I don’t think it would really be apples to apples tho. No replacement for displacement!!

Just thought of something as I looked at the photos again. If you don’t have a heat shield for the turbo (unless you just removed it for the photo) you should really consider finding one, or maybe getting a turbo blanket. Heat in that area without some kind of shielding can both heat soak the intercooler, or cook those power steering hoses… cheap insurance to do one or the other. I went full paranoid and did both….

I think I must have been under some kind of impression that the JDM Spec B endlink bracket was unique somehow. Seems not? So, if just depends on how complete the kit you got was. Around me, they mainly seem to come with the swaybar and mounting brackets sold separately, so I had to get my own (cusco) brackets, then got the mounting point reinforcements at the same time, since it all had to come from Japan anyway. Fits my aftermarket swaybar just fine now. Had to drill a new hole to make the support brackets work, but not a big deal there. traildogck on outback.org apparently makes then as a direct fit for usdm cars, if needed.