Pleides

Are your toe alignment specs out of whack? My car has had so many alignments for various bushings and whatnot replaced, but I've never noticed this shimmy. I can dig out an alignment specsheet if you'd like to compare with mine, but even with stock suspension and a more mundane alignment, I never noticed this sort of shimmy. I'm on 100% stock brake hardware.

That's a good deal with the Konis and H&Rs. Paid 800 for mine. Absolutely amazing combo if you're not looking to slam the car. Would recommend!

I'm all for DIY but at some point you gotta stop trying to fix this problem yourself and take it to someone who can diagnose the spendy stuff. If your turbo sucked up some pieces of catalyst then you're in for an expensive day. Go for an OEM boot/axle when replacing the old one. Aftermarket ones tend to vibrate and not last very long. The boot fails because the hot downpipe is right next to the boot. You can wrap the exhaust with some heat wrap to help prolong the life of it.

Valves out of adjustment? Bad MAF sensor? Bad O2 sensor? Lots of things could cause it. I've yet to see somebody with a bad coil pack on our turbo engines. My car has the original ones at 212K, 15 years old. Plugs, very well could be an issue. Built motors call for spark plugs every 25K, most of them.

Dang, thanks for the reply. Guess I'll have to live with it being on there. I might keep my old rear bumper after a shop does a new one on here and try removing the thing with a heat gun from the old bumper to see what happens.

EGR can be a little tricky. MAF/MAP sensor takes a minute to replace, but the other stuff, counting diag and all that seems normal for a shop in a city. The codes you've got are why they're replacing what they're replacing. Do you have a picture of the quote they gave you for an idea as to why it might be so expensive? Another user mentioned one of the codes pertaining to the oil control valve. Typically, unless the car has a ton of miles, those fail from lots of gunk in the oil getting in the OCVs and clogging them. My 05 Legacy GT has this issue to a degree. I replaced both OCVs and the car ran amazingly, but within a couple days they got clogged up and the car started running rougher again. Pretty much comes down to the fact that there's gonna be some gunk in the oil at 212K miles, which is what my car has. I'm also the third owner of the car, so who knows if the second owner changed the oil frequently enough. But that's typically what causes them to fail. If you're handy, get a socket wrench with an extension and remove the oil control valve(s). Not too difficult. If you can use alligator clips to touch to the battery and to the valve (with it removed from the car) then you'll open up the valve (it'll look like a little cylinder that moves) and you can spray it clean with electronics cleaner. Would also help to change the oil a couple thousand miles early for the next four or five oil changes with synthetic oil.

I'm just wondering if it can be removed. I'm thinking the car would look better without the protector.

My car desperately needs a valve adjustment and cold idle is pretty rough. It does tick a little. I'd do a valve adjustment but shops around here tell me it's a motor out job, so I haven't done one since the motor will need to come out soon enough anyways. I'm at 212K.

Make sure regular maintenance is done first before modifying. Some stuff you do as regular maintenance can be upgraded, I.E. if your sway bar endlinks are bad, put some Kartboy ones on there, or something like that. A catted downpipe + tune is the best for waking up these cars IMO. I have TGV deletes and there is some margin of error during install (sensors you can bonk with your wrench and what have you) and only add about 5 horsepower. Intake I would leave alone as the stock intake on these cars is pretty good.

Sorry, I should have specified. I'd like pics of the bumper without the cargo loading plastic protector.

Surgeline is a good shop. I'll be there Saturday, though I probably won't see your car amidst the COVID madness. Tell Brandon I said hi (Nathan with the Legacy wagon, he'll know me). It's gonna vary depending on the shop. Surgeline probably won't charge AllData hourly labor times since they've done so many Subarus they can take the spark plugs out in 20 minutes, but a regular shop will charge a lot more if they don't know the tricks to getting the plugs out quickly. You do need an air supply for a leakdown test and I wanna say that Surgeline does a compression test as part of a pre-dyno inspection, so you should be good there, but double check with Bobby/Anthony/Brandon before you embark on that, of course. Their labor rate is 105/hr, which is pretty par for an auto shop in most of SW Portland. A compression test, if you're curious, is whatever the rental compression gauge at Autozone costs plus a bit of your time. Not super hard to do, but it would help to have a hand to crank your car while you do it. I'm also partial to attacking the spark plugs from underneath the car rather than from the engine bay, so you do you there. I can get them out in maybe 45 minutes when the car is on a lift.

I'm looking to replace my beat up rear bumper on my 05 wagon in the next couple months and I'm wondering A. Can you remove the black plastic cladding that sits atop the rear bumper to protect it from scrapes when loading cargo, and B. does anybody have any pics of this on the USDM rear bumper? Not looking to go with the JDM rear bumper where this isn't natively on the bumper.

Make sure your car is mechanically sound before modifying it. All of the rubber in our cars is weak stuff. I've replaced just about every rubber component in my car and on Saturday am finally finishing up replacing the last of my worn components at Surgeline this weekend (rear upper control arm bushings + Whiteline roll center kit since I lowered my car when replacing the worn factory suspension). These cars are very temperamental if not taken care of and subsequently modified. Might be worth mentioning that, if you're not on a VF40/46 then you may get some boost creep with those mods. Make sure to clean your MAF sensor beforehand, make sure your upstream O2 sensor is ay-OK, and MAKE SURE YOUR ENGINE IS HEALTHY. A compression and/or leakdown test should be done before putting it on the dyno.

Kind of weird they didn't mention the Legacy GT at all...? Little bummed that they only briefly touched on the Spec B and not much else from the fourth gen, which is widely considered to be the best generation. They also skipped the fifth gen, which was the first to get a CVT, still got a 6-speed, etc. Oh well. I'm glad they touched on the kind of silly ad campaign for LGBT folks back in the 90s and early 2000s. Our cars would never have been so popular if it weren't for those ads and their targeting of lesbians

You do not need a tune for a catback exhaust on our cars. I did a 3->2.5" conversion on my downpipe to catback and needed no tuning.

Huh... my picture uploaded and showed in the final post... did it get removed? Interesting.. linked 404'd but your quote shows the image I originally uploaded in higher quality... ah whatever. I fixed it now.

Am I a bad person for resurrecting this thread? I dunno if people are still looking for H&R pics, but here is my 05 wagon on Koni shocks, Subaru OEM top hats, and H&R springs with a 3/8 saggy butt spacer. Tires are 215/45R17 (stock size).

Ben from the Gears and Gasoline had similar issues with his flood-salvaged Legacy GT wagon a couple years ago. Hopefully you don't have any issues with the electrical system. Are your battery and alternator in good working order?

That's a good deal y'all!

Yes, they should fit. Edit: woops, maybe not, was looking at sway bar compatibility between the models. I can't see why they wouldn't but you'd wanna contact kartboy or the like. I would think you'd need a lowered set of suspension on your Outback to make it work.

What turbo did it have before and what turbo does it have now? I assume your car is stock?

Nah, I'm driving much the same. Maybe 5 MPH more on the freeway since that's the general moving speed of traffic on there now, but it would I'm not gonna be super reckless amidst a world crisis.

Mine doesn't close properly 75% of the time. Have to slam the sh*t out of it at a weird angle to get it to stay. I just live with it. Recent airbag recalls probably haven't helped. You could try taking all of the parts that suspend the glovebox out of a junkyard OB/Legacy and seeing if it fixes your problem.

Your car will thank you for getting rid of that awful DMFW. Just to note, make sure you didn’t get any turbo in your engine! Might be worth doing an engine flush to be certain there’s nothing still in there.

Sorry to hijack the thread, but this is the first I've heard of this. My car has had two VF46s in it's 212K miles on the OEM motor. What exactly is the concern doing this?