I drove the thing for the month of March and sorta forgot about the voracious need for oil until, on April 9th (why yes I procrastinated an entire month on fixing literally anything!), Uncle Rodney came for a visit:
View: https://youtu.be/W2URM602yk8
Made it maybe a mile past that video and it gave up the ghost.
Why am I using a uhaul trailer?
I assume my trailer was also broken.
Spent the next couple months getting caught up on fixing everything else, and then I turned to the easy task of fixing the Legacy. After all, I had another engine already, from the transmission parts car!
... Which had *VERY* different heads on it, and was in terrible shape anyway, so I scrapped that idea and spent some months soul searching.
I decided the future:
Subaru FA24 engine. The big 2.4L turbo out of the Ascent and the new legacy/outback XT's. Except it was 2018, the engine just launched that year, and was unobtanium.
So, I decided to baby-step it:
1) Early 2019 - Get a functional FA/FB powerplant *of some sort* in the car and running with the 5MT transmission
2) 2019-2020 Debug the whole mess
3) Late 2020 Switch to a standalone ECU so I don't need to buy an entire Ascent, just the engine and supporting parts
4) 2021 Surely Ascents will have been crashed in sufficient numbers by this point!
Here's how that went.
Dec 2019: Procured donor car for an FB20. 2015 Impreza.
I made the rash decision that one crashed in the front would be fiiiine. None with rear damage only were on the market.
Jan 6, 2019 - "Well, lets get this thing started to make sure nothings broken"
Oh. Lots of things here are broken.
Broadly:
- *ALL FOUR* variable cam actuators have their wiring smashed off
- The O2 sensor is busted
- The water pump pulley is bent
-And most worryingly... The harmonic balancer does not turn with the crankshaft. The crank bolt *unthreaded* and boogered up the threads in the crank nose (which, by the way, are some weird bolt size with an oddball pitch), the woodruff key sheared, AND the balancer itself shattered spraying metal bits into the timing chain compartment.