legacycentral bbs

I'm a relative newbie to this forum, so I don't know what to do with this problem, or even what it's really about.

94" turbo legacy wagon, ej22t, with super poor gas mileage. Just replaced the o2 sensor, which seemed to be oem and unchanged, in the hopes that it would get better. Didn't.

Owned the car for 3 yrs., 110k+ miles. Mileage poor from the beginning, never really topping 220 miles per 13 gall tankfull (around 17 mpg) at the very best, and that was only with non stop/go highway mileage.

In the last month or so mileage dropped to around 12. Was about to pull and clean the maf sensor (still will) until scrolling through vrg3's scan tool screens I saw that my boost bleed was around 80% and stuck there solid as long as the car was over 1k on the tach. Over 1k it jumps right up there, no gradation, and stays stuck, then @ 1k drops down the same way, like a light switch, on or off, no in between. I figured that just can't be right.

As I said, being a newbie the scan tool offers what seems like a lot of cryptic information to me. So what is boost bleed? How do I fix it? The standard repair manuals don't really seem to touch on it.

I belive that is the boost control solenoid bleeding boost from the wastegate line. it allows the wastegate to stay shut to build more boost. No CEL?

No cel because I'm using vrg3's stand-alone scan tool. The tool connects directly to the ecu and reads/displays ecu output and codes.

I have to scroll through codes while jacking up rpm's to see if there's any active trouble codes, which may be, but there are no stored codes that I know of.

As I understand it the wastegate controls pressure in the turbo sytstem, safeguarding the manifold from excess pressure.

My suspicion is that since the boost bleed jumps right up to 83.59% after 1000 rpm and just sits there that the wastegate control solenoid is toast or extremely clogged with gunk and only extreme pressure forces it to open. I'm guessing about stuff I really don't know though.

From what I've been able to find online it seems that my boost bleed should be about 7-13 and not 80. I'm probably mixing values there. If it were 7-13% and I've been up @ 80% for who knows how long I'm sure the manifold/turbo would've blown by now.

Gonna look for active trouble codes, and also take a good look at the wastegate solenoid, etc. I'll post what I find.