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I bought a 99 foz the other day and am doing minor repairs to get it up to speed. It has a slight hesitation issue and rough idle.(threw a knock sensor code. Cleaned the sensor and torqued properly. Voilà code is gone for now!) Anyways, rough low idle is still present at some level. Found a wire connector hanging down near the passenger side strut tower. It appears to be a ground wire. However, I cannot find where the darn thing plugs in and am afraid that someone reassembled the engine poorly at some point and forgot it. I'm not familiar with these engines but it is supposed to connect somewhere on the heads or something.
So my question is, can I jimmy rig another ground wire? I'm not familiar with wiring in any way shape or form. But I'd like to fix this and suspect its causing the funny idle issue.
Sorry for the long post.
Holler with any advice!

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Here is a photo of said wire.


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Hi,
I'm helping a friend w/a 2.5>>2.2 swap and that wire looks just like a ground on his '98.

If there's nothing on the passenger side head, w/a matching plug, then I'd just replace that w/a similar sized ground wire. Buy a roll of black wire the same gauge (wire thickness), a couple of wire terminals, and run the new wire. You could also get one from another Subie of the same year range - probably '96-2000 @ least, from a wrecking yard/Pull and Save-type place.

There should be an unused bolt hole on the head or find one the block to connect to.

BTW, the '99 Foz had a RECALL on the MAF sensor (unique to that year, IIRC). If you log into My Subaru, add your vehicle by VIN# it should tell if the recall was done...might help w/the idle, too.

Td

Awesome advice as usual my friend. Thank you! I'll have to check out the maf issue and see what happens. Thanks again!

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It is a ground your missing the connector on the engine side.
as for the hesitation like wtdash said try to swap the maf with a known good working one. I would also suggest properly testing the knock sensor unless you think it had some old or bad gas in it

No, that's actually a ground wire. It's present on my 98 Forester as well. The other side is bolted to the head.

I believe brat man is right. It is bolted to the passenger head. But mine was absent so I made a new one.
Hahaha as for the hesitation, i did need a knock sensor but the motor is currently sitting in my garage getting an entire head gasket job and reseal. Huuuuuuge shout out to TD and his buddy Jason at mike scarff Subaru for hooking up the parts so quick. <3 (Yup. A heart.)