legacycentral bbs

Hello everyone,
This is a great day for first's, this being my first post over here at legacy central and also I bought my first Legacy today. However this is not my first Subaru, all together it is my 4th. ( 2 Imprezas, 1 Forester) The Legacy I bought today was a deal I couldn't pass up. It's a 96 Legacy L wagon, AWD, Auto transmission and the bulletproof ej22e purchased for the sweet price of 100 bucks. Although sadly this Wagon is just going to be cannibalized because it's a rust bucket and will not pass inspection anymore. This is where I need some help. I'm planning on buying a 2003 Legacy wagon (ej25d) supposedly with rod knock from a friend of mine. Without going into too much detail I will tell you I turbo'd my old 1997 Impreza (ej22e) and absolutely loved that car. Drove it for around 20 thousand miles on 5psi (vf11) never had any trouble until I crashed it one night with a couple of my friends. Luckily we all walked away without a scratch, cannot say the same for the car though.
Up until this point I have been dying to do another turbo build, I just had to get some things in life lined out before continuing my Subaru passion. I'm excited to say I think I've reached that point again, now getting onto the project.

I'm sure either through watching MCM on YouTube or being Legacy guys in general you all have heard of "gramps" the 11 second ej36 gt35r super sleeper, if not please stop reading this and go find it. My build is not going to be anywhere near the magnitude of gramps but I want it to be along the same lines.

Here's what I'm working with, 1 ej25d (phase 2) with supposed rod knock 1 ej22e (phase 1) that runs great just needs some tlc. My plan right now is if the 25 block is shot, swap in the 22 block and throw a td04 on it. Then have a nice low boost sleeper to have some fun in and still be able to haul the family around. Now I haven't really dug into the hybrid motors much, just skimmed the surface of the fourms here recently and I would like to see if anyone has done a similar build. Any insight would be great, this is just the beginning but I have some turbo bits laying around that have been itching to be installed again. Td04, wrx headers, catless up pipe and some 17" legacy gt rims.

Thanks ahead of time for any input and I look forward to working on this project with your help, legacy central has always had a good reputation around the other Subaru fourms.

Oh yeah, sorry for the lengthy post haha

Derek

Welcome!

An 03 Legacy doesn't have an ej25d (D as in DOHC). If it were me, I'd go with the ej22 and keep a backup shortblock handy. The 2.5L non-turbos's just don't seem durable enough to run boosted for long. Plus they are tranny breakers

Gotcha I see now that it is the ej251 SOHC, I would like to go in the direction of a hybrid build using the 22 shortblock with the ej251 heads to drop the compression. I've seen similar builds push around 10 psi with no issues on this setup. That is if the motor is even knocking, I haven't picked it up yet but he says there has not been any power loss or coolant/oil mixture or even any metal shavings in the oil. So who knows it could be the timing belt tensioner worn out and knocking on the case. Either way I would like to do something unique with the legacy (03) on somewhat of a budget build. So far I have managed to get both legacies for under 1000, but when it comes to buying parts I don't cut corners there, you get what you pay for.