El_Freddo

Sounds like that’ll be the bearing between 2nd & 3rd or 4th and 5th. Same happened on my Sister’s RX Liberty, probably near the 400,000km mark. I wonder I I dropped that gearbox swap in its thread.

At that point it had a small whine, and in town on light throttle it would slip out of gear all the time, 3rd and 4th mainly from memory. That could be the next symptom you experience. After that I believe the next move on the gearbox’s part is to have the bearing collapse in some way then you strip gears as they misalign and place extreme load on the gear teeth.

That’s how I see it anyway.

Cheers

Bennie

Yeah that’s a fair point about the vehicle downtime to replace a shot bearing.

I was thinking about this today and wondered why you pinpointed the input shaft as the dying bearing. Easier to diagnose with a dual range gearbox compared to the single range. If the noise can be heard at idle and it changes pitch when in low range, it won’t be the input shaft bearing. That means more effort to get to the bearing as it’ll be buried between gear sets.

Moot point but might help someone else down the track…

I recall there being a slight change in ratios between models, from memory it was the NA impreza box that had different ratios in 2nd onwards and the other boxes had the same 1st & 2nd with 3rd - 5th being slightly different. That was about 2014 when I was researching which box to rebuild my AWD offroad box with locking centre diff, so things are a bit hazy without looking at the research again.

Cheers

Bennie

I reckon you’ll find the gearing different with the foz box - at least for 5th gear cruising. Don’t throw out your old box just yet - you could swap 5th ratio - or buy a 5th ratio from partsouq. I’ve recorded this part number - 0.71 5th ratio: 32315AA420 - from a 1999 WRX which is near the crossover to the phase 2 gearbox. The only difference between the phase 1 & 2 fifth ratio is the keyway.

If the issue is the input shaft bearing, why not crack it open and replace the bearing? It’s not a hard thing to do. The EJ boxes are easy to work on. If I were closer I’d ask you for the box to scavenge parts from for different projects.

As for the shafts issue. You can pull your old box apart and pull the stub axles and sun dials out, grind a groove in the end of the stub axle to fit the C clip (need to measure where exactly as I can’t remember off the top of my head). The sundials need to be swapped in place of the larger sized bearing retainers. Not a hard task to do if you count the number of turns to get the larger units out, then wind the sundials in the same number, job done, slot stub axles in place. This is what I’m doing with my brumby when the time comes - but with 23 spline stub axles initially.

Cheers

Bennie

Good investigating Duncan! That seems to be it with that solenoid unit sitting near the steering input shaft. It certainly doesn’t have the motor under the main rack section.

Thanks fellas!

Well, both are now hooked up and nothing changed.

A mate is going to post over his pro-scan tool. Not something he usually does but it should get to the bottom of my CEL.

The only thing I can think of it being is that temp probe in the up pipe that’s not fitted to the exhaust. The probe is plugged in but obviously not seeing a temp reading.

As I type this out I’m thinking I should try using a metal band to effectively cable tie it to the up pipe. There’s apparently a resistor that can be fitted that I think I mentioned previously, just that the source of the info wasn’t sure of the wattage required. 2.2k ohm is what’s needed, possibly a 1/4watt.

I’ll update again once I know more.

Cheers

Bennie