June 14, 2025

I can't believe it's been over a month since I last wrote an entry here. Lotsa shit's been happening.

But since the last time I posted, the major development since then is that I've been able to pull the engine out of the engine bay. It ended up being a much less eventful affair than I was afraid that it would be, though it still required some grunting and straining, along with the help of a good friend of mine who was willing to endure peak Austin heat and the filth of my garage to help me take this out.

The engine in my 2003 baja is an EJ25 mated to the MT5 manual transmission. There are a lot of videos on the internet that walk through the process of pulling the engine, so I won't spend a ton of time recounting every agonizing detail here. Some points and parameters that might be relevant to others wanting to do this for themselves in the future, however, are:

• There's no need to drain the power-steering system or purge the A/C system like the factory service manual would suggest that you do. You can just detach the power-steering pump and the A/C compressor from the engine block and leave them on the side of the engine bay while you pull out the rest of the engine.
• In addition to detaching all the coolant lines for the radiator and the heater core, it's highly recommended to remove the radiator at the front as well so that you can buy yourself some more room to maneuver the engine block while you're pulling it out
• MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH VERTICAL CLEARANCE IF YOU'RE WORKING ON THIS IN THE GARAGE. I almost got into a pickle because the engine hoist I was using was starting to crash into the ceiling as I jacked it up to crane the engine out. I was only able to get out of it by lowering the car past the first safety stop on the lift in order to buy myself more clearance between the underside of the engine and the car. While I don't think this was a dangerous thing to do, it was something that I should have thought about and planned for ahead of time, especially since it was a little hectic trying to deal with this in real-time with a 300-lb chunk of metal floating in the air.

I was fortunate enough to find a digital copy of the Subaru factory service manual on the internet, which I used for the engine removal.

Anyways, here are some photos of the aftermath:

As you might be able to tell from the above image, my engine bay is greasy. Hopefully yours shouldn't look like that; the reason mine looks like that is because my power-steering pump has been leaking for a while, and it's been spewing the oil all over the engine bay, resulting in the lovely grime you see above. Now that I have more access to things, I should be able to tinker with this and fix it up a bit so I don't have to keep topping off the power-steering reservoir every few months.

I will admit, I puff my chest up a little bit and strut whenever I see the engine sitting on the floor, but it is taking up quite a bit of space in my garage. I'm going to need to find someone to buy this or take it off of my hands soon X-D.