-SUMMARY-
3.0 USDM to 3.0 JDM engine swap discussion and guides
For my 1000th post here, and in the spirit of other swap threads in this forum, this is both my own build/progress thread, and intended to serve as a table of contents thread for other's threads for reference, and for listing posts of all the people who are knowledgeable on the subject matter.
-INTRODUCTION-
For the Subaru Outback, rough estimates of this generation's sales figures in the US put us at about 300,000 to 330,000 units in circulation. And a guess of about 15% of those being H6 3.0 engines is around 35,000 or so cars with this engine between VDC, LL BEAN, and plain 3.0, which makes this a fairly rare and unique car across North America.
The primary reason to perform an engine replacement instead of a repair is the time/money cost of the labor intensive repair process of various components on the H6. Oftentimes it will result in engine removal as a requirement anyways. At the point of going through effort of removal, it may be a better use of time and resources to simply source a better engine than your current one. Ideally it would not only not need the same repair, but also have fewer miles of use on it.
But seeing as how we're talking about a car whos configuration has less than 40,000 units in the US market and that it is approaching 20 years very quickly, finding ideal engines that have been pulled from US cars from the same generation is starting to get downright annoying, let alone ones that have not been used up themselves.
So this thread is dedicated to the other possible alternative; sourcing of a JDM engine from Japan through an engine importer.
There are many available engines to import from Japan for cars. There are various reasons as to why this is, but the main things to note are the engines are 10 years and older that oftentimes have 60,000 miles or less on them, and cost often less than $1100 including freight--drop shipping. The engine used in the Japanese Legacy and Outback equivalent is interchangeable with little modification (... a couple of sensors, and the power brake line and the pedals are on the other side in japan. More details will be in these posts) so these engines are the most ideal for a nearly direct replacement.
3.0 USDM to 3.0 JDM engine swap discussion and guides
For my 1000th post here, and in the spirit of other swap threads in this forum, this is both my own build/progress thread, and intended to serve as a table of contents thread for other's threads for reference, and for listing posts of all the people who are knowledgeable on the subject matter.
-INTRODUCTION-
For the Subaru Outback, rough estimates of this generation's sales figures in the US put us at about 300,000 to 330,000 units in circulation. And a guess of about 15% of those being H6 3.0 engines is around 35,000 or so cars with this engine between VDC, LL BEAN, and plain 3.0, which makes this a fairly rare and unique car across North America.
The primary reason to perform an engine replacement instead of a repair is the time/money cost of the labor intensive repair process of various components on the H6. Oftentimes it will result in engine removal as a requirement anyways. At the point of going through effort of removal, it may be a better use of time and resources to simply source a better engine than your current one. Ideally it would not only not need the same repair, but also have fewer miles of use on it.
But seeing as how we're talking about a car whos configuration has less than 40,000 units in the US market and that it is approaching 20 years very quickly, finding ideal engines that have been pulled from US cars from the same generation is starting to get downright annoying, let alone ones that have not been used up themselves.
So this thread is dedicated to the other possible alternative; sourcing of a JDM engine from Japan through an engine importer.
There are many available engines to import from Japan for cars. There are various reasons as to why this is, but the main things to note are the engines are 10 years and older that oftentimes have 60,000 miles or less on them, and cost often less than $1100 including freight--drop shipping. The engine used in the Japanese Legacy and Outback equivalent is interchangeable with little modification (... a couple of sensors, and the power brake line and the pedals are on the other side in japan. More details will be in these posts) so these engines are the most ideal for a nearly direct replacement.
