![Subaru E-wagon 1.2 4WD 1993 [HD-TX-47]](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fprod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F6b1966a5-83fa-4b9f-b043-ce343e894295%2F9df28563-fad2-4457-8d4e-47ab886a6d66%2F1000084974.jpg?table=block&id=15110891-28d2-8078-9f1f-c16a7b15dd82&cache=v2)
Time of Ownership: | May 2020 to December 2024 |
Did I enjoy it? | Not really to be honest, it was mostly a headache |
Country of origin: | NL |
Related webpages: | |
Last update: | 28 July 2025 |
Also a lot to document, not enough time and willingness.
Bought this one a week after my previous one. Thought it was running well and in overall good (enough) condition. I was mistaken.
![Subaru E-wagon 1.2 1994 [HP-PJ-99]](https://www.notion.so/icons/car_gray.svg?mode=dark){kind=icon}
It had a rattle on purchase, I was convinced it was a loose exhaust cover. It wasn’t.
The previous owner had placed a new oil pan on it due to it having had a hole in it, that should’ve been my giveaway to not buy it.
After running it for a few weeks the knocking got worse, knocking, exactly that word. The crankshaft bearings were of course worn out and had to be replace.
So, from 2020 I started getting the engine out. I was inexperience, had poor tools and had a lot of frustration and stress. It was also the period of Covid-19, a weird time to be alive. This project was mostly frustration and headaches for me, nothing went well.
Engine out, revision done by NMB Motoring Hoogkerk (they did good work) and then put the engine back in.
Test drive, me being happy after finishing this in about 1 to 2 years, blood sweat and tears.
I drive it back home, ~32km, I go back down in speed from 100km/h to 80km/h and hear the worst rattle I’ve ever heard. Clutch slips when I put in a lot of throttle, I am mentally in pain.
Get it back home for the last kilometer, had to put it on a trailer back to my workshop some weeks later, and start diagnosing.
Long story short, I had figured out that I had loosened a bolt, the gearbox oil drain plug to be specific, that I shouldn’t have loosened while unmounting the engine. I had apparently not torqued it back, and in the time that the project took, it had leaked all of its oil out on the damp dirty concrete floor already covered with countless fluids. Or it leaked it out under pressure of the drive back home, who knows.
That one bolt cost me 2 trips to Germany to get donor gearboxes, about ~€1200,- in labour removing and placing it back (done by a garage, I was so fed up with this project) and another 800 for replacing the internals of the gearbox.
The garage also managed to damage my 4WD solenoid and not take responsibility for it, all in all this was a bad experience and an expensive lesson.
1 bolt can cost you thousands of euro’s and some more days of your life.
Good, afterwards I had done 1 road trip through Norway and Sweden, it was beautiful and it had no issues at all, it’s off-roading was so easy as well.. ~4.500km is all I had driven in it in about 5 years of ownership. Definitely not worth it, but wow, this thing thought me lessons. It was hard to get rid of, so hard.
Bought it for 3.4k, engine revision was ~2k, another ~2k for the gearbox, maintenance parts and tires were another 1k. Sold it for 5.5k…… It had gotten dirty and developed some nasty rust spots.
This thing was supposed to get a new life for a woman selling books to bookstores, so I like to see it as a book van now. I hope it lives on.
