I've got a funny situation on my hands, and I'm looking for some thoughts on it. I currently have two 4th gen Legacy vehicles in my possession, and I'm a little torn about what to do with them. The two vehicles are a 2006 Outback wagon 2.5i and a 2005 Legacy GT limited sedan, both automatic.
Both of these vehicles were owned by family members and both of them had their head gasket issues manifest within a couple of months of each other. For those family members, those cars are done, and they've moved on to other vehicles. The reasonable and logical part of me just wants to get rid of them both and have them out of the way. The enthusiast project loving part of me doesn't want to let the turbo motor go for fun's sake.
What I'm considering is taking all of the good and necessary parts out of the Legacy GT and swapping them into the Outback. I would completely rebuild this motor in the process, not just addressing the head gasket issue. I have all of the required knowledge, skills, and means to do this, so that's not something I need to consider. Worth it? I'm still trying to figure it out.
The reason I'm not interested just rebuilding the Legacy GT motor and reinstalling it is mostly due to one issue. Aside from me preferring wagons by far, the major issue for me is that the Legacy GT was heavily smoked in for the last year. It's a heartbreaking story, but it is what it is. The car was mint in every way upon picking it up a little over a year ago, with the exception of the usual rust on both rear wheel well quarter panels. My inconsiderate and irresponsible family member spent a significant amount of time basically hot boxing this car with the grossest, cheapest 100 size cigarettes day in day out for the last year. I'm so repulsed by this, it has theoretically totaled the car in my eyes, motor aside. I've cleaned the car out, deep vacuuming and decent interior clean/wipedown. It was bad in some ways, better than I thought in others. Sprayed the windows with glass cleaner and the liquid that ran down was yellow, thats how bad it gets.
Legacy GT has 150k miles on it and The Outback has 130k miles on it. Generally speaking I figure the parts I would end up needing to swap to get this motor in would be; motor, transmission, subframe, driveshafts, rear diff(?), wiring harness(partial?). I'd probably take the brakes and wheels as well. I think they're bigger if I recall. I'm sure theres a bunch of other things. Probably gauge cluster swap, Automatic climate controls being the wiring harness would travel with everything. That's the basics off the top of my head.
So what do you guys think? Would you even bother with something like this, or would you let this mess go? The end result would just be an extra car for me. My daily driver is a nice AWD V8 300hp Mercedes station wagon, so I don't exactly need another powerful AWD wagon. Not to mention I still have a 1999 Legacy GT 5 speed wagon full of STI and WRX parts that I still need to get rid of. But I do love that turbo engine. I'm torn and looking for insight. Help me.