just picked up a '99 UK turbo, it's a rather sorry looking thing in need of some TLC the idea is to prep it for the Subaru Sprint series, I bought it knowing it needs clutch, but before I start pulling the gearbox out I yhought I have a quick on inspection, firstly under the bonnet I found a vac hose disconnected looks like it's come off the 'pressure source switching solenoid valve' (not sure what this does???) but on re-connecting the hose the idle drops, like it's trying to stall (although it keeps running) but it's not as steady an idle as it is with it disconnected but I'm sure it should be connected.the other thing is the bottom rad hose doesn't seem to be getting warm, it's producing a little more 'white smoke' on tickover than I'd expect even with the weather been cold and foggy, on the plus side it clears in normal driving, heater is blowing hot, it's not ovrheating or pressurising the cooling system, I know I've got to do the clutch but if it does need head gaskets I may as well pull the engine and do them at the same time or if anything esle crops up I may decide to break the car and find a better base car.
Any thoughts?

 

send some pics of pipes and locations and i can double check on mine.

tbh if i was you i would pull the engine anyway just to check the general condition of everything, you may or may not know that impreza engines are fairly easy to remove.

 

you could well be right, but I'll do a compression test first see if the shows anything,
another question re AC I can't see any AC control on the dash and no AC rad or piping but it as a AC pump with no belt?? surely they didn't fit just the pump??

 

maybe its had an engine swap before and they left the aircon pump on.

 

never thought of that if I had a V5 I'd check the engine no, I'll have to wait till the new one turns up

 

my bottom hose takes bloody ages to get hot but car runs spot on and heaters not bad.
just down to stat taking while to open up.

 

I've had a look at the cooling system diagram and it looks like the water pump bypasses the rad but feeds the heater matrix until the temp is above 76c when the stat opens, so it may not have been getting warm enough to fully open the stat.