How do you determine quickly in the junkyard if the coupling or angle gear is bad?
How do you 'rebuild' the CVs or what other car takes that CV joint that's common & junkyardable
Concur on the rest, i'm just trying to keep time & costs as low as possible to roach down -'98XCs & V70Rs. The V70R valved/ride height rear nivomats are annoyingly rare in the JY but I've hoarded a few for cheap for mine as needed...$200ea self-leveling rear shock/spring things...love em when they work but silly to have the air pump & sprung part be part of the wear part (shock absorber/damper).
Mostly Rs not because I like them (I prefer the XC cladding & white paint to bash around with no sunroof/manual seats & 5 speed/n/A motor/less to break), but because of any of the P80s only those, mint stick shift 850s & super low mile 850Rs/T5-Rs aren't sale-proof if you should ever decide to sell it...
Buy a subaru with AWD that actually works/isn't made of glass with good viscous coupling & LSD options for all 3 diffs that you can recombine the junk drawer to get low range & dis-engageable rear wheels? Lower labor times, motor comes out easy, better weight balance, profit & profit again?
That said, the subaru motor is kind of a weak POS, so tho it's light & comes out in record time, all but the 90-94 non-interference EJ22 turbo closed deck forged crank blocks kinda...suuuuck? Lots of years of parts interchange/lots of them in the JYs in a nice way...kinda more so than the P80s tho they made whiteblocks plenty of years too mostly compatible broadly speaking...93-2010ish? RN swap being pretty 'doable'...
Prefer the Volvo safety, paint, rustproofing & comfy seats, however...