Here are all of the years that the WRX or STI had an EJ series engine here in the US:
2002 - 2005 WRX - EJ20
2006 - 2014 WRX - EJ255 
2004 - 2021 STI - EJ257

For the Forester XT, here are the years of that car that had an EJ series engine:
2004 - 2013 Forester XT - EJ255

For the Legacy GT, here are the years of that car that had an EJ series engine:
2005 - 2012 - EJ255 (front mounted turbo for 2010 - 2012)

For the Outback XT, here are the years of car that had an EJ series engine:
2005 - 2009 - EJ255

All of these engines had Dual Over-Head Cams (DOHC), and used the same style hydraulic timing belt tensioner, so the timing kits for these cars apply to a wide range of vehicles.  The main difference is the water pump that the car used, which mainly depended on whether or not the cars came with a factory heat exchanger that sits between the oil filter and engine block.

If the car comes with a Heat Exchanger from Subaru, then you would need a 3-Port water pump, and if the car doesnt' come with a Heat Exchanger, then you would need a 2-port water pump.

Here are the cars that came with a factory heat exchanger:
2004 - 2021 STI
2002 - 2007 WRX
2005 - 2012 Legacy GT
2005 - 2009 Outback XT
2004 - 2007 Forester XT

There are three reasons you would typically dive in and perform a timing service on your WRX or STI with an EJ20/255/257 engine.

Hitting the 100,000 mile mark is the most common one, next would be getting to the 10 year mark, and lastly would be a bearing raising a racket and telling you that it is time to freshen up all of those pulleys.

In the case of Jon's Sonic Yellow 2003 WRX, the 10 year mark hit right around the same time that one of the pulleys decided to go out.

When you get into the engine to pull off the timing covers, it is generally a good idea to replace anything that could also be starting to wear out so that you will most likely be set for the next 10 years or 100,000 miles, so that is what we did.  We pulled just about everything from the Roger Clark Motorsport catalog to freshen up the EJ257 that is in this WRX.

In this Episode:
00:00 - Intro
00:41 - What is on the lift?
01:28 - Time to re-do the Timing - more than 10 years have passed
02:05 - A look at the RCM parts that are going on the engine
08:11 - Tear down begins
08:57 - How off can timing marks be with resurfaced heads?
10:19 - Cam Bolt Removal - Did they play nice?
12:03 - Found the pulley causing all the noise
13:03 - Taking off the oil pump
15:18 - Radiator needs to be replaced, hoses need to be replaced...
16:06 - When parts start going back on, things start to get a bit more exciting
16:50 - Oil Pump install
21:39 - Oil pump seal or front main seal install
23:18 - RCM Alloy Cam Pulley install
24:23 - Checking timing belt alignment
24:58 - RCM Dual Bearing Eccentric Idler Pulley install
29:40 - When would you need adjustable Eccentric Idler pulleys?
32:02 - RCM Motorsports Timing Belt Guide install
34:30 - Oil Cooler and water pump hoses installed
35:03 - Trimming the center timing cover to fit with the RCM Motorsports Timing Belt Guide
36:18 - Priming the oil pump after install
37:10 - Filling up the coolant and first start
38:30 - Final thoughts after burping the coolant

If your car didn't come with a factory Heat Exchanger, and you would like to add one to stabilize oil temps as you are doing a Timing Belt service, we have put together a kit to do that. 

If you install these parts and this water pump, you would then just need to add the Timing Belt Kit of your choice - a water pump can be selected in either our Oil Cooler Conversion kit or our Timing Belt Kits.

If you have just put a new timing belt on your WRX or STI with a Subaru EJ engine, one of the last steps before you button everything back up is to rotate the engine a couple of times to make sure everything is in sync.

But it is very common for the marks on the timing belt to not line up with the marks on your pulleys.  In fact, it is totally normal, and not a cause for concern.

This is something that is fairly different compared to most engines that use a timing belt, so why is that?

In this video we do our best to answer this questions, and hopefully help you understand what is going on with those timing marks after you install your new Timing Belt.

When you are doing a timing service on your WRX, STI, or other Subaru with an EJ205,207,255,0r 257 engine, it is not that unusual for the timing marks to be slightly off.

But if your heads or block have been resurfaced, or if you are using thicker head-gaskets, you may find that your timing marks are something like half a timing belt tooth off.  If that is the case, and you want to make sure that your engine is in proper time, you should be able to get them lined up by using a set of eccentric timing belt idler pulleys.

We like the Roger Clark Eccentric Idlers because they use a dual bering just like the factory bearings, so they will be just as durable as the stock pulleys.

We go through installing them in this video, and you can see how much of a difference these made on the engine.

A few years ago, we had Tasso from OTC Racing and Ryan from DSX Motorsports at the shop to record an episode of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast.

Tasso had been putting the final touches on his new engine, and he had brought it down to install a Roger Clark High Grip Timing Belt Tensioner in place of the Subaru OE tensioner that he was originally going to run.  After talking through his plans for the new engine, we decided that the RCM tensioner would be more ideal, and hopefully keep his engine running strong for the next few seasons.

Since everyone was at the stop, Ryan and Tasso took the lead for this video, and once we discussed the RCM High Grip Tensioner, we moved on to talk about the other Roger Clark parts that Tasso is using on this new engine build.

This turned out to be a great conversation, and I hope you enjoy it!

For the cooling system in your WRX or STI to work properly, it can't have any air present in the cooling system.

On many cars it is fairly easy to get all of the air out (also known as burping) of the cooling system.

But this process is a bit more complicated on a Subaru EJ engine.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  The first is because the thermostat is placed on the bottom of the engine, not the top, and the second is because of the boxer engine design.

We had Jon's Sonic Yellow WRX in the shop to replace the timing components, and as part of that we had to re-fill the engine with coolant and burp the system, and we put together a video talking about that process.

If you would like a guide through some of the upgrade options that are available as you are doing a Timing Belt Service, we have put together a Blog going through all of those as well.

If you are looking to find the best Timing Belt Kit for your application, we have also put together a blog walking through all of the different options, and things to consider to help you pick the best Timing Belt, Tensioner, etc