Where is the starter on a 1997 Subaru legacy 4-door automatic?

Answer 1

Finding/Replacing 1998 Legacy Starter

To find the starter on any car, follow the heavy lead from the positive terminal on the battery. A dedicated cable will connect to the starter.

I just replaced the starter on my 1998 Subaru Legacy L Wagon. Some notes on that process:

The starter is at the back of the engine compartment, driver's side, accessible from the top. It's tight, but I changed out the starter without getting under the car.

Begin by unhooking the negative lead of the battery; the positive supply to the starter is unswitched and will be hot otherwise.

There are two main bolts holding the starter in place. Remove the positive cable from the lug by removing the nut and washer, and pull off the ignition switch lead (these are next to each other on the upper side). The ground cable is attached to a bracket that is held on by the upper attachment bolt. When you remove the upper bolt the cable and bracket will be free. I left the bracket attached to the ground strap.

The upper bolt is 14mm, the lower nut (which goes on a stud that stays in place) is 17mm. You will need several different size socket-wrench extensions (I used two 3" extensions on bottom and one on top) to get in a position to work. (It would, at minimum, take a lot of patience to do this with a wrench.) The order in which the bolt and nut are removed doesn't appear to be important.

The nut on the underside can't be seen from above, so must be done "blind." Look at the replacement starter to see where the nut will be, and what the shape of the casing is around it. Small hands are an advantage here.

There's not a lot of room to work, and it's hard to get enough leverage, so I found a small length of curved metal electrical conduit very handy as a cheater bar. (Real mechanics should get a chuckle out of that.) In replacing the bolts, they really should be torqued to specifications, but I used the "pretty tight plus a half turn" approach. Hard to imagine getting a torque wrench in there, unless you happen to have a power ratchet with a torque setting - in which case, you shouldn't need any advice.

As always, get both the bolt and the nut snugged up before the final tightening. It is not necessary to worry about the alignment of the part, which is accomplished by the stud and bolt. Replace the positive cable and the ignition lead.

Check and see if you've knocked any hoses off (there are several right in the way); I had. The last step is to replace the negative battery cable. The running lights will begin to flash when the battery is reconnected. This is normal (some sort of anti-theft thing, I think) and will stop when a button on the keyless entry is pressed.

The job will take about 30 minutes if you are skilled, perhaps 90 minutes if you're at the "oil change" level of competence. If you can't put a washer and nut on by feel, then you might get stuck in the middle of the operation. Good luck.

*These steps worked great. Thanks for the instructions. Just a note, I put the car on ramps and found it much easier to loosen and tighten the lower bolt from below. Not only because I could see the bolt, but I also found that I had better leverage from underneath. Also a bit of PB Blaster really helped with the takeoff.