It seems like the only times I ever post on here, it's about something I need rather than something I'm contributing. Most of that has been the fact that my Legacy has been in the body shop for ages on end. Hence the purchase that brings me to create this thread.

I recently purchased a 2005 Outback 2.5XT with a manual transmission so that I would have a Subaru daily-driver. It had high miles, but finding one of these in Texas with a manual transmission is nearly impossible. The price was VERY right, too. It's not without its issues, though. When I first got it, it was throwing 5 codes. Three were O2 sensor related (upstream and downstream) and the other two were for the starter input voltage and a neutral safety switch error. The car ran okay under heavy acceleration and even under partial throttle, but when I would decelerate quickly it would die. By this I mean nearly every time I came to a light or a stop sign, dropping the revs by pressing the clutch would kill the car. I'm against revving a car in neutral like an ass hat on principal, so I just tolerate it and restart it as often as I need. What's key in this "pre-repair" state is that the car never had a miss. None was ever felt and no code was ever registered with the scanner in 2 weeks of driving.

I bought new Denso OEM O2 sensors and proceeded to replace them. The install went smoothly and I fired it up. It ran okay in idle, but seemed like it was working a few quirks out every now and then. I forgot that I needed to reset the ECU, so I stopped it after about 2 minutes, disconnected the battery and reconnected it about 45 minutes later. I started it up and it seemed to idle the same again. I let it do that for about 30 minutes before I went to get in the car. As soon as I tapped the gas, I nearly killed it. This is in neutral, by the way. It recovered, but it let me know how taxed it was after that little effort of mine and took some time before settling on a normal rpm to idle at. Once I finally was able to coax it up enough to drive, I took it out around the neighborhood. The familiar check engine light was still blinking at me.

It runs very rough most of the time. Partial throttle acceleration will usually come with a little surprise as it seems to only make about 50-60% of its power and will then surge up out of nowhere. There is a vibration felt in the wheel, and the engine is very finicky about where it thinks a good spot to idle is. If nothing else, it's a bit embarrassing to drive between the shaking and stalling.

My boyfriend and I erased the codes and restarted the car to see if the CEL came back. It did. This time registering as a cylinder #3 misfire. Now let me tell you that I wouldn't be wasting the internet's precious time if I felt that there was some sensible logic behind what might be causing that code. In fact, I still may swap coils between cylinder #3 and #1 to see if the problem follows the coil. However, it never had a miss before I replaced the O2 sensors in 2 weeks of driving, nor was there a code present or stored. Obviously there is a miss present, but I guess what I'm hoping for is for someone to tell me something else that could be causing the coil to miss that could have also been an issue previously. A clogged fuel injector, perhaps, or something less obvious. I'm counting on the fact that this may be a common occurrence, as my search results would seem to indicate.

Thanks for the help! Pictures of the new car will follow when I'm able to get it cleaned! It's not much to look at, though. But it's MUCH faster than my Postal. When it's running well, that is.