While I was on vacation in NY, a buddy of mine called me up and I met up with him and his wife in Toronto. He's a fellow Subaru builder and works for a shop that specializes in Subaru vehicles. While joining for dinner, we were talking about Subaru's and told me he had a long block EJ25D that was sitting in his garage with only 79,000 miles on it and a blown HG and would give it to me to take home. I didn't even have to pay duty on it declaring it at the border, which was really nice. Needless to say, I got the engine for nothing. As far as I know from what he told me, it is out of a 98 Outback Limited Auto. The car had 140,000 kms on it when the passenger head gasket blew. The owner of the vehicle shut off the car immediately and had it towed to my buddy's shop in an attempt to prevent further damage. The shop quoted him a total of nearly $1200 to do both head gaskets. The owner used the car for winter driving and the car body was pretty rusted so he just signed over the title to the shop and called it a day. My buddy salvaged the motor, among other parts, and scrapped the rest of the car.
Here is the part that I would like a second opinion about. He tells me this motor with the upgraded head gaskets and some EJ257(I think?) STI pistons would be a great candidate to throw some decent boost on it. He's offered to track some pistons down and send them to me on the cheap. As it sits, I will be pulling it out of my SUV, after the 3,000 mile trip home, and putting it on my stand and when I move next month I'm going to start tearing it down. I'm going to order the full upper and lower gasket kit and timing kit next month.