1994 Subaru Legacy Low Power on accelleration

Engine Performance problem
1994 Subaru Legacy 4 cyl All Wheel Drive Automatic 80k miles

Situation: From a standing start the car is almost dangerous to accelerate smoothly into traffic from a stop, as you don’t know if it will simply and slowly pull out or pull out quasi-“normally". Sometimes it works well but not as a rule, you just never know and can never rely on it. Typically it is simply gutless and ranges from non to marginal acceleration. It seems to be slightly better when hot.

Then after driving another identically set up same model/year car, the difference was Gy-normous. I now realize its not just the Legacy 2L twin turbo as I have been told.

This has several Subaru Mechanics saying it’s inherent with the Subaru Legacy S/W 2L Twin Turbo. After asking around I found many Subaru mechanics agree but no-one has actually been able to track the issue down; several have tried. There are no codes.

I found a former Subaru dealer mechanic who admitted to trying to sort this problem before and that it’s pretty common. To that end he agreed to work on the car as an as-able basis. He also bought a donor-car that was working fine and exchanged out all the kit he could think of, including the turbo’s, computer etc to no avail. He has had the car now for 6 weeks and I’m trying to assist in some research to help.

I am not sure if it runs "˜normally’ on the highway as its always run like this, it seems to go "˜OK’ fuel mileage is poor as a rule 10-15MPG (U.S) and 20 on the Hwy, accelerates on the 2nd turbo OK for passing, but is a bitch on inclines without it, and occasionally the engine stutters drops to Get-home on hard acceleration (i.e. when passing!!). It could be unrelated

Stopping and turning off the ignition and back on again fixes this and it happen only rarely. Code indicates something in the turbo but nothing found.

Comment: I had a similar "˜89 single turbo 2L Auto legacy wagon before this one, and it was magic!

Getting very frustrated!