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Haven't been following this, but you're doing some of the things I plan for mine on my 1990 wagon. Glad to see some tuft testing done, though I'll still have to do my own because of the different rear end.
My plan is to duct the radiator exhaust air out the top front of the hood, moveable upper grille block, partial lower grille with acrylic so the blinkers show through, cover the undercarriage, and try to reduce the wake with some kind of spoiler. Don't know if I want to do wheel skirts or not as they'll have to come out pretty far to cover the Forester wheels. I'd do an airdam, like I did on my '83 sedan, but I love the ground clearance too much and am hoping cleaning up the horrible undercarriage will be enough.
There was a factory rear wing available on the sedans that you could probably find. They came on the turbos for sure, but I've seen them on N/As as well, though they could've been fitted later.
Don't know what bgd73 is talking about. These cooling systems are very robust, so I wouldn't worry about blocking the grille at all. I know guys with modified turbos, one living in TX that is using a stock N/A radiator and has no problems. They're also 1000x the car the preceding ones were and I absolutely loved my two EA81's. I wouldn't touch an EA82 with it's terrible head design, maze of vacuum hoses, and stupid twin timing belt set up. At least the EA81s had the gear-driven cam. My 1990 New England outdoor car has very little rust, only the wheel arches, which can be easily seen and fixed. Tearing it down for a restoration is showing it to be in shockingly rust-free condition in all the hidden areas (I'm guessing re-undercoating it every year helped). You could watch the older Subarus rust, which is why mine both went to the junk yard with under 150k miles on them. The EJ22 is an amazing engine and if you ever tore one down, you'd know that, but it was also very advanced for its time with fully electronic ignition, MPFI, and learning software. The older engines had 3 mains, while the EJs are 5 large bearings, completely encapsulated by the block, with over an inch of journal overlap on a crank less than 18" long and using forged rods even on the non-turbos. At a quarter million miles of beating the hell out of the car (including an indicated 133 mph, many hard accelerations up to 120, long periods over 100 in the desert in summer, and low speed, high rpm sliding in the snow), the engine looked nearly new inside (except for the burnt exhaust valve on #3). The head designs aren't the best on these either, but there are later, much better heads that bolt on (single or DOHC). However, the head design as standard gives good bottom end, which I prefer anyway.
The firing order is 1-3-2-4, as all Subaru 4's are, unless the waste-spark ignition is causing some confusion. There are two coils—1 for each pair of cylinders and they fire 180* apart, so you get a spark on the ignition cycle on one side, while getting a spark on the exhaust cycle on the other. I have never had an ignition or fuel system problem since I bought the car at 107k. I wish I could say the same about the POS distributors and carbs (at least the Carter-Weber, the Hitachi was bulletproof) my EA81s had. The only thing about my EJ22 is that it ate ignition wires about every year and a half (about 40k miles) until I gave up wasting time with the Auto Zone "lifetime warranty" junk and got quality Magnecors that went 6 years until I parked the car a few years back (not an issue of reliability).
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