My car is a 99 2.5 rs. I have been smelling the sweet death of an antifreeze leak. The leak is not major, just a drip at this point, but it is coming from the back passenger side of the block where the head bolts on. I was thinking of putting in some subaru conditioner for now, but I figure it will only get worse. Anyone do work on the side? I figure I might as well do both head gaskets, the timing belt, water pump, fix my dented oil pan, maybe the clutch. Anyone think of anything else? I would be willing to lend a hand, but I do not have any experience with this level of work. I figure I am looking at around $300-400 in parts (without clutch), plus labor. Would I be better off finding a complete low mileage junk yard motor or maybe a turbo swap?
If your going to replace the head gasket, i belive you have to send them out to a shop to have them resurfaced. I was givin a price est. at a shop for around $1500 so you might wanna look into new motor swap. But i dont know to much about this yet.
I believe you meant resurfacing the heads, not the gaskets... IF you are going to do this yourself with some help, resurfacing the heads will be cheap once you get them off, less than $100, unless you are doing some major work to them... With the timing belt off, everything should come off pretty easy... Just don't strip or break those bolts in the block.... Get your parts from BP or Mtka Subaru with the dicount, they can give you the price of what all those parts will cost.... You WILL need a torque wrench...
You do NOT have to resurface the heads when replacing a head gasket. Head gaskets on the 2.5L NA engines were a known failure point up until about 2001. All that you need to do is replace the head gasket (as long as the leak is only external, and not internal. If the leak is internal you will have coolant mixing with your oil and the engine is now best used as a boat anchor. I replaced the head gaskets in my Legacy about a year ago, and it's running great. Just get someone on here or a shop to do it. It's not that hard of work, they just have to follow the torquing sequence very carefully.
The really annoying part is the engine lost the timing belt at around 59k and the dealer installed a new short block under warranty somewhere around 2002-2003 (previous owner, dealer won't release complete records, mtka I'm talking about you). One would think with only 116k on the car and about 58k on this engine the head gaskets would have held out better. Fortunately I only live 1.5 miles from work ( fill my car about every 5-6 weeks with gas ), so I think I can get everything together for a spring overhaul.
the STI gasket is the fix, in 2003 the sti gasket didnt exist, therefore the ****ty gasket was installed. its extremely common. As for the service records, we cant release that info.
Just clean the deck and head with acetone. You don't want to resurface the head unless you are ready to completely tear it down to clean out all those little bits of metal. If the surface flatness is over .0020, go ahead. +97658. Its a bit different since the factory bolts use a torque to yield design. I didn't believe it untill I read it in the FSM.
"Fortunately I only live 1.5 miles from work" This is probably why it is leaking. doing the headgaskets are not that bad of a job 4-6 hours start to finish if you have all the parts/tools at hand. For a good engine re-builder to check/resurface the heads I only use "B and A Cylinderhead" in blaine for any engine work I can't do on my own(boreing, decking valve grinding....). Tel. 763-427-7535 his rates are reasonable for top quality work. Ask for Mat, you can tell him Brady sent you but he might charge you more LOL. They are also one of the only places I found that will PnP subaru heads.
I just did the HGs in my legacy. It was not too bad. As for the head if you get a straight edge and go from corner to corner and see if it is warped, if not you dont need to get it resurfaced. What I did was get some paper towels and plug the oil/coolant holes in the block, get some high grit sand paper with some brake cleaner on it and sand it down. With the high grit sand paper it takes off the old gasket material but does not mess up the actuall surface.
I did some more checking today and noticed bubbling in the overflow tank, more so when the engine is rev'd. Is that normal, or is my head gasket leaking into the cylinder? If the car isn't over heating is it ok to drive it? In case anyone is wondering, I got a quote from mtka subaru. With Eric's help I came up with $600 in parts and $1000 in labor for the head gaskets, timing belt and clutch. Clutch is a maybe, but I figured it would be worth it with the engine out. Price doesn't seem horrible for the dealer doing it all. Does this seem like it is worth it on a 8 year old car with 116k?
Is there a way to find out if the headgasket leak is from the inside? How are you able to tell if the car is drivable? Wondering because I am interested in a beater but if it's too much $ to fix, then i would drop it.
If it were leaking internally, your coolant and oil would mix, causing a white foam to build up inside. You can usually see it on your oil cap. correct me if I'm wrong
Listen to the man. My wife just had her headgaskets replaced on her 2002 2.5rs with 62,000 miles on it. She now has the sti headgaskets and from looking at the old ones vs the sti ones, we're talking 2 different worlds. As for replacing it on your car, you said you had 116k miles on it. What you're not remembering is how "in-demand" your body style is. IMO I'd get the work done. As long as the motor hasn't been abused it should run just fine for a long time. That's just my $.02
Not always. I've seen a small leak that did not show anything visible in the coolant or overflow, but a test of the coolant showed some hydrocarbons, meaning a leaky HG. Take a sample of the coolant to a shop that does the test and they can tell you whether or not your HG is leaking internally.
Coolant won't always get into the oil. It depends on where the leak is on the head gasket. Most of the time, the gasket blows out on the back side (lower) of the LH head. Then leaks mostly coolant out from the back, and down onto the cross member where it drips onto the exhaust to be burned.
