legacycentral bbs

The 96 head valvecovers are not compatible with 97-99 heads, as you can see the sparkplug tube is shaped differently. So you must have 96 heads. Further, the head itself will not work well if at all on a 2.2 block since the combustion chamber is made for a larger bore. Somebody must've put a 96 engine in that Forester when the original one blew up. You're going to need to find a set of 97-99 heads.

EDIT: Actually, odd that they aren't HLA. Maybe it's a non-USDM market engine? 4-cam 16-valve markings but shimmed buckets is unusual. If you have the heads off, the 96 heads have a pentroof large bore combustion chamber and less piston dish. The 97-99 heads are a cloverleaf design like an EJ20 and deeper piston dish. You can't safely use the 96 style heads on a small bore engine.

If it was an hla ej25d, those head would be good for matching with an ej255 or ej257

I know that was a bit confusing it not being hla's i haven't had a chance to pull the heads off yet i was going to do that probably on Friday i still need to pull the engine out of my car still been to busy tje last couple of weekends. I know some work has been done to that engine before because the cam seals have a bunch of silicone on them. When i pull the heads I'll get som pics of it all and maybe someone can help identify them. I am going to measure the combustion cambers just to be certain on what my compression ratio is going to und up at.

So I thought that all the hla heads used a rocker setup but I was wrong so I'm guessing that the engine I bought is really a 96 lgt. I still haven't pulled the heads off yet im planning on doing this on Friday. Does anyone know if these heads will drop my compression ratio too low? The other issue i was seeing is that the combustion chamber is the same size as the as the 2.5 pistons if so will this be an issue I just don't want to have wasted money on these parts.

The combustion chamber is too large if they are 96 heads, you can't use them on a 2.2 bore.

Yeah, the HLA is under the bucket on 96 heads, no rocker arms.

So this is what the 22 head gasket looks like on these heads



So I dont see any issue with the bores and im going to go ahead and use these heads with a stock ej22t head gasket.


I do have another issue while I was pulling off my crank pulley I have pretty bad crank walk. I never noticed it while it was in the car kind of glad that the throw out bearing popped off or I wouldnt have noticed until it might have been too late. I was planning on replacing the main bearing anyway I am going to split the block tomorrow and just hope that my crank isnt screwed up.

not sure why these pics are so big when i upload them

The other, very large issue, you're going to have using those heads is going to be the 7:1 compression they're going to put you at.

When I put everything into a compression ratio calculator it came out to 7.3:1 I was going to have the heads resurfaced also

Eh, low CR isn't the end of the world. It isn't optimal for power, torque, mileage or spool time, but it'll run OK.

If you resurface the heads enough to change compression you will likely need to address cam timing too.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

If you got 7.3 then you used the wrong combustion chamber volume. The 96 25d heads are 56cc.

Actual compression is somewhere are 6.8-6.9:1 with those heads, I rough calc'd it in my head for the above number.

I measured them and it came out to 54cc