legacycentral bbs

Yeah... the title says it all. At least thats what i think it is... but i am not the most mechanically knowledgable. Theres a serious coolant leak in the area at the back of the passenger side head. Its not very consistent if you can tell anything from that, some times it leaks like a racehorse, sometimes not at all or very little. I guess my my main question is how much do you guys think it will cost?

gasket kit is a little expensive, but if you have a good friend who's mechanically inclined its a day or two project. a friend and i pulled and changed headgaskets/intake manifold gaskets/ehxaust gaskets and slapped a 5mt in a 90 legacy in under 3 days....dirty oily drive train was my only complaint

Sam

is the whole kit required? just the head gaskets seem to cost about 40 bucks, the kit about 200 more. are new head blots needed? where would you guys recommend i buy these?

http://www.subaru-autoparts.com/partslookup.jsp

-was all i could come up with.

are you sure that the leak is coming from the actual head, or somewhere else?

took me about a month to do my head gaskets. mainly becuase i was waiting for parts to come in. then i decided to do a valve job, so i had to wait on the 8 new exhaust valves and valve guide seals to come in. then i had the valves cut and the heads planed. I cleaned the head and block, mounted the heads and torqued them down using new head bolts (i figured i might as well get new bolts since there is no good reason not to).

I'm not sure what the kit comes with since i didn't buy it even though i probably should have. I just got the head/intake manifold/exhaust gaskets separately from www.subaruparts.com. you need them all because you have to take the intake manifold and exhaust off to get the heads off and you have to replace those gaskets.

good luck

i cant really tell exactly where the leak is, its dripping on the up-pipe at the back of the head. It would be cool to find out its only a hose or something. So do you have to take out the engine to change the head gasket?

the car is turbo right? there are some coolant lines running to the turbo which does sit behind the passenger head. it could be one of those.

To change the head gaskets you do not have to take the engine out. Obviously it would make it easier, but there is more than enough room to get the heads off with the engine in the car. You will have to jack the engine up off of the mounts though. Consider getting a valve job while you are in there (if you have to go in there).

with a friend who is machanically inclined, how long to you think it would take to fix? and yes, it is a turbo.

A couple days at least. You should take the heads to a reputible machine shop and have them planed.

people call me mechanically inclined and i would give myself at least 4 to 5 days (not working all day), thats including turnaround time for the machine shop. Just have the friend take his time, and don't try to rush the process.(but first make sure it IS the head gasket)!!

I'd be willing to bet my Legacy that the leak is not comming from the head gasket. I'd take a closer look at the hoses going to the turbo or where they bolt in to it. It could also leak at the block on the back of the head, it runs coolant and oil to the turbo, there are some O-rings in there.
Good luck and I hope it's not the headgaskets.


Or I owe you a car.

I'm gonna hold you to that . Do you know something i dont about the durability of these head gaskets?

The old EJ22 seam pretty indestructable. I'v never had to do head gaskets in any of mine or any of our customers Legacys, alot of them are pushing 200K and some of them have even been overheated quite badly. The turbo buts more stress on them but the turbo block is also designed for it, besides the chance of an external leak seems VERY unlikely and there are way more things behined that head to leak coolant.

subafreak wrote:besides the chance of an external leak seems VERY unlikely and there are way more things behined that head to leak coolant.

yeah... that's my reasoning too. that's why i said to make sure that it IS the head gasket first.

These engines are practically indestructible. Except mine, which blew a head gasket seemingly out of thin air. My symptoms were air bubbles in the coolant reservoir. No overheating or anything. Even though the car ran great, I knew something was wrong. It ran like that for about a month until the exhaust leak into the coolant got so bad that it caused a lack of compression in one of the cylinders. sure enough when i took her apart, i could see where the exhaust was leaking into the coolant. it's only overheated twice a good 2 years before the gasket went, due to my crappy cooling fans, and both times not that bad.

so instead of taking my legacy on a road trip to NY, which was supposed to be my graduation present from my parents (gas, food, hotels, etc...), i got an even better present....i got to work on my broken car for a month (but they paid for the parts). I also did a valve job while i was in there and now she runs a little better and gets great gas mileage! i guess it wasnt such a bad thing after all.

so just check all the hoses down there, because i would be willing to bet (not my legacy) that it isn't coming from the actual head.

What do you mean the exhaust was leaking into the coolant?

On the compression/combustion stroke of the cylinder, the force would be so great that it would push a small amount of exhaust gas past the gasket and into the coolant passage, thus causing bubbles in the reservoir.

oh okay

The same thing happened to mine. Drove for over 40K with oil in the coolant. Eventually started to overheat from compression air bubbles collecting near the water pump (I believe) and preventing the water from circulating.

Steve

I havn't had any problems with overheating yet. I'm not really driving it right now, i've got my gutless little mazda truck as backup.

I blew a coolant line after installing my WRX IC. Now after fixing it my car seems to heat up pretty quick and not cool down. I do see some bubbles in the coolant resevoir also.

Did I blow my head gasket?

The Things we will do for more power...

Thanks

Please help?

PJ

Sounds like head gasket. That or a cracked head.

Steve

I could get a used engine for the price of replacing a headgasket at a shop

PJ

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze730qe/Head ... ement.html

A good resource for those in need. This write up is specifically for an EJ25, so some of the part #'s listed in the parts needed won't apply. But the rest of it is very useful for a hack mechanic wanting to do this themselves...

That is an AMAZINGLY in depth write up. Too bad I'm still in apartment hell otherwise something like that might seem feasible.

-Brian