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EA82 head crack between valves


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In my efforts to resuscitate my91 loyale I have acquired a used head but I now notice a crack between the valves....what I wonder is how significant this is? It's an old car and I'd be satisfied with another 50,000 miles. Is it even worthwhile to put this head onto the engine? I'll work on getting a picture up...

Mark

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those cracks are common and not terribly problematic. they pretty much all have them, though some do get bad enough to ruin the head. have to watch for some of the inner passeges around the exhaust and there was something about the valve seal area where they can go too far but I cant remember exactly.

 

might be worth your time to get a machine shop to check them out, or at least take a good picture and post it here so those that work on them often can see.

 

all in all, if they dont leak id run them.

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easiest way is to just sign up at photobucket or another pic hosting site. it will have codes listed for the different methods of linking photos that you can just copy and paste (image code will just paste in the text here).

 

that way you can have pics that you want to share on there and link wherever you feel like. it doesn't cost anything.

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In my efforts to resuscitate my91 loyale I have acquired a used head but I now notice a crack between the valves....what I wonder is how significant this is? It's an old car and I'd be satisfied with another 50,000 miles. Is it even worthwhile to put this head onto the engine? I'll work on getting a picture up...

Mark

 

Look for a tiny crack in the rib in the exhaust port, before you put it back in. If it has one, then you have another door stop.

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I thank you all for your input. I'm even slower getting pix on facebook than I am getting the head on this subaru, but your advice has enabled me to order the damn gasket set anyway. If I ever get this thing running I'll post pictures, although I might just wait a few weeks for the temperature to come out of the single digits.

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The crack is not a problem unless the material has seperated. In which case the head will need to be repaired or replaced. When repaired properly, the head will last as long as it did originally. Rule of thumb is if you can get a thumbnail inside the crack it is bad!

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Non EA82 heads don't crack that I've seen. All three versions of the EA82 heads do and in 99.99% of cases the crack does not matter. People have had them welded, stitched, peened, and pinned - nothing holds. In fact you run the risk of creating a loose valve seat problem if the head *can't* crack in that location - it could pull the material away from the seat instead and the seat can fall out. I can't see how you could find it very interesting to have that happen nor do I see how you could determine if it has cracked again without disassembling the head from the engine to visually check. Further there really is no need for you to test the theory as it is well established in the Subaru community that the cracks will return.

 

GD

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All heads will develop a crack sooner or later..new or welded up..after 25 yrs of driving an Ea82, I have never had a problem from cracks that develop naturally.."naturally" meaning the cracks are more closer to hairline in size and were not created by the engine over heating thus warping the head..the only time that I have ever reused such a head (from over heating) only pushed the crack deeper into the water jackets...thus leaking slowly..

Edited by Petersubaru
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  • 1 year later...

Junk yards still have loyales in them. I would keep looking until you can come up with heads that are not cracked. But who is to say that the heads that you already have in your car are cracked. Did you take those heads out yet and examine them? They made 3 generations of the EA82T MPFI turbo head, but only one generation of the EA82 loyale head, as I understand it. You can't use the turbo head in a non-turbo loyale. Was your loyale using a lot of coolant before it stopped working? That could be due to either cracked heads, loose cylinder head bolts, or leaky hose connections. When you take your head off, be sure and note as to whether you had any loose cylinder head bolts. If you have loose cylinder head bolts and no cracks in your heads, then just get a valve job on the heads, buy new cylinder head gaskets, and put them back in. And when putting on the camtower, be sure and apply a slight amount of gasket maker around the two contact oil passage holes, that pass oil from the cylinder head to the camtower. And also get the genuine subaru O-ring for each cylinder head at the indented oil passage hole that contacts the camtower. The engine will run quieter.

 

And don't put any short cylinder head bolts in the holes that require the longer cylinder head bolts. Because you will strip out the threads in your block when you attempt to tighten them to spec. Then your block is toast.

Edited by scoobiedubie
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people are finding these cracks when they pull the heads from bad head gaskets. It's easy to blame the crack for a HG failure.

 

But bet your pennies, go pull off the heads from a known good running ea82 and 99% of the time there will be the same crack in perfectly working heads.

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Welding cracks is bad idea DOSENT WORK bad news have had to cleanup so many bad head cars because of poorly done weldup jobs the problem is the casting is poorus and holds carbon bits the make the welds not bond properly and after heatup and cooldown cycles the welds give out guide falls down piston gos smack and you look for new engine. Subaru had some very good tooling to build those heads and I think was some very tech temp related work to put those seats in head.

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