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I know I've mentioned it before, but..... yes you CAN resurface your own heads. And it's not even that hard. Especially with Subaru heads because they are aluminium and very small. This time I took some pictures of the end result, the rig that does the job, and some pictures durring the process that show the progression from warped/pitted to smooth and flat. First of all - the first one I finished next to an untouched unit: A good cleaning in the parts washer, some scraping of the gasket material residue, and a spritz of bra-kleen: About 30 seconds of surfaceing. You can see where the low spots and high spots are and you can see the clear (and rather deep) groove that was created by the original HG fire ring. That groove is not acceptable. It needs to be removed so the new gasket is firmly held. The more of this groove we remove - the higher the clamp force will be on the new fire ring. Clean the paper and another 1 minute or so of circular motions on the "resurfacer". You can really see how the head is "cupped" and the center is not even touching our paper yet: Another few minutes of work: And the final result: Now they match. I will be going over both of these with a finer grit paper to finish up the surface. You don't want them too smooth though as the gasket needs some imperfection to "bite" into it. Too smooth is a bad thing - about a 320 grit is the finest finish you need on a Subaru head: Here's the simple rig used for this job. Solid workbench with a laminate top that's been scraped smooth of any imperfections and checked for general level-ness and flatness. Doesn't have to be totally perfect - that's the job of the glass. I then backed the 5/16" thick glass with a 1/2" thick section of plywood - also checked for basic flatness. The paper (wet-dry 220 for initial stock removal, and 320 for finish) is glued down with contact cement (the glass is cleaned with mineral spirits between paper changes) and the lubrication is WD-40. You have to use a lot of WD-40. You MUST use it to clean the paper as well as lubricate the sanding operation - other chemicals will break down the paper and the glue. This little rig has saved me time, money and waiting on several projects. It seems that often I am assembling engines on the weekend and the machine shop isn't open. They also want money for their services and while I don't begrudge them some business from me here and there - I prefer to trade a few minutes of my time that I would otherwise have spent driving to and fro to drop them off and pick them up simply doing this job myself. It takes about 30 minutes per head with paper cleaning, paper changes, etc. GD

problem solved it was a broken wire in the transmission. thank you everyone who chimed in about this.

Thank you. And my all wheel drive is working too. I'm really kind of glad I didn't buy the parts to fix it on the old one now