Scoobaroo

Code readers are cheap now; under a hundred bucks for a basic one. Best investment a person can make. Yep the feds mandate all of this stuff. Cars have gotten MUCH better in the last 30 years, though. How old are you? Do you remember Ford's Variable Venturi or Chrysler's "Lean Burn" carburetors of the '70's?. I'll take todays cars any day over those POS's. God, those were bad years.

MMO works great for me in the '02 OBW. It kind of keeps things clean to the point that I never need to do an aggressive cleaning with Sea Foam. I only add it to the gas tank, though. You're only supposed to add around 4 oz. per 10 gallons of fuel. Were you using it in the gas tank or in the engine oil? And how much? Just curious.

Mobile 1 10w 30 is a good all around weight oil unless you live in Siberia. I use it in my Toyota and Subaru with no problems. Change it every 5K and don't worry about it. An oil analysis will cost you as much as just going to Walmart and buying 4 brand new quarts. Alot of this oil analysis stuff has gotten out of hand. Mobile 1 is the best Synthetic ever (even though other snake oil salesmen will tell you different) and it's available almost anywhere.

Sea Foam is good stuff for aggressive cleaning but it could dislodge large pieces of funk in a really dirty, neglected engine. A chunk of dislodged carbon between a piston ring and a cylinder wall is as bad as taking a piece of sandpapaer to the inside of an engine. Over the years, I've become hooked on Marvel Mystery Oil for gentle cleaning. This stuff has been around since the 1920's. A few "glugs" (ounces) in the gas tank at fill ups keeps things unbelievably clean. It's safe on O2 sensors, and you can get a quart at Walmart for around $3. Cleans and lubes fuel injectors, valve guides and valve seats. Marvel Mystery Oil is NOT just repackaged ATF as some people believe. It contains proven ingredents like Naphtha, wintergreen oil, solvents, and light oil for upper cylinder lubrication. About 4 oz per 10 gallons of gas raises the octane rating because it slows the burn rate of the gas down. I also use it in my lawn equipment as a gasoline stabilizer; keeps carburetors form gumming up over the winter. I'm sold on the stuff.

I wish car makers would stop with this "my piston skirts are shorter than your piston skirts and our engine makes .005% more HP than your engine" mentality. I'd galadly accept a few less HP for a well built engine with normal length piston skirts that never blew head gaskets and never developed piston slap. Get a clue, Subaru. Keep it low tech and reliable. You're losing customers because of this crap.

People always rotate from brand to brand. Thousands of people per day swear they'll never buy another Subaru, yet over on the VW boards, the same number of people swear they'll never own another VW and that they'll go back to owning Japaneese cars. Doesn't mean much really. People have to drive something. For the most part, the new VW's are POS's. Electrical gremlins, shoddy hardware and poor dealer service. Their "design it in Germany, but assemble it in Mexico" philosophy has been a complete failure. I've found that Toyota is about the best overall.

I know that there are a few bad timing belt tensioners out there, but piston slap sounds like nothing else but piston slap. It always seems to start with #4 cylinder for some reason. Replacing the belt tensioners in hopes of getting rid of the noise is wishful thinking in most cases and is usually a waste of money unless Subaru is picking up the tab under warranty. Are "counter measure" pistons still being used for people that complain about the noise? I haven't heard anything about them in awhile.

Translation of the letter: -We are in deep s#it over this head gasket thing and it could cost us tens of million$ to properly fix the problem. -Let's tell people that head gaskets are supposed to leak and that it's "normal". -Let's act as if we're concerned about the problem by adding a cheap can of sealer to peoples antifreeze thinly disguised as a "conditioner" Maybe this will buy us some time until these cars are out of warranty. -If people have to pay out of their own pockets to fix their head gaskets that should have been designed properly to begin with after the sealer fails and the car is out of warranty, then f*ck 'em. I'm good at translating cheesy, predictable corporate responses. Let me know if there are any others that need translating.

Hmmm, let's see. A $10 can of sealer goop vs. Subaroo paying $800 per car to actually replace the gaskets. I can't imagine how they arrived at their decision to add goop to the cooling systems.

Your engine will most likely be quiet while it 's brand new and the pistons and wrist pins fit tightly. My '02 with around 26,000 miles started to get noisy this winter during cold starts. The noise is a by product of extremely short piston skirts. As little as 1/2 of one thousanth of an inch of piston skirt wear will cause the noise. Dino oil, synthetic oil, heavy weight oil, light weight oil ; knock yourself out. Try them all. It won't do any good. Once the cold piston clatter starts, it's there to stay. I use Castrol 10W30 in mine. It seems to like that oil the best. I don't worry about it much. Every japaneese car that i've owned has had cold piston clatter for hundreds of thousands of miles with no problems. Subies are no different.

The disagvantage is that it is a cheap, band-aid, temporary solution to an expensive problem. Subaru hopes that by dumping a $5 can of "conditioner" (aka sealer) into your engine that they can escape shelling out $600-$800 to replace your head gaskets until your car is out of warranty. Maybe I am over reacting. I don't have any HG problems yet, but I feel that when we have a HG failure, we are entitled to re-engineered gaskets that will last the life of the car at Subaru's expense; not a can of sealer.

What happens when the stop leak stuff fails at 105K miles? They'll tell you that you're S.O.L. when in fact you should have had new, redesigned gaskets for free at 44k, not stop leak. Folks, this is disturbing. They'll be adding this stuff to your radiator without your knowledge when you take your cars in for unrelated service just as a preventative measure so that people won't complain about the external leaks until after 80k or 100k miles. It's cheaper for them to dump a $5 can of sealer into your cooling system for free than it would be to replace your head gaskets for six or seven hundred dollars per car. There's no way to "condition" coolant so that it won't leak out of a failed head gasket. There has to be a stop leak type sealer in this new mystery additive.

What "counter measures" were taken in late '01? Improved gasket? Different head bolt torque? Different block and head design? Anybody know?

Is this cooling system "conditioner" a sealer? Adding a can of sealer to the cooling system to get these engines past 100k miles would be cheaper for Subaru than replacing the head gaskets. I'm not sure that I want a sealer added to my cooling system. GM had the same problem with their POS engines in the 80's and 90's. Every car that came through the door of the service dept. got sealant "tablets" added to the cooling system at no charge with or without the customer's knowledge. It was cheaper for them to add sealer tablets than it was to replace engines with porous blocks and seeping head gaskets. Looks like Subaru is following in GM's footsteps. They know that they're on the verge of a class action lawsuit over this head gasket issue. They'll take any low cost route that they can in order to avoid this.

Thanks. I think my OBW was produced in 11/01. Does this mean that I might have the new, new, NEW improved head gaskets?

I've got an '02 OB with the phase II 2.5 and i'm watching the head gaskets like a hawk. So far, so good with only 24k miles, but all this talk about phase II failures has me a bit worried. How hard can it be to design a frickin' head gasket that lasts 200 k miles? Subaru auto tranny failures are pretty rare at 60 k. I think you just got a bad unit. At least they are picking up some of the tab.

Looks good! Our '02 OBW handles like it's on rails on ice and snow. Enjoy!

Alias, Thanks for your informative posts on this board. I wish all message boards on the net were this friendly. Says something about Subie owners, I think. Always willing to help each other out.

I'm betting that they mean the coolant temperature sensor for the fuel injection system. No such thing as a fuel temp sensor as far as I know.

With OBD II, simply disconnecting the battery isn't enough. The computer stores the code in memory even if the power is interrupted. The computer actually has to see that the problem is no longer there during several running cycles before it turns the light off. Of course, you could always clear the code instantly with a scan tool.

Just flurries here in Laramie so far. We're supposed to get some more tonight, I think. Enjoy!