Gentz

Sorry about that it is a 2006 H6 LL Bean Outback. Actually KBB says something more than $13k. Could never justify paying that much for a car with that much mileage on it.

Thanks for all the input. My first thought was that the price was significantly higher than it ought to be. So what would a fair price be for this car?

I am looking at a 3.0R Outback with 161k miles. The asking price is almost $11k but it is loaded and in great cosmetic condition. It has a clean 1 owner carfax with outstanding maintenance documentation. Documents show regular oil changes and other work at one major dealer up to this point. My question is: can I expect to realistically get 260k miles without major service on this engine? Also, is this a reasonable price?

Excellent.... Thank you very much. Close enough to the same as mine, so must be the correct length. Oh well, engine is just burning oil cause it has a lot of wear. Maybe I will try Seafoam before my next oil change in case something is stuck but I don't expect it will make any difference.

I am definitely going to check that next oil change. Meanwhile anyone with a 99 - 2003 2.5L SOHC Forester out there who can go pull the dipstick and measure its overall length?

Thanks John and Qman. Excellent link to the opposed forces site too. The problem is that I bought this vehicle very cheap with known engine issues at a salvage lot. No known history and so things like the dipstick could have been swapped around. I guess its pretty unlikely that it would have gotten one from an STI though. I have done quite a bit of work getting it running very well now but still burning oil. It occurred to me that this could be a possible explanation since it seems significantly worse after I have topped it up. Still... if anyone can verify that the correct length for the 1999 - 2003 2.5 SOHC (non-sti) engine is 20.5" (52cm) that would completely eliminate the possibility.

Thank you sir! I appreciate that. It is actually shorter than the one in my 1999. Mine measures 52cm overall. (~20.5") So there is some variation from year to year and engine to engine. Meaning it *is* possible that the stick in my engine is not correct for it. Anyone else? Measurement from a 1999 - 2003 greatly appreciated.

Could someone please just measure the length tip to tip including the handle? 1999 to 2003 SOHC Forester.

What is the correct length of the metal part of the dipstick on a 1999 SOHC 2.5L Forester? (From bottom tip to bottom of shoulder of plastic stopper.) I purchased a used high mileage Forester and if I fill to just about half way between the marks when warm, it burns oil quickly until it gets down about 1 quart then oil consumption seems to slow to a relatively normal rate. (When I say quickly I mean about 1 quart in 400 miles.) I had another used car at one time that had a dipstick which was shorter than correct for the year it was in (PO replaced it with the wrong length) and I am wondering if my Forester has the same problem. If it is too short then I am overfilling every time.

Did not realize they went to throttle by wire in 2005. You sure?

hmmm... Yes engine management, but not bogging down. More like no increase in fuel for a couple of seconds. That's a !very! long time to be sitting still when you are trying to get out of the way of an 18 wheeler that "came out of nowhere". I do not normally drive by snapping the accelerator to the floor but there are times when it is critical to be able to do this and get some kind of a response. This is definitely not a normal type of response to throttle. Maybe it is not getting a signal or the correct signal from the TPS or MAF? I have also seen some theories that it might be the knock sensor but that just does not seem likely to me.

The hesitation that I am talking about is from a stop only and pushing the accelerator down hard and then having nothing happen for 2 - 3 seconds. Then after the 2 - 3 second delay strong normal-feeling acceleration. The 2000 Outback did it from brand new with approximately 600 miles. The 2006 had about 100k on the ODO.

I previously owned a 2000 model Outback with 2.5L engine and auto trans. This car had a serious but intermittent problem with hesitation off the line from a stop, usually only when I really needed to get out of the way. I have since sold the car and never got any codes off of it. Recently I test drove a 2006 2.5L Outback with auto at a Subaru dealer which did the same thing from every stop. What is the reason for this? I know that this has come up on forums many times in the past and I have seen many opinions but is there a single definitive answer yet? My present 1999 Forester does not have this problem although it is old and tired and has other problems. I am looking at purchasing a newer vehicle and the answers to my above questions will probably effect my purchasing decision.

After doing my HG, I put in a bottle of the miracle cure during the fluids refill. Seems to have helped but has not yet completely solved my problem. Still slips some in the 1st to 2nd shift when cold. Its only been about 200 miles so we will see how it goes.

Dealer here does not stock the wrist pin clips but they can order them for me at $2 each and it will take several days plus drive 20 miles across town again to get them. But, I have inspected the clips carefully with magnification and I think they are ok. I believe that I must have unseated the clip while I was looking at the piston outside the engine or there was some kind of trash in the grove that caused it not to seat well. I cleaned it all and checked while tapping on the wrist pin outside the engine and it was holding fine. So put it in the engine with the old clips and everything is fine the second time. Qman thanks for your generous offer but not necessary.

Qman thanks for the offer I am going to drive across town after work and show them what I want and see if the dealer can find them on the shelf. Will let you know I may need to take you up on it. I did find the lost clip though. It was as I suspected. Popped out of the piston when I was tapping the wrist pin in. Fell through hole between cylinders and semi lodged in the opposite inspection hole. When I took the cover off of the front of the engine (I had the rear, driver side piston out) there was the lost clip poised to do maximum engine damage as soon as I started it. Given that it came out so easily I think I better go ahead and replace both of them on this piston. Engine has 165k on it and these appear to be original.

1999 SOHC 2.5L from Forester: D***-it!!!!!!! Decided not to bore cylinders - just put it back together and put in new head gasket and try to get another couple of years out of it. So I got the wrist pin back in and then looked through just before I put the circlip back on the outside groove..... WTF??? Where is the other circlip??? Pulled the piston back out -- not there! Can not find it -- Do not know if it popped out while I was tapping on the other side of the wrist pin and fell down in the engine or popped out while the piston was out of the engine. I now have the oil pan off and the windage tray out and can clearly see the big end of the connecting rods....still can not find the circlip. Looked around on the floor of the garage...nowhere to be found. I am going to get a 14mm Allan wrench today at lunch so I can get the other covers off but: Anybody got any ideas??? If I search thoroughly and can not find it, where can I buy these things by themselves??? Already checked with the local dealer: they have never sold them to anyone, do not have them in stock. Rooster2: You were right. One thing leads to another, to another, to another...................

Wow, with that much work, I'm thinking I might be better off buying an off the self rebuilt engine. There is a company called SSI Subaru Specialists in Traverse City, MI. Anyone had any experience with them? They advertise a rebuilt long block with new timing belt, water pump and oil pump for $1975 on ebay.

This is a fairly long story but to understand where I am now you have to start from the beginning. I bought a nice looking 1999 SOHC Forester from a used car lot very cheap because it had almost zero compression on one cylinder and was blowing coolant out of the exhaust. I figured worst case I put in a new engine and I have a pretty nice car and still relatively cheap. Made it all the way 20 miles home and I drove it for a couple of days after just to see if it magically healed. Of course it did not. :-\ So I decided that there must be a severely blown head gasket and determined to pull the heads. At that point I had never pulled an engine and did not have a hoist so decided to do it with the case still in the car. This was based on an article about someone doing this successfully on an Outback on another message board. So I pulled the intake and all of the stuff in the way and then got the heads off. The gaskets were not in good shape but more significantly one exhaust valve was missing a pie shaped wedge about 1/4" wide. So I bought a cheap engine gasket kit off of ebay and a couple of new OE Subaru exhaust valves and replaced the valves for the bad cylinder and all of valve seals and gaskets. I checked the head flatness with feeler guages and a flat plate at work. Cleaned the surfaces reasonably well but still saw some discoloration in spots. With much difficulty and a little scraping of the new head gasket I got the heads back in place and all of the parts reassembled. Car ran tremendously better (in fact very well compared to any engine) and became my daily driver for the next few months. It still burned oil and fogged the neighborhood with blue smoke for the first 2 - 3 minutes after a cold start. Then after a few months it started overheating and blowing bubbles in the coolant overflow tank. So I decided that I needed to do the head gaskets again and check to see if I had a mis-seated valve stem seal. Lessons: It is possible to do the head gaskets without pulling the engine. It might be possible to do it right if you are very, very lucky. I am not lucky. Best to pull the engine, buy good quality head gaskets and spend a lot of time cleaning the metal surfaces. Now to present day: I have the engine out of the car and have good Subaru OE head gaskets ready to put in. I have partially cleaned all surfaces, checked flatness with a precision ground straight edge and I notice that one set of intake runners looks significantly more oily/dirty than the others especially near the valve seat. So I pulled the valve springs to inspect the valve seals. They look fine and are new from the last time. I can not find any cracks or anything like that that would allow oil into the intake runners. I then start thinking that maybe it is blow back from the cylinder that occurs at the point where the intake valve first starts opening. This is the cylinder that had the broken exhaust valve before. I start looking at the cylinder wall as I rotate the crankshaft and notice 1) the wall is a lighter color than all the other cylinders (maybe from running before with broken valve) and 2) a streak of oil about 1.5 mm wide that is not being removed by the rings as the piston travels up and down. So I decide to pull the piston and look at the rings even though there is no sign of gouging on the cylinder wall. After some false starts there (thanks for the help up to this point) I got the piston out to check the rings. They look fine: not broken and have correct gap. So: Could there be a glaze on my cylinder walls causing excessive oil consumption? Can I use a hand drill type stone-hone on the cylinders safely? What other advice do the members have to offer regarding my adventure?

Thanks to everyone who offered advice. I went out this afternoon bought an impact driver and decided to give it a shot without even grinding a slot. (There was still a little shape left in the phillips slots.) A few good whacks with the hammer and she started turning. Easy peasy. Definitely will reach for this first if I need to remove a phillips screw from now on.

Thanks guys. guess I will be going to Sears at lunch to get tools.

Great! Thanks for the help.

Trying to get the rear, driver side wrist pin cover plate off to remove piston to inspect the rings. One screw came out ok but the other one rounded off the phillips drive slots and is stuck. I have already drilled a hole for an easy-out but even with that it is not budging. I am putting enough torque on it that I feel some torsion in the easy-out so I am close to snapping it and definitely don't want that. Have been spraying it with penetrating oil and tried heating it up several times. Still not even a hint of rotation. What's the secret to this? BTW: 1999 SOHC EJ25 from Forester.

I just took the flexplate off of the crankshaft. Are these 8 bolts stretch-type or can I go ahead and reuse them?