lugnutz

Alternator went on fine after some convincing the rear bushing with a BFH. Thanks for the suggestion. Mom bought the car used with 120k on it - the shady used car dealer claimed the belt had been done at 105k, but it had never been touched. 135k is when it failed. The cause of failure was actually the idler pulley bearing - it disintegrated and shredded the belt. Machine shop bill was $700 which covered the complete valve job, 16 new valves and a full gasket kit to put it all back together. Also spent $100 at Advance on oil, filter, plugs, wires and gray permatex. It took me about 14 hours to get it all back together and running again (most of that time was spent trying to sort out the bucket of bolts and what went where)... though figuring out how to hold the cam pulleys to torque the nuts was interesting without an old timing belt to use. For the driver side I fabbed up a tool similar to what the shop manual recommended, but for the passenger side pulley, I ended up using one of those belt-style oil filter tools, which worked like a champ. It smoked like a banshee when I first started it up and was initially thinking the head gaskets hadn't sealed properly, but I guess it was just all the extra oil I coated the cylinders with. Also accidentally dripped some anti-seize on the exhaust manifolds, which is stinking like burnt poo. I drove the car for the first time tonight - runs smooth and drives well for the mileage. Overall pretty impressed with the Subaru engineering - certainly was easy to work on. Will change the oil and give everything a final inspection tomorrow and send Mom on her way. Thanks again for the help guys! lugz

Thanks fellas. I had tried tapping that bushing last night with a lightweight hammer, but I was trying to be careful beating on an alternator with a hammer and gave up after it convinced me it wasn't supposed to move. (Why are replacement alternators so dang expensive for this engine?) I'll put that sucker in the press tonight after work and move the bushing out a smidge. Virtual beers on me if this does the trick. lugz

Hey guys, Skip to the bottom for the cliffs notes. So my Mom was visiting us from out of town in her '02 Forester, then called in a panic on the way back out of town. Broken timing belt on the highway, which we eventually discovered had bent all 16 valves. The shop we towed it to (near where she broke down) had the timing belt, intake and heads off when they discovered the bent valves and updated the quote to finish the job: $2800! (from the initial quote of $515 to replace the timing belt.) Needless to say, we had the car re-towed the 45 minute ride back to my house. T-Hoff machine shop in Raleigh reworked the heads, and I spent about 12 hours this weekend trying to get it all back together from a box of parts and a bucket of bolts. Heads went on fairly easy after jacking up the engine, and the timing belt was a breeze. Thanks to some great writeups done by others, everything has gone smoothly up until getting the alternator back in place! PS bracket is bolted in, AC bracket is bolted in... but I've spent about 45 minutes trying to figure out how to wrangle the alternator into its spot. The two-prong side of the alt clearly goes on the AC bracket side, but it just doesn't seem to want to fit in its home. The shop manual shows that you can remove/reinstall the alternator without removing any of the other brackets, so what am I doing wrong? I'm about ready to take a grinder to the corner of the PS bracket so the alternator can clear the corner of it. Maybe easier to unbolt the PS bracket or at least loosen it up first? Crimony! The thought did cross my mind that maybe the original mechanic gave me the alternator from another project, but it "looks" correct from what I've seen on "the internets." Thanks for any help or "tricks" that you guys have figured out. lugz