gdubya

The oil pressure light never came on, although it does at startup. I've begun tearing the thing apart again. The valve clearances are way off, so I think that's the noise. Maybe it is a bearing though - I guess I'll see soon enough. I see a lot of mention of $200 EJ22s on this and other forums, but searches only come up with $700+ engines. Any tips on where to find a decent price? I assume junkyards and whatnot, but then who knows what sort of condition the engine is in.

I hadn't thought about the effect of torquing them in the installation - thanks for pointing that out. I have, which is why I bought the good ones in the first place. That said, this car has about 160K on it, and I don't expect it to last forever. If the original OEM ones (similar to the felpro cheapies as I understand it) lasted about 100K miles, I'd imagine that the replacements should last about as long. Given the age of the car, I'd say having it last until ~260K is probably good. Hell, even if it dies in 50K I'll have gotten my money's worth (figure 50K = ~4-5 years). However, if the felpro's are crappier than the originals, then perhaps the $100 is worth it. I don't particularly want to do this again, but I also need to balance my desire to get it right against the cash spent. I don't have a ton of money in this right now, but each little thing adds up. That's why I'm here.

So it looks like I'm going to pull the engine and start all over again - do the head gaskets go on dry, or is there a correct sealant to use? Same question for the valve cover gaskets. I spent the cash to get the MLS gaskets, and hopefully since this engine only has about 3 hours of runtime since the rebuild I'll be able to reuse them. If not, I'll be forced to cheap out and use the graphite ones that came with the felpro overhaul gasket set.

I actually don't have a thermostat in there right now - I cut the springy bit out of the gasket and put it back to ensure that the coolant is flowing. I'm holding my breath right now, but I think the overheating issue has been solved by the burping tip. I ran the engine at about 2000 rpm for a while, and all stayed nice and cool. I'll take it out for a spin today to see for sure if that did it.... If so, I'll pop a thermostat in there. The valve tap leaves me with a bit of a dilemma: I can either check/adjust clearances with the engine in the car and hope that the silicone won't cause any problems, or I can pull the engine, redo the HG's and try to get the buckets and shims back to where they were. I'm kind of on the fence here. Will the silicone lead to leaking HG's again, will it get sucked into some other parts (oil channels or coolant paths), or is there some other effect that I should be aware of? Obviously the best thing would be to get rid of the stuff, but I need to consider time spent on the car vs time spent on all the other projects I have in life.

The tapping sound - could it simply be that the valve clearances are off due to mixing up the cups? The sound is definitely coming from the left side valve cover.

Oh dear god! Yeah, I know I did some boneheaded stuff here - trying to learn as I go. I have access to another block and all the innards, but I can't simply swap them as the block was damaged in an accident. It's from a SOHC EJ25, but the heads are gone into another car. Are the crank and rod bearings etc interchangeable? Does the EJ22 mate to the same transmission (AT), and wiring and all that?

Apologies for the long saga. The short version is that I redid the HG, accidentally drove without oil for a few minutes, and now I have a knock/tap coming from the left cylinder bank and the car overheats. Before I start taking things apart again, does anyone have any thoughts as to what exactly I broke? Now the full version: I recently bought a '97 Legacy GT (EJ25 DOHC, ~165,000 miles) with bad head gaskets, and just finished replacing them last week. It all went fairly easily and the car started right up, so I was quite proud of myself. The engine sounded good and smooth, and drove like a dream. Having never attempted anything of this magnitude, I thought pretty highly of myself when it went so well. Upon completion, I took the car out for a short (1-3 miles) drive to see how things were sorting out. As it turned out, the oil pan drain plug hadn't been fully tightened, so when the car over heated I let it cool, checked the fluids and found that it was oil free - obviously not right. After tightening the plug and refilling the oil, I gently drove home and everything seemed basically OK, although I think that the knock/tapping may have started then. The next day I went for another test drive, and definitely noticed the noise. Again, after about 30 minutes, it began to overheat. I once again checked the fluids (this time all the oil stayed in the car), took it back to my shop where we flushed the cooling system, and checked the thermostat and water pump (both fine). Given the brief time that the engine had no oil, I'm worried that I've gone and done it. While the engine now sounds like an old diesel it delivers power fine and smoothly. My concern is primarily with the overheating and the potential for problems in the future. I'm going to look at the timing belt shortly, but having been extremely careful about keeping that in order during reassembly I doubt that's the issue. A few things to note about the HG job we did (me and a mechanic pal): While we were careful about keeping every other part of the valve system in order, we didn't keep track of which of the valve cups came from which valve. It wasn't something either of us knew to do, and they all looked the same. It's likely that they got mixed up when they went back in. However, the cups on the right bank were similarly mixed up, and that side sounds fine. Is it possible/plausible that the timing is just off a little bit? If so, how can I figure out which cup goes to which valve? We used silicone sealant on the HG's, which I've since been told was not a good idea (in my defense, the tube said it was good for all gaskets, inc. HG's). The person who told me it was a bad idea suggested that perhaps a small piece of the sealant got sucked into an oil channel and blocked it, causing one of the pistons to be running dry. Is it possible that the wrong sealant would cause catastrophic failure? Or is it more likely that during the brief oil-free drive, I cracked a piston or something?