idosubaru

i know people that have with good results. i have spoken with them on the phone and plan on ordering a set or two.

pull the hoses to the heater core off. (there are two hoses connected to the fire wall giong to the heater core, remove them). i leave the hose connected at the firewall and disconnect the other end. you'll have two hoses, inlet and outlet. blow water or compressed air through them to flush out any junk. i've done this before, it's very easy. might as well replace the hose and clamps while you're going through the trouble. be careful where the hose clamps at the firewall, the hose actually clamps to the heater core, don't break it. gotta go.

i've read on here that dealers normally do the headgasket in the car, they don't remove the engine. crank seals, cam seals, water pump, oil pump are all right in front of them while doing the headgasket, there's very little associated cost in replacing those at the same time. crank and cam seals are 5-10 dollars each, same with oil pump oring. call another shop and get an estimate on head gasket and crank, cam, oil pump seals and see what you get.

yes

15A fuse. it's not a big deal. you could install any fuse in your fuse box whether it be a 15, 20, 25, or 30 and all will work just fine without issue.

nice picks indeed, doesn't look hard at all? much easier than i thought. is there a new gasket that goes between the rear extension housing and the trans case when you reassemble?

not required as i suspected, found online: http://www.epa.state.il.us/air/vim/faq/testing.html#10

most states have an exclusion for AWD vehicles. they test it at idle only, no moving or rolling tests needed for AWD. i would refuse to use the fuse. an AWD auto trans is nothing to mess with unless an emergency. good to be prepared, but i can't imagine they'd make you do that, liability written all over it. i'd call and ask first and demand that this not be done to your car if any resistance is found, but i find that unlikely. not too mention...what if, somehow that one dinky circuit went bad or the fuse popped or something...then what? the car takes off with people standing in front of it and through the doors it goes? no way i say, refuse the fuse.

lots of people do this, i've done it a number of times to any subaru i drive. very common practice. the tune up likely did more for your engine than this.

the newer generation subaru's don't get great gas mileage. yours doesn't sound far off depending what kind of driving your doing. the fuse will not help physically speaking. mentally maybe you're more aware of driving habits and slow down, use brakes less if you put it in due to the fact you're paying more attention to it, but otherwise it won't make a difference everything else being equal. i've gone so far as to drive both auto and manual trans in FWD without the rear driveshaft connected and even without the rear axles/rear diff in place and still no difference. (i didn't do it for gas mileage reasons, but do plenty of highway driving for accurate comparisons). i'm currently running FWD in my XT6 because i removed the rear diff to put in another car...no change in mpg at all and i drive all highway miles 120 miles round trip per day to work. very consistent testing, no change.

so why would this misalignment occur while the engine was not run for a couple months and never while driving? i always assumed corrosion of some sort since it was always while "sitting". cars both ran perfectly fine before tear down (minus head gasket seaping). belizianbus, do you have a means to swap distributors to check? haven't heard back from you yet.

agreed, i can send you one for "testing" if you'd like. send it back if i it doesn't work.

battery connections clean and tight? how old is the cap? i'd replace it and the rotor. cracked or leaky distributor cap or rotor can cause this, rough to start but runs great. outside of that, leaky injectors bleeding off fuel as the car sits. but i'm highly doubful that's the case.

positive, i only swapped distributors and kept the (brand new) cap and rotor. same on the previous instance a couple years ago, finally swapped disty after many days/hours replacing everything and swapping MAF, Knock sensor, ECU..blah blah blah to no avail. replace disty and it ran fine. on this last time, i had pulled/reinstalled the wires multiple times and connected/disconnected the electrical testers. no codes, i tested every pin out at the ECU and followed the entire, convoluted, detailed "No Start" testing in the FSM...pages and pages worth and everything tested fine. i've owned about 12-15 XT6's, parted a few out and know them fairly well. from now on i say replace it (but that's easy for me to say i have plenty of parts lying around). this just occurred to me, i dare even say this as some people likely don't believe me up to this point, but let me mention an even stranger detail. i'm wondering if there is anyway for the CAS to become disoriented or misaligned internally? the first time i could actually get the car to run (not very well though, but driveable) by lining it one or two teeth OFF intentionally. line up the disty correctly and it wouldn't even start if i turned the timing all the way as far as it could go. lined it up OFF intentionally a couple times (more or less by accident) and it ran.....i agree, totally weird and believe i would have used every cuss word in the book at the time i was so frustrated. that's why i say check it if you can't find anything else now that i've had it happen twice. and both times it never happened while driving the car or using it...but after the car had sat awhile....it wouldn't start up after running fine before. huck, john and others from xt6.net helped me through that first nightmare, they probably recall and the details are posted all over xt6.net or the old yahoo groups. i say swap disty if you can, it's easy enough to do and worth the trouble it may save.

yes you can do it, i don't have time to post but check out http://www.xt6.net

the 2.5 headgaskets are typically done by the dealer for around $1,000 - $1,200. the new updated gasket is not known to fail like the old ones. i'd save a grand and replace the headgasket. if you're going the 2.2 route, you can pick those up for $200-$500, i'd go that route before spending $2,000 on one.

$2,000 is insanely expensive. she should never talk to that dealer or sales person again, he/she is not to be trusted. 2.5's generally run $1,000 from the dealer. i wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't even a head gasket issue, but so hard to say without seeing the car or having any more information. 130,000 is low mileage for a 2.2. 2.2's generally go alot of miles and are regarded as durable motors. If you were to drive up there and do it yourself the easiest solution is to find a used motor for a couple hundred and swap it out. you can find them for 100-500 used. then no worries about how to do the job, needing parts, opening up seals, gaskets, timing belts, heads being warped, needing machine work on the heads/valves...etc. engine swap can easily be done in a day and doesn't require much really. install new timing belt, water pump and oil pump seals while it's out, you'd be best to do that anyway even if you did the head gasket on hers. i'd tell her to ask around for an honest mechanic and have the car tested elsewhere, second and third oppinions are well worth the effort some times.

if you're asking about the XT6 then no the ignitor is where it is on the EA82's, not on the disty.

it's easy. if you're scared then you probably shouldn't attempt it. only tricky part is seating the torque converter of the auto trans. the trick is to make sure it's seated all the way in. pulling the engine - unbolt exhaust. remove intake. disconnector electrical connectors. remove alternator wires. unbolt a/c compressor and swing it to the side (it'll push to the right and allow the engine to be pulled without removing a/c). remove fans, radiator if you'd like. unbolt trans. pull motor. it's straight forward, there's nothing all that big about doing it. if the engine/trans don't want to seperate use a screwdriver or equivalent to start seperating them and work your way around the bellhousing. there really is no "science" or "how to" because each is different. depends what you're doing and why you're pulling. just pull whatever you need to get it out. sometimes you leave the intake and connectors connected if you're just pulling the block (hold them up and out of the way). sometimes you can hack and cut the hoses if it's coming out of a junked car and it's really easy, just cut everything, unbolt and remove.

awesome, that's the exact page i was looking for, you are the man! do we know why it is locked? thanks!

an 03, is it still under warranty? axle (what he said earlier) or ujoints in the rear driveshaft are my guess.

i was looking for actual information on replacing the head gaskets, like how to do it and the torque specs. there's too much information overload to get anywhere by searching but i know i've seen it in the past. any help? do the new updated headgaskets have a different torque specification, has that specification always been the same or did it change since the HG issues crept up?

what car are you looking at? i have three 97 and 98 impreza's with 2.2 liter motors. the 2.5 is the only one with head gasket issues, the 2.2 is a beast of a motor. and "head gasket problem" is vague terminology. toyota's V6 may have had a much larger percentage problem or design flaw than the subaru 2.5 liter. really no way to compare without seeing numbers/statistics.

i disagree about the head gasket being a pain in the car. it is nice to have the engine out of the car, so if you like doing that and have the means then tear it up. i normally work on the 6 cylinder XT6's which are trickier and have less room to work with and more bolts. done a number of head gaskets and the first time i did an EA82 was a breeze. the biggest hinderance is rusted or stuck bolts (read...intake manifold bolts). otherwise i had no problem. $1,000 seems high. i did head gaskets, ported and polished cylinder heads, valve job, heads resurfaced, reground aggressive cams and all new engine seals, timing belts and new timing pulleys for about that for someone else. i've swapped one cam and two HLA's in 2 hours (granted it was the easier p/s side). just the head bolts after that to get the heads off. if you have an air compressor it's SUPER quick. have a wobble socket ready to get to all the head bolts and zip-zip you're on it like a hornet. good luck and have fun,

i agree these things *should* happen this way. but, i've had two failed distributors (still have them) that produced no CEL and i got spark and fuel. i've heard others say it's not supposed to happen like that and agree it shouldn't (would have saved me ALOT of time diagnosing) and i don't know what the exact problem is, but swapping the dist made the engine start, that's what i know (and i previously had fuel, spark). the second time i kept telling myself no way it was the distributor and i tested everything....then when i finally sucked it up and swapped, it started. i'll need to do swap them again since i have 4 dist and don't know which two are bad. 'im curious to see if they'll do it again and i can test for differences.