idosubaru

the EZ30 is much harder than any other subaru engine in this area. the lower drivers side valve cover bolt is amazing. can't see it and no room. who's done it (JCE, i know you have, where are you!?) and what tool did you use for that one bolt? how did you keep the tool on there and know you were tightening it? i already got it removed and reinstalled finger tight, now i'm trying appropriately tighten it. it came out entirely by hand as far as i can tell, unless i bumped it some unknowingly while trying to get at it with tools. a wrench - doesn't seem to be enough room to turn it. my hands are large so i can't get both down there. tried from the bottom behind the wheel and mostly from up top.

KYB GR2's are commonly used in Subarus for some reason, i've had no complaints with them with limited experience as i haven't done many strut swaps. aftermarket axle market is terrible. a few seconds on google or a subaru forum shows countless threads with new axles causing issues. those of us that do a lot of subarus - can't even count or remember how many times we've seen "new" axles have issues. leak grease, click, grind, vibrations, blow to pieces with little balls rolling all over the ground, i've seen it all. sure - you can get a good one too, my point isn't that every one will fail - but they are such a high failure rate it turns into a waste of time and headache over time. also - i've seen new aftermarkets have more issues on lifted vehicles. in other words i've seen new aftermarkets vibrate like crazy on a lifted rig but run fine on a non-lifted rig. don't waste your time with any store bought axle. i personally have two options: 1. reboot a Subaru axle. they are very robust and never fail if kept properly greased/booted. if the only issues yours have is cracked boots it would be silly to throw away or trade in Subaru axles for junk new ones. hard to do on older Soobs of course.... 2. MWE. he's in colorado and so you have to deal with shipping, but it's well worth it. $75 an axle plus core or shipping back and forth. lots of folks on here have bought from him. some folks like EMPI, but there have been issues reported on here and subaruoutback.org. i'd still consider these a decent alternative to the rest of the aftermarket axle debacle, but given there are two other perfectly good options i haven't bothered to try the EMPI's. avoid everything else like the plague.

ball joints and tie rods are about the two most dangerous items that can fail...people think it's brakes - but you generally have options if brakes have issues. if a ball joint or tie rod fails - it's not pretty when that happens, the car can do crazy things and you have no control. i'm not saying i've heard of ball joint failures in Subaru's and you're generally going to have some warning signs and manufacturers don't want liabilities, so might not be much issue - but i like how robust Subaru ball joints are and I generally don't cheap out on them. i use Subaru or Beck Arnley and wouldn't buy the cheapest thing you can find on these. Shawn just posted a great price and the guy knows Subaru's like his socks - I'd buy that.

copy. wish i had one of your EJ18's, i might try it on a forester i have sitting here. LOL

Huck - I checked, I don't have the EJ18 intake any more but I do have a spare 2000 Forester manifold which has the same idle set up (i checked) as your 99. I could ship the throttle body with the solenoid/idle controller on it if you want to compare it to your EJ18 intake. Let me know if you want those parts to play with so you don't have to disassemble that EJ25. If Gloyale is right that a SOHC throttle body will bolt up to the EJ18 then that would be awesome. The Forester idle controller has a solenoid in the throttle body with a hose going to some contraption up front. The hard part is that this contraption is somehow tied into a bunch of the evaporative lines and some other metal line that taps into the intake right below the fuel injectors. Weird. Anyway, not sure how you would route all that.

Huck - call or email me, I've done it. It's easy. You even saw one of the cars I did it too a couple years ago when we hung out in Cinci. It will depend on which EJ25 you mean? Option 1: (this will only work with DOHC EJ25's): Get a 95-99 EJ22 intake manifold with EGR. Those bolt up to the EJ18 and are plug and play into the EJ25. The EJ18's I've seen have EGR...and 95-99 EJ25's have EGR so you'll want an EJ22 intake manifold with EGR. EJ22's are a crap shoot, some have EGR, some don't..and sometimes there's no rhyme or reason. EJ18 are dual port heads so the EJ25 exhaust bolts right up. Option 2: The other option you could do is to probably bolt the EJ25 heads up to the EJ18 block, then you wouldn't have anything to worry about - same heads, intake manifold, etc. I've never checked valve clearance, like if the EJ25 valves would strike the smaller EJ18 cylinder walls...shouldn't be too hard to check that. I know you can bolt the EJ25 heads to the EJ18 block. Cost wise I guess you want to see if you can get an EJ22 intake for cheaper than a pair of headgaskets - might be about the same. I suspect you're selling it so it won't matter but if I was keeping it I'd opt for the EJ22 intake so compression doesn't get hammered and ease/cheap maintenance - cheaper timing components, fewer cam seals, no nearly impossible to adjust DOHC valves. If you're talking about Phase II SOHC EJ25's then option #2 is your only option.

exactly, you got it. the whole point of the EJ22 swap is that you *don't* use the Ej22 manifold because the EJ18 intake bolts right to it. it avoids all the wiring, ECU swapping/issues. so you bolt EJ18 or EJ22 heads to either an EJ18, EJ22, or EJ25 and you're good to go. turbo requires swapping all the wiring, ECU, exhaust, and the engine crossmember as well. it's much more involved swap. EJ22 and EJ25 blocks have knock sensors where EJ18's don't (or all the ones i've seen don't, i'm not sure if maybe some later models may have them). either way, just remove it, it's not used.

multiple ways to do it, read up on it and figure out how you want to do it. there's a sticky or thread about it in the USRM - read that first.

right on miles, i'm with you. i totally agree, i never meant to suggest it was intentional. But the QC/TQM (Quality Control) Industrial Engineering principles outlined to Japanese companies for post World War II rebuilding that has made them the successful ventures they are today (read about Edward Demming, it's a fascinating story that everyone should know)....aren't being followed or there wouldn't be a 15 year headgasket issue with half-hearted, ill-fated attempts to alleviate them. to that end - as i mentioned before - Subaru is okay with risk, not that they are intentionally doing it. interpret that however you wish, i may make some half-hearted tongue in cheek suggestions (using the phrase "it might be more accurate to include"...which are very ambiguous words and not a statement of fact) that are silly, but they are okay with the risk for some financial reason. i wasn't referring to DIY folks, we're a blip on the radar screen - an anomaly. so "ease" of work hardly plays into it. has more to do with disposability in our culture.... but nonetheless the original question has a simple answer - it's not cost effective, there's simply no reason or need.

there's no need and it's not cost effective. alternate ways of sealing have been around for a long time. for that matter, alternate ways of doing lots of things are available but not used - it's simply not cost effective. it's not a "wrong type of engineering". it is incorrect to assume that Subaru's goal is to produce an engine that never has headgasket issues - that isn't even close to reality. they are okay with some risk to that end. if they were that concerned about it they would have far more focus on headgaskets than they have. they're okay with a slight amount of risk and quite possibly the repair/maintenance/parts market is getting a good boost so there's a cost/reward curve in play too - it's not as black and white as one might think. they're okay with loosing some customers if the rest of the Subaru community is paying higher repair and parts costs. manufacturers don't make money selling new cars any more, that statistic swung hard and fast in the 80's and 90's. now they might rather have more cars generating maintenance/repair costs than producing lower maintenance vehicles - repairs costs are where most dealers are making their profits (that and used cars). consumers are uneducated, most *think* they're educated so that just compounds that dynamic!! so rather than thinking of new cars as some pinnacle product that generates revenue....it might be accurate to also include the idea that new cars are an infusion of revenue generation into the consumer world. manufacturers are okay with certain risks in exchange for other things. what seems simple on the surface has financial costs, opportunity costs, or other costs associated with it in the real world. one can sit back and arm chair design anything - manufacturers live in the real world of costs, economies, exchange rates, marketing, competition, 20 year strategies, and fickle uneducated consumers. their world and ours have completely different modes of operation.

classic radiator symptoms...time of year...and age - the car is a quarter century old.

+1 most likely. radiatorbarn.com has cheap radiators usually. sounds like classic radiator stuff here...i'm surprised after 2 years and overheating that the radiator was never considered? weird. a flush by no means guarantees radiator innards.

classic bent valves sound. it's not making any compression so it can turn easier and smoothly with no lumpiness as it builds compression. i mean, make sure of course that your belt marks are all dead on first.

4 bolt 8 bolt is no big deal - they easily interchange, just follow GD's suggestion on the starter. other than that you can pretty much ignore this difference.

just install the belt properly and see where you're at. these belts are easy to install. you don't have to reassemble all the timing covers and accessory pulleys, etc - install the belt (PROPERLY!) and start it. there's no way to tell if you damaged the valves, no one knows where the crank mark was...there is some chance that it was in a position where no valve damage would occur. there are two marks on the crank sprocket - make sure you use the right one. i don't personally understand where folks get confused but they do - use the dash. line both cam and crank marks up to their 12 noon position - the drivers side cam and crank both have marks on the engine to align with, really simple. passengers side is the cam case mating surface at 12 noon. install the belt and go from there. sometimes the valves are bent lightly enough that the car is drivable, sometimes it's not at all. again - just install the belt properly and see what happens. sounds like free labor no big deal.

previous history may dictate on what you can and can't do. was it previously holding the seal and grease in place? if so then that tells you you got a chance. otherwise that looks fairly terrible. is that where the seal sits? if it is how did it get warn down - was the seal missing or out of place or...? someone likely has an extra arm lying around, i had one at one point.....i still might actually, i can't remember if i kept it or not. shipping wouldn't be fun....

Easy - simply replace the boots. It's just a boot - replace it. Very easy to do I might add. Another guy recently quoted $220 for a dealer to do this. Costs about $20 for the boot and doesn't take that long. Ignore your dealer. That is not a typical response - most dealers simply replace the boots.

she can also ask here for Subaru specific information. like if she needs a timing belt or has a check engine light we can give her very specific information on how best to proceed and the cheapest cost parts and which are better to use subaru parts on...etc.

if it's that stuck you need to push it back out the way it went in - continue trying to drive it back through the other way. it'll eventually come out, it's amazing how stuck they seem even when you didn't tap them that hard to begin with. i'm not familiar with historic subarus but since the late 80's on Automatics (you don't say if yours is an auto or manual) you can pull on the front axles and the stub will pop out of the transmission - it's only held in place by a small circlip. so - if yours is an automatic and the historic models have that same stubby shaft set up, you can simply pull it out to work on it out of the vehicle.

install a metal separator plate on the rear of the engine. adjust the valves and install new valve cover gaskets. install a timing belt kit off ebay with all new pulleys and tensioner. reseal the oil pump and tigthen the backing plate screws on it - usually one or a few are loose. all of that is well talked about and covered here. install new cam seals and cam orings.

engine alone shouldn't matter - but i would try to get one from the same generation as yours - like 95-99. they're essentially worthless parts that rarely (never) fail so it should be really easy to find one the same year as yours for cheap.

yes. not necessarily "greater" - just a different design protocol. with most design choices there are advantages and drawbacks to both. they are called torque to yield bolts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque-to-yield_fastener you can google and research more. Subaru doesn't use them. right on, i hear you. i have experienced shocks working on other vehicles that are far different than i would have anticipated from Subaru's. Heck Subaru on ocassion can confuse me. LOL I am more familiar with TTY headbolts than you are so you don't need to explain, i know exactly where you're coming from, those are nothing new and quite common. But Subaru doesn't use them. good thing about new headbolts is they are clean, no need to wipe down the threads of the old headbolts. that's the most value you'll get for your dollar on those. in the end it doesn't really matter - this is a win-win because either way you choose you get the same result.

there is no oil underneath the car at all? it can also loose oil through valve stem seals, not sure if it could loose a quart every 600 miles though. if it's a valve stem seal then you could do a headgasket job and install new valve stem seals. price out some EJ22's and see what you can find. if you find a great and inexpensive option that might make the decision even easier. you could even get an EJ18 if you want to expand your options, they're usually easier to find cheap because there is higher supply than demand. i know a guy that has three of them and he said i could have one for free if i want it, he can't get rid of them. your EJ22 manifold will bolt right on top of the EJ18. i bought one with 100,000 miles and a warranty for $150 from a junk yard already pulled. great deal, i've put 60,000 miles on it and it hasn't given me a problem yet.

+1 to GD's comments. EJ22 headgaskets dont fail unless the motor was overheated....which you don't want anyway since overheating is bad for oil and bearings too. Get one from a wreck and it's going to last the life of the vehicle if you care to maintain it properly. Subaru's = never replace headbolts. That's a materials driven question, don't borrow techniques from other manufacturers who use different processes and materials.

sure, try taking the fuse out. if something is wrong it's simply a matter of now or later for it to surface. correlation does not mean causation - it is unlikely the front diff change did anything...but it's hardly material to your situation now anyway. i wouldn't worry too much about what "fixed" the torque bind, focus more on proceeding properly from here on out based on current symptoms. you have the fluids changed and tires matching, good job. 1.) fix the bad axle (or whatever symptoms make you think there's a bad axle) 2.) pull the fuse and see if the AWD and FWD fuse are working properly.