jonathan909

Been away for a while (that's a good sign - the cars have been pretty much behaving), but I've got a few things to do this summer and might as well wade in. I think I'm the lone dissenting voice here. I have a couple of '01 H6s, both bought cheap, one came (in pieces) with HG leaks and the other developed them later thanks to a series of overheatings. Last summer I pulled them both and did the gaskets, and it's fundamentally not a different job than doing it on the EJ25s. The difference is in the timing cover and All Those Damn Screws - about 65 just to pull the front off, and those are the ones among which will almost certainly be a stripped head or two (they're Allens). Once the heads are back on, cleaning up the cover halves and reassembling them adds a day to the job. I actually found rethreading the chains to be kind of fun (didn't replace any of the timing components), and I wouldn't hesitate to do it again. I just took one of them (the one with the terrible body but bitchen McIntosh stereo) out for a road trip - Calgary to Toronto to fetch a(nother) boat, then back via Pittsburgh, Madison, and Minneapolis - and with a big load of old computer hardware in the back both ways. Nothing like an H6 to give you the juice to do that.

Ain't my first rodeo - when I do HGs I go with known quality. Not sure exactly, but over the past couple of years I've generally been using Mahle MLMs (most of which have actually been Subaru OEM), and they hold as they should. The one exception was the (2019?) rebuild on my '99 DOHC in which I used the gaskets supplied with the EngineTech kit - that was purely an experiment, and they failed after about a year (during which I made a nine-day road trip to NY and back). This car hasn't seen nearly that many miles since the rebuild. So I have confidence in both the gaskets and my work.

Yeah, but it's winter here too, so obviously there's no towing involved, and since we live in the foothills, a day trip to ski in the mountains isn't any kind of serious load - I'm not talking about the middle of summer with a full load of passengers and camping gear and towing a boat.

Daughter is reporting the cabin heater (normally very efficient) is blowing cooler than usual as well, which just adds to the weirdness. BBQ thermometer an interesting approach, though.

Like most of us, I've had my share of bad HGs, so I rather doubt that's the case, but I'll double-check.

This one's odd. I did a rebuild on it a year or two ago (spun a rod bearing), it wasn't running well after I put it back together, it sat for a bit, and it finally settled down after I stuffed in a pair of fresh O2 sensors. After that, it ran great through the spring, summer, and fall. Then it started acting up in a strange way: The engine temperature isn't as stable as usual, and though it was running a little on the cool side, it overheated on my girls on a day ski trip to the mountains. The first and easiest thing that sprang to mind that might be causing this was a thermostat, maybe not staying closed tightly when it should (hence running cool), but maybe being generally sticky (which might cause both the under- and over-temp conditions. So it got a fresh OEM 'stat, but has still been running cooler than normal. What next? The pump? There's no evidence of leaks, and when it overheated the coolant loss was through the overflow jug. I'm a little puzzled.

Ouch! Around here it warmed up as predicted and has been hovering around 0C - and predicted to stay there for a while. But I've lived here too long to be fooled into thinking that it feels like an early spring...

...except if corrosion has actually removed portions of the threads. That's what had happened to the first of the H6s I did this summer, and I very reluctantly reused them because I was in a rush and under a lot of pressure. I knew they'd hold okay despite the voids - just a few mm of missing thread here and there - but didn't anticipate how much it would affect my ability to accurately torque them. The creak was unbelievable. So I'm just grateful it's holding together and I won't do that again.

How is it for you up there, brother? We woke up to -40 this morning, and a few miles up the road (Sundre) it was -42 (not counting wind chill, of course). But we're due for a Chinook, so we'll be back up around 0C for a few days around xmas.

About the head bolts: Even though people in the business of selling them say that they have to be replaced, they don't. Re-use them unless they're obviously damaged (e.g. corroded threads).

I bought the Enginetech full-rebuild kit for my '99 EJ25 (DOHC) a few years back, and just for yuks, used the head gaskets supplied in the kit - I wanted to see how they'd stand up compared to the MLM gaskets we all know are the Right Thing. I got one year out of them before they leaked out, causing me to pull the heads and put in an MLM set. So the HGs in their kits are clearly crap, and I don't think I can recommend their head bolts either - some I got were, um, "less than straight". So the Enginetech kit is a perfectly reasonable - and very economical - kit, as long as you just toss the HGs and get HQ MLMs (incidentally, of late I've been buying Mahles from Rock - and they carry the Fuji Heavy Industries (Subaru) logo). Do it that way and you can get the quality where it matters (the HGs) and save a lot of money over a premium kit.

Yeah, that means that you'd get another data point, but it may not be definitive. The best test is the one you did, but the negative result could mean the problem is somewhere else (i.e. the actuator) or the two controllers are different. I would think a simple visual check (including comparing part numbers, if any) would answer the latter question; if they're different, trying the '99 in the '95 probably isn't going to work either. But don't forget what I mentioned previously - that others have reported simply reflowing (resoldering) all of the joints on the controller PCB and had it spring back to life. I haven't done one yet, but it's small and will only take a few minutes, so it doesn't make sense to me not to try.

Does that mean you've ruled out the controller as the possible source of the problem?

So problem in linkage or controller.

When powered from what? The controller, or on the bench?

I successfully used the external bolt biter extractors we discussed recently after nothing gripped the Allen head cavity (these are socket head cap screws).

Yabut... Removing the cover should still be considered nontrivial since there's a good chance that at least one of those 65 front cover screws is stripped. If that's the case, you're at least going to be pulling the rad to give you enough room to work at getting it out, and more if it gives you a bad time.

I have the same problem with the same model/year, only it's simply "reluctant" to move the door rather than absolutely stuck. So during the winter, once we get it to move to defrost+floor, I tell everyone just to stay the hell away from the control and don't ask for trouble. Why haven't I fixed it? Because I'd rather do three HG jobs and pull a Mustang motor for a timing kit (like I did this summer) than crawl under (or take apart) a dash once. But I know I'm going to have to deal with it sometime - probably this spring. Poking around online recently, though, I found discussions of the problem actually being with the control head PCB. Apparently (as with the instrument cluster) pulling it out and just reflowing (resoldering) all the joints generally solves the problem, so I plan to start there.

GD and I are at odds over this because he's practical and knows what he's doing, and I'm stubborn, cheap, and live by the old Stiff Records maxim: Try everything once except incest and folk dancing. I just did two HG jobs on the older ('01) H6 this past summer. Assuming yours is more-or-less the same (I haven't done a revised H6 yet), that furshlugginer timing cover alone adds a day to the job. Seriously, in addition to cleaning all that RTV, you're dealing with ~150 bolts, and that means it's all but certain you're going to get some stripped heads that'll add to the fun. I didn't change the chains, and so far it's been running great (one is in service, the other on standby and hasn't seen any actual miles yet). So I'm happy with the effort and the result, and actually had fun when it came to reinstalling the chains.

Rock: as long as you have no expectation of customer service, they're the best going! I've been perfectly happy with them since I figured that out. I think to date the only thing they've really gotten wrong was the timing cover crank seal (alone, not part of a kit) that they sold me for the '01 H6 - it was simply too small for the hole in the cover. Right part number, wrong fit. It was unclear where the mistake occurred - with the part's supplier or with Rock - and their error-bot credited me back half the cost of the part. Fine by me; not worth making a bigger fuss over a $5 seal that would cost $10 in postage to return. So, customer service reputation aside, do they not have anything that fits and works?

I didn't even know they'd rebooted it. If the premise is the same, I don't expect I'd feel any differently. MacGruber, on the other hand, is quite alright. Haven't seen the movie, just some of the SNL bits.

Hmm. I didn't see any mention of "running bubbles" in the coolant overflow, but is it worth doing a compression test? Hardly definitive, but maybe something turns up. I don't think I've ever head anyone mention "airhead" adapters on here - the shop air adapters that take the place of the spark plug and let you pressure up the cylinder without running or cranking.

Sure, but I was typing quickly. Don't want to get that OT, but worth noting that in its original usage, "hacking" was a hardware activity and only later came to be applied to the (now dominant) software usage.

I fuggin' HATE that word. There were plenty of words and phrases to describe this activity (kludge, hack, jury-rig, etc.) that predate by many years that idiotic POS TV show, and anyone who uses it within arm's length of me can expect to get bitch-slapped without delay.

I can't answer that one - I don't really know anything about the actuator and controls as I hate working in/under dashes so much that I've just been living with my '99 OBW's reluctance to change the airflow on command (e.g. from defrost to floor). In that case my suspicion is that the control PCB needs reflowing or replacement or something - I'm not having the kind of problem you are. Also, I don't know how representative a result you're going to get over <30 minutes. Myself, I'd pressure it up and leave it overnight. Consider that this leak may be (in part) a product of normal thermal expansion, and that it may be a smaller aperture when cold.