Ryker101

After a long spell of inactivity, let me catch everyone up on what I have done and where I'm currently at with this project car. November/December 2014: I lubed up the valves and piston heads with Marvel Mystery oil as Silverback suggested. Replaced the intake gasket and then put everything back together. Next, without any water I tried to start it up for the first time. At first, she didn't start- but, after resolving a fuel delivery issue (bad fuel pump), I finally got her to start. Besides the huge plume of smoke, the engine ran and sounded good. I assumed the large amount of smoke was the Marvel Mystery burning off. Since I didn't have any coolant cooling the motor down, I limited the time that I allowed the motor to run to under a minute. This wasn't enough time to see if the smoking would dissipate. Now that I knew it ran, I installed the water pump and added tap water. After adding water, I found that my radiator leaked. After sourcing a good used radiator, I finally was able to fire her up and let her run. I started it up and drove it around the block (at night because the smoke was really bad!) I would say it ran for less than 5 minutes, then I shut it off. When I went to try to start it again, she wouldn't start. After pulling the plugs, I found the cylinders full of water again . At this point, I was really disappointed so I parked it and put the project on hold for a bit. Fast forward to now: I've decided to start again on this project and I think I have two options: 1) replace the head gasket and rebuild the heads. 2) Source another EA81 that runs good and do a motor swap. Any advice on this? After calling eight wrecking yards yesterday, I found only one good motor nearby but the wrecking yard wants a small fortune for it $650. They claim it came out of a rollover that only had 86,000 miles on it. This is about double what I was hoping to pay! The motor is out of a car that had an automatic transmission. My car has a 4spd manual. The wrecking yard claimed that the motor for the automatic's is different then the motor that came with the manual transmissions... is there any truth to that? Monday I plan to call more wrecking yards. Thanks

First, thanks for all of the great comments on this. I drained the oil tonight and found a great deal of coolant in the oil (about 0.5 to 1 quart I would guess). The oil and coolant poured out completey seperated (the oil wasn't milky). I imagine since the car had been sitting so long, the two fluids seperated in the pan because of the different densities. I was surprised at how clean and dark green the coolant looked when it poured out. If there is coolant in the oil, what does that mean? Could this still have been caused by a bad intake gasket or does it point to headgasket? The thing I keep debating is that if I have to tear this thing down, I might be better off finding another motor and saving the time and money that it would take to reseal the original motor. I I found another running motor that's not far from where I live. The seller claims it ran good when it was pulled. It's been in their garage for several years. They're asking $250 but I think I could get it for $150 or 200. What's your opinion? I was thinking about just putting my exisiting motor back together (following the advice from the comments above) and try starting her up. If she runs, great. If not, just pull the motor and put another one in. I was wondering if I were to put the intake back on and got the engine to start, what are the chances the motor would last? Maybe? ... or unlikely? ... or very unlikely? Are there any good write-ups that anyone can direct me to on the procedure of replacing the head gaskets on these motors?

The motor turns over by hand smoothly and appers to have good compression. But I haven't checked the compression with a guage. Side note: When I flushed the coolant ports I had the intake ports plugged with plastic. I'm begining to think my plastic plugs may have leaked a little adding to the coolant in cylinder problem. So would you suggest pumping the water out of the cylinders and putting the intake back on and trying starting her up and see what happens? Thanks.

Greetings everyone: My first post, here goes: Background on the Car: 1984 Subaru 155K miles. I bought this car not running. I don't know much of the history other than it hasn't been on the road since 2002. The previous owner parked it because it stopped running. After inspecting the motor and pulling the plugs, I found coolant in all four cylinder heads; intially, I thought that the motor had blown head gaskets- but then after reading several posts on USMB, it got me thinking the intake manifold gaskets were bad. This would explain why I had coolant in all four cylinders. So, I went ahead and pulled the intake manifold last weekend- and, to my surprise, found the passenger side coolant passage completely blocked with this white waxy/pasty gunk. I have no idea what this substance was, it reminded me of Elmer's Glue white paste. The blockage was about 1" thick. The only thing I can think of is that the previous owner added "Head Gasket Sealent" attempting to seal the coolant leak that was getting into the heads and the stuff sealed up the intake coolant port. So, I cleaned this blockage out the best I could using the head of a flat head screw driver and flushed the coolant ports out with water. I just finished cleaning the intake manifold mating surfaces in preperation for the new gaskets. I have also replaced the thermostat and thermostat gasket while the intake is off. My question is: Since the intake is already off, should I replace the head gaskets as well? I'm worried that after putting the new intake gaskets on, I'll find out that the head gaskets are bad and have to replace the intake gaskets twice (cleaning those mating surfaces was not fun and I would hate to do it twice!). If I don't pull the heads and just replace the intake gaskets, how should I go about getting the coolant out of the cylinder heads? When I turn the motor over with a wrench I can see coolant in the intake port as well as see pooling coolant looking through the spark plug hole. Should I consider flushing out the clyinder heads, then sucking out the water and coolant with a pump? Check out this pictures I took of the gaskets and unkown blockage substance: http://www.dropbox.com/sh/nnwoarop3cy5g3v/AAB1IrYALGDwwEL3_-LZv3gVa?dl=0 I would really appreciate any advice people have.