cporath

The block halves are going in an engine washer tomorrow, and I will be definitely taking my time cleaning the heads and oil passages. I will be replacing the oil pump as everything goes back together. I am going to do piston, rings, and wristpins as well while I am in there. This has been a great learning experience..... I never again will take oil levels for granted.

So the crank is at the machine shop. It was epic failure of rod bearing number 1 and minor failure of the remaing 3 and every main bearing along the way. Pistons and case all look great, so should be a relatively easy fix. 257 dollars to grind and true the crank, and new rod and main bearings.

Thanks for all the advice. I plan on tearing the motor down later this week. I'm curious to see what I find.

Is it common for the bearings to be composed of aluminum? That's the part that I don't understand. None of the silver colored shavings can be picked up with a magnet.

Thanks! I will give that a shot.

engine has 160k.

So, to clarify, I do know thew engine is toast. Is there any specific bearing I should be looking at? I plan to pull the engine this week and get it on the bench. Should I just plan on a replacement engine, or could it be worth fixing?

Desertsubaru- Oil was checked last week, and was fine. The car barely used any oil up to this point.

This weekend my wife was driving our 04 Subaru outback, while passing a slow moving car, the motor made an odd shutter tap noise while hitting the passing gear. It had a bit of an intermittent shutter noise the remaing 5 miles to town. When we pulled into a gas station the oil light was flickering on and off. After letting it sit, I found it was low on oil (not registering on the dip stick) I added a quart and headed back hom. after that the noise became a light clunk at idle. The clunck disappeared off idle until 2500 rpm. I never lost any performance whatsoever on the drive home, and from the drivers seat of the car you would never know there was a problem. It appears the car as about 2 1/2 quarts low when the problem occured. I checked the timing belt tesioner, everything looked fine (just did timing set and head gaskets 20k ago) I pulled the oil pan today, and there is alot of metal in there. A couple pieces of what appears to be aluminum the size and thickness of finger nail clippings. And alot of smaller to medium size shavings as well, all are non ferous and appear to be aluminum. I checked the rod bearings while in the oil pan and everything appears tight. From what I could see of the wrist pins and piston skirts, everything looked good. I'm not really sure where to go with this project.... I was pretty sure the knock was coming from the front of the motor, but my old man thought it was coming from the back (we both have terrible hearing) it seemed to me to be slighly louder on the drivers side.Any ideas as to where this knock could be coming from would be greatly appreciated.

I am honestly looking for a cheap option to get this thing back on the road. Having a couple of engine choices opens up alot more possibilities. I have already dumped a bunch of money into this car over the last year and a half already..... Thanks for all of the knowledge everybody!

Thanks for the quick reply! I am really leaning toward the 2.2 as a replacement, and this information is exactly what i have been looking for.

I know this topic has been beat to death, but I can't seem to find the answer to my question. I have a 2004 Subaru outback with an ej251 that lost a rod bearing this weekend. I am tossing around the idea of swapping the 2.5 for a more reliable 2.2. I do understand that i need a phase 2 motor for a plug and play installation. My question is, what year and make of Subaru have the donor motor I would need. If I choose to stick with the 2.5, I understand that any 2.5 block from 2000-2005 will work? Is this correct? Thank you to anyone who can help!