Chris from Tampa

Hi, glad to be here. We were given a 98 Forester that was my neices car. It's now my daughter's first car. It appears to have been neglected a little bit, and it sat for a year before we started driving it again. It's the first Subaru Ive ever owned. Ive recently fixed a few leaky o-rings in the A/C system, new plugs/ wires, and Ive changed the valve cover gaskets, the oil cooler seal and the oil pan gasket- no more oil leaks now. It needs a new steering rack, soon to arrive. Seems like a fairly easy job. However, we've had some ominous overheating issues with 'disppearing' coolant. I guess this is a head gasket failure? It's got 160K miles- sounds about right on schedule, based on what Ive been learning. I do my own mecahnical work, although Im not a mechanic, but the EJ25D is really easy to work on. Is the head gasket something I should tackle myself? Im not really looking forward to pulling the motor, but I also dont want to throw down 2K for the repair either. Anyway, Ill also post this in the forums later.