JockinCville

Took my car back to the garage after a renewed small oil leak offered visible evidence to invoke the guarantee. This time the owner was behind the counter, a tremendously experienced fellow who said: "Yeah with Subarus if one cam seal fails, they all need replacing. Oil squirts out. They're famous for that. And you have to use a special sealant too, or it won't seat right. If I'd been here I'd have said to replace all the seals, not just that one." Based on some old posts on this site I took this opportunity also to replace the water pump, in the name of preventive maintenance. The tally was over $400, from which he deducted last week's $188 bill--so for about $250 I now have a purring, happy engine which will be good (one hopes) for the next 88,000 miles.

Thanks, Frag, for a creative and likely-seeming diagnosis which has reversed the approach I was going to take to the problem. I was going to drive the car seldom and very gently, to see if the burning rubber smell was just a leftover from the old leak which goes away on its own. Maybe what your post did was cure me of wishful thinking. After reading it I reviewed last week's repair bill and noticed the words "All Work Guaranteed for 30 Days." For the next 29 days I am going to drive the car hard, and often. If the cam seal burns out again, at least the labor to tear down the front of the engine and get to it ought to come under the guarantee. This time I'll have him check that camshaft carefully.

To answer your questions: no visible leaks currently. No other symptoms besides the burning rubber smell which seems to come from the front of the engine. Replaced rhe cam seal--which the mechanic said was completely gone and the engine bone dry of oil--last week. I left out some symptoms which others with this problem should know about--in particular the horror story of driving with my roommate from Virginia to Massachsettes. Halfway there, smoke billows out of the hood smelling like burning tires. Frothing, sblue and purple, enough to make the turnpike attendant very upset. Probably oil blown back onto a hot exhaust system. Thought the car might explode. My roommate's solution was to drive too fast for the explosion to catch up. When those seals fail the oil leak is prodigious, and the risk to the engine extreme. On the plus side: the engine purrs like a kitten even at 88k miles, even after it got abused by having to drive fifteen minutes with very little oil to get to the mechanic.

I smelled burning rubber from the front of my '96 Impreza wagon 2.2 (which my mechanic speculated might be a plastic bag wrapped around the catalytic converter). Nope. It was the front cam seal burning up. When it disintegrated completely all the oil started leaking out of my engine. Saw the leak and luckily got to the mechanic before the engine melted down. Cost $188.00 parts and labor to replace the seal. Now I smell burning rubber again. Is there some heat problem on the underside of all Subaru engines, or is it just mine? The temperature gauge reads normal. Some time ago my mechanic removed a "heat shield" between the exhaust system and the car body when it came loose and rattled annoyingly. Said it was surplus metal. Could it have been some kind of heat dissipator instead, which Surbaru uses to deal with the cam heating issue?