February 28, 200422 yr Brought this one home today - got it for a song since it "doesn't run" Nice interior and pretty good looker I think. Anyway - the reason for it not running became obvious as soon as I removed the air filter..... all 5 pounds of it - soaked in "milkshake". Now the owner said that he had a rebuilt engine put in less than 2 years ago..... so what kind of damage can I expect to see from all this water and oil mix being run through the thing? We drained a full 2 gallons of this chocolate shake stuff out of the pan, and there's at least another quart there in the bottom. Obviously he drove it some this way - he said he drove it home, and pretty much parked it after that. I can find no evidence of metal shavings to indicate that any bearings have gone, and we poured some gas in it, and it cranked over for a few secconds - sounded alright.... GD
February 28, 200422 yr check the freze plugs under rocker arms. my brat was the same way. i lucked out ,just cleaned plugs and reinstalled. maybe???? good luck todd
February 28, 200422 yr Author Hhhhmmm - an interesting possiblily. I'll certainly have a look at those. Thanks for drawing my attention to that. GD
February 28, 200422 yr mmm, thats the good stuff, we poured that out of SubaruTex's car after 40 min of very hot freeway driving with blown head gaskets. It's all goin back to gether now, and all the inards looked to be just fine.
February 28, 200422 yr GD you say "pretty good looker I think" In spades mate!!! Nice snag, I say fix it, flush it and fire it. Keep an eye on the oil pressure, if the big end bearing went toast, it will show up there. Finding an engine is easy, finding a "looker" like that... impossible almost on this coast. Congrats and good luck.
February 28, 200422 yr I say, Find the source of the water. Then fix it, fire it up and drive it like you stole it:D The motor is probably O.K. It might have done some bearing damage, but you never know till you try.
February 28, 200422 yr get the freeze plugs new and from the dealer if they are what popped, the ones you get from the parts store don't fit!
February 28, 200422 yr yeah Andrew has experience in popped freeze plugs:D The 83 hatchback I bought from him had that same problem when he got it. After we fixed it and got it running, I retuned the carb and it ran like a champ. Then I cleaned it, found a whole bunch of rust and traded it for my 79 wagon:)
February 28, 200422 yr Author Wow - sounds like this freeze plug thing is pretty common - I'll have to look into that, as the engine *was* a rebuilt apparently, and just maybe the plugs were aftermarket, and popped out. That sure would be nice if that were the case. GD
February 28, 200422 yr that's what my engine looked like when I opened it up. As mentioned above, a couple of the freeze plugs had rusted through and needed replacing. Also, the crank and bearings were in bad shape from spinning in water, so that had be ground and oversize bearings put it. If they stopped using the car immediately it may not be a problem...but the guy I bought my car from drove it home like this so I had my problems. Another thing...the oil relief pipes in the camcases are apparently not made of aluminum and they were incredibly corroded. I might've cleaned them up but I just replaced them lest I get a big chunk of rust in the oil system down the road. That's all I can recall that was damaged as a direct result of the milkshake.
February 28, 200422 yr Author the oil relief pipes in the camcases are apparently not made of aluminum and they were incredibly corroded. YAY! no cam cases here..... GD
February 28, 200422 yr oops...you mean there's other engines than just mine?! In my limited experience, "Subaru" = EA82 Well, mark that off your list
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