PLEASE HELP! I have a '96 Subaru Legacy and it is overheating. Here is what I've done:

 

1. Replace radiator (because it was leaking, but not overheating at the time!). Then I intermittently had overheating problems, so....

2. I replaced the thermostat (but my lower hose stays cold). I thought I had a faulty thermostat, so I replaced it again, to no avail!

3. I've tried burping it - so far to no avail.

 

How important is it that I have the thermostat positioned correctly? One manual says to keep the little hole toward the front. I have done so, to no avail.

 

Someone here referred to "following the directions and watching the video here" but I cannot find them.

 

CAN ANYONE PLEASE HELP ME? THANK YOU!

You need to jack the car as high as possible when you fill the radiator from the Passenger side hose. Fill it slowly.

Then start the car, still on jacks and burp the coolant until no air bubbles are coming out of the over flow hose.

 

Subaru's trap air if they are not filled properly. Once full, if you see bubbles coming out of the tank and it overheats you most likely have HG failure!

You have done a lot of work with radiator and thermostat, which is the logical things to fix first with an over heating problem.

 

Next time that you run the motor, get engine temp up to the middle of the dial, then open the cap on the top of the radiator overflow tank. If you see bubbles in the tank, then you have a bad head gasket.

 

96 to 99 Subarus with 2.5 motor are prone to developing bad head gaskets. A ton of info written about this on this forum. Read in the archives about this in the "search" section. With Subaru bad head gasket results in over heating every time.

 

I have just replaced the 2.5 motor in my '98 because over heating resulted from bad head gaskets.

Mods: This is a duplicate posting (1st one was 10 minutes earlier). Is it possible to combine the two?