early ej22 headgasket failure

[subarurx yo]

i bought a 92 ej22 at a yard for like 200 bucks with 178k on it so i replaced hg s with fel-pro and old ones looked good, i torqued to spec and cleaned block and head well, i put altogether and put in my rx as a swap and had a gutted thermostat for 1500mi then decided to get one which was a oriellys one, now i just found out to only use subaru ones. It was staying good temp with working fan, 50 miles later it then suddenly got very hot and blew the hg with steam out the oil fill tube and blowing all coolant into overflow. I did this swap to avoid these issues. Could just using non-subaru thermostats cause this, any is there any special tricks while doing hg s, or? , its sad my ea82t that was abused held up longer:(

[Fairtax4me]

Dunno what happened there. Felpro makes the HG for Subaru. If you look at them they even have the FHI logo stamped in them.

Using a Subaru thermostat is pretty important on the EJ engines, they're not too forgiving with aftermarket t stats.

I have close to 15k miles on a patched together in a hurry ej22 with unsurfaced heads and felpro gaskets. Never has even made it to the halfway on the temp guage.

 

If it overheated bad enough though it could have warped the heads, but I've never heard of one mixing coolant and oil. Is there actually water in the crankcase or was there just some vapor coming from the filler tube? When the oil is hot there will be some vapor in the crankcase but it's just oil vapor that the PCV system draws out.

 

Try changing the t stat and refilling the cooling system and properly bleeding it of air and see what happens.

[mikaleda]

why did you change the head gaskets on the engine? where they blown or did you just want to do them because it was already out of car?

[subarurx yo]

i changed them just to have fresh ones and the olds didn't get blown and it has white cream on the inside of oil filler cap never happend till now, and i didn't find water in oil, it also steamed while running

[johnceggleston]

it sounds like you made a mistake or got hold of a bad gasket. head gaskets on theses engines don't usually leak coolant into the oil. that is rare.

 

what torque sequence did you use for the head bolts

 

did you use ''copper spray'' or install dry?

[subarurx yo]

well this is strange, but decided i would take the thermostat out and try again, and i have no signs of a bhg and stays cool, no steam or coolant loss,the torque sequence i forgot but it was the one i researched and every one said it was the proper way, i saw a thread that (general disorder) posted in that he said when it gets hot the head can slightly warp, causing coolant to escape

[johnceggleston]

ok, a subaru t-stat it is.

[mikaleda]

have you re torqued since you did the head gasket? i have seen these engines over heated on a couple different occasions and never seen steam come out of the oil fill tube, something doesn't sound right about that.

Edited June 6, 2012 by mikaleda

[subarurx yo]

havent re torqued but it looks easy to do so i guess i can, still no loss of coolant within about another 100 miles of driving today, just a thought but could there have been condensation in the engine that steamed out from the eccesive heat?

[johnceggleston]

lots of things are possible, especially with a salvage yard engine.

 

but an after market t-stat can be a terrible thing.

[Fairtax4me]

havent re torqued but it looks easy to do so i guess i can, still no loss of coolant within about another 100 miles of driving today, just a thought but could there have been condensation in the engine that steamed out from the eccesive heat?

 

This is kinda what I was thinking. No telling how long it was sitting and condensation has a tendency to collect on metal parts over time. You did change the oil in the engine right? Did you notice if any water came out with the old stuff?

Even when drained there is still a small amount of oil still in the bottom of the pan that could have been water contaminated.

 

I wouldn't bother with retorquing, unless you have a very good feel for exactly how much torque is supposed to be on the head bolts.

[ivans imports]

the eraly legacys had the false headgasket problem the red oring were the two halfs of the block go toghther had ishsues with leaking coolant into pan and making milky oil very hard to pinpoint and was temp related and whole engine had to be torn down have seen it about 3 times when pan was off with preshure on rad you could see the coolant drips coming from block.

[ivans imports]

mabee its been frozen and cracked ?

[Gloyale]

the eraly legacys had the false headgasket problem the red oring were the two halfs of the block go toghther had ishsues with leaking coolant into pan and making milky oil very hard to pinpoint and was temp related and whole engine had to be torn down have seen it about 3 times when pan was off with preshure on rad you could see the coolant drips coming from block.

 

you may be on to something.

 

Perhaps it's holding until the engine get's too hot.....then with the pressure rise as the coolant start to want to boil, it leaks out to the pan.

 

good thermostat, keeping cool, moderate pressure....no leak.

 

Bad thermostat, get's hot, massive pressure....leak.

[mikaleda]

with a good accurate torque wrench i don't see what it could hurt to re-torque the heads. one time on a mazda truck one of my neighbors had, started spraying water everywhere i went over and took a look at it i couldn't find anything. later on he had a mechanic look at it, they re-torqued the head and no more problems since. i know these subaru motors have weird things that can be wrong with them, but sometimes they can have normal things wrong with them to.

[johnceggleston]

the problem with re-torquing the heads is there isn't a head bolt torque spec in ft lbs. there is a head bolt torque ''procedure''and the last 2 steps are ''tighten 90 degrees''.

[mikaleda]

it is still part of the procedure there is a reason for it.

[ccrinc]

The only heads that ever needed retorquing were the early EA series; After the advent of the EA82 engines, retorque is not necessary.

 

Mazdas are a whole different engine. What works for them does not work for a Subaru.

[subarurx yo]

not one sign of hg failure before when i got it, the motor was from a bad tranny car so figured it had a good motor, but old oil looked good, the motor also sat in my shop for a couple months before putting in my car, but still holdin' coolant and ive been stepping on it kinda a lot:brow:

[mikaleda]

The only heads that ever needed retorquing were the early EA series; After the advent of the EA82 engines, retorque is not necessary.

 

Mazdas are a whole different engine. What works for them does not work for a Subaru.

 

i'll take you'r word for it, i just don't see what makes these engines differ from any other engine i have worked on, all the way from a '67 chevy to a 98 toyota it has been the same. on a different note though i have to say i have never done a head gasket on one of these engines so i would not know.

i will be interested in the out come though because i am going to be doing a hg on my 90 soon and it would be nice to know this info.

i know i thought i had my coolant prob fixed untill 300 miles later and it started happening again

[ccrinc]

What makes them different is:

 

1) They are mostly aluminum. Most engines over the years had a cast iron block with either aluminum or cast iron head(s). Since those two metals react to heat differently, retorquing was a common procedure.

 

2) Um, duh. They're horizontal.

[ivans imports]

retouquing whouldent hurt but i whould gess that the head or block surface could be bad i have seen up to 6 thow warp on tops of cly so no mater how good the gasket is it just cant seal. We are going to try for fun surfacing a whole short block asembled and see how that works. I tourque the head bolts 90-90 but then i check and recheck the bolts about 3 times each bolt to make shure that they are all the same have had some that once all the bolts are tight i find that others are slightly backed off mabee cause the gasket compresing

[mikaleda]

retouquing whouldent hurt but i whould gess that the head or block surface could be bad i have seen up to 6 thow warp on tops of cly so no mater how good the gasket is it just cant seal. We are going to try for fun surfacing a whole short block asembled and see how that works. I tourque the head bolts 90-90 but then i check and recheck the bolts about 3 times each bolt to make shure that they are all the same have had some that once all the bolts are tight i find that others are slightly backed off mabee cause the gasket compresing

exactly! no mater what the engine is made of the gaskets sometimes compress.

Edited June 7, 2012 by mikaleda

[mikaleda]

What makes them different is:

 

1) They are mostly aluminum. Most engines over the years had a cast iron block with either aluminum or cast iron head(s). Since those two metals react to heat differently, retorquing was a common procedure.

 

2) Um, duh. They're horizontal.

#1 i have worked on aluminum engines you still have to re torque them

#2 being horizontal shouldn't make any differance

#3 the engines you are talking about that have a cast iron block and aluminum heads didn't last long because of problems with the heads cracking for the exact reason you said because the two metals react differently to heat.

Edited June 7, 2012 by mikaleda

[WoodsWagon]

There are loads of cast iron block, aluminum head engines of all different designs out there and most don't have headgasket or head cracking issues. The gasket is designed to allow the different rates of expansion without leaking.

 

Back to the origional question; if the engine was run with a gutted thermostat for a while, the oil never got up to boiling temp because the whole engine never warmed up. You get condensation inside the engine because one of the byproducts of combustion is water. When the engine did get hot enough, it boiled out the water in the oil leading to the mayo on the inside of the filler cap and the steam vapors coming up.

 

The temp gauge in an RX also reads wrong if used with an EJ temp sender, 1/4 on the gauge is normal temp for the engine, middle of the gauge is overheating. I have buried the temp gauge in the red zone with an EJ sender and EA gauge, the engine was down on power and boiling in the overflow bottle, but had no issues after it cooled down. That was a 200k plus mile engine too that had never been apart.