May 18, 20169 yr Drove this LL bean for a bit over 200,000 miles, gonna miss it. Body isn't worth it for me to put in a used motor, it needs brakes, struts, pretty much every bushing. Runs great though! Keep to someday fix? Sell outright with proper disclosure? Part it out? Gotta think on it.
May 18, 20169 yr Drove this LL bean for a bit over 200,000 miles, gonna miss it. Body isn't worth it for me to put in a used motor, it needs brakes, struts, pretty much every bushing. Runs great though! Keep to someday fix? Sell outright with proper disclosure? Part it out? Gotta think on it. How much work would it be to cleanup the surfaces and slap a new gasket on it?
May 18, 20169 yr Author Would take more time than I can do without a car;. H6 head gasket jobs are complicated, and don't have a great success rate. It's really just a matter of all the other work required, and then a few more brake lines will rust, then the subframe, I'll always be messing with it.
May 19, 20169 yr Aaahhhhh.....not yours!!?? Sorry to hear that but more miles than the moon is pretty good! Rust is the never ending repair that is well worth it to avoid. time or money investment into something with little value, not a good fit really. Remove tstat, mitigate and try to ride another year? Try craigslist and see if you get lucky? Run brake fluid for coolant like that eccentric former member did for a year or more!? Lol
May 20, 20169 yr Author I wanted 300k! Right now if I drive easy it pressurizes darn quick but doesn't spew or overflow, and I release the pressure when I park so there's less chance of filling a cylinder. Has anyone ever hydrolocked an H6? It'd be nice to stop marking my parking spots! If I didn't check the overflow for bubbles right now you wouldn't even know it had a bad head gasket. I wish I had the time to install gas-traps with bleeds on the 2 return radiator hoses, it would be a fun project. It'd be cool to see how long it ran.
May 20, 20169 yr Never seen or heard of a hydro locked Subaru. I've seen a couple ran for awhile with bad HGs, they get to a point of using about a gallon per 100 miles and no hydro lock.
May 20, 20169 yr how about trying one of those miracle repairs? Blue something or maybe there's others? I suppose it would have to be put in the bad cylinder and 'pushed' into the cooling jacket somehow? Or, unplug the injector and take the plug out! 5 cylinder boxer! Edited May 20, 20169 yr by 1 Lucky Texan
May 20, 20169 yr I think blue devil is expensive but I guess you can get your money back. On a rust bucket not worth fixing it, that's not a bad fit, consider it a test mule for science. Document it and sell your story to the company.
May 20, 20169 yr Be slightly cumbersome with your COP dangling and noise and drivability but That's an interesting idea LT to pull the plug if one can identify which cylinder. No compression to force exhaust gases in?
May 20, 20169 yr ^^ yeah, just some experiments lol! just unplug that coil and toss it into the spares box! also, what if you twist the rad cap to the safety position? Run with no system pressure? would it push less coolant out IN TOTAL if the gasses can bubble out of the rad neck? It would be a mess, but coolant may 'linger' longer in the circulation circuit. Especially after you got an inch or 2 of space at the top the radiator. of course, there'd be no vacuum to pull any in from the overflow either - but constantly refilling 'some' amount of coolant is gonna be necessary either way..... FOR SCIENCE !!! Edited May 20, 20169 yr by 1 Lucky Texan
May 20, 20169 yr I have done this with ea82 engines - take a small piece of 14 or 12 gauge wire, make a little u shape. Lift the check valve on the rdiator cap, and put it in there to hold it open. Bend it so it won't fall off. This makes zero pressure, and still allows for coolant to be drawn back in on cooldown. I have had no problems with boil over due to the lower pressure. Different engine may be different. Check coolant in top hose and overflow tank before every drive. Gotten away with this for months, but eventually the headgasket leak starts to get worse to where you can't use the car without risking overheat.
May 20, 20169 yr Author I'll give that a try- although having pressure in the cooling system might slow the gas transfer a little. Everything's a tradeoff... What has been surprising is I can dump the pressure, it's always mostly fluid with some gas, then come back to it and fluid is still up to the top. There's gotta be a bubble in there somewhere. Edited May 20, 20169 yr by CNY_Dave
May 20, 20169 yr Author My thought is if I pull the thermostat to put in the blue devil schmutz, then the bolts will break, the coolant elbow will finally rust through, etc etc.
May 20, 20169 yr It depends on how bad the leak is. You can pull the thermostat which will take pressure off and buy you time; also Blue Devil guarantees are good as gold, got my money back 4X! Fiberlock is not bad either, I think it was double your money back. Just make sure a coolant flush product is on the receipt and follow directions to a T. I've driven for many months on blown head gaskets.
May 21, 20169 yr I'll give that a try- although having pressure in the cooling system might slow the gas transfer a little. The combustion pressure is very high. Way more than a compression test reading. I doubt the difference between 0 and 15psi in the water jacket is a significant difference. I think the main benefit is that more water is drawn back in during the cool down - the pressurized air would just cool and depressurize, and not draw any coolant back in. The zero pressure trick is really good at limping home if you have a coolant leak - like water pump seal fails, or hose or radiator gets a pinhole, etc. Even a cracked head - until the crack grew - but I got enough time to rebuild a spare engine.
May 23, 20169 yr Author It's been behaving well so far, just leaving the new cap on, any bets after not touching the thermostat for 200 to 260,000 miles the bolts will come out vs snap?
June 4, 20169 yr There are a lot of tricks mainly short term; pulling the thermostat out so the water courses through the system very quickly; putting the heater on to suck heat out of the system. Make sure the fans are working properly. I'm surprised that excellent high tech remedies haven't developed with the expensive head gasket expenses.
June 7, 20169 yr Author Still not forcing more than a trace out of the overflow tank, and temp as stable as ever. I'm not ever flooring it now, though. On the replacement- plan is still to buy the wife something newer and I get her '05 forester, but it's looking like subaru's are popular enough that we literally can't afford another one, it'll have to be some other AWD.
June 7, 20169 yr Getting the bolts out - run the car to normal operating temperature. Immediately go to work removing the bolts with care. Some penetrating oil before the run couldn't hurt also.
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