'97 OBW,2.5

 

 

 

Does anyone if Subaru specifies burping the coolant system after installing a new timing belt?

The backround on this is I had a timing belt replaced, the next drive from the shop the car overheated and now has a blown headgasket. This car has never overheated prior to this. Upon this happening I asked the mechanic who did the work what they had done. He denied touching the cooling system at all. Well after much research and doing an inspection of their work I now realize that you must remove the fans and the coolant resiviour.

Further I noticed the timing marks were not 100% line up. I read that they can look that way due to the imprecise nature of the plastic timing marks and other components. However, when they were adjusted by one tooth the alignment was perfect.

So does anyone know if Subaru's procedure inclures burping the coolant system? Or could being off by one tooth cause a weak head gasket to fail?

 

Thanks

<<So does anyone know if Subaru's procedure inclures burping the coolant system?>>

 

yeah, anytime you loose coolant, you must refil and bleed the air out of the system. taking the fans off causes you to remove the upper rad hose, thus loosing coolant.

Where would I find the proper cooling system bleeding procedure?

You can just take the fan and reservoir off without touching the coolant in radiator, thus not requiring an re-burping. You don't have to remove the upper radiator hose to remove the fans - I just did it two days ago.

 

It is possible that he did not put the fan connectors back in properly, leading to overheat from non-operational fan. Did you check if fans work?

 

It is also possible that he might have taken the radiator off for more room to work. To take radiator off, you definitely need to drain the coolant and remove radiator hoses, requiring a refill and burping the system.

 

Did he replace the waterpump? That would definitely requiring draining the coolant as well.

 

Timing mark off by one teeth should not cause a blown head gasket - not that I can think of.

 

Finally, it is not impossible that the two events are not connected. Seems like a sloppy mechanic if marks were off - so it is quite possible they are connected.