Leaderboard

No. Yes. What takes the coolant's place when it leaks? Air. The coolant reservoir is meant to compensate for *pressure*, not capacity/volume. Sometimes that's correlated, often it's not, particularly in situations like this. No chance some rag got stuck in there while doing the engine swap? or something wild like that? Compression tests aren't always a good test here. But if it's been bad then it probably was when you go it and it may be bad enough to show iteslf. Pull the plugs and see if one looks considerably different than the others. That can suggest coolant entering combustion chamber and burning off in there. Those Phase I EJ22 heads are elementary to replace in the car. No need to even pull it. External head bolts! Easy. Pull the head, resurface (DIY sand it), install Subaru head gasket. Done. If you don't pull the engine it wouldn't be a big deal to just replace the one that's bad, not much wasted time if you ended up doing the other gasket later. The main concern I'd have is that it sounds like you got this with existing head gasket issues and I'd wonder how badly it was overheated before you got it.

I had the new CCR do two engine rebuilds for me for cars I was fixing and selling. I was happy with both and never had any questions back from the new owners.

Scott , I hope you mean EA81 and not EA82 Its your business of course but man it would hurt me if you stuck an OHC engine in there. If you do , go EJ not EA. Best of luck with it. Enjoy ! No experience with CCR other than Shawn worked there once upon a time and yeah we played “Willy and the Poor Boys” until we wore the grooves down.

What did you end up doing about the scored rod? I don't know if I'm missing something else with your move involved multiple engine/previous work scenario but oil blowing past the oil control rings. Or a massively hosed PCV system but I doubt that's the case here. Good to know these lap in easy, I'll likely ever avoid doing another valve lap job but I've done it before and was (too) meticulous about it. That's the issue. They might not be horrible but they have a higher failure rate. waiting too long to change the oil and low oil.