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Valves are bent. Probably all of them. Sounds like you're on a budget with more time than money. Tools and free internet education is cheaper than a mechanic You can often return tools after use - the various auto parts stores do this on purpose to get you in the door to buy parts (not required that you purchase any parts though). Amazon and ebay sell complete valve sets CHEAP - never had an issue with any of them if setup properly. Get HG's from Subaru ($150 for both). Get an Aisin timing kit and some cheap fluids. Unless you keep all the tools you buy (or hopefully you already have some of what you need). this can be a $500 repair. Or if you go to a shop and get the heads rebuilt and a new short block from Subaru because it's old and burns oil, etc then it can easily be a $6,500 repair. GD

Yes, DB is in Kingsport. I supported my local parts garden and scored an H6 alt. While the H6 and 2.5L alts both have a 3 pin connector, it appears that only the H6 uses all 3 wires in the harness. I noted that a 2006 Forester 2.5L 3-pin green alt connector only has two with populated pins on the harness pigtail. That being said, I wonder if the H6 alt could serve as a spare for a 2.5L model? Parts store says they will take the reman alt back.

M finally decided the old Impreza wasn't worth fixing. Compression had gotten so low the car would roll in gear with the engine off. In a way this is the one that started all of our Subaru off pavement adventures after I hit a deer over a decade ago. A little disappointing it didn't hit 300,000 miles. Certainly the most entertainment per dollar of any car I've ever owned. inside of the gas tank: Some of the parts we scavenged. The main things I wanted were the wheels (and tires), shifter/console (although most of that doesn't fit my '98), and the front axles and knuckles. The knuckles had been upgraded to the bolt on wheel bearing style and it had the big front wheel drive style axles. We considered removing the transmission (since it's the older style 5MT with the top inspection plate) and a few other things but had to draw the line somewhere. That left us with the question of how to make it roll. The simplest/cheapest idea I could come up with was to weld a tube to the bottom of the control arms (they're kinda rusty and I already have a few pairs of good stock ones). Then I welded some short pieces of tubing inside some space savers to act as hubs. These weren't centered or anything but it was just for getting the car out of the garage and on the flatbed. "hubs" were retained by tack welds. Gave us some hot Carolina squat action. Don't worry we kept the chrome lug nuts and only used a couple old rusty lug nuts per wheel to put some crappy tires on the back. M specifically told the tow company they should come with a flat bed but they didn't. He insisted the guy look at how poorly the "front axle" was attached but the guy was unconcerned. Put the front end on a dolly and dragged it out of town. Frightening. A day or two later when I unloaded the parts the one taillight still had plenty of blinker fluid in it. Have made some progress on the green Impreza too. Will try to post a few pictures sometime. Unfortunately I've been busy with other things. Mainly buying a building to move my machine tools into. In the long run that should be great but it's kept me from finishing the Impreza.

At least you have good hearing. I would have never heard it. haha. The valve are bent, unless you're really lucky. It's worth a try, because if you are lucky there's no damage at all. But more than likely it's bent. Cheapest option is two used heads, new subaru belt and pulleys. Aftermarket belts have higher failure rates. The pulleys cause the belt to fail too, it's asinine not to replace them. Particularly at high mileages.

I think DB is also in TN, so you'd be supporting local. They're pretty popular in subaru forums, probably still not OEM quality but they've been around quite a few years now and have good recommendations.

The machinist that I use, told me that on a Subaru, all you have to do is look at the valves wrong and they bend. At the time he had about 6 sets of Subaru heads sitting there. He also said that the valves are not expensive and he charges $250-$300 to recondition a set of heads.

I don't think so. The H6es get ECU control of the alt. best bet, find a local rebuilder and have your original alt. rebuilt. unless of course, it was already given up as a core. car may be down a few days. or check into parts from DB electric or Maniac motors(?) in Texas. even an alt from a wrecking yard (must be H6) is preferred over any alt from typical parts retailer .

Went to the UP the last weekend of July with three Subarus and five people. B wasn't able to join us. Before the trip I was checking my notes and realized there was a crack in one of the rear uprights of the black outback so I welded that. The rear tires on the white Outback were almost completely bald so I put some less bald tires on it. I had looked before we went and saw a large area of public land east of Sagola we hadn't explored. There were several fire towers and the ELF (extremely low frequency transmitter) in the area too. Didn't expect much of those but gave us something to roughly wander towards. Fire towers turned out to not exist or be on private property which is about what I expected. When we went to where the ELF was originally marked on my GPS we couldn't find anything. Later Z looked it up and we did make it there but it's some kind of secure gov't facility so we didn't get to see anything. On the way up I was driving the black Outback when suddenly I looked down and the coolant temp gauge was pegged. It had been right where it normally is for hours so I figured it might be the sender or gauge or something. Pulled into a shady spot in a parking lot. Realized it was the same hose that had rotted out on us out west and replaced it with a spare I had. The oil leak there keeps eating those hoses. Left that skidplate off for the time being figuring we'd just reinstall it at camp. Crossed into Michigan and started wandering off pavement. Z got his Forester high centered and stuck on a stump (between engine skid and trans crossmember). Lifted it off with the high lift and threw some wood under the tire. This part of the UP was rockier than most of the UP but not like the Keeweenaw. Trying to follow a powerline grade Z got his Forester stuck in some soft mud. Good reminder that any time you see even a slight trickle of flowing water up there the ground is probably going to be super soft. At this point I realized I'd left my brand new speed strap and folding recovery ramps at home. Then we broke my 2” speed strap, it's seen a lot of abuse but I was still a little surprised. Z had a tow strap and with a combo of that and my marginal speed straps we were able to get his car out. One of those situations where we tried about ten iterations of straps thinking each one would work, might have been just as fast to winch or jack him out of there. Went the other way on that powerline grade which had some good rock ledges and climbs but didn't go very far before going off into the woods. Before one fairly big drop we decided we should put the one skidplate back on the black Outback so we did that while V cooked the burgers since it was supper time. Maybe the first time we've cooked supper before getting to camp. Saw a (juvenile?) porcupine standing in the road, got a few good pictures of it before it walked off into the brush. Late in the day the black Outback started making some fairly high frequency drivetrain noises proportional to wheel speed like a gear in the transmission was rubbing on something. M was driving and I played with the shifters and then it went away. Found a FS campground and stayed the night there. The next morning we did a little more trail riding but the transmission noise was back. It was making enough noise even in neutral that we didn't think flat towing it would be a good idea. We discussed a few options and decided the best would be to try to fix it. I have been carrying a stock DCCD so plan B was to install that and plug the shifter holes. We went back to the campsite we'd stayed at the night before since it was decent, close to toilets, and there had been no one else in the whole campground. Of course during the day two other campers showed up and occupied the spots on either side of us. Disassembly went fairly smoothly but time consuming. Realized we'd need gear oil so Z and V drove to town to get that and some groceries so V could cook us some fajitas since we knew he'd have plenty of time. The main problem seemed to be thrust forces (from the helical gears I assume) wore out one of the snapring groove lands to the point that one of the snaprings was just floating around in the middle of the low range. We just removed the snapring, the part it'd been holding on was already galled/peened in place. M and I tried about ten times to put the low range back in the trans and then put the cover on with no success. Finally we put the low range in the cover and put the whole thing on and it went right together. One trick we used was to tie the split needle bearing on the front output shaft on with a blade of grass since it would instantly dispose of itself, before that those bearings kept falling out of place during assembly even though we'd greased them. As it turned out the grass fell out during assembly but did its job. Then we put everything else back on and I took it on a test drive around the campground before dark. Seemed to work fine but still a little noisy. Camped again in the same spot we had on Friday night, something else I don't think we've ever done before. Sunday we had a solid day of trail riding with no major issues. Found a stunt area, unplugged a culvert that'd been dammed up by beavers, then Z got properly stuck in the mud in a clearcut area. Probably over 100' from the nearest fairly solid ground. Set up the winch and swapped the Anderson connector from the white car on to his battery. Winched off of several different stumps with the snatch block and eventually got him on to solid ground. Good reminder that having a winch you can put on either end of any car is far superior to having it permanently mounted to one end of one car. He was then able to drive through the clearcut along the trail back to where we were parked. The whole thing took under two hours with surprised us. I got the black Outback stuck after turning around and trying to climb up a steep bank. A backed the white Ouback back to where we were. By then I remembered I had a proper elastic snatch strap and soft shackles so we used those. They hit much softer than the speed straps. I couldn't really even feel when it hit even though A was taking a 10-20' run at it. He eventually pulled me up the little bank. Somehow the rear bumper cover of the white Outback had come off so we cobbled that back on and continued. Monday morning while we were following the black Outback it seemed like the rear camber on it would be both tilted to left, then both straight. Eventually A decided to pull over because it was steering itself. The subframe had pulled out of the remains of the unibody on both sides. We also had brackets connecting it to the skidframe which had mostly ripped off. We sort of straightened out the brackets and hose clamped them back on and ratchet strapped the subframe up into place. (We were able to ratchet strap the subframe back up to the body, not shown) A managed to navigate us down a fairly long and almost entirely off pavement route south. Got to an abandoned railroad track. Had to restrap the rear subframe a couple more times. The last time A came up with the idea of strapping the subframe to the skidframe laterally which helped a lot. Black outback is probably finally and properly totaled. Needs a trans rebuild, radiator, coolant hose, rear diff is no longer limited slip, rear axles and wheel bearings are ticking time bombs, and most importantly needs some serious body/frame repair for the rear subframe. In the meantime it is still driveable if I need to drive it around town some. Really need to get the Impreza running. Will try to post an update on that soon.