scoobiedubie

Better replace it ASAP. It is so critical that I run 2 in parallel. If that wire breaks, your engine won't start. The static on your radio will get real bad right before it goes out. Then you will need a tow, if you don't have a replacement.

Most people here are proponents of the "replace oil pump gaskets" to get rid of the alleged valve ticking noise that is most likely noisy lifters. I am not a member of that club. From my own experience, it is the careful assembly of the camtower onto the cylinder head, that is most effective for quieting good hydraulic lifters. Having good clean oil that is not contaminated with a dilutant like brake cleaner, also helps keep the oil pressure in the hydraulic lifters. Replacing oil pump seals is a very big deal, even though it sounds simple. Tips for Repairing camtower to cylinder head joint: Upper removal of the camtower, you should immediately check the lifters to see whether they are hard and hold oil. If the tip can be pushed into the assembly, they are either bad or they are not getting the oil pressure that they need. Replace them if in doubt. At the joint between the cylinder head and camtower, the two interior oil carrying, flat surfaces on the camtower, that contact the cylinder head, need to be lightly buttered with the Three-Bond gasket maker or Permatex Ultra-gray gasket maker, before assembly. Natural both contact surfaces should be free of all oil. Also, you must have a good Subaru rubber covered metal O-ring. The Subaru O-rings can became flat as a pancake with heat and age, and become worthless. I replace mine every 50,000 miles because I usually have some other kind of issue that causes me to get into the engine far enough to replace them. Standard O-rings will melt rather quickly. The leak from your picture, appears to be primarily from this joint and secondarily from the camtower cover joint. Your gasket making material also appears to be completely shot, at the camtower to cylinder head joint.

If the dipstick is not fully inserted, or the breather tubes that come off of the camtower covers, are either cracked or disconnected, expect idling problems. The vaccuum lines plug into a number of gadgets with fragile plastic male connectors. Those connectors can break off from just from leaning on the engine or vaccuum line. Then you no longer have a vaccuum and will run rough. The plug wires metal ends get green, corroded and break inside of the disty cap. The points in the disty cap get corroded and require regular scraping every 2500 miles. Check the two lines that go to the alternator to make sure that they are no loose. I am not familiar with your distributor but check the electrical lines to make sure they are snapped in properly. Timing belts get loose and should be looked at by removing the front covers. You should consider replacing the plugs, plug wires and alternator, next. When you pull the plugs, you should inspect them for any unusual color. A dark color may mean a oil leak that may represent an impending cylinder head gasket failure. Check the compression while you have the plugs out. Look for anything out of the ordinary.

The video only made four huge mistakes. 1st mistake: He failed to run an instrument into the camtower groove, when placing the Permatex Ultra-Gray, in order to push sealer into the groove and get the air bubbles out. He then failed to run his finger over the Ultra-Gray, in order to also help fill up the groove. 2nd mistake: He used a standard low temperature O-ring and not a Subaru rubber coated metal O-ring. Standard temp O-rings melt and deform, and screw up your lifter lubrication. 3rd mistake: He used the Ultra-Gray to hold the O-ring in place when he should have used grease. Grease dissolves and can pass through the tiny oil lube holes that lube the lifters, bearings and rocker arms. The Ulta-Gray gets hard, brittle and can clog up the tiny holes. 4th mistake: He failed to lightly coat the two interior flat surfaces that contact the cylinder head, that are part of the oil lubrication channels that maintain lubrication oil to the camshaft bearing area, rocker arm contact surfaces, and hydraulic lifters. You could probably hear that Subaru coming from 2 blocks away.

The leak that hits the exhaust, is from the camtower covers. For that you need new gaskets, new rubber bolt washers and a tube of permatex gasket sealer. When you replace the gaskets, after cleaning off the cover and camtower with brake cleaner (and don't get any brake cleaner on any rubber CV joints or Power steering boots), you maker sure you have permatex in the lower half of the groove in the camtower cover, before you put the gasket in it. Then coat the exposed edge of the gasket, for the lower half as well. Lastly, you get the permatex in the gap between the bolts and the rubber washers, for the two bottom bolts. Then put the cover on by installing the top two bolts first.

Better to start over with setting the distributor. Reset the timing mark at the center of the 3 notches. Pull your distributor cap off, and wiring, and vaccuum hose. There is a screw beneath the cap that holds the advancing assembly in place, that aligns at about the 4:30 position, assuming you were standing in front of the vehicle and looking directly backwards. When the distributor is set correctly with it's base attachment screws at the old wear marks on the distributor base, the rotor should align with that advancing mechanism screw. Just look on the distributor itself and you will see where those screws wore some rings into the base. If the rotor does not align properly, then you get to unbolt it, lift it up while noticing how much the rotor rotates, and then reposition the rotor as you slide the distributor back down into position. When you finally get it right, pay special attention to slipping the wires on the distributor properly. They should snap into position. If no snap then they are just wedged between the plastic cover and the metal connector, which is not good. Don't forget to clean the corrosion off of the distributor cap points, as well as at the tip of the rotor. Use 200 grit sandpaper.

There are two types of water pumps. Long stem and short stem. The short stem are for subarus with turbos. The long stem are for everything else. Doesn't matter what your other accessories are.

Here are some more tips. Buy special Subaru rubber coated metal O rings that go between the cylinder head and the cam tower assembly. Buy Three bond gasket maker from motorcycle shop. Buy permatex high temp gasket maker from auto parts store. Buy 2 new intake manifold gaskets. Buy 8 valve guides. 2.5 Align the timing mark with the center mark of 3 closely spaced marks on the top of the flywheel. Hold flywheel in place by inserting a screwdriver in flywheel hole or a special Subaru block. You turn the flywheel with a 22 mm socket on the crankshaft pulley. 3. Remove the radiator and clean it. Remove the fan. This also allows you to look at your camshaft gears when reassembling with either the hole aligned with the top notch in the rear plastic belt cover, or pointing straight down. If left side is up, then right side is down. 6. Do not undo any gas lines or electrical harnesses, except to the distributor. The intake manifold is not going anywhere so keep it hooked up. 7. Unbolt the A/C from the engine block but do not unhook any Freon lines to it. Lift it and slid it towards the rear of the engine. Do not touch the power steering. 8. Do one side at a time. Reassemble. Then do the other side. If replacing timing belts then all front covers have to come off. This involvs removing the crank pulley. Better check your timing belt pulleys and have new ones ready if they have more than 80,000 miles on them. If not changing timing belts, then you do not have to remove them from the center gears. Only from the camshaft gear. Water pump is a good thing to replace while you are this far into the engine. 9. Remove all 6 manifold bolts and clean all rust off. They rust real easily. Use a small shim to slightly raise the manifold off of the cylinder head. 11. If you have a 87 or later, better leave your distributor in the cam tower and do no spin the camshaft. 12. 9 bolts per cylinder head. Some bolts are long and some are short. Keep track of where they go. Tall shoulders require the long bolts. Short shoulders require the short bolts. If you attempt to install a short bolt in a high shoulder hole, you will STRIP THE THREADS IN THE BLOCK. Then you are toast. Clean the bolts off real good. Get all of the grease and rust off. Clean with brake cleaner. Put some paper towels in the holes in the block, to keep out the gasket debris that you will be scraping off of the block face. Don’t forget to remove them before installing head. 14. If you clean up the cylinder head yourself with a high pressure hose, then it only costs $40 to have the valves ground. But you will need to supply them with valve guides. 15. You have to clean the block off. I very carefully use the floppy metal from a spark plug gapping set. Or a wood chisel. But you cannot put one single gouge in the block. 16. Spray brake cleaner into the cylinder head bolt holes and blow out with compressed air. Then remove paper you put in block holes to keep debris out of the block. You will be making at least 3 passes to tighten up the super clean cylinder head bolts. Allow 10 minutes between passes. 17. Jack up the car at least a foot off of the ground, before you attempt to set the rockers in place with wheel bearing grease. You should have cleaned all of the old gasket maker off of the cam tower. Clean everything up with brake cleaner. Then install Subaru metal O ring in front bottom corner recess and hold in place with a little grease. Spread 3 bond on all contact edges of cam tower. Lightly paste 3 bond on the two inner flat surfaces that contact the cylinder head, otherwise you are going to have noisy hydraulic lifters. Let 3 bond sit for 20 minutes. Then install cam tower on cylinder head. 18. Use permatex gasket maker and paste the lower half of the cam tower cover gaskets. Use same on two lower bolts. Lower vehicle once covers are in place. 20 Install the camshaft gears with the pin going through a hole in the gear between the 3 bolts. Using s Subaru wrench, shift the gear so that the outside timing hole either exactly aligns with the top notch in the rear timing cover, or points exactly down. You can simplify this by putting a white typewriter mistake paint mark, exactly opposite to the timing hole. Then when the hole is exactly pointing down, then the white mark aligns exactly with the timing mark in the rear cover. 22. Remove screwdriver from flywheel hole.

Use snow tires. They are available. All LSD's in GL's and Loyales, are 3.7 gear ratio and are turbos. LSD rear differentials, really help out in loose gravel, ice and snow.

If you were Portland, I would have guessed that someone took the car to the largest Subaru mechanic in Portland, and they pulled the CV axles out, and squirted epoxy made for fusing metal. It is a little game that they play on clients when those client's enemies eavesdrop on their phones and simply call up the Subaru mechanic to have their vehicle sabotaged in some fashion. They did BOTH of my rear CV axles. I ended up installing a replacement LSD rear differential that I bought off of EBAY, and a couple of almost new CV axials off of my parts car. So I ended up with a better car than what they had sabotaged.

A subaru mechanic that I spoke to describes the 87 gl as the worst car that Subaru has ever built.

If you line the timing mark up on the 3 flywheel tics, there is a nearby hole in the flywheel that you can insert a screw driver to keep the flywheel from spinning while you either loosen or tighten the crank pulley bolt. Subaru also makes a flywheel stop that goes into that same flywheel hole.

It's a keeper!

One big leak that is easy to fix is the oil pan. If you are going to remove the engine, you would wait until then to tighten up all of the 10mm bolts that surround the oil pan. Otherwise, you can tighten up the front and both sides and clean up most of the oil leak there. For the left and right side cam towers, you would have to remove and replace those and use a good liquid engine gasket maker like ThreeBond 1211between the cylinder head and the camtower. Then you buy full gasket kits on EBAY that give you the camtower cover gaskets and the 2 camshaft O rings. If you got it down to taking your camtowers off, you might as well take the cylinder heads off and replace the cylinder head gasket, providing your cylinder head pressure is less that 120 psi. Mine are at 130+ psi. There are a lot of special tricks to doing the cylinder head gaskets right, so it helps to already have done it. When assembling the camtower covers, use some extra hi temp gasket maker like Permatex Ultra Copper, in the lower half to help confine the oil. Also use some gasket maker around the two lower bolts that hold the cover on. Any other leak around the engine, would be uncommon. You did not say how many miles your car and engine have. If you are going to fix everything yourself, you can buy EBAY parts for $300. The transmission is a huge unknown at this point. Low mileage replacements are available, but unless you are pulling the transmission off of the old car yourself, there is no way of being certain what kind of mileage your are getting on a replacement transmission. If you are going to pay someone to fix it, you could get into the $3000 range easy. The car is not worth $3000, even when fixed. You could cut your losses and resale it. And then go out and buy a Subaru with less than 150,000 miles on it. Mine has 400,000 miles, but I have already replaced everything at least once.

The spring on the belt pulley, applies all the tension that you need. Both belt pulley bolts must be slightly loosened, in order for that spring to take the slack out of the belt. For new belts, you would want to reset the belt tension in maybe 3000 miles. You would want to use a 2 1/2" long 12 mm socket to tighten. Otherwise a short socket may pop off of your 3 inch extender, and get lost inside of the belt covers.

You will want to center the flywheel timing mark, on the center of the three hash marks on the flywheel. Those sets of hash marks occur on opposite sides of the flywheel. Since you will be pulling your driver side camtower that has the distributor, you will want to leave the distributor installed in that camtower. If you have a rotor, note that position as well. Also note whether the timing holes in the camtower timing belt pulleys, are either straight up, or straight down. If the left side is straight up, then the right side will be straight down. Those timing holes have to align exactly with notches in the rear black plastic timing belt covers. If you are an expert, you don't have to align the flywheel timing mark with anything. But if you aren't an expert which appears to be the case, then you will pay dearly for it later.

In a couple of those pics, it looks like they were already high centered and waiting for a tow, eh!

Sounds like corrosion throughout the system clogged up your interior heater. The fittings that heater and coolant hoses connect to, also corrode in the contact points with the hoses. They need to be circular sanded with 200 grit sandpaper before reinstalling the hose. Just wrap a small piece of sandpaper around the fitting, and spin it back and forth a couple of times to take the corrosion chunks off and leave a smooth surface to connect to. If the engine overheats alot in the summer time, then you will need a new radiator. If you have either A/C or a turbo, then you need an aftermarket double core radiator. The system corrosion will eat away at your water pump bearings as well. You should run some radiator flush through your radiator and engine, in order to improve things. Then remove your radiator and clean out the gunk that collects in the bottom, with a hose. If this does not fix your interior heating problem, then you will probably need an entire interior heating coil replacement. It is not real difficult to replace.

Businesses that sell trailers, often install trailer hitches. Especially if they have a shop. I have a trailer hitch and have towed 1500 lbs. I don't recommend towing more than 1000 lbs, however. All of the trailer hitches on EBAY are wrong for the loyale. Those hitches hang off of the hidden cargo hold. Instead, you need one that has a beam that transfers the load to the flat areas on each rear corner. The attachment at those corners is with 3- 5/16" dia bolts. You would also have a center strut that extends forward and is mounted just behind the differential. If you have a 2WD, forget about a trailer hitch, because the trailer would lift your power wheels and reduce the traction and pulling power.

For slowly loosing coolant condition: 1. Tighten all hose clamps of hoses with coolant in them. 2. Tighten cylinder head bolts. If still loosing coolant, look for leak below engine. Does the car smell like it is leaking? Last place to look because it takes the most time, is the cylinder heads. There, you can have a crack in the fin in the exhaust port of the cylinder head, or between the intake and exhaust valves.

While you are at it, find yourself a second condensor and hook it up just like the first. When that little bad boy goes out, the engine won't start.

What happens is the cylinder head bolts get loose. You can retighten them by just removing the camshaft tower covers. Use a 3/8" x 17mm socket.

It is easier to get a used front cover out of the wrecking yard, than the back cover. Try and not damage the back cover. You might try a wide screw driver or wood chisel, to pry the covers apart, once all good bolts have been removed. When reinstalling good bolts, using HDPE plastic washers or rubber washers, will keep the bolts from seizing next time.

The short answer is NO. The long answer is NOOOO. All you need to do is pull the alternator, pull the timing belt covers, unhook the timing belts, remove the camshaft/belt gears, and remove the camshaft end caps.

For slow window motors, squirt lithium grease into the guide channels for the window wheels. It brings them up to original speed. If you have a vacuum line that connects to the distributor in order to advance the timing, where is that vacuum coming from now?