GeneralDisorder

Very foolish. But whatever - you were warned. They harvest replacement computers for guys like you in junk yards every day so fly on Kennedy. GD

Instead of RTV for replacing the gaskets - get a roll of Butyl rubber from the auto body supply. It can be formed into beads and stays rubbery for many years. It's what Subaru used to use for tail light housings, etc before they went to the crappy foam that is discontinued. And yes the plastic housing warp and come unglued - we use Three Bond 1217H for all these types of needs. But there are various RTV's that will work. Some are just firmer than others. The 1217H is a nice middle of the road firmness. Not too soft, but not hard as concrete like the 1217B was (discontinued). GD

It's not price gouging - the customer is getting new parts and they are happy for it. You cater to a different type of customer. I get that. But a $10 markup only shows how naive you are at running this type of business. Once you get to running a real shop with real overhead you simply cannot do that. Most shops markup between 200 and 300% for parts being delivered to them. And it's not correct to view it as a 600% markup because you are talking about labor for the pickup and delivery portion of it - which is $99 per hour. It's about a 100% markup plus labor. I have had to work my way up through the customer ranks - some of the people that came to me when I was a guy in my garage have stayed through all the changes but many didn't because I don't change $35 an hour and 10% parts markup anymore. No matter - word got around and now I have customers that are happy to pay my current rates. They would likely never have considered taking their car to somones garage though so those aren't the people you start out with as a customer base. The customers I have now want a brick and mortar with a warranty and a comfy lobby with popcorn and Wi-Fi. Naturally this creates overhead and they understand that. GD

My head surfacing works wonderfully. I've checked flatness and parallel with a machinist straight edge and height gauge and both are well within spec. It's not an issue nor is surface finish. The paper is not 150 grit after multiple passes. It cuts fast at first then shears down to a fine grit and gives a very nice finish. And again it's MOST important to consider that I've been doing this over a decade and not one head gasket job has EVER failed. You claim my method is wrong though you have no experience with it nor any evidence that it doesn't work. Only speculation and an irrational belief that because it's an arcane method it can't possibly work. If you want to disassemble all the SOHC heads so they can be milled go right ahead. It's a pain in the butt for no benefit to the job in my experienced opinion. I have a customer making 380 AWHP on EJ205 heads surfaced with my method. A fuel system issue caused an injector to clog and he detonated the engine - cylinder pressure was high enough to blow out the 257 cylinder wall like Elmer Fudd's shotgun. The head gaskets did not blow even with enough cylinder pressure to break the block casting on a semi closed deck. It split the iron cylinder liner down 3/4". All Subarus since 2000 have Viton cam seals unless someone changed them. Subaru superseded the seals on the 90's cars to the Viton seals. Sometimes the sprocket bolts come off. Sometimes they break all your tools, and the sprocket, and you have to destroy the bolts. That's why the dealer stocks them by the dozen. If you haven't experienced that, then you haven't done very many 02+ dual cam models. Yes I've seen it all as well. x5 what you have seen I'm sure. Remember I'm running 5 bays simultaneously so I see 5x as many cars on an average day. I'm also pushing all this stuff to the limit and beyond. You have no idea what goes into making a 257 live at 600 HP. There are things that matter a LOT more than the method used for head resurfacing. GD

Not going to happen with either of those motors. You would be hard pressed to make that much power NA with a Subaru 6 cylinder. Remember you are working with half of a 305 SBC. Even one of those has a tough time making 1 HP per cube. And the Subaru motor is already higher than that at 165 HP. That's the equivalent of a 305 making 330 HP. They are already maxed out. Making another 10 to 20 HP is possible but typically not worth the effort. The only way you will get even close to 300 HP is with a turbo. GD

It's probably not an injector. Do the compression test first. #2 and #4 are the cylinders that always burn exhaust valves. Chances are it needs a set of exhaust valves and some news rings at that mileage. GD

Yeah it's usually the gaskets. But you may also need to apply sealant to the housing. Probably have to make your own gaskets. They are rapidly discontinuing parts for the 00 to 04 Legacy. Subaru has a new paradigm on parts it seems and they are going to obsolete most parts after 10-15 years. Forces the old stuff off the roads and consumers into the showrooms. GD

When the head gaskets were done, was the valve lash adjusted? Do a compression check. At that mileage you are probably looking at a burned exhaust valve. GD

I feel the same way about it that I feel about honeing cylinders. If they are so screwed up that you are considering honeing then you need to bore it oversized with a bore plate and a plateau hone. Same goes for rotors - if they are grooved and have a wear edge, etc.... I would rather have new ones. The quality new rotors will be painted on the hub and fins for corrosion resistance, etc. On the subject - Raybestos came out with brand new calipers for Subaru applications that are properly painted, etc. They are made with all new castings due to the lack of quality cores. The price is good. I haven't tried one yet but my supplier brought one in and they look promising. GD

You would contend incorrectly if you don't think our method IS resurfacing. You manifestly don't have the experience doing it this way to understand what the end results are. It is a truly flat surface and you can really only learn this by the experience of seeing many different heads and how they progress from unfinshed to fully surfaced using the same glass each time. When you have done hundreds of heads and seen everything from heads that surface easily in one or two passes to heads that have severe low spots and fire ring pitting you begin to get a feel for how flat of a surface it creates. Every head is different and it's pretty obvious once you have done a few that the process produces an extremely flat surface with excellent finish. We have an excellent relationship with Rick's Cylinder Head who is nearby to us and the owner has seen and approved of our method. In fact he thought it was quite ingenious and effective for our purposes. Heads and many other things have been surfaced using this method for hundreds of years before the advent of milling machines and Blanchard grinders. We used this same method (all the way to 1200 grit) on disc valves when I worked industrial machinery - we would then leave them filled with solvent overnight and the flatness was such that the mirror finish from 1200 grit on glass would seal off mineral spirits between two lapped surfaces held together with a very weak spring. As for the cam carrier or cam seals leaking.... never seen it unless someone had messed with them. None of the HG jobs we do ever leak there. Like the Viton rear main seals - leave them alone. The rear cam plugs do leak and often need replaced as they are Buna-N. There are cases where the carrier needs to removed for inspection such as bottom end failures, or previous incorrect work, but the vast majority of engines are just fine to leave these alone. You clearly haven't experienced the 10mm Allen camshaft sprocket bolts yet. Once you experience that BS you will think twice about replacing viton cam seals that aren't leaking. Half the time we have to weld axle nuts to them, and sometimes the sprockets get broken in the process.... Viton lasts virtually forever unless there is engine contamination, shaft damage, or have been installed improperly. We do rings in about 90% of cases. On pre-2006 engines I knurl the piston skirts (on my Perfect Circle Nurlizer). We don't reseal the oil pumps if they have a 10mm. Those o-rings haven't been a problem on the newer EJ's thus far. For that matter there are three more of the same part number o-rings used between the case halves so if they were a problem we would be seeing those fail also.... Usually we are swapping out the 7mm and 9mm pumps for 10's because the small pumps have a lot harder time on older engines supplying enough volume to the rods. Yes I have seen the failures of that o-ring - but it's usually on older 90's stuff, and it's pretty rare. I pull off 7mm and 9mm (and 10/11 on turbo engines) all the time and can't remember the last sucked in pump o-ring I saw. Probably better oils not doing so much damage to them. Or maybe improved machining tollerances putting more accurate clamping force on them.... In any case it hasn't been a problem in our experience since the 90's models and we almost never work on stuff that old. I've been doing this a LONG time. And each job is unique in some respects. But these are the methods that work and produce excellent customer satisfaction. One need only consult my reviews if they have any question about my customer satisfaction with our methods. GD

It's not a matter of rushing the job. It's that I pay my guys hourly and for them to be delivering and picking up rotors will add significantly to the cost. They can go work on another job (5 bays full at all times) while I wait for rotors to be delivered. Sending people off site for any reason generally results in a lost hour one way or another. Especially if it's two trips. They always stop for food and screw off, etc. It's not economically viable *for us* to resurface rotors. With the discounts on parts that we get through our wholesale channels, and figureing the machine shop costs and additional labor costs not to mention tieing up a bay for much longer (if I need rotors I'll have them delivered before we even begin the job), it's just not worth it in any way. The cost to the customer plus the inferior product being delivered (thinner rotors) is a lose/lose for us and the customer. If you figure $35 for surfacing, plus and hour for two round trips to the machinist and other screwing off, then the lost time on other jobs, and the bay being tied up waiting on rotors. The cost to the customer for this would be approx $200 for surfacing. I can sell Brembo or Akebono (OEM) rotors for $65 to $85 per each. That's $130 to $170 a pair. The math doesn't play out for us sell surfacing to a customer. Now for a DIY'er who's time is worth basically nothing (though I would argue they probably [hopefully?] have a marketable skill they could be using to make money in place of doing their own brakes) it might be viable to resurface some rotors.... but in any case it's still an inferior end product to new OE quality rotors. GD

Neutral switch. It's an ECU input.

You must use glass (thick glass), and do the lapping with the head surface down (glass stationary). I do all my own head work unless I need seats cut or heavy surfacing due to warpage, etc but the decision is yours. If they aren't disassembling them then you are much better off doing them yourself. GD

You can't get any debris out that goes into the camshaft oil feed passage without complete disassembly which is time consuming and generally unnecessary as the carriers rarely, if ever, leak. The cam seals are viton so we just leave those be also. If your machine shop did not disassemble the heads prior to CBN milling then there is a potential for camshaft and cylinder head damage. And there's no way to insure this doesn't happen without disassembly once the deed is done. The Subaru head gaskets are MLS. But surface finish hasn't proven to be an issue. I used to go to 400 grit back in the day and then 220 grit.... And now the paper we use starts as a 150 and then shears down to a fine grit shortly after the first few passes. It's a very high quality cloth backed emery product though that continues to function through surfacing several heads. I would say the end finish is probably around a 400 grit. In any case we have literally millions of miles on this process with zero failures. If you're concerned about surface finish go ahead and take it to 5000 grit and then hand polish them to a mirror finish if you like. You can go as far as you like with this method, but the paper I use is 150 and has worked for me for many years. We DO NOT have repeat HG failures of any kind. I have had one HG failure in 10 years and it was because an intern mixed up a DOHC head bolt on a SOHC engine and the threads pulled out of the block shortly thereafter. That was the last job he performed for my shop. Attention to detail is not optional on my watch. As for sealant, we use exclusively Three-Bond 1217H. We get it from Nissan - it's half the price Subaru wants for the same tube. You need a special Permatex mini caulk gun ($5) to dispense it. GD

This is actually much more problematic than our method. Unless the heads are fully disassembled you risk getting debris into the oil passage leading to the cams. The machine shop for the local Subaru dealer won't even CBN cut heads without disassembly due to multiple occurrences of camshafts seizing and breaking. Doing the extra (hours) work of disassembly just so they can be surfaced on a CBN mill is a ton of extra work and cost that must be needlessly passed to the customer as in most cases the problem being corrected is an external HG weepage issue and disassembly of the camshaft carrier simply isn't warranted. By doing them inverted on glass, nothing can fall into the oil passages. We aren't just "scratching the piss out of them" with sandpaper. This is a process that we take great care in performing and has proven itself in 600 HP engines and over a decade of use on and off the track. It's called lapping and when done properly results in as good of a finish as you want (or need) to put on the head. Just because it's simple and easy and anyone with a brain could do it doesn't make it wrong or invalid. Trust me this method is far superior in that you get the same end result and have less downtime, less cost, and you get to see the progression from warped or pitted to smooth which is very informative on how the HG blew and how the engine has been treated. It generally takes about 10 minutes per head. GD

The cost is much higher than $35 for the resurfacing because your time is worth far more than the cost to do the surfacing. We get the highest quality rotors for most customers (Akebono is generally OE) and after 10 years and hundreds of brake jobs - not one has come back for rotor problems. Dust and noise issues with certain brands of pads yes, but haven't ever had a rotor complaint. It just isn't generally on the radar for these cars. Even inexpensive rotors seems to be fine under most usage. Subaru's are not that demanding on brake components - that's why the factory calipers often last the life of the car. GD

Rotor turning is only done on big stuff with expensive parts. Subaru's are not that. The brake systems job is to turn motion into heat via friction thus slowing the vehicle. The rotor's heat dissapative ability is directly related to it's mass. If you have deeply grooved rotors and then remove more material to smooth them out you are compromising it's mass and therefore it's ability to absorb heat from pad friction. This will end up creating hot spots that will bake pad material onto the rotor surface creating "cementite" crystallization of the rotor in an uneven pattern - leading to brake pedal pulsation due to rotor thickness variations. Commonly referred to as "warpage". This is generally undesirable, and in *most* cases cannot be corrected by turning the rotor - the crystallization will still be present and will shortly present itself again as the softer material surrounding it wears and again leaves those spots proud of the surface. It's likely at least $10 to $15 per rotor to have them turned. Then you have to figure travel time and waiting - quite possibly two trips. When a rotor cost's about $30 - $40 new - maybe less from rockauto.com, etc. The risks, frustration, and inconvenience greatly outweigh the savings unless you have really expensive rotors. GD

For one thing, you CANNOT adjust the idle speed. By ANY means. Messing with the TPS will only result in it being out of proper adjustment. The computer targets a specific idle speed and will compensate once it learns the new TPS position. I know that it appears that the idle is too low by how the tach is labeled but rest assured it's targeting about 750 RPM. And if this seems to low it's only because the engine is running rough and generally poorly at the requested 750 RPM. Raising the idle speed would tend to smooth the engine but is only masking the real problem. You need to determine the cause of the roughness. Compression test, valve timing, fuel delivery, spark, etc. GD

We use 150 grit cloth backed emery sheets..... https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000BPNMZ4?psc=1&ref=yo_pop_mb_pd We use contact cement to hold this to a 1/2" thick sheet of plate glass. Remember that the paper only starts out as 150 grit. Very shortly it is much finer. We do not go any finer. And the sheets last about 4 cylinder heads per sheet. 100% success with this method. GD

You need new wires or possibly a coil pack. GD

Fuel pump relay is under the drivers side of the dash. It's a metal canister relay - likely will have a green connector. Check for power at the fuel pump connector at the tank. GD

Which one? There are two.

<p>I have never fixed an EVAP code by replacing the canister, regradless of condition. Is the canister likely to be less functional than a new one? - absolutely. Is it going to fix your 1440 code? Almost certainly not. </p> <p> </p> <p>I would be looking at the fuel tank pressure sensor and circuit as well given the EVAP solenoid seems to be working. This is not a data item that is available through generic OBD-II live data. It will require either a Subaru Select Monitor or direct measurement of sensor input to the ECU. </p> <p> </p> <p>GD</p>

I am not sure if that will cycle the purge solenoid or not. It may. If not just remove it and bench test it. GD

Well it's important to check for leaks and also to verify operation of the purge solenoid, etc. Ensure the purge solenoid is electrically good and that it opens and closes correctly. GD