GeneralDisorder

Yes dropped valve guides is common on that year. It requires replacement of the cylinder head. The heads are cracked which leads to the guides shifting. I believe there are revised heads to address the issue. No recall though. The poster that you quoted has an insufficient understanding of the system though as he mentions camshaft (valve) timing advance and these engines do not have variable valve timing. What they have is variable valve LIFT and changing the valve lift in and of itself generally will not cause a drastic change in idle quality. Poor oil and filter and infrequent oil changes definitely can affect the system though and isn't good for the engine for sure. These engines need FULL synthetic and high quality filters (WIX, Amsoil, etc) or they end up living a short and smokey life. GD

It's very rare to see a center diff VC fail on a phase 1 5 speed. I wouldn't worry about it short term. GD

When the switch is at fault for a P0028 It virtually never causes any kind of rough idling. Replacing the switch generally fixes that code in 99.99% of cases I've seen. Rough idle is likely unrelated to the code. Find out which cylinder is misfiring. Unplug injectors till you find the one that doesn't cause any change in idle speed, etc. When you find the cylinder that's not firing inspect all the ignition components carefully. GD

About 06 to 09. Some 10's I think Forester/Impreza. Nothing particularly old. car-part.com will do most of the interchange to you. They should list parts from alternate years that fit. GD

The engines aren't cheap like I said. Best deal going is from Subaru. 0.0 miles and about the same price or just a few hundred more. Driving isn't cheap. Running your car out of oil even less so. If they own the car take out a loan against it. If they don't approach the bank about taking out more equity against it. Doing a halfway budget job of repairing it will only end badly. Do it once, do it right. GD

Don't forget Ford, and since they use Ford engines, Mazda too. http://www.focusfanatics.com/forum/#/topics/288128 There is nothing out there that they haven't gone to low tension rings. CAFE standards are to blame. Force the manufacturers to do things that really aren't possible without compromise. It's either burn oil or go out of business from the legislation. So who's to blame for that? It's not really something you can stick Subaru with the blame for. It's clearly industry wide. GD

All the parts department needs for the warranty from me is an invoice with customer name and VIN. I had to go through the warranty because I received a block with cylinder head bolt thread problems and even though it never made it into the car we had to treat it like a warranty. But yes there probably is some kind of stipulation that it be professionally installed. But ask the parts department. See what they say. It's still the best deal even if you pay someone to put the heads on it for you so you can get a "professional" receipt to validate the warranty. FWIW I haven't had a warranty issue yet (that wasn't obvious during assembly) with one of them. It ends up being just under $5k installed for the AVLS engines out the door through me. GD

You can disable the crank position sensor and just listen to it crank or post a video of it cranking. It's obvious to the trained ear when compression is low in one or more cylinders. They crank like a dog running on three legs. You can also check amperage draw waveform on the starter, or use a pressure transducer hooked to the tailpipe and watch that waveform on a scope. Many methods. I can tell if an engine has uneven compression just cranking it. Takes me 30 seconds. Unplug crank sensor, crank engine. Tell customer bad news. GD

Likely bent intake valves on 2 and 4 due to the thrown belt. Check compression. GD

If it threw the belt then you most likely have one or more bent intake valves. Double check timing and then run compression test. GD

We stopped using Gates stuff about three years ago due to quality and country of origin concerns. They tried to "redesign" the tensioner and made a completely new unit (made in Canada they claimed), but it knocked like a rod bearing on startup and after my video of it knocking got plastered all over Facebook they pulled it from the market. I've seen at least two of their timing belts break before 100k. We use exclusively Mitsuboshi timing belts. Aisin water pumps, NTN, KOYO, NSK rollers and tensioner. GD

Problem with your logic is that it's not just Subaru. It's all brands. Nearly everyone is complaining of excessive oil consumption on all newer cars. This is industry wide. GD

Do a compression test before you do anything else. GD

Yes Subaru of America contracts with a major rebuilder to provide remanufactured complete short block assemblies. They come with oil and water pumps, oil pan and pickup, etc. Any dealer parts department can get you one. Used engines go for around $2k+ anyway. So might as well get a brand new one. GD

Best deal going is a Subaru reman short block. 3yr/36k warranty. About $2150 for the block. $200 core. The heads on the AVLS engines have a LOT of oil passages and must be cleaned thoroughly. It's quite a bit of work to insure the new block is not contaminated from the old heads, etc. Run synthetic in the new engine. Non synthetic and poor oil change frequency is what caused the consumption in the first place. GD

Then the ECU is not firing the injectors. Check that the cam sensor signal is present. GD

So now you need to find out if you have +12v, ground signal, or neither. Keep going..... GD

Battery and brake lights at the same time is bridge rectifier failure. It's in the VR, which is in the alt. So alt is bad. That's a 100% diagnosis. GD

Somewhere between $1 and $1200 - depending on who's labor you are paying for. GD

It's good to use the appropriate references for sure. Sometimes they aren't available.... also it's important for anyone doing this type of work to understand that the "engineers" aren't divine beings who's reasoning for a torque value cannot be understood by mere mortals and so must be read verbatim from the holy FSM. For the majority of fasteners, an SAE/Metric torque chart by fastener size is all you need. They make these in the form of posters you can hang on the wall. I have several in my garage. That said, once you do this on a daily basis for a couple decades, you only pull out the Snap-on $700 digital torque wrench for things like head bolts, case half bolts, etc. And most of these deal with both torque and angle (thus the $700 digital torque/angle wrench) so a torque wrench isn't even the only thing you need.... But for 99% of a car - the torque is "1/4 turn before it breaks", or "tighten till you hear the casting crack, and back it off 1/4 turn"..... And for really critical fasteners like connecting rod bolts we actually measure the stretch of the bolt because torque depends on friction which depends on lubrication. Bolt stretch is independent of friction and therefore perfectly accurate and repeatable. So when you ask torque - you need to specify lubed or dry. And if lubed - with what? Anti-seize is not going to give the same torque as assembly lube, or penetrating oil, etc. Given the number of factors at play - even reading the FSM they leave out so much information like lubed or dry.... coupled with the general innacuracy of +/- 5% or even more on a typical mechanic shop mechanical torque wrench.... worrying about fractions of a Ft/lb is lunacy. Your instrumentation hasn't got even close to the granularity or accuracy required nor are the threads even close to the laboratory conditioned needed to divine the difference between 8.7, 9.4, 10, or 10.7 Ft/lbs. That's CRAZY talk. Your average street corner mechanic has his torque wrench calibrated exactly.... never. Fortunately the Snap-On guy has a torque wrench tester hanging on the wall of his truck... and my space age digital torque wrench seems to need go go back in for service every year or so anyway so I'm good.... But your average guy that's not an engine builder probably has a click type wrench he bought sometime in the last two decades and it gets tossed around in and out of his tools box.... never been calibrated since it left the factory. And what will happen is this wrench will fail and over torque some fastener. The tech may break it off or he may realize that it's gone too far, pull it out, show it to his boss who tells him "looks ok, put it back in and use my wrench" and then the unit goes into service somewhere in southern CA, where after 6 hours of operation the bolt fails catastrophically and causes about $25k in damage to the machine and a bunch of downtime for the customer.... But I digress. GD

Torque values on fasteners that small are based entirely off thread diameter, pitch, engagement, bolt grade, mating thread material, and thred lubrication..... You can safely consult any machinist handbook for a chart of this information. No need for an FSM. FSM comes into play for gasket crush, and tightening sequence questions. The "engineers" use the machinists handbook for all the other values. How else would they know what torque to put in the FSM? GD

I can tell you FOR SURE it isn't 6 teeth advanced on the valve timing if it runs. More than 2 teeth on a camshaft will bend intake valves. It also would run badly if it's 1 or 2 teeth off. Milling the heads has no significant impact on this. If the intake still bolted up without modification then they didn't get milled too much, and it's not possible for any of the sprockets to be off by 6 teeth and have the engine run. You must be using the wrong timing marks. GD

Check compression. GD

Seatbelt alarm? Is the seatbelt indicator lit on the dash? GD

It's not a 2.2 - the 2.5 became single cam after 99 (and 99 Forester/RS). Sounds like the trans is overfilled or was overheating. The fluid expands when hot and will overflow the breather if it gets too hot or is overfilled, etc. The car is going to need head gaskets and a timing belt if they haven't been done. The 2000 is prone to coolant leaks in addition to the "normal" oil weeping from the HG's. If they haven't been done and aren't leaking it means they maintained it poorly with non-synthetic and the engine is so nasty inside that the sludge sealed up the leaks. GD