jonathan909

I've had an alternator or two go out, and have done just fine with replacements from the wrecker. Generally speaking, if the shaft is turning and you're getting 13.5 volts on the battery posts, you're good.

No, it's really deep, really in a bad spot, not the only thing wrong with it, and I already got a replacement last fall that's just been waiting to be put in. This started with the surprise! running-out-of-gas that shouldn't have happened. I figured it was a problem with the sending unit, so I popped the seat and cover and found a very ugly hack on top of the tank involving a brass elbow and big gob of epoxy. To cut to the chase, I think what happened is some PO (the car had a couple) really slammed the underside of the tank, hard enough not only to dent it, but also push the tank up into the cover, breaking the hose fittings and causing the ugly "repair" job, which has the fuel heading to the engine via a replacement rubber hose. And the sending unit was screwed to the tank with the wrong bolts, so all those holes are stripped out now. In other words, a really big Charlie Foxtrot just crying for replacement of the tank and sending unit and restoring the original plumbing. I suspect this mess is implicated not only in my not being able to trust the gauge, but also in the extremely inconsistent fail-to-start behaviour we saw on and off over the winter. I thought it had to do with low ambient temperature, but it's not that consistent. What it does feel like is a lack of fuel, so I'm hoping cleaning up this mess will solve that problem too.

Assembled '01 Forester's EJ25. Because that car's down, my daughter had taken the '99 OBW to work, leaving me to use the '98 Legacy wagon (that's next on the repair list because the exhaust is loud) to go fetch the package from Rock that I needed . This extra juggling is taking place because my now-daily-driver '01 H6 OBW's brakes recently made a nasty noise and I don't want them getting worse... once it gets its turn in the garage I'll also be replacing the gas tank - when I started driving it last summer it didn't take long to discover that the PO had put a big whompin' dent in the tank, precisely under the float, so the gauge sticks at about 1/3 right up until the car stops (and while it's in there I need to pull the stereo and figure out why the CD isn't working, plus make the key fob locks work). Thought about the other '01 H6 OBW that'll be getting HGs this summer. Didn't think about the '95 Legacy wagon. I think that about covers it...

Oh... yeah... right... duh. I don't know about all-y'all, but I'm kind of a slow learner, I don't do this often enough, and this is one of those little details I have to re-learn every time. The thick washers are the ones with the rubber seal molded into the ID, which is kind of obvious for bolts whose heads are immersed.

Understood, but no such this time. As I said, this is a super low budget rebuild on a car that we got for $500, that my girls like, that wasn't written off a couple of years ago when a moose ran them off the road (after the previous two Foresters were destroyed in deer strikes), and that I don't care much about - beyond its ability to provide me with some more experience. I've got a couple of hundred bucks worth of bearings/rings/gaskets going into this rebuild that's otherwise just junkbox, so I wasn't about to start multiplying the investment with pricey machine shop time. Most of all, I just want it the hell out my garage so it's off the list and I can get to all the other work that's queued up! Oh - on the lubricant... yeah, I'm sure you're right about there being volatiles that don't stick around. Maybe some of them do remain as vapour, get absorbed into the metal, etc.

To be clear, no props deserved at this end - I've done a few now, but that only makes me a slightly-less-clueless noob. GD's the guy here to be reckoned with - the number that I've done in my life, that's how many he did this morning before lunch. Oh - and he actually knows what he's doing.

Well, the more times you do it, the less major it becomes, right? High-miles engine spun a couple of rod bearings. Most annoying part is that the bearings went about 8 months after I did the head gaskets. Biggest challenge was just finding a good crank - I'm jammin' econo, since it's my daughters' Forester and I'm not real crazy about those things to start with. Ended up being kinda funny, though. Buddy doing some acreage yard cleaning popped up on the local online buy+sell (kijiji), hoping to get someone to haul off a pile of motors of unknown condition his kid had left lying around - two EJ25s and an EJ20. So I gave him a few bucks and took 'em home like scratch'n'win tickets - how many do I have to pull apart to find a good crank? Two, it turns out, then I gave the EJ20 to the friend I sling these things with.

I figure both are true - that the air in the blind hole is being compressed as you describe, but that it's also at higher pressure to start with, so when vented at 4000 ft. it makes more noise than it would otherwise. Not with you on that part. We'd need to know exactly what's being outgassed in order to determine its vapour pressure, but I doubt it's that high. But on the heating thing: Phase transitions aren't a one-way street. When it cools down it's going to condense back out.

Didn't notice a smell, just the hiss. So what do you figure is going on?

Ah, thanks - that solved it. I had to stare at the drawing for a while, but the six with the thick washers are the ones inside the block proper, in the coolant passages. The thin washers are used on the two short bolts up front between the oil and water pumps, and on the two rearmost long bolts on the outside of the block.

I'm reassembling this thing, and just noticed that the washers on two of the eight long block bolts are smaller than the other six. I didn't note where those bolts were when I pulled it apart. Does it matter where they go? The FSM doesn't indicate anything, and these don't appear to be like the head bolts (where a few of the washers have to be smaller in order to seat down in the casting). In this case, the larger washers seem to fit in all of the bolt positions. Wtf?

Nah, the vapour pressure wouldn't be high enough. This is mos def trapped air. The threads get oil, but the sealant is on the block mating surfaces surrounding the bolt holes, so it's inevitable that some squishes into the bolt holes.

File the sealant part under "goes without saying", as the FSM specifies it, and when the halves get bolted together quite a bit gets squeezed into the holes.

I'm pretty certain it was air at the bottom of the hole and not along the shank; this would be supported by there having been quite a bit of residual sealant in the holes, so I don't think the argument about the spiral gap along the non-contacting thread face holds up - that is, it's the sealant breaking that's allowing the air to escape. And I don't think assembly would be noticeably affected by the pressurizing air as the bolt is tightened - it's just not tha big a space and air is highly compressible, right? But I wasn't working that slowly, and there'd be a much larger volume along the shank, so that's possible too. [edit] Hmm... no, now that I think about it, you're probably right. It was when the head initially broke loose that I heard it, so it's probably the air along the shank. Any escaping the bottom of the hole would come later and not be as loud.

Sure, but whose recommendation? The people selling the pumps? Until I see one fail, I'm unlikely to be convinced that perfectly good working pumps need replacement. Rock doesn't carry the strongly recommended brands of belts and idlers, otherwise I would have bought them there as well.

Both water pumps failing? I don't have anything as new as yours, but I have yet to have a water pump fail, so I don't routinely replace them as part of a head gasket and/or timing belt job. I'm making a point of experimenting with head gaskets, and so far the answer is clear: If it's multilayer metal, good. If it's not MLM (i.e. "composite"), you're likely to be replacing it again in a year. In my experience to date, manufacturer hasn't mattered, though Actual Experts may point out that my head's up my @$$. Timing belt: Mitsuboshi only. And while you're doing it, replace the toothed idler - it seems to have a much higher incidence of failure than the smooth ones (one of the toothed idlers seizing caused my only catastrophic timing failure to date). I'd have to check on whose I used, but they were Japanese. Rock has a choice of HGs and other gaskets that are fine, but they don't (or didn't last time I bought them) have anything good for the timing parts, so for those I think I tracked down someone on ebay for the best price. I'm doing my second full rebuild now. For my first one I bought the Enginetech full-meal-deal kit, but mainly because the HGs in that kit were trash, this time I'm a-la-carte-ing the sub-kits I need. Oh - head bolts. Some of the bolts I got from Enginetech were, um, "less than straight", but I used 'em anyway. But when their head gaskets leaked out, I re-used my old factory bolts. I don't think I've read a definitive answer regarding re-use of bolts; would like to know what the informed consensus is.

No, I'm thinking pressurized air escaping. It was assembled at low altitude with more air packed in. Come to higher altitude w/ lower air pressure and it escapes.

Not a big question, ain't no thang. Just kinda cool. While splitting this EJ25 block, with each of the block bolts I removed there was a little hiss. Didn't take long to figure out that wherever it was assembled - probably the factory - must have been rather lower altitude than my roughly 4000 ft. The US and Japanese plants are both in the 700 ft neighborhood.

Sheesh - kids.

Little kids. Whaddayagonnado?

Fair enough. Even better would be for the gods to just delete the post asap.

I just left the first negative comment, so they weren't turned off as of an hour ago. I thought about the view count, and am hoping that when you leave them a "thumbs down" (which they can't edit, afaIk) the visit doesn't add to their (paying) count. And if they have to edit the comments, it increases their workload. So in balance I think it's worth a try.

Yeah, loose bolts... The first time I changed the short block in my '99 DOHC OBW (first Sube) I failed to tighten the ground strap on top of the manifold, just to the left of the coil pack. Engine ran just fine. Transmission went wonky. The time I wasted chasing that one down...

If you're annoyed by these, follow the "youtube" link and leave appropriate feedback for them, because it's pretty certain they're not reading our replies here.

I'm going to repeat advice offered previously (a couple of times). The first time I did DOHC heads and was reinstalling an old belt with worn-off markings, I was being a girl and counted teeth just to make damn sure I got it right. Couldn't get the count right. Eventually discovered an error in the diagrams that show the (inter-sprocket) tooth counts that originated in the FSM and was dutifully reprinted by Haynes. However, we're talking about a one-tooth error, so it's not likely to keep you from starting. Ferret54's diagrams are good enough, make sure you got the sensored sprocket on the port (driver's) side intake, and throw a vacuum gauge on just because.