mka

After digging into it a little further this afternoon, I agree that a reman head is - like you said - not the way to go. That being said (read: you're probably right... BUT) - I have so little into the car and there is negligible zero to anything other than that one lobe of the cam that I'm willing to roll the dice against that probably very sage, obviously much more experienced advice. I've (finally) managed to source replacements for the parts that appear nicked up, including the camshaft itself (surprise surprise, deltacam.com out of Washington will send a fresh one out for $65+core charge). My intention is to pop the oil pan to clean out the bits of lifter, and scope the cylinder or remove the head to inspect it. If it's not too too bad, I'm going to try to rebuild it. If it's trash, I'll be doing a swap of some kind or another.

I think I got a good read on what I have to do to check up on the state of the engine, after a lot ( A LOT) of google-fu i found this thread: https://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/97832-valve-train-problems/ And I think something similar has happened in my engine. Gotta check out my valve motion and find my rocker + retainer keepers, or whatever is left of them, and triage from there. I suspect it wasn't maintained pretty well, ran low on oil and siezed up a lifter, ultimately causing this somehow? What little is left of my lifter assembly is pretty chewed up. The frontmost cam also looks pretty trashed, moreso on the non-lobe face - like it's been run like this for far too long. It may barely still be runnable if i can manage to find and/or replace all the parts aside from the cam (You're right, DaveT, parts are like hen's teeth). I'm hoping that's the case - a new reman head costs almost as much as I paid for the car. I'll check valve motion after yanking the cam carrier, I'm hoping the non-interference nature of this engine saved it from the worst of it. If it's too thrashed it may either be time for an EJ swap (or even better, an EV swap).

Hi Folks - hoping I might be able to glean some help here. I'm trying to force an 87 GL EA82 back to road life, 280k miles on the engine. When I bought her she had a hell of a tick of death, so I did the standard oil pump O-ring and seals replacement, along with all accessible seals on the front of the engine. Drove her around a bit more, TOD slightly better but still very very apparent after a few days, so I popped open the valve cover (R hand side, it's a left hand drive as I'm in the states)to take a look while also addressing a pretty good oil leak from the cover gasket. Clink, clank, out falls what appears to be an (extra?) valve spring, a valve spring retainer, and the bottom half of an HLA. I'll be damned but it appears there is NO rocker on the frontmost valve (#3 intake?). None. Nada. Zilch. Long story short, my questions are as follows: 1) Are the oil ports in the cam portion of an EA82 head big enough to Houdini an entire rocker arm along with the retainer keepers (which are also notably missing from this particular valve)? 2) Why in the world would there be five valve springs in a head that only has four valves? It's a large spring only slightly smaller than the remaining valve springs, and was rolling about in the bottom of the cam area just like the half of the lifter. 3) Where in the heck can I source another rocker at least if I cannot locate the missing link? I know where I can get lifters, no biggie, but the rocker (and potentially a cam) are what elude me at the moment.