help with engine work.

[Gentz]

This is a fairly long story but to understand where I am now you have to start from the beginning.

 

I bought a nice looking 1999 SOHC Forester from a used car lot very cheap because it had almost zero compression on one cylinder and was blowing coolant out of the exhaust. I figured worst case I put in a new engine and I have a pretty nice car and still relatively cheap. Made it all the way 20 miles home and I drove it for a couple of days after just to see if it magically healed. Of course it did not. :-\

 

So I decided that there must be a severely blown head gasket and determined to pull the heads. At that point I had never pulled an engine and did not have a hoist so decided to do it with the case still in the car. This was based on an article about someone doing this successfully on an Outback on another message board. So I pulled the intake and all of the stuff in the way and then got the heads off. The gaskets were not in good shape but more significantly one exhaust valve was missing a pie shaped wedge about 1/4" wide. So I bought a cheap engine gasket kit off of ebay and a couple of new OE Subaru exhaust valves and replaced the valves for the bad cylinder and all of valve seals and gaskets. I checked the head flatness with feeler guages and a flat plate at work. Cleaned the surfaces reasonably well but still saw some discoloration in spots. With much difficulty and a little scraping of the new head gasket I got the heads back in place and all of the parts reassembled. Car ran tremendously better (in fact very well compared to any engine) and became my daily driver for the next few months. It still burned oil and fogged the neighborhood with blue smoke for the first 2 - 3 minutes after a cold start. Then after a few months it started overheating and blowing bubbles in the coolant overflow tank. So I decided that I needed to do the head gaskets again and check to see if I had a mis-seated valve stem seal.

 

Lessons: It is possible to do the head gaskets without pulling the engine. It might be possible to do it right if you are very, very lucky. I am not lucky. Best to pull the engine, buy good quality head gaskets and spend a lot of time cleaning the metal surfaces.

 

Now to present day: I have the engine out of the car and have good Subaru OE head gaskets ready to put in. I have partially cleaned all surfaces, checked flatness with a precision ground straight edge and I notice that one set of intake runners looks significantly more oily/dirty than the others especially near the valve seat. So I pulled the valve springs to inspect the valve seals. They look fine and are new from the last time. I can not find any cracks or anything like that that would allow oil into the intake runners. I then start thinking that maybe it is blow back from the cylinder that occurs at the point where the intake valve first starts opening. This is the cylinder that had the broken exhaust valve before. I start looking at the cylinder wall as I rotate the crankshaft and notice 1) the wall is a lighter color than all the other cylinders (maybe from running before with broken valve) and 2) a streak of oil about 1.5 mm wide that is not being removed by the rings as the piston travels up and down. So I decide to pull the piston and look at the rings even though there is no sign of gouging on the cylinder wall. After some false starts there (thanks for the help up to this point) I got the piston out to check the rings. They look fine: not broken and have correct gap.

 

So: Could there be a glaze on my cylinder walls causing excessive oil consumption? Can I use a hand drill type stone-hone on the cylinders safely? What other advice do the members have to offer regarding my adventure?

[Fairtax4me]

I'd have the cylinder bored over a hair (.010) and use an oversized ring on that one. You can try honing the cylinder and putting in a new set of rings, but honing doesn't make the cylinder round. It may not fix the problem. Couple extra bucks for a bore and hone at a machine shop ensures no cylinder wall damage or out of round, and new rings properly broken in will do the trick.

 

Be sure to double check all other cylinders for wear before jumping into this too far. You might even decide to do all 4 cylinders so you get even compression. That would cost a bit more, but may be worth it in the long run if you decide you want to keep this car/engine for a long period of time.

Or you might decide that it's not worth it and want to drop a whole new engine in. 2.2s are cheap, and bullet proof (no HG problems).

[Gentz]

Wow, with that much work, I'm thinking I might be better off buying an off the self rebuilt engine.

There is a company called SSI Subaru Specialists in Traverse City, MI. Anyone had any experience with them? They advertise a rebuilt long block with new timing belt, water pump and oil pump for $1975 on ebay.

[Rooster2]

Wow, with that much work, I'm thinking I might be better off buying an off the self rebuilt engine.

There is a company called SSI Subaru Specialists in Traverse City, MI. Anyone had any experience with them? They advertise a rebuilt long block with new timing belt, water pump and oil pump for $1975 on ebay.

 

 

Yes, that's what happens when you start doing internal repairs on an engine. One fix leads to another, then to another fix, and then to another fix, and the next thing you know, you have spent a lot of time and money rebuilding the motor. I agree with your thinking, that buying a rebuilt long block, or a used good running engine is a good practical solution.