Head Gasket Redo went WELL!!

[osfanrich]

Man, It was easier than I thought it would be.

Pulled the motor.

Did both sides.

New Timing belt.

Engine oil cooler.

Tranny cooler.

Total time about 16 hours. Not including parts runs.

 

The thing runs MUCH better now! And it's not puking out the overflow bottle anymore.

I appreciate the help and pointers from here!!

[Jerry DeMoss]

Thats great.What motor did you do the work on? Ea82 or EJ22?

[Dickensheets]

Nice job.

 

Do you think in hindsight you would do it without pulling the motor next time.

 

rd

[cookie]

I love the sucess stories!

[osfanrich]

Sorry,

EJ25, 1999 Legacy SUS AWD automatic.

 

I'd pull the motor again. The torque procedure for the heads and the timing belt/cam timing setup would be harder on the car.

Heck, I even changed the spark plugs!!

 

I don't know if a manual trans would complicate things much.

 

A note about the oil cooler:

I bought the flex-a-lite kit #3951 from Summit.

It's easy to do, but I had a persistant oil leak from the filter gasket area.

The sandwich adapter is machined for a built in "thermostat". The corners of this squared off machined area is located right at the gasket of the filter. When pressurized oil pushed past.

I tried a Fram first, forget it!! oil poured out! Then I used the old filter, a Valvoline VO61, it slowed down the flow, but still leaked.

Turns out the Fram gasket is even smaller than the Valvolline unit!

Well, I did some investigating, and ended up using a Dodge Colt filter thats bigger all around, but has a gasket that's about 1/4 inch larger.

No leaks, good pressure. Specs are similar except for a slightly higher bypass valve pressure.