Cam Seized

[silvarick]

I recently had the head gasket replaced on a 1999 Outback with 112,000 miles on it. At the same time they did a complete engine re-seal. The car was only driven a little over 2500 miles during the next 4 months. The car stalled and we couldn't get it started and had it towed to the Subaru dealer that did the head gasket. They are now saying that the right intake cam has seized due to lack of oil (they claim it was very low) and when it seized it would have caused massive internal damage. They are recommending installing a used engine, that it's not worth opening up the existing engine to see the damage because it will cost more to repair than installing a used engine. Does this make sense? Could anything they did during the head gasket replacement have caused this 4 months later? After spending over $2,000.00 on a head gasket the idea of pouring 2-3 more thousand into a used engine is tough.

 

Any thoughts?

[nipper]

This scenario has come up before. Try a search using the word seized. I do beleive there is a scenario where this can happen, as it rarely happens of its own accord. Seized and Subaru rarely show up in the same scentence.

 

As far as internal damage, yes. This is an interference engine. Since there were valves open while pistons were racing towards the top of the stroke, there may be lots of damage.

 

nipper

[idosubaru]

there's no proof, but i would guess that it's more likely they did something wrong than it randomly seized or lost oil for no reason. where was the oil changed last? did you check oil level or where the loss of oil was occurring? i would have wanted that checked before taking it in. was it making noises at all before it seized? any oil spots in the driveway/garage? any smoke coming from the engine prior to seizing? basically...any signs of oil loss before this happened? if it ran out of oil there's 3 or 4 quarts of oil to be found and that doesn't hide very easily.

 

if they did the original repair, i would not trust their diagnosis of the failure. of course they're going to say the oil is low, anything else could point to them being at fault. low oil would be your fault or no fault...so naturally they'll point to that as the cause. it is likely they've cleaned up any possible clue as to what really happened. if you trust them then i guess you'll have to ignore my negative viewpoint, but far more people that i know get hosed than get treated well. and it is highly ironic that just shortly after a major engine overhaul it looses oil and seizes a cam...the chances of that happening right after this major engine tear down and not being related to the tear down...really, really small in my oppninion.

 

the only one i've ever seen did not break a belt and did not skip timing so there was no piston/valve damage. in this case, replacing the cam should bring the engine back to operational. not ideal, but neither is your situation.

[nipper]

Knew there was another one

 

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=28339&highlight=seizure

 

nipper

[silvarick]

The last oil change was the one they did when the head gasket was replaced. There were no oil leaks, no smoke, no noises, can't be sure how often oil level was checked as my son was using the car. They claim that the "SAE" standard is that an engine with over a 100K miles will burn a qt. per 1K miles on average. So they claim having driven 2500 miles it could have used between 2.5 to 3 qts of oil. When I checked it after we had it towed to the dealer it was down about 1.5 qts. They say that the cams being the furthest out would starve for oil first.

[ron917]

Silvarick,

 

Sorry to here about your misfortune. I had almost exactly the same experience with my '99 Outback. The only difference was the mileage - HGs replaced at 105K miles, cam siezed at 118K miles, 8 months and 13K miles later. It was the same camshaft that siezed (right side intake).

 

You'll find a few stories of siezed camshafts on the 2.5L DOHC engine, and the consensus is that the oil passages are too small. If anything reduces oil flow (dirt, whatever), the camshaft is going to sieze. In my case, the engine was not low on oil. Both oil and filter had been changed 2000 miles previously. I check the oil level at least once a week. It was not low after the cam siezure.

 

See my threads at:

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=65855

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=66978

 

In my case, due to the time and miles driven, I don't believe my camshaft failure was related to the headgasket work. In your case, it may be easier to make an argument that it is related.

 

As for what to do, you have to weight the cost of the repair against the cost of replacing the car, along with how much you like your Outback. I really didn't want to buy another car, and had the time and skills to do the work myself, so the equation came out in favor of replacing the engine. I went with a rebuilt from Colorado Component Rebuilders. They have an excellent reputation, and post here on the the forum.

 

This kind of thing really sucks, but it happens sometimes. It doesn't help that the Subaru 2.5L DOHC engine is very expensive to repair or replace.

 

Good luck,

 

-Ron

[frag]

There is no such thing as engine damage because a motor is «low on oil».

However low the level may be, if the oil light does'nt come on, meaning if the oil pump intake is below the oil level, full pressure will be delivered to all parts of the engine.

There is no such thing as pressure lowering wilth lowering oil level. You have full pressure or no pressure at all.

If neither you nor your son ever saw the oil pressure light on at any time, i would greatly suspect they did something wrong when they worked on your car that starved the camshaft of oil.

[idosubaru]

that's complete BS on 1.5 quarts low starving the engine.

[newg]

That "SAE" standard seems like a stretch...my 98 OBW has 170K on it and burns zero oil, FWIW.........

[nipper]

Most shops dont even know what SAE stands for. When I had my engine rebuilt, i talked to the dealership about the downside of synthetics (long intervals of not opening the hood). HE said the down side is that the engine MAY consume 1 qt between oil changes. So thats the spec I use for subaru, that they conside 1 qt per oil change (3500 miles was the number we were kicking around). 1 qt per 1000 miles you would notice.

 

As long as the engine didnt over heat, there is no reason for being a qt low to cause this. The shop is already being defensive, so somehting is up. Another point, is why not ALL the cams, or rod knock.

 

nipper

 

PS - next oil change i am chainging to synthetic, so dont jump on me

[88whitecat]

that's complete BS on 1.5 quarts low starving the engine.

I second the motion, I often add 3-4q of oil to my car at a shot. Once dumped a fresh gallon in just to bring it in range with no problems before or after (other than known issues like why I keep feeding it oil)

[WoodsWagon]

I've run on 1 quart before. Total. So being 2.5 qts low won't starve the engine.

 

They may have introduced debris into the oil passage when they removed the heads. Another thing to consider is the cams and their bearing caps have to be removed to pull the heads on the DOHC's. So if some "flat rate shortcuts" were taken, the bearing caps may not have been put on in the same order, even though their placement is stamped in at the factory.

 

Either of these could have caused the failure. They were the last ones in there, they removed and replaced the very part that seized, and claiming that it was 1.5qts low was what fried it is slimy.

[silvarick]

I've run on 1 quart before. Total. So being 2.5 qts low won't starve the engine.

 

They may have introduced debris into the oil passage when they removed the heads. Another thing to consider is the cams and their bearing caps have to be removed to pull the heads on the DOHC's. So if some "flat rate shortcuts" were taken, the bearing caps may not have been put on in the same order, even though their placement is stamped in at the factory.

 

Either of these could have caused the failure. They were the last ones in there, they removed and replaced the very part that seized, and claiming that it was 1.5qts low was what fried it is slimy.

 

Any chance you could elaborate on the "flat rate shorcuts"? They did tear down the engine after I spoke to them and found the right exhaust cam was the one that seized. It doesn't look like it damaged the pistons so they are saying that they could install a used cylinder head but that it would be a "crap shoot", that there could be other problems that aren't visible.

 

I'm just trying to get as much info as possible to argue the point as you said "they removed the the very part that seized". But having gone over 2K miles since the work was done could anything they did take that long to show up.

[WoodsWagon]

well, if they tore down the engine, they got rid of any evidence that you could have used against them.