At 200k miles, owner of this 2003 Subaru Outback says the engine “shakes” for about 10 seconds after a cold start with the CEL flashing….Then it runs smooth!
Hmmm P0304 is set, so let’s take a look at cylinder #4.
Is this BAD NEWS for this Subaru, or can it keep going for another few years?
TESLONG NTS500 DUAL CAMERA BORESCOPE: ***SAVE $50***
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SQ4FLYX?linkCode=ssc&tag=onamzpineholl-20&creativeASIN=B07SQ4FLYX&asc_item-id=amzn1.ideas.BH34H8T28VY4&ref_=aip_sf_list_spv_ofs_mixed_d_asin
Enjoy!
Ivan
')){kind=link}
If they don't want to replace the head gasket, I would suggest trying adding a can of good "Stop Leak", they might get lucky.
I like to use the copper spray on those gaskets when I do subarus.
I've seen old iron Detroit engines run for a surprisingly long time with leakage like this, but I wouldn't suspect a Subaru engine to act that way. From the look of it the gasket is compromised, the block/head probably aren't far behind. The condition is likely to slowly worsen until it starts to decline rapidly and then it's game over. If it were my car I'd pull the head and put in a new gasket. If the head and block both checked out good I'd call it fixed. If the head surface was only slightly bad I'd probably machine it flat. If the engine deck is bad, well, just put it back together. However, when charging a customer by the hour for her 20 year old car that's got 199K on the clock and a junkyard engine of unknown mileage, I wouldn't suggest any of that.
New cylinder head bolts is an interesting idea, but since there's already a leak present I'd be surprised if they proved to work any better than what Ivan did by just tightening the existing bolts. I'd also have to really give thought to whether or not the car is worth the price of the bolts and the time to put them in, particularly since I wouldn't actually expect to see new bolts fix the problem. Used car prices are on the decline now, and given the condition of the rest of the car, what's it actually worth?
I have seen Stop-Leak type products work for a surprisingly long time, but that's been the case where the leak is in an radiator, a heater core, around a water pump, at an intake manifold gasket, a welsh plug,,, but when the leak is subjected to combustion gases like a cracked block, head or failed head gasket, the durability of the stuff seems limited.
At this point I'd put on a low pressure radiator cap, a 5 or 7psi model. This is a problem of coolant leaking into the cylinder, loss of compression isn't the issue, so lower the coolant pressure. I'd still tell the customer to start looking for a new car, and while it is still running reasonably well its best value may be for use as a trade in. If she's not ready for that yet, and so long as it does remain running, she should get used to checking and topping off the coolant level diligently and think of it as an "around-town-car." For a drive of any real distance she should keep a jug of 50/50 antifreeze on hand and really get into the habit of minding that coolant temp gauge. She should also bring it back every 15-20K miles for another borescope inspection just to see how it's doing over time and how much longer it's likely got to go.
I needed to get about 4 more months out of a used BMW with the 4 cylinder engine; but after getting a $1,200 estimate for a valve job & head gasket, I got a BMW manual from the local library, lowered the coolant level, and after minimally loosening each head bolt, I re-torqued the head bolts in the required criss-cross pattern to the correct torque values in three stages, as required by BMW. Then, as insurance, I added a little Stop-Leak to the anti-freeze. My cheap repair lasted my daughter the whole summer she needed it for transportation to get to and from work, and to and from the beaches, in the high summer heat of a hot coastal SC City. At the end of the summer, the BMW had metastatic engine cancer, so I got her a very low-priced new car, with AC and CD player, from a local Ford dealer for driving to and from Wisconsin for graduate school, and the new car never had a problem, except for occasionally bumping into things that shouldn’t have been where she was driving. The moral of the story is that re-torquing the head can keep an engine alive for longer than you might think possible, and holes or divots in aluminum heads or blocks can be fixed with a judicious application of the original JB Weld if you let it set up several days to be completely hard before putting everything back together.
1 Any chance you didn't replace the bolts when you did the head job?
2.Try the BM sealing tabs. They were installed from the factory and I use them for on the fly resealing my 1.9 L Saturn engines. I have over half a million miles on one and over 250,000 miles on the other. Without the pellets these engines usually blow their head gaskets in around 2 weeks, just like the caddy's do without the pellets. They are actually the only way most of the 1990's all aluminum engines will run. There's a similar Barrs product that worked on my friends T-Bird. Two weeks after he changed the antifreeze and removed the stop leak the head gasket blew. This stuff will NOT seal blown head gaskets, but will prevent cold start seeping in some engines. No promises, but you don't have much to lose.
This vehicle seems like a good candidate for head gasket sealer. I used Blue Devil on a Ford Edge and it worked perfectly. Since there isn't much to lose, I was wondering why you didn't offer or try a product like Blue Devil.
Is this a Subaru design flaw or is it people leaving old coolant in too long? I wonder if the owner ever changed coolant after you repaired that engine 8 years ago. Did you say the battery was a "Never Start"?/ LOL. Also, with torque to yield bolts, retorqueing them doesn't work because they start to stretch at the specified torque. That's their limit. Torqueing them further only stretches them more, it doesn't actually increase their "clamping" force.
A tube Alumaseal or Barsleak would easily seal that head gasket.
Would ARP head bolt studs be better when redoing head gaskets for long term?