Subaru Boxer Engine Cylinder Head Removal

hi my name is Mike I'm a master Subaru technician today we are going to replace head gaskets on an engine that I rebuilt about 8 months ago um I went through this phase when I bought uh eBay head gasket sets um to Save A Buck or two and big mistake um there are only a few uh manufacturers that make head gaskets worthy of a to be worthy of being put in a Subaru and we're going to we're going to talk a little bit about that as we go through this process but um yeah this is about this is about the 12 motor I've had to redo in the last 6 months because I used uh eBay head gaskets um so we're going to we're going to take the motor apart today and and just replace the head gaskets in it um and I'm going to kind of take you through that step by step motor's out intake off it um so we're going to pull the front of the motor off and I'm going to start by pulling the harmonic balancer off there is a tool Subaru uh that that's manufactured to actually make this job a manual job where you can uh do it this way and put a breaker bar on here but to save time I'm just going to put the impact on it if you're doing it in the car this is the tool you want to use right here I'm removing the harmonic balancer bolt with a 22 mm harmonic balancer should just slide off off sometimes they're a little snug and you got to work them this one will come off but sometimes you don't want to pry against the timing cover cuz it's plastic and it will break just got to kind of work it a little bit you come from a northern climate it can really be a bugger to get off we're in Phoenix but this car is from Flagstaff so they get a little bit of a little bit of snow and crappy weather so we're almost got it got it off just a little bit of rust around the front of the crank that's That's What Causes That to be [Music] tight now we're going to pull the timing covers off 10 mm [Music] he [Applause] [Music] I usually just throw the bolts in the timing cover so you don't lose them just set those off to the side okay now we have the timing components uh exposed we're going to put the harmonic balancer bolt back in it we're going to keep that in there for now we're going to use that to turn the motor over and where got sockets right here right now we're going to there's a timing mark on the front of the oil pump right here there's also one on the on the uh on the crank G driven gear we're going to line those up that brings the engine um to a safe place where you can disassemble it without causing any damage to Val bending valves you want to have those lined up anytime you're assembling or disassembling the front timing components if it's a manual car it'll have a anti-bump cover right here that keeps the belt snug on the on on the crank pulley you take that take that off at this time so you can see everything now we're going to loosen up the two we going to Loos loosen up the two cam gears this a 17 mm we're just going to we're just going to loosen them up going to loosen them up okay now we're going to we're going to reindex this back up to line up the timing marks and now we're going to start pulling the front components off it um that's a 14 mm 14 mm socket we're going to start with the bottom one right here that has just a little bit of tension on it and then we're going to move to this one that'll releas some of the tension move all of them we're going to check them and make sure they're all good going to take the tensioner off and then take the belt off this belt is only six or 7 months old as well as the balance of these timing components um so now we're going to take we're going to take the cover bolts off this is a 10 mm and we're taking the backing plate bolts out one of these connects the head to the block so you have to take it off cuz ultimately we're going to pull the cylinder head off we're just going to set these with the uh timing timing covers okay we've already loosened up the gear so we're going to take take the timing gear off we'll go over to this side this side uh in order to get this timing cover off you have to take the dipstick loose take the timing cover off of that or the timing gear pull a dipstick tube out hopefully you've drained the engine before you pulled it out of the car otherwise you'll make a mess all right lots of people bring engines to me with oil in them and it pisses me off sometimes these inserts will break off they'll they'll break when you when you take these covers loose I recommend you going to Subaru and spend the $20 and buying a new one instead of leaving Le just bolting the timing cover with one or two bolts I would I always replace them if they break and it's common that they do break okay now we're ready to pull the valve covers off of it it's a 10 mm socket we're going to oil will run out of these if there's oil in the motor it will run out of these bottom bolt holes I've drained I've drained all the engine oil and an out of here already and we take these off these are these are these are real nice soft rubber uh they won't need to be replaced again um you can either get them they either come in some gasket sets or they come from Subaru for about six bucks a piece but they they need to be very soft soft and pliable or don't reuse them at this point we're at a at we're at a time when we could pull the the one head right off the motor um on the on the 2.5 single overhead cam you can leave all the valve train intact if you're just going to pull a cylinder head um and replace a head gasket so there's there's six bolts in here there're are 14 mm 12p point 14 mm 12p Point deep well works the best so we're going to take them loosen them up by hand they're very they're they're usually very snug so reason you don't use the impact tool on that an impact will not loosen them up the bolt stretches too much we're going to do them in Reverse reverse direction of Titan which is counterclockwise which is counterclockwise lefties looses rties TI we're just loosing them is all we're doing now we're going to tilt the motor back we're going to take them out with the impact now that they're loose if you don't have an impact just keep turning my [Music] hand [Music] those are some long bolts they are long bolts they they uh they utilize a lot of thread so they have a lot of holding a lot of holding torque now what do you do tilt the motor down a little bit I'm going to pull the head off it set the head in the pan let it drain a little bit we're going to inspect the head gasket right now what are you looking for um where the Subaru fails where the Subaru head gasket fails is always on the bottom side in um and you can see if you look right here you can see um by the discoloration here that this one's been leaking on the bottom side here if you look if you look around the head gasket it's nice and clean all the way around the top side then you get to the bottom here and I'll wipe this off a little bit you can see the black discoloration where it's been leaking on the bottom side very very common with this particular head gasket I'm not going to talk about who made it I'm just going to tell you that they're available on eBay and the gas gasket sets complete gasket sets run about a 100 bucks or less and very high failure rate you're lucky if they last 6 to 8 months you don't want to be doing it again don't chint out on head gaskets what should a head gasket cost what should they expect to pay for good ones well there's only there's three head gaskets that I would use on this motor an oem Subaru head gasket I would use a a spell Pro oh and they're and they're probably retail I mean I pay you know I have a wholesale account I pay mid-30s you know you might pay $45 for each head gasket at Subaru um you can buy a felpro uh which is an MLs head gasket and I'll show you what those look like or you can use a six-star head gasket they're sold by uh Northeast uh imported parts and uh um they're available on eBay but they're also you can also uh buy them direct and you can Google it Northeast imported Parks the ones you the ones you bought on eBay were they how were they just no-name brand is that what it was they just weren't one of those three brands they weren't one of those three brands I won't I won't tell you you said it was you said it was a hundred bucks but the price as you said for the OEM is cheaper that that's just for one head gasket yeah but even if you bought two if you said it was 30 or 40 bucks that's a whole that's that's a complete gasket set you're going to still have to buy valve cover gasket take and exhaust for the $100 on eBay you were getting a complete gasket set for less than 100 and were the other gaskets good the other gaskets seem to work just fine it's just the head gasket which is which is the biggest problem with uh with Subaru is that they have a they have a head gasket issue and there are several companies that have done a lot of uh um research and development on head gasket for Subaru and they've come up with some good Technologies to uh to you know to uh um address that issue of blowing head gaskets and what you got the engine apart you can see the Pistons in there is there anything you should look for while you're in there yeah you know you want to look at the cylinder sometimes if you if you if you blow a head if you blow a head gasket and don't repair it right away you'll end up with water in the cylinder and it'll and it will actually start to uh corrode the bottoms of the cylinders this engine I know has it's it this is a real recent issue um and and you can you can see that the insides of the cylinders look beautiful that's not going to be a problem the reason you already knew this is you previously did the rebuilt this engine using the cheaper head gaskets and the whole reason you're taking it apart now is to replace those cheap head gask I'm repairing this under warranty this I'm not I'm this is a pro bono job yes it's your cost of your education exactly this is the cost of this is the cost of of uh trying to save a buck and uh trust me it's not worth it you just spent a dollar to save a nickel yeah so we're going to clean we're going to clean the head gas surface and we're going to clean the block and we're going to check them to make sure that they're flat before we put put it back together okay so I just take a razor blade like this this is from a this is from a uh like a box cutter or or or a utility knife and I'm going this block has already been machined I this block was was machined when I rebuilt it so that chances are the block is going to be still going to be nice and straight but we're going to we're going to clean the uh and be real careful not to scratch we're going to just scratch we're going to we're going to scrape the gasket off being real careful not to scratch the the deck surface of the [Music] block okay so we're going to we're going to clean this gasket surface up real nice you can actually see the dark spots down here where the gasket was blown okay I'm going to take my vacuum cleaner [Music] now clean all the stuff all the all the residue out of [Music] [Music] here [Music] oops just going to go over and double check it now keep in mind this was a rebuilt motor so these surfaces were already machined but when you're when you're uh when you're pulling an engine apart that's been overheated to to an extreme this this uh surface can actually warp and I'm going to show you how to check that uh it requires a specialty tool but I'm going to show you how to do that um I'm going to clean the other the head off first and then uh then we'll check both of them at the same time okay so we got all the material uh off of that and we're going to take the vacuum and clean that out also [Music] [Music] because this engine is a rebuilt engine and we're just replacing head gaskets there's a good chance that I won't have to have any Machining done today um these heads were just resurfaced and the block was just resurfaced also what's that tube what are you doing right now this is lacquer thinner and we're and I'm using a um just a just a good um sturdy cloth and some lacquer thinner and I'm cleaning off all the residue off of this head anything that was that my scraper didn't get off this will probably remove then we'll check it we're going to check it with a machinist straight edge and see how flat it is and we're going to do the same to the are you just visually seeing that all the old gasket material is removed or do you run your finger across it to feel bumps or I'm going to check that as soon as I get as soon as I get done with this I'm going to feel it you can actually look at this head and you can actually see the discoloration right here where the head gasket was blown you can see the dark spot right there and you can see the dark well this you can see a little bit of dark down here too but this is this is uh this is where it was leaking for the most part right here a nice sturdy razor blade does a really good job at removing all the all the material so it this this feels real nice there um if you're if you're doing a engine that's an older engine that has never been apart before sometimes you'll feel indentations right in this area um from expansion and contraction the the engine gasket ceiling ring will actually leave an imprint in the head and that needs to be machined out you have to take them in and get and get the heads machined at your local machine shop and that can run anywhere from $50 to $80 for pair of them but that the discoloration that you see on yours there that's just that's just color there's you can't feel anything in there that's just that that's just a discoloration from the exhaust gases so when it needs to be machine you can actually feel when it need you can actually feel an an impression in there with your finger that's when it needs to be machine Yep this is a machinist straight a machinist straight edge it has a very finely machine Edge on it that's that's straight to within a tenth of a thousand we're going to set that across the head okay this is a flat feeler gauge this is um this one's uh in thousands and Metric um and it starts at a 2,000s increment and it goes actually uh you know to about uh uh 30 35,000 in thickness um the clearance allowed in in in warpage on this cylinder head is only 22 th000 by Subaru standards so if it if it exceeds 2 1/2 th000 we need to have these remachined even those these were machined um at one point in time not that long ago if they're not flat they need to be machined again so I'm going to start out with a 2 and 1 half thousands because that's what Subaru gives me for a clearance and I can see right now that this one is already over 2 and 1 half thousands I can slide in so it shouldn't you should not be able to slide I should not be able to slide that in one of those little feelers is a different thickness y That's a 3,000 so that one still goes in there that's a 4,000 that one goes in there and we're going to continue going up and see how see how act how warp that head is this is a 5000 now I can't get a five in there very tight three slides three slides under there um and then we go to the five and the five does not but the five is twice is actually twice what Subaru gives you for a a maximum warpage clearance so we're going to have these heads M we're going to have them cut again so they're flat so you don't do that yourself you you take them in somewhere to have that done take it to the machine shop and have them uh remachine them if you're going to do one does it assume the other one needs to be done too yeah we'll do them both we never do one at a time we we always do them as a pair but this is a bit surprising though isn't it that that these were just done it's a very strong possibility that when the head gasket blew the uh owner of the car ran it um ran it out of water or in overheated condition and um you know caused us some heat Distortion so um we know the block is straight we've checked that that's straight within 2 and 1 half thousand so the block is fine they didn't get it so hot that the block warped well the block is like cast iron right and this the block is is is aluminum with steel sleeves so so Subaru engines are all aluminum they're all aluminum okay um which which is the reason that the head gasket issues uh seem to be prevalent um but yeah this head is not flat enough um so we're going to we're going to machine it we're going to pull the other one off just like we did this one we're going to clean everything up and uh we're going to take it to the machine shop and then uh um reassemble it uh probably in a day or two we're going to do the same we're going to do the same here try a couple different ones just to see how straight the block [Music] is which ones are you picking that's a well the thin one I have is 2000 and that's and the block is within [Music] 2,000s so the block is straight okay we're going to continue and we're going to pull the other head off some oil coming out the holes which is common it's why we always have a drain pan underneath it never know where oil is going to come from lots of [Music] oil always better to have oil in the drain pan than all over the driveway okay we're going to pull the uh we're going to pull the uh spark plug tube seals off and again these aren't very old so they're still real pliable we're we're going to take six head bolts out again this is a 14 mm deep well with a breaker bar um you can't really loosen them up with an impact cuz of Bolt twist so it's easier just to do them manually and then once you get them Loos and just take them out with the impact we're going to we're going to loosen them up in the opposite direction of uh torque opposite counterclockwise you go there there there do the center ones last I notice you got a great that's not a regular socket wrch you're using that's a breaker bar yeah it's a breaker bar so you don't break your back always have it at an angle so the head doesn't fall off in your lap you have it straight up and down the head will fall off how heavy is the head um 40 lounds the head probably weighs 40 pounds tore the skin right off my leg right there when a head landed on my leg ouch yeah but you only did that once only did it once today might be the second time sometimes you have to pry them off a little bit they get glued on with these uh eBay gaskets okay pull a gasket off and again I can see the dark spots along the bottom of the cylinder right here it tells me that it was leaking right there just like on the other side they always leak on the bottom side right in this area right between these two water jackets in the cylinder clean this side of the head up too or this side of the block I'm sorry in again you want to be real careful not to dig any gouges you don't want to gouge this is a very critical surface here and you don't want to gouge it you don't want to put any deep scratches in it see the dark spot right here that's that's where the gasket was leaking right here cleaning this uh these surfaces and making sure they're straight is almost as critical as using a good head gasket we're using a good H good head good H good head gasket is as bad as using a bad one if you don't clean the surfes exactly and uh you only you only have to do this for a short time and uh and have a couple of redos and you learn that your time is worth more than uh the difference in the the cost of a good and a cheap head gasket so it's spend an extra 10 minutes now instead of an extra 10 hours later right yeah make sure you get it good and clean we're going to wipe it down good with lacquer thinner when we assemble it but um we want to get a good clean and we're going to check it for flatness and I'm fairly sure that this like the other side will be nice and straight it takes a lot more to warp the block than it does the cylinder head it's much much much more rigid but I do see them warp so in my opinion it's still critical that you always check it for flatness [Music] we're going to put the pan underneath the motor and we're going to stand it up we're going to check it check this side now again we're going to check this with uh we're start out with a two two a two or a 2 and 1 half thousand um the 2000s doesn't go you can also put the F gauge underneath it and drag the and drag the bar if the 2000 dra will drag the bar then you know that there's that there's a that the block is straight that there's no air between the there's no warpage there's no warpage and there's no air between the the block and the and the flat flat [Music] bar if it pulls it if it pulls it then you're in good shape this is a 2000 feeler gauge that's the thinnest one I've got this block is straight so I'm not I'm not going to worry about the block the the the whole cause of this problem is is uh just really poor head gaskets all the prep work and everything was done properly in this motor when it was built the first go around just poor quality Parts is what is what brought is what's brought here us here today to do this again okay when I pull this head off you can see that the cam is positioned so some of the valves are still open and we want to get those valves closed before we continue we don't want to take a chance at bending any of the valves so I just put the cam cam gear retention bolt in the end of the cam shaft and I'm just going to turn I'm going to turn the cam shaft to get the uh to get to get the valves in a closed position right there they're all closed then I'm pulling the bolt back out you don't want to work on the heads when the valves are open you always want to close them you just don't want to take a chance of bending anything so we've got the other head off and I can see the real obvious signs if you look if you look right here you you can see a good seal you can see how the gasket sealed up real nice here you can see the black discoloration where the ceiling ring would normally leave a nice clean area you see the black surfaces right here that tells you that that gasket is leaking right in this area right into the water jacket pressurizing the cooling system and causing an overheating condition what happens is the cylinder the the piston in the cylinder becomes a compress ressor and it takes air from the combustion process pushes it past the gasket into the water jacket and it pressurizes your cooling system causing it to overheat so what are the symptoms of the when you're driving the car um what it'll do is is it will uh your um the first thing you might notice is um well if first thing you'll notice is the temperature gauge will start to climb over over it normal um uh normal range and then if you open the hood and look under the hood you'll see that uh that you're probably pushing cool uh radiator fluid into your coolant tank and overcharging the uh the coolant tank the recovery tank and you might see that overflowing and you might see some uh coolant on the ground but you definitely will uh will notice that the engine's running warmer than it normally should and and in some and if you if you uh if you lose enough cooling it'll actually overheat but there's no misfire or F felt of loss of power or anything like that not unless the thing is so hot that it's in the red and you've been driving it like that for a little bit then it the engine could seize up if you actually get it if you actually get it over 320° um which is well into the red you could cause uh permanent engine damage what's normal range anything below uh anything below about 250 is is still not going to cause any damage um probably even 280 probably isn't going to cause any permanent engine damage what's normal normal is anything uh anything um below 2 and a qu 225° is our like a normal range um 190 to 220 the thermostat on this car opens up at 180° which is lower than some um but um under extreme conditions you'll see these you'll see the engine run um 220 deg uh which is considered normal maybe on a hot Arizona day with the air conditioning running and a bunch of stuff in the car absolutely you see this engine was running really nice if you look at the color of the uh of the uh uh Valves and the combustion Chambers this this engine was running very nicely um it ran it still ran beautifully it just had overheating condition [Music] [Music] so [Music] we're going to wash the head off again and we're going to check it for flatness um I'm assuming assuming is probably going to be like the other side is probably going to be a bit warped you're just using your lacquer thinner yeah I'm just getting all the uh all the U remaining gasket material remaining gasket material and dirt and carbon buildup in the combustion Chambers um just so I get a good reading when I put my flat Edge on here getting rid of all the foreign matter on here nice and clean we're going to start out with a 2000 which easily slides under there a 2 and 1/2 we're at a three easily we have a four and then we have a five so we know that it's between 4 and 5,000 of warpage um probably 4 and half thousands worth of warpage there which exceeds um subu's recommendation so we're not even going to worry about it we're just going to take them to the machine shop and have them cut that's typically this area right in here is typically where you'll notice that there's a uh a warpage issue but they they don't ever the gasket because of the amount of material here the gasket never never loses its seal there it always loses its seal down here H you can and you can see again by the discoloration there that that's where it was leaking okay I'm just going to dease them super clean available at Walmart bug sprayer nice little pan to catch the the so the the cleaner I'm going to just degrease them just get the oil off them all right so basically we're just trying to uh trying to remove the grease and Road Grime and whatnot off them um when we take them to the Machine Shop uh they won't be dripping oil everywhere so they'll cut them and then they'll rinse them off for us but um just just kind of gets them pre- cleaned up for the machine shop if you don't have an extra Legacy uh trunk mat well you'll have to find something else to lay the heads on when you rinse them off is that just to keep the stains from the driveway yeah we just keep the uh well we don't want we don't want to set the heads on concrete um and we don't want to put all this down into the road we don't want to put this all into the road so we'll we'll dump it in a container yeah we're just going to pressure wash the heads quick with the 2500 PSI of pressure just to rinse off the rinse off the grime if we leave lean the head against the other head it won't tip over now because I just moved just be I just moved recently and I don't have my compressor wired up with 220 so I'm going to stand him up and let him dry in the sun otherwise I'd blow them dry with air so here in Arizona it's 85° so they'll dry in the sun in about half hour once they uh once we get them all dried up we'll drop them off the Machine Shop um pick them up tomorrow probably they they do give me a pretty good turnaround time um and then we'll uh show you how to bolt them all back on and and uh put it back in the car so

Channel: CareyHolzman

Views: 212,889

Keywords: Forester, Mike Bauer, Carey Holzman, instructional, how-to, cylinder head gasket, gasket, removal, disassemble, disassembly, cylinder, head, socket, wrench, engine, inside, tutortial, step-by-step, process, fix, repair, remedy, complete, instructions, replace, rebuild, car, automobile, mechanic, cars, all, Subaru, Suburu

Id: 5PLdz-lXnQA

Length: 44min 27sec (2667 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 27 2013