My daughters is overheating, radiator appears to be presurized by compression gases. Car sat for 2 years, just put on road.

Have Haynes manual but Seeking someone with experience to correspond off line about engine work.

Pull engine or perform in car?
Are heads likely to be craced?
etc.

Randy Clark
Arnold, MD

Hi

I never like guessing on a head job. I use a leak down tester. I test each cylinder at TDC, both valves closed. Remove the rad cap, and slowly presurise the cyl, at about 40 psi to 60 psi you will see the coolant start to overflow from the rad, if its bad.
This way you know excactly what goin on, and which cyl(s). When the head is removed, I send it out to a local machine shop for testing. Nothing worse then pullin a head twice.

Heads on a Suby is a pretty hard DIY project for a beginner, go slow.
Good luck

Later

I've heard it's possible to remove the head without pulling the engine, but I don't believe it, at least on the earlier (to 97) twin cam 2.5 engines. Pulling the engine isn't that difficult though, and makes it easy to do the timing belts and water pump at the same time. If you're experienced with other late model engine work it won't be too much, but take your time and do them right or you'll just be getting practice for doing them right the second time. If your background is all aircooled you'll be impressed by how expensive all those very fine Subaru parts are.

Thanks for the advice, I'll do the test and pull the engine. Getting too old to keep leaning over a fender for hours. (ohh my aching back...)

What year is the Legacy?

Most of them have a problem with leaking head gaskets. Most of the time you can just look under the car and see where the head gasket lays on the motor, usually you can see some coolant seepage there.

You can totally do the head gaskets without pulling the motor, but it is alot easier to just pull the motor, do both head gaskets, water pump, thermostat, crank seal, cam seals, timing belt tensioner, timing belt. Also make sure that if you are doin all of the above that you get a thermostat gasket and there is a lil gasket that is on the timing cover just under the crank seal that usually gets too soft and falls off.

quite an easy job in total.

CAUTION!!! when putting on the timing belt make sure that you can read SUBARU on the belt. NOT UPSIDE DOWN!!! This way all the lines match up exactly correct. If not and they are just "close" you will bend most every valve upon start up.

_billy