scooby_pimp

Guys, need some advice.
Drove my 95MY WRX wagon (import) to B&Q and once there smoke was coming from front left hand side of the bonet (as you look at the car). Not sure what is going on but it's not making me feel too good as it looks like it could be expensive. Oil level has not gone down (as far as I can tell) but looks like possibly one of the head gaskets may be leaking.
Has anyone experienced such an issue ?
Can you advise things to check before I take it to a dealer and get ripped off for loads of unnecessary work !?

Anyone, please advise

mark@wrx

It'll be the rocker cover gasket leaking. A common problem. If you are half mechanically minded you can sort it yourself br removing the rocker cover and cleaning the rubber gasket and applying some instant gasket before refitting.

scooby_pimp

Cheers Mark.
Without an owners or Haynes manual I dont have any visual way of checking if your right.... as i'm not sure where the rocker cover gasket is !
Any ideas if a picture breakdown of the scooby engine exists anywhere on the web?

XS-Home

Take off the airbox & where the spark plugs are that is the rocker cover.....get a torch & shine it down onto the up pipe you'll see oil soaked onto this pipe; if you see the oil time for a rocker cover gasket change

mark@wrx

Look her http://www.saxonfields.freeserve.co.uk/. Go into the Subaru workshop manuals for a Pre 97 car. Go into engine section and scroll to page 10. You can identify the gaskets from that.

scooby_pimp

Mark,

Is this really a job that can be done with no pro help?
Have drained oil, taken off air box, looked at the diagrams from your recommended link ......... and am quite daunted by taking the rocker cover off.
Do I have to drain all the other pipes around the effected area or can they be left?

Cheers

scoobchrissy

iTrader: (1)

No you dont have to take any pipes off although you might loose a little bit of oil it's a simple job realy, good luck

BaldyMan

Check the oil filter - found mine loose - with half my oil gone 2 months after having a service.

Could'nt tell i had a leak as the oil was getting caught in the plastick engine guard.

AvalancheS8

It's fine, the area under the rocker cover is oily, but it's not full of oil, so you'll only loose a few drops of oil at the most. You will need to remove the air box for access as mentioned, then pull the spark plug leads off and tuck them out the way. Pull the breather pipe off the top centre of the rocker cover - don't worry, it's just a breather, it's not full of oil or anything. Un-do the six bolts - some of them are a little hard to get to but they shouldn't be too tight. the rocker cover should now come off in your hands - you might have to give it a gentle knock to un-stick it. Clean up all the sealing surfaces and apply a thin coat of instant gasket all round the seal, and all round both of the seals where the plug go though and on all 6 of the bolt seals too. Carefully line it up and replace it, do it up, replace the breather and the plug leads, re-fit the air box and you are done. Apart from the fact that you have drained the oil, which you didn't really need to do.

It is important that when you have re-filled it, BEFORE you start the engine, that you disconnect the crank position sensor ( on the front of the engine - behind the pulley that drives the alternator - a small black or brown thing with a lead plugged onto it - pull the plug off) and crank the engine until the oil pressure light goes out, or for 3 runs of about 10 seconds each. Then reconnect the crank position sensor and start it up. If you take the chance to do an oil change and replace the filter too, make very sure that the filter has been fully filled with oil and topped up unitl no more will go in, it usually take 10 - 15 minutes to get this right, letting the oil soak in each time.

Scoobies are twitchy about oil change procedure, the 2 precautions above are to try and insure that the oil pressure is up and there is the minimum chance of damaging a big end by starting it when all the oil ways aren't full of oil. If you want to take absolutely full precautions you can take the spark plugs out while you crank it over so that there is no load on the bearings but it should be fine without.

mark@wrx

It really is straight forward. Undo a few bolts, take off the cam cover, clean everything up, apply some instant gasket (just a thin smearing) and put back together. The worst part is the small amount of room you have to work in!

scooby_pimp

Cheers guys for the info.

Does look extremley fiddly, but will give it a go.
Thanks for the clarification on the oil change procedure too, performed an oil change 2 weeks ago ...... it's good to see that the steps you provided are consistent with the ones I followed from somwhere on the forum. Two sources are always better than one.

Will give this a crack and report back when I ***** it up !

Pimp