Head gasket woes. What to do?
 

Sometimes I could swear that cars are sentient and more so actually petulant little gits!

The same day I collected a van for a camper conversion my '01 bugeye WRX decides to pop a HG. Interestingly it happened at 100,000 miles precisely!

Friend of mine is an ex subaru mechanic and now head mechanic at a local garage (near Lutterworth, Leicestershire). They've quoted £1600.
I'd estimate the car is only worth £2k.

What do you recon... Try steel seal? / Find a new engine? / Sell it for £500?

I've really grown to love the WRX. Its been great fun, esp when the roads a bit wet n slippy!

Given the age and milage i would suggest it need a full rebuild, bottom end included so expect alot more than £1600.

As far as if you should have it done, whats the shell like? arches ok? etc if they are ok and you wanna keep the car have it done, if not then just break it and sell the parts, you'll get more for it that way

Used engine from pole position will be the most cost effective route imo

Are pole position a breakers? Have you got a link or phone number?

On the brightside, at least my van will allow me to collect large things, such as new engines!

I have also been toying with the idea of dropping in an 2.0 STI or maybe a 2.5.
Would that be harder than it sounds?
I'm a fairly competent spanner spinner, but never swapped a whole engine.
Would my 5speed 'box marry up to STI engines ok?

Dont worry, found them.
Probably should have just googled first really!

No point upgrading/downgrading to a 2.5 engine as they suffer more problems than the 2.0L engine.


As above really, find a good 2nd hand engine or price the car up for scrap. Not a lot of options out there that make sense unfortunately.

might be worth having a look on importcarparts.co.uk as they sell a genuine Subaru brand new ej207 short blocks that you could swap all your engine ancillaries on to including heads etc

Is the £1600 including a bottom end refresh?
Personally I would just pull the engine out and fit new head gaskets,cost you about £300 to do yourself including hoist&stand.
Might be a gamble on how long it lasts but I had some fun doing mine,not a massively hard job tbh,not saying mine will last forever but I've done about 5k miles and it's still going strong :)

The £1600 quote included:
1x HG, waterpump, belts, pulleys & tensioners, coolant, oil, oil filter, 12 hours labour. No mention of bottom end work.

I'm just about to go on holiday for a week so got plenty of time to mull this over.
I've emailed pole position to see what they say.

Plus I'm fortunately able to borrow a very good friends new focus RS here and there while he's away for business during the week. :luvlove:
So not much incentive to rush! ha ha

Wow that's expensive then!
There's about £300-400 worth of parts there so around £100 per hour labour!
I would be in no rush either with an RS to borrow :)

Are they going to take the engine out? If so you're going to be looking at a similar amount of labour plus the cost of an engine.
Also Matty at MB developments is a good source of parts. He's on the authorised trader section on here.

If the HG's have gone, it's a good idea to split the block and at the very least, renew the bearings. They have a way of destroying themselves shortly after a rebuild for head gaskets if you don't.

How shortly after?

depends how hot it got when the HG went, the big ends fail due to becoming oval because of heat.
As you can imagine there'll be quite a delay on the temp gauge compared to the temp in the casings so you wouldn't know really.

So if caught early then the engine could last a long long time :thumb:

Instead of a high mark on the Subaru temp gauge they should of marked it 'engine cooked' lol

Most subaru specialists charge 800-1000quid to do the headgaskets. just phone
pole position and ask for ian or sha 01902605037 to give you a quote to fix it or buy a used sti engine to drop straight into ur car. They very busy so phone call is best way to get a quick response

The bearings fail after hg failure for various reasons. one is oil contamination, you might be running a suspension of oil and water, plus ethylene glycol, which is NOT good for bearings.

Mine lasted 6 months. But I'm not an aggressive driver. The first time I had a little play....bang.

and I was in northern France with no foreign get you home, as wifey said we didn't need it, LOL

Although I never LOL'd at the time. €700 to get me to Calais, the RAC took over at Dover. Being towed on and off the ferry by one of those things that moves lorry trailers, attached by a chain, was fun...not.

I guess it's the luck of the draw.
I'm running a shortblock which was kindly donated,it had suffered HG failure and been in storage for a couple of years,I'm running 350+bhp and don't drive like miss daisy.
Been going strong,sounds sweet and pulls like a train for 9 months and I just bolted my heads on,used cheap head gaskets and didn't even skim the block or heads :)