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122,000 miles, automatic transmission (US). To the best of my knowledge, at least for the last three years, the car has had regular oil changes, and the timing belt, spark plugs, and wires were replaced at 105,000 miles. The car drives fine, it just leaks oil, but when I move the car, it is often a quart or two low! It does not overheat, the dipstick only shows oil, and the radiator cap only shows coolant. The exhaust looks “clean.” I climbed under, cleaned everything, and ran it for about twenty minutes while sitting and watching, trying to make sure that I did not run the engine with insufficient oil.
I did not see a single drip. There may have been slightly more seepage than before, but I was not positive.
There had been a great deal under the engine, mostly on the passenger’s side. I bought a Civic eighteen months ago that has been reliable, but my ex-girlfriend convinced me to allow her to drive the Subaru, but I took the car back, and took the car to three different shops to see how my car was doing. The last shop sent me to the dealership, which estimated $3,500 to replace the head gasket.
Kelly Blue Book says the car is worth $1,900, but at least Japanese cars seem to sell in the Phoenix area well above Blue Book. Eighteen days ago, someone posted a 2,001 Forester with 240,000 miles for $2,500 with a bad head gasket, mentioning that it must be towed.
For the last five months, I have only moved this car as I parked it different places.
I spoke with several shops and each of them said that if the dealership said it was a head gasket, they should know what they were saying, but they estimated $1,500-2,500.
The dealership did not say how they determined the head gasket was bad, although people seem ready to assume the Subaru has a bad one. Compression test, coolant system test, and then a leakdown test?
Write down and answer all of these:
1. condition/smell of exhaust at tail pipe
2. is there a build up of soot on the rear bumper near the tail pipe?
3. unplug the distributor and remove all the spark plugs. notate the condition of each plug and which cylinder each plug came out of. If there is oil present on the plug notate whether the oil is on the electrode end or the plug wire end.
4. perform the compression test;on each cylinder. write down the gauge reading for each cylinder and if the cylinder holds pressure after turning the engine. Then drip a little oil in each cylinder and repeat.That member seemed to have a coolant leak. Do I need to check different things if it only seems to be an oil leak?
Too many details? Not enough? I greatly appreciate any help you can provide! Thank you very much!
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I would recommend that you take it to a shop that can do a leakdown test. This test is similar to a compression test, but better, as it will provide more data. A compression test only shows if a cylinder has a compression loss, whereas a leakdown test indicates where the loss of compression occurs. I am not sure that you actually need a cooling system pressure test if you are not losing coolant, there is no sign of mixing coolant with oil, and there is no engine overheating. Of course having it done won’t hurt anything, but it probably won’t help either, and be just a waste of money. Start with the leakdown test and go from there. If the leakdown test reveals nothing, your head gasket is probably just fine. The oil has to be going somewhere, though. It can’t just evaporate. There are only three choices: Mixing with the coolant, going out the tailpipe, or falling on the ground. If the car does not smoke (you said exhaust was clean), and isn’t mixing with the coolant, then it has to be leaking out from somewhere like an engine seal or valve cover. I am also not convinced that it is a head gasket because you state the “car drives fine.” Every engine I have seen with a bad head gasket did not drive fine. It overheated, or had significant power issues. I am much more inclined to say there is a leak or crack somewhere that the oil is escaping through, but the leakdown test is still a good place to start.
I hit the thanks button! Is that how this place works? 🙂
A mechanic told me “if oil leaks out of the head gasket area, it would need replacing , and a compression test plus a block leak test will not show the head gasket is bad in that case, as it’s just an oil leak that has nothing to do with combustion or water leakage. I’d bet it is the head gasket,” and he recommended using the UV dye.
I looked at diagrams until I figured out exactly where the head gasket was and what was around it. If it is not leaking, I am pretty sure something is leaking on it, and I am not sure what could leak on the head gasket, but I am going for a closer look now.
Thank you very much for your response! Please enjoy your day!
Head gaskets can fail in a number of ways. The worst case is when there’s a breach into a cylinder combustion chamber.
The next worst is when oil and coolant mix through a gasket failure.
The least serious is when a head gasket drips or weeps engine coolant or oil. This is pretty common with Subarus.It’s possible sometimes to stop the latter by retightening the head bolts if you can find someone wiling to take a stab at it.
The valve covers would need to come off of the engine. You would then probably have to modify a socket or a boxed end wrench to snug the bolts up. It can vary a bit by year as bolt heads change.
The bolts pretty much rely on torque angle anyway and while the above is not real scientific it can work. The object is not to apply so much grunt that threads pull out of the engine block; just enough to notice if you feel the bolts moving a bit. It’s common for repeated engine heating and cooling cycles along with the head gasket relaxing a bit to cause the bolts to loosen a bit. This can lead to leaks or weepage and if it goes on long enough can cause an outright failure.
Oil weepage around the edge of the gasket is the least serious of the possibilities.
You could have a dual cam engine. The dual cam engine has the head bolts positioned under the cams and there is no way to reach them without pulling the cams first.
Edit: A Subaru is really hard to inspect for oil leaks. My wife’s WRX started smelling of oil two years ago this coming August. I immediately started searching for a leak. In the following months I had the undercover off a number of times and found things wrong. The car ended up with a new timing belt, water pump, radiator and a couple of hoses including power steering – they all needed work. But, I still hadn’t found the source of the leak. Finally, I decided the only thing to do was pull the entire exhaust off the bottom of the engine. In the process of doing that I found the leak and it was only a valve cover which was dripping onto the exhaust.
So, the moral of the story is, if you want to know the source of the leak, you look until you find it. On a Subaru, especially my shoehorned WRX, that is not easy. It is that or accept the dealership’s story.
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