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I had a 08 Legacy 2.5i whose engine seized. I payed $2,000 for a short block from Subaru, and then paid Subaru somewhere around $3,500 to rebuild heads and reassemble everything. I got to put barely 3,000 miles before the car got totaled. I bought an ‘09 impreza with the same EJ253, with the 5MT, and it also came with adjustable coil-overs all around. Body is super clean, but the engine seized up, I believe to a spun bearing. So the seized Impreza engine is my new rebuild hobby, and I’m putting the new engine from the Legacy, into the Impreza. I just wanted to post and see if anybody wanted any of the parts from the Legacy before I scrap it. I plan to keep the alternator, A/C compressor, power steering pump, injectors, MAF, and maybe a new other things. I was going to see if anybody would like to buy the 5MT from the Legacy, it have around 200xxx, haven’t had a single problem. If you do, make an offer. I was planning on keeping and rebuilding the engine with the spun bearing but would also be willing to sell that for the right amount. Differentials, CV axles, wheel bearings, ect are also possibly for sale if you make an offer. If nobody wants to buy them, I plan on keeping the transmission and engine and rebuilding them to either sell, or rebuilding them with upgrades internals to swap back out. Stuff like alternator, A/C compressor, MAF, wheel bearings, ect I plan to keep as backup parts if no offers are made. Not sure about the battery, but I’m probably going to scrap the catalytic converters for a couple hundred dollars. If you like far away and you make a reasonable offer on padts I’d be more than happy to split the shipping costs. I just hate to see any of these parts go to waste. I also plan to post on Offerup, Craigslist and Facebook among other things. Or if you have any new gears or synchros for rebuilding the transmission, message me and I may buy them. If you have any bring ideas on how to squeeze out a large amount of horsepower when rebuilding the engine, let me know. Or if you have upgraded internals laying around, I’d be happy to buy. If I rebuild the engine and transmission stock, I’ll probably sell them to offset the $6,000 spent on the engine, or if I rebuild them with upgraded internals, then I’ll put them into my Impreza, and take the low mileage engine ans transmission out and sell them. Or if there’s any fun idea you can think of for procharging it I’m open to ideas. Just let me know if interested, I’m easy to work with! Thank you all, and I wish you far better luck than my own

Yeah that’s probably a wise choice, I’ll do that. I called around, and everybody I talked to said usually they don’t rebuilt the lower end since you have to pull the block apart. I called Subaru and I can get a new short block for just under $2,000, I think it was like $300 for fluids and gaskets, and Subaru said $2,600 to have them pull my engine, move everything to the new short block, and re-install and it’ll have a 3 year/36k warranty. Right now I’m looking to see if there’s any cheaper options as far as labor goes. Looking at $5,000 for a new short block, and that’s not even with rebuilt heads. I doubt I’d be lucky enough, but nobody on here happens to have experience with shops doing their engine rebuild in Oregon would they?

Well I guess it had lost a lot of coolant within a couple days, after it was boiling I let it cool down and looked again and the overflow was empty. I added maybe 5 cups of 50/50 to the radiator and then filled the overflow, no more overheating. I drove a different car and it sat there for 2 days without being driven, and then I started it back up, and when it started after sitting there it puffed out some blue looking smoke out of the tailpipes, not a ton, but enough to be pretty obvious. I haven’t seen smoke since then, but just now I turned it on to sit in the A/C while I took a break from working and now it has a pretty loud knock. Honestly I’m pretty much over it. I’m not going to take it back apart to redo the head gasket a second time and have to rebuild the short block. I figured if I try and sell it as is, I’m just going to lose a ton of money. So I’m considering buying either a long block, or just a full engine with low miles that was pulled from another car. Anybody know where I should look to find a good quality long block with low miles, that isn’t going to cost me a ton? Hoping I can find one around $1,500 but not sure how realistic that is. I’m pretty broke, but I’d also rather pay a couple hundred more and get an engine that doesn’t have any problems. Thank you. Rip to this engine. On side note, I’ll probably keep this engine after I pull it and just slowly rebuild it over time, maybe a couple years down the road have a nice built engine with some performance upgrades to swap out

Well tbh I haven’t actually flushed it yet. I’ve been swamped at work. But from what I can tell it’s not losing coolant anymore, still drinks oil but very little compared to before I did the head gaskets and had the heads machined. I just drove back from work, took about 2 hours. Got to an appointment and sat in my car with it idling for about 5 minutes, maybe a little less. I got a whiff of some hot coolant, looked at my dash and the coolant temp was just under the redline, so I turned my car off real quick and looked under the hood, the overflow was at the proper level, but it was boiling. I’ve seen people saying it’s just air coming out of the radiator but I’m pretty sure it was actually boiling. The other thing I read about that is possibly a bad head gasket allowing combustion gasses through. Sooo not feeling too positive about my chances rn

Yeah that’s the picture. As far as coolant types go, I’m pretty sure I used the green Peak coolant. I was going to put some dye in the radiator and check it that way, unless you think one of the other options would be better. The only thing I did to get rid of air in the coolant system after putting the engine back was filling it up, and starting the car with the rad cap off, and then when it went down I added more a couple times till it was full. So I’m not really sure if I just didn’t do a good enough job and there was still air, or if it is actually leaking. But the slurry under the cap is what really scared me. I know that straight water/coolant isn’t going to do a good job cleaning oil without some sort of de-greaser, so it kinda wouldn’t surprise me in there was some stuck in all the little fins of the radiator, but I just wasn’t sure how likely that is or if it would’ve been enough to cause the slurry. Was thinking about flushing it and maybe dying it and seeing what happens. Thank you a ton for the help though, it’s nice to have a little re-assurance when you’re in this kinda situation, I was really starting to panic lol

I was wondering if anybody could answer something for me. After the head gasket job I smoothed out all the troubleshooting problems, (aside from slight misfire at idle). When I did the job, I just pulled the hoses off the radiator, I didn’t bother flushing the system or anything. But now that it’s all back together I’ve driven close to 3000 miles. I had the radiator overflow filled up to the “full” mark, and just now when changing the oil I saw that the overflow was empty again. I pulled the rad cap and it had a bunch of slurry under it again almost identical to the picture I posted before. Is the lack of coolant just the bubbles working their way out of my radiator? And what are the chances the slurry is from residual oil in the radiator since I didn’t flush it? Should I be worried that the head gasket job I just did, didn’t work? I’m scared, and contemplating selling it at the moment. I can’t afford the do the head gaskets all over again. If it is the head gaskets, has anybody heard good things about Subaru coolant system conditioner or Blue Devil head gasket fix stuff? Was talking to a customer last week while wiring his house and he said he used blue devil before on a bad head gasket and it fixed it for over 2 years. I need to find out for sure if it’s a head gasket, so I can get rid of it before I end up broke and carless. Thank you

Actually it has always been cylinder 2, I’ve never seen it throw a code for any other cylinder, even when I swapped plugs, wires, injectors. The misfire has gotten a little worse recently, but it still runs pretty well 99% of the time so I’m not sure if I’m going to keep throwing money at it. Especially because I’m worried the new head gasket job isn’t doing what it should be.

Yeah I bought an A/C manifold gauge set from Harbor Freight, and rented a vac pump from autozone. Worked pretty good. I saw on a youtube video that ‘05-‘09 subaru’s have a lot smaller A/C compressor and less refrigerant capacity so they aren’t as strong. I’ll just keep an eye on it. Is there a way to get like a tuner or something to turn off the misfire code? At this point I’m not sure what it could possibly be besides a glitchy ECU or bad EGR or something. Or maybe is there a way to turn up the idle a little? Mine usually idles around 600-700 which I don’t mind but it usually only misfires at idle and when I press the gas to get it to 800~ it runs noticeably smoother

Well I followed your advice and I bit the bullet and redid the timing. Much more of a pain in the ass when it’s in the car. But turns out I forgot to bolt down the guard that bolts on above the crank. Little curved metal piece that’s supposed to guard the belt and prevent it from skipping was just floating there bouncing around. So I’m glad I did. Everything seems to work fine now, after I asked you those questions about the A/C on another post I did mine, and it works good but sometimes the A/C will cycle between blowing super cold air and just below room temp air, cycles maybe once per minute or so. As far as I can tell it doesn’t change depending on my RPM’s, maybe (MAYBE) blows a little colder while driving at highway speeds but not sure what could be causing it. I didn’t wanna overfill so I put a 12oz can of 134a in, so it’s about an oz. short, don’t know if that’s enough to do it or not. Also the clutch travel seems to have broken in and gone back to normal so that’s good. Idk if you saw my thread about the cylinder 2 misfire, but after changing everything in that thread, changing head gaskets, and after the machine shop cleaned the carbon that was holding cylinder 2 exhaust valves open, I thought for sure the misfire would go away. But lo and behold, my check engine light came back on for the cylinder 2 misfire. Including the $1,000~ for changing the head gaskets, I’m about $2,500 in trying to figure it out. Unless anybody has any bright ideas I’ve basically given up, it drives and sounds good, I just want the CEL to go away

Sweet, thank you!!

I have gauges, what’s the vac pump for? to clear all the old stuff out? Don’t you just hook up a can to the gauge and fill it till you get to the correct pressure? (With the correct oil obviously) Also I read somewhere to use PAG46, and read somewhere else to use some Denso 8 or whatever it was called. I’m not sure which one is correct. I was going to have Subaru do it but they wanted just under $300 to charge my system.

Can I ask why everybody is saying to take it to a shop? I’ve recharged A/C systems before (On a Ford and BMW) and it wasn’t difficult. Is it really complicated doing it on a Subaru or something? I don’t have any leaks, I just need to charge my system since it all drained when I pulled my engine

So I drove it, clutch works fine aside from the weird travel. Push the clutch pedal down the first 75% and it moves the slave cylinder about 1/2”, push the pedal down the other 25% and it moves the slave cylinder another 1”~, but it seems to work fine aside from that. The leaky injectors were deformed O-rings. The rattle is still there though, sounds almost like a loose nut/bolt rolling/rattling around under the timing cover. I popped the small section of timing cover off but couldn’t see much, the noise did get louder though. I’m going to see if I can upload a video to youtube and link it here real quick Here:

Tbh I haven’t tried actually driving it yet, it was smoking, (probably because a number of fluids leaked onto the exhaust manifold when pulling the engine) and the injectors were spraying fuel out, didn’t want it to catch fire or anything so I shut it off after a few seconds. And I only pushed the top of clutch fork towards the firewall enough to slide the throwout bearing off the input shaft, but it went right back in place afterwards. The throwout bearing was sitting a little closer to the engine than before so I pulled the top of the fork forward to make sure it went back smoothly, (In doing so the slave cylinder piston got compressed), and I was later told by a friend of mine that he’s had a slave cylinder go out simply from the throwout bearing being pushed in when putting the engine back in his car, so I’m hoping I didn’t break it when I did that. Going to go take a look at it here in a little bit, I’ll check to see how it looks, and see if it moves right away when I press the clutch, maybe try and bleed it or something. And I did not install a new tensioner, (Should I have?) it was working fine before, so I slowly compressed the tensioner with a C-clamp, pushed a drill bit in the pin hole by hand, and re-installed it, then got the timing lined up with the belt on, re-installed a couple little pulleys and then pulled the drill bit out. I was wondering if the rattling or knocking was a timing pulley, or any pulley hitting the timing cover, cause that’s kinda what I imagine it would sound like. But I’ll try looking at that stuff when I head down there after I eat. Thank you for the help!! Edit, I did order the Sachs kit with the sleeve and oversized bearing, but the old sleeve on there had the tiniest allen set screws I’ve ever seen, didn’t have one small enough to remove it. (At least I think it was an allen, was covered in grease and couldn’t see it very well). The old sleeve was still smooth and not worn or anything so I left it on there, cleaned all the grease off and use some copper anti-seize on the sleeve and on the fork where the slave cylinder pushes. Don’t think that’s really important but figured I’d let you know anyways.

Hey guys, I have an 08 legacy EJ253 SOHC that had bad head gaskets. I pulled the engine myself, tore it down and changed head gaskets, sent heads into a machine shop and he did a pressure test, vac test, made sure valves sealed correctly, resurfaced them for the gaskets, and pulled and redid cam seals. I changed all gaskets I came across during teardown. Intake mani, exhaust mani, valve cover, etc, etc. I got it all put back together last night and turned it to the on position a couple times to get fuel back to the injectors, and heard a little hiss, started it anyway. It started up and runs fine and smooth. Except there’s a few problems, two of the injectors are leaking fuel now, which I realized later I didn’t put oil on the o rings as I slid them in the fuel rail, so I’m going to have to pull them, clean them and try again. Or if I can find out what size the o rings for the fuel rail and the lower rings are I’ll buy new ones. Second problem, from maybe one of the pumps/pulleys on the belts or maybe the belts themselves there is a suuuper shitty rattling noise, can’t really describe it very well. I’m hoping it’s not something hitting the timing cover, maybe the belts are too tight and the pulleys are having a hard time, I’m not sure (Also, A/C system is empty, haven’t filed it yet but I’ve never heard an A/C compressor sound like that from being empty). But most importantly for me, when I step on the clutch to start the car, it feels nothing like it used to. It’s really soft, and goes down really easily, and the only pressure I really feel much of is at the very bottom. I replaced the throwout bearing, the clutch and the pressure plate (Sachs from rock auto) but I’m really scared I’m going to have to get back in the bell housing. I don’t believe we bled or opened any of the clutch lines, is there anything you guys can think of that I should check for the clutch just shy of pulling the engine back out? I’m super bummed out that it’s like this after all the time and money spent fixing it. Thank you.