mccorry

Well... I kinda screwed up. I've been working on the motor for 8-10 hours a day over the weekend and until late hours. I put the new timing belt on late Sunday night and lined everything up. I turned the motor over about 10 times by hand with a ratchet to try and prime the oil pump a bit.... Was putting on the cam covers when I noticed my screw up. I used the Triangle on the crank cog instead of the box/line. I felt like such an idiot and was very pissed at myself for making such a silly error. Basically... I had the crank 90 degrees retarded from where it should have been. This puts the intake valves open and pistons at TDC. I don't remember and hard force or any noise as I turned it over, but now I'm paranoid. I stopped the build and have been waiting on a leak down tester to show up to verify the intake valves are not tweaked / bent. The look OK visually and they do hold liquid (brake cleaner) in the intake ports when they are closed, so I might have gotten lucky. I hope so. <---- feels like an idiot.

I broke the two intake cam bolts loose with the engine still in the car and the transmission in 5th gear... foot on the brake pedal. I couldn't get the two exhaust cam bolts to loosen. Ended up getting the passenger side one out with a 3/4" impact wrench. I had to drill out the drivers side exhaust cam bolt. I've run Valvoline (conventional) 5W30 or 10W30 up until around 125K miles. I started having lower oil pressures while cruising (65 psi vs. 80 psi). I then switched to Shell Rotella T5 to keep my pressures a little higher (73 psig).

Coming back together. I need to pull the oil pan back off tomorrow to verify something. I think I switched bolts by accident. Late tonight, I found an oily 10mm bolt (with phillips head) underneath the engine hoist leg. My photos show that I put a non-phillips head 10mm bolt in its place in the sump (on the windage tray oil pickup brace). I'm going to verify and swap it out. Picture is attached. Other than that... just chugging along.

Made good progress today. Started with the bare shortblock this morning.

Sheets Machining in Galloway. Dick Sheets is a good guy.

Yeah... Verified all main and rod bearing clearances.

Genuine Subaru piston rings were all within STD spec range without any filing. I'm really happy with that.

Block is back together and pistons are in as of late last night. Working on installing clutch, oil pump and heads now...

Gapped the new Subaru piston rings and got them installed on the pistons.

Same stock pistons. No issues. Machine shop gave me the ok to reuse them.

Got the parts back from the machine shop. Bearings, rings, and head studs showed up today. Ready to start putting this thing back together!!

Lol....

I'm still here.... been away from the forum for quite a while but I still check in from time to time. Currently in the middle of an engine build on my '05 LGT... Join Date 07-06-2004 Total Posts 9,436 Good to see all of you still on here. Didn't realize it till I got on last night, but I miss my LGT.com family!

That's what my stock block is, as well.... AAAB.

I think you're right rmoore5. I do feel very thankful I decided to tear it all the way down. Boy, I'd have been pissed to have a catastrophic failure right after doing head gaskets.... I'd say that 185,000 miles might be due to the bearing exceeding its service life. Maybe not. I find it very strange that only the #5 main bearing showed this failure. There was one very small pit on the #3 main.. but nothing like this widespread failure.

Did some research and decided to go with studs... looks like a more secure way to fasten the head down... and I want as much confidence as I can get. For $185, it is worth it... Thanks for the suggestion.

Was planning on reusing the stock head bolts. I hadn't even considered studs. Isn't that overkill for a basic Stage 2 car?

Amen, JBear....

As of now... the block halves, the heads, cams, crank, rods, and pistons are still at the machine shop. I've been cleaning up parts in preparation of reassembly / re-installation. I will try and post pictures during the build and install.

Here is where it gets interesting.... The oil pump was disassembled and inspected. No notable wear... so it was cleaned and sealed back up to be reinstalled. The block came apart nicely with just a little persuasion. Again.. looked very clean with only a varnish coat. The crank and rods looked good. The machine shop told me today that the crank just needed cleaned up a little bit. New standard main bearings will be needed. Also... standard rod bearings. However, the original rod bearings did show a significant amount of wear. #2 rod bearing was worn through the cladding to the copper layer. Fortunately, it didn't hurt the crank. BUT... here is a close up shot of #5 main bearing. All other mains looked OK (other than expected wear). I can't believe this didn't chew up the crank. The machinist said I was extremely fortunate to pull the block apart to find this.

Next, I pulled the oil pan and other piping systems off the block. Again, there was quite a bit of varnish, but no sludge or deposits. This engine has been run on Valvoline Dino 5W30 most of its life. I switched to Rotella recently due to dropping oil pressure when cruising. The Rotella doesn't experience viscosity breakdown like the dino oil does. Pulled the heads. DAMN the head bolts were tight. I was scared to break the first few loose. Seemed awfully tight. Pulled the pistons one by one and cleaned them up as I went. All cylinders had minor scuffing of the walls from the piston skirts. Number 2 cylinder had one groove from the skirt that you can just barely catch a nail on. The machinist said he would see what it looked like after honing the cylinders. All of the pistons looked fine, other than the skirt scuffing. No broken ring lands or anything like that. The machinist suggested I put them back in with new rings. Here is a picture of the passenger side (#3) head gasket up close. I think this is where the combustion cylinder was leaking into the coolant.

I pulled the intake off and cleaned out the TGV's, injectors, fuel piping, and intake... then installed all new gaskets. The ORIGINAL FACTORY VF40 was removed with ABSOLUTELY no shaft play. This turbo has been running Stage 2 @ 17 psi of boost pressure its whole life (since 3,000 miles). Inside of the heads had a little varnish, but the cams, buckets, and valves all look great.

Here is a picture of the Gates racing Timing belt with ~75K miles on it. Not wearing as good as I would have hoped... The 10mm hex bolts that hold the cam cogs on are a B$*CH to get off. The intake cams broke free with a 3 foot breaker bar and a good amount of force. The passenger side exhaust cam came free with a 3/4" Impact running off 130 psig air pressure. The drivers side cam bolt had to be drilled out... it wouldn't budge.

Hey everyone. I haven't been on here for quite some time but thought this would be a great time to jump back on here and share my story. I've been racking up the miles on my 2005 LGT over the past few years. No major issues other than repeated brake caliper issues (seizing pistons). I noticed two weeks ago that my cooling fans came on when I pulled into the garage. The temperature gauge seemed fine. This happened the next day, as well. After some inspection, I found that the coolant overflow bottle was full. I let the car cool down for about an hour then re-inspected. It never pulled the coolant back. When I opened the radiator cap, I could see the core. Ugh. Refilled everything and started her up to see bubbles in the coolant. Either a cracked head, cracked block, or failed head gasket. Hence... the engine pull and rebuild started. I decided to go all the way down to the bare crank due to the miles. I'd hate to have just changed the head gaskets to have a bearing failure down the road. It's a good thing I did. Here is the car with 184,xxx miles on it before the work, then the accessories off, and the engine out.

http://www.classic-audio.com/marantz/pics/r_2226.jpg