apokalypse

Whelp... I joined the club of people who had to MacGyver a blown off rad hose with nothing more than a bad pair of pliers 20km from home, on my way to a brewery. The hose I replaced pulled itself off the radiator when I was cruising on the highway. I was able to pull off, assess the situation, limp the car to get some water (hopefully without it having damaged anything further), add what seemed like far too much water through the rad, hit up a hardware store for a worm clamp, tighten it down, have a beer, buy some beer, and drive back home while blasting the heat on high. What a fun Saturday!

 

Yesterday I took all the hoses off/pulled the tstat and flushed the block just to clean everything out. I noticed in the lower rad hose that it is deteriorating as well, so I have one on order from the stealership. I also noticed that I had left the drivers side fan disconnected after my timing belt work in October, which is likely a contributing factor to my problems

 

I bought some t-bolt clamps and replaced all four spring clamps today, filled the car with distilled water and went for a drive much closer to home. The clamps seem to be holding fine, and I'll put it through the paces of a longer drive tomorrow. I did notice that the level had risen in the overflow tank, which tells me the cap is working (and there wasn't any leaking from hoses, so the clamps are holding well).

 

I'm going to track down some Mishimoto constant tension hose clamps, since they seem to be a bit more ideal than the t-bolt clamps, unless there's a good reason not to change them out.

 

Addendum: Am I my own worst enemy?

 

I went out this evening to top off the coolant system and I noticed it was leaking a bit... traced the leak to the rad filler neck. Ho hum - I bought a no-leak funnel... it worked great the first time I used it! Why isn't it working now? I used the same coloured neck and cap.

 

I tried tightening up the cap flanges where it holds tight onto the rad neck, but that didn't help. Water still came out. It kind of looked like the overflow hose wasn't on all the way so I made sure that was fine, and re-clamped the no-spill neck and cap. But still, water leaked.

 

And then it struck me... wasn't there a grommet in the bottom of the rad neck? I looked, and there wasn't.

 

But ... wasn't there supposed to be a grommet on the no-spill neck piece? There is on all the others ones!

 

But ... wait, did I accidentally leave the no-spill grommet in the rad neck, which prevented the rad cap from opening and caused a failure at the weakest link (the upper rad hose)? Myth: plausible

 

I stole a grommet from the smaller no-spill neck and I'm definitely making sure I pull it out tomorrow morning...

Got the new hose and rad cap this morning, installed the hose and burped the system again with the front end up on ramps. Filled the reservoir up to full? So far so good, the hose held its own. I got the temps up to 214F (then the fan kicked in and lowered it to about 200F) by turning the air off. The hose feels much more firm/rigid compared with the old one, even when pressurized. Also, it didn't try to slide off the radiator port as shown before.

 

I went for a 5km loop that was mostly city, with a quick jump on and off the highway. When I got home, there was no bubbling in the reservoir, and it was still at the full mark.

 

One thing I did notice was, I think I had the rad hose on 'backwards'. In the photos I posted before, there was a yellow dot and not an arrow on the radiator-side of the hose. The hose isn't 100% symmetrical and looking at photos from google images, it seems like the arrow should point towards the radiator. I suspect this might've caused some of my issues post-timing belt service that I did back in October.

 

This evening I was able to remove the rad cap without it being pressurized. I did notice the coolant in the reservoir appeared to be slightly lower than the full mark; I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this as I can't be sure it was perfectly at the full mark earlier in the day or not. I plan on taking it for a much longer drive in the next few days to dot the i's and cross the t's.

When my HGs went it was easy to reproduce the symptoms: top off radiator, get reservoir bottle to proper level, drive on highway for ten+ miles and the reservoir bottle would overflow. Once cooled down I would open the radiator and there would be an air pocket. For my DIY investigation I replaced the radiator cap and flushed the cooling system, no change.

 

https://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/add-me-gt-head-gasket-failure-list-255946.html?t=255946

 

Woah, that reservoir looks pretty... salty? You could grow stalagmites on it!

 

Did you have any signs of leaking from the gasket on the engine/head mating surface? I used my inspection mirror and it all looks clean on the underside, though I'll take a closer look next time I get the front end up.

Here's a link to the video of the bubbles that occurred when I turned the temps down in the car so the AC ran instead of blowing heat on HI. Bubbling like this was not present when I was running the car with the heat blasting, so I suspect it's from the coolant temperature being increased (217F) and not from a HG leak...

Borrowed a radiator pressure test kit, got the system up to ~11psi (black arrow I think is 0.8 bar), which I think is stock pressure.

 

It looks like it's dropping about 1 PSI / 10 minutes (these pictures were 11 minutes apart). My understanding is that if it drops 1+ PSI or more in a few minutes, then it's a head gasket leak. The very slow rate of leakage makes me think it could just be the tool giving off air. I didn't see any visible leaks while doing the test.

 

Thinking that the pressure in the coolant system could be escaping into the cylinders, I recorded starting the car and revving it a few times, but no white puff of smoke was seen.

 

Would it be worthwhile to leave the pressure test kit on and get the engine idling for a while to see how much pressure is building up, or is that not helpful to know at this point?

 

Short of doing a compression test on each cylinder, which seems like a pain in the arse, anything else I could look at?

Sometimes with a small leak you won't notice it without load on the engine.

 

Drive up a hill, pull over and look for bubbles in the overflow bottle.

 

I had my wife rev the engine a bunch of times, hold it at 3000 rpm for 20 seconds, blip it to 4500/5000 rpm, etc. and still no sign of exhaust.

 

To look for bubbles in the overflow, can I just top off the reservoir without filling the system? Or will it just pull the overflow coolant back into the system.

I tried the test kit again, this time I pulled the reservoir hose from the radiator and placed my finger over it just so it wasn't pulling outside air. I could get a few pulls from the bulb and then it formed a pretty good vacuum until I lifted my finger, so doesn't seem like there's extra gases in the system. The tester liquid stayed blue again.

My next course of action is replacing the cap and upper hose, since when I squeezed it, it definitely made a croaking/creaking sound that makes me think it's compromised...plus the goiter it grew can't be healthy!

Ok, so I acquired one of those combustion leak detectors, got the car heated up (interior temp set to HI on max), and tried for fifteen minutes to make the colour change without any luck. I did have to siphon out a fair amount of coolant since my first two tries ended up diluting the liquid. Torque app told me that my coolant was running about 200-203F. I also tried a couple minutes while pinching off the reservoir hose just to make sure I was pulling air from the radiator.

 

Start 5:05pm

 

 

5:11pm

 

5:14pm

 

I had my wife come rev the engine a few times just to see if that would make a difference (not that I expected it to), and it didn't.

 

Discoloration:

 

Now, I did turn the air back on and let the car idle some more while I tried to get the colour to change. I did get what seemed like extra liquid into the tester and it ended up discoloured, so I stopped.

 

What I think happened here was I was pulling air into the test kit, and I got some boiling coolant into the chamber, so it ended up evaporating off some of the coolant and/or test liquid. When I pulled the tester off the radiator inlet, the coolant level was pretty high and it was bubbling. Torque app said the coolant temperature was 217F so this makes sense to me. You can also see there's more condensation in the tester in this photo, which also explains why the level is slightly lower.

 

I'm thinking if there was actually a head gasket leak, it would have showed up pretty quickly. The test is pretty idiot proof, unless I'm just a really good idiot...

I know with my Grand Prix, there would be some evidence of mixing fluids, i.e. dirty coolant or frothy muck under the oil cap. If I drain the coolant/oil, am I likely to see mixed fluids? Are there any other easy tests to confirm head gasket failure?

I noticed when starting up my LGT recently that it smelled a bit sweet, like some coolant had evaporated off the engine. Looking under the rad cap and the level was fairly low, such that squeezing the upper rad hose brought a bit of coolant into view and then back away. I topped it off with a funnel and went out to run some errands. Afterwards, I noticed that coolant had been blown out of the system through the reservoir and that the level was still fairly low under the cap again!

 

So I went and bought one of those spill proof radiator funnels, put the front of the car up on ramps, left coolant in the funnel and burped the system. Let the car cool off, and capped the radiator. This seemed to work really well and I thought that was the end of my problems.

 

The next day, I went out for a quick test drive, came back and had a look at the radiator. The upper hose had slightly unseated itself and it's starting to bubble (attached). Now this is where I'm a bit confused.. the system seems to have too much pressure in it, shown by the hose, but it's also not overflowing into the reservoir anymore. The level in the reservoir has not changed since I burped it with the spill proof funnel.

 

I let the car cool off, used a cloth to remove the radiator cap, and it shot coolant everywhere. Capped it off, got it up to temps, let it cool off and it again had too much pressure.

 

Since the hose has that bubble in it, I'm going to get a replacement next week from the dealership, but I'm wondering if there's something more I should be looking at? Should I do another coolant flush from top to bottom again?

Well... that was an exciting time (ha ha! timing belt)

 

3/6 nuts pulled out the studs from the exhaust manifold.

 

Got new studs/nuts and gaskets.

 

New AVCS cover gaskets.

 

A new bolt for the muffler hanger that snapped off when I tried to remove it (still need to drill it out).

 

But worst of all.. finally with a second set of hands I was able to get the flare nut back on the oil line from the turbo to the scavenge pump. This was by far the worst challenge (aside from having to drop the exhaust for that water pump line).

 

All in all it was a good experience, but what a pain to get that water pump out!

You got the same set of OE idlers and tensioner I got from the looks of it - just the one coming off the car looks different for me

https://photos.app.goo.gl/XYjhgbKkNHmvYG9PA I added photos to my timing belt album.

 

https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2735105 it appears this person had the same concern I have - sounds like a non issue and the Koyo replaces the NSK bearing?

None of my stock bearings were orange. The were 4 bearings, 1- small, 1- cogged and 2 same sized bearings. Timing belt, bearings, tensioners were interchangable for all variations of the EJ255 & EJ257 (DOHC Turbo) motor.

 

It was an NSK bearing for the lower left idler, but I have two of the same Koyo bearings from the Aisin kit.

 

Looking at https://parts.subaru.com/a/Subaru_2010_Legacy-25L-TURBO-6MT-4WD-GT-Limited-Sedan/_54102_6022813/CAMSHAFT--TIMING-BELT-TIMING-BELT-10MY-12MY/B14-013-04.html though it looks like they're both Koyo now.

Everything that he said. I just did mine and got the Aisin kit from RockAuto. The pulley's are all koyo bearings (good) and the belt is from Mitsubishi. It hurts me to see the brand new (wrong) water pump still in the box every time I see it, though, so I'd at least do the math on cost for going full OEM vs mix and match.

 

I also second the manifold drop method.

 

Here's the post in the DIY sticky about the coolant pipes: https://legacygt.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5673463&postcount=11

 

The Kinugawa braided flexible lines are another cheaper option that I did, but I think I'd go with OEM if I did it again. Not thrilled with their fitment.

 

Did you buy the TKF-004 or TKF-006? In the -004 kit, it looks like one of the bearings is different, I have two of the black bearings instead of one black one orange.

It is not that hard to remove the center pipe assembly, one support bolt and 2 bolt to the catback portion. The support also has a hook to hold up the exhaust on that end to make it easier to reassemble.

 

Yeah, I see that too. Was just hopeful

Is there enough room to get the exhaust/turbo out without removing the center exhaust pipe, if I can get it disconnected at the cat?

 

edit: nm, the one nut is so rusted it's not even worth trying.

It is easier to drop the whole exhaust manifold with the turbo and downpipes attached. You can slide a 10mm wrench to remove that bolt, but it doesn't really do you any good, you still need to drop the downpipe to get to the oil cooler bolt near the back of the water pump.

 

The low mount turbo makes the waterpump difficult. The 5th Gen Legacy is the only EJ255 variation like this.

 

Yeah, as I started down that path I just realized you're right... gah. I didn't notice the oil cooler tucked in the backside

Are the plugs still installed? Pressure in the cylinders can make it easier for the crank sprockets to spin. I think you want to remove the covers on the two pulleys so that you can turn them easier with a hex key.

 

Yeah, the plugs are still installed. That's correct, I'll need to remove those two covers to get access to the bolt to rotate the cams.

Just get the tool linked above. It is going to be really hard to line them back up without.

 

Sadly the one above is not for sale on Amazon Canada, but I found something similar that will show up tomorrow.

 

I'm also replacing the water pump, and I tried removing the bottom WP bolt that secures the heat shield to it without dropping the donwpipe, as the nuts on the turbo bolts are all rusted. I think the bolt threads are now cheesed, as it's not backing out anymore. I'm going to hacksaw that out tomorrow and cut a little channel in the heat shield so I can work with the clearance that I have - will upload photos tomorrow. Whoever thought that placement was a good idea needs to give their head a shake

Whelp, I didn't have my vice grips clamped enough to prevent the driver side cams from staying put and they sprung free. https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMyjYjkAsCZ0g8ktG5v83dqifBT6NBp_lTtjJ8O9mnY_5wDkgEdZtz--fFHHHFQ4A/photo/AF1QipOkCNOaxKsE7vmi1XR3qfWcv2aASbupSEpLY4Re?key=Vmk5TVFOcHgzZndjb0gtME1WY1FsY1RyNktBb25R

 

I should just be able to rotate the exhaust counter-clockwise, and the intake clockwise until they are re-timed, right? I had borrowed a plastic cam lock tool but it didn't end up fitting over the exhaust due to the lip.

The notch is slighltly to the right for the crank gear, which will should line up the cams closer.

 

You have it lined up correctly. The mark your looking for is faintly on the rounded piece of aluminum thats oxidizing a bit above the pulley. I'm sure you could wire brush it a bit and it might show up better...?

 

I was able to remove some grime, and lo and behold the notch appeared.

 

Right now it's not perfectly aligned (the gear is a hair to the left of the notch), but I guess if I install a fresh belt properly, it will be?

You have it lined up correctly. The mark your looking for is faintly on the rounded piece of aluminum thats oxidizing a bit above the pulley. I'm sure you could wire brush it a bit and it might show up better...?

 

Yeah, I'll try that tomorrow. I scraped at it a bit but nothing jumped out. I was just worried of doing something wrong at this juncture since both sides appear to be off, but aligned if I rotate it a bit more.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/pqNDkdMHDGtmc5e69

 

What am I supposed to align this to?