2005 Legacy GT wagon: a bone stock rebuild

[birkhoff]

Sorry about the duplicate images. I'm trying to follow the request of the mods here and upload pictures to the local server, but there are some issues I haven't figured out yet. I get both thumbnails and in-post pictures at the moment. When I figure this out, I'll edit out the thumbnails.

[StkmltS]

Holy shinikes!

When I rip mine apart next month I hope I find cool stuff like that valve.

[Max Capacity]

What the compressor wheel on the turbo look like ?

 

Do you have the stock up pipe ?

 

I wonder if a banjo filter would have stopped that...

[birkhoff]

What the compressor wheel on the turbo look like ?

 

Do you have the stock up pipe ?

 

I wonder if a banjo filter would have stopped that...

 

You mean the turbine wheel? Turbo is perfect.

 

I was running (and currently still do) the stock up, with cat intact. Nothing in the up, the cross, or either m'fold. The cat in the up was loose, but that happened a long time ago.

 

A mystery still to be solved, or maybe never I guess.

[Max Capacity]

You mean the turbine wheel? Turbo is perfect.

 

I was running (and currently still do) the stock up, with cat intact. Nothing in the up, the cross, or either m'fold. The cat in the up was loose, but that happened a long time ago.

 

A mystery still to be solved, or maybe never I guess.

 

 

Correct, sorry about that. Got my incoming air flow backwards in this case.

 

 

Didn't notice if you plan to have the turbo rebuilt while its out ?

 

Also that burnt valve is most likely caused by the stock engine MAP.

[birkhoff]

I picked up this turbo as a core for rebuilding. Turned out to be in fantastic shape when I got it. Zero shaft play in any direction. Super clean wheels and housings. So I pulled my old one (at about 175K) some time ago and set to rebuilding that. My original one is also in awfully good shape -- slightest hint of shaft play. The rotating assembly was inspected and rebalanced by G-Pop -- they found nothing out of spec.

 

FWIW, my strategy in this project has been to make as few changes as possible outside the long block. There always seems to be something to deal with after a major overhaul like this. Some problems went away, and some didn't, but nothing new has emerged which is good news for the long block! The ones that didn't go away are now easier to find and attend to. That's the plan, anyway.

 

Another possibility for the burnt valve is out-of-spec lash. I seriously doubt this engine ever had the buckets done. I need to pull the old heads out from under the bench and see where they were, clearance-wise, especially the exhaust. Somewhat of a priority, since if they are ok, then this may be a fuelling issue which my new engine may not like any more than the old one did!

[Max Capacity]

The fueling/timing issue is why we say to get these cars tuner by a great tuner. So you don't burn valves or break ringlands.

[birkhoff]

Had a chance to check valve lash on the heads that came off. Exhausts on the side with the burnt valve were

 

0.0085, 0.0065, 0.0055, 0.0060 for the four buckets, front to back.

 

If I am reading the FSM correctly, exhaust valve lash should be 0.0118 to 0.0158

(12 to 16 thou).

 

That means the bad valve was running at close to half the minimum lash. Probably not a sustainable situation.

 

Intakes were all acceptable; Exhausts on the other bank were on the low side of the spec, but acceptable. I find it odd there would be such a difference from left to right.

[birkhoff]

Ok, more surprises here. No ring land issues at all. Actually, the pistons look pretty good! Skirts are serviceable -- a little scuffing on one or two, but others still have the machined surface showing. Overall, quite impressive for such high mileage.

 

How come so much oil consumption?

 

All four pistons had stuck oil control rings. I mean really stuck; hard into the groove; would not push in; no spring outward. In the middle picture below it is hard to tell the plain rings from the corrugated centre ring. The plain rings have a hard deposit that matches the corrugation. Behind the rings, the groove was packed full of the same hard deposit.

 

Finally, with the pistons out, the full condition of the bores can be seen. I'd swear this block could go back into service with a light hone. The block was AAAA, so there is no option to go to a slightly larger STD piston grade if the hone opens up the bores a bit. Measurements will determine my options. In the last pic, the dark area at the bottom of the bore is just crud outside the skirt area. It wipes right off with a bit of thinner and there is no transition whatsoever from where the skirt ran to where this crud is.

[Max Capacity]

Stuck oil rings may be the reason...

 

Do you plan to have a machine shop measure and clean the block and clean up the deck when they are rebuilding the heads ?

 

They will tell you what size piston to order

[StkmltS]

Wow, you lucked out.

Are you going to replace the pistons anyways?

[Max Capacity]

Just reading your reply in the other thread, you have the bore gauges so you have a idea what you doing.

 

I'll agree a light hone and drop in the pistons and new rings. After the block has been cleaned and decked.

[birkhoff]

I should clarify. As I described back in post #19, the new engine is built and just going through break in. It was built from a donor used SB (that DID have broken ring lands) and a backup pair of heads I also purchased separately.

 

These recent posts are directed to figuring out what that terrible noise was in the video linked to post #19.

 

What I am finding is that my block is in very similar shape (in some respects better) compared the low mileage one one I built up, so it may be helpful to others who are going through this right now and making decisions on what to refurbish, and what to replace with new.

 

Shortly I'll gather up all my pictures of the build and complete this thread with that and anything useful I find during break in.

 

This has been a long project, and the timeline is confusing, to say the least.

[birkhoff]

Final part of teardown for inspection. Split the case. First picture.

 

Main bearings all good. Look the same as the last one I did with only 50K miles on it. Second picture

 

Crank good. Third picture. A vigorous polish would clean it up. There is a slight oil ridge on the wide bearings where the journal has an oil groove; #1, 3, 5. Interestingly, it is more worn down the centre where the oil flows than it is against the bearing. I can only just detect the ridge with my fingernail. There is a pretty heavy groove on the running surface for the oil pump seal. I'll measure this crank but there is a good chance it will not be re-used.

 

Rods good. Bearings also look good. This is rod #4, the only one showing anything even slightly abnormal. In this case a little something out near the rear edge. There is nothing to feel. Fourth and fifth picture. Piston pins came out easily, and the small end bushings look good. Would have to measure to be sure about re-using without new bushings.

 

So basically, except for the seriously stuck oil rings, this block was ready to go quite a bit further! This is not what I expected, considering the sound the engine was making (post #19). It appears the bad valve was the cause after all.

[birkhoff]

Time to move this thread along to some sort of conclusion.

 

To recap, this build was initiated by a long history of heavy oil consumption. In anticipation of cracked ring lands, I purchased a used short block, tore it down, rebuilt it and put aside. Not wanting a long drawn out swap, I also picked up a set of good used heads and got them ready to go. A medium-long list of required parts was purchased, including new timing kit (with pump), oil cooler and etc. I tried to avoid buying a bunch of parts on the `while I'm in there' principle since I know that can really balloon the budget. It's hard, though.

 

In January something let go inside the engine and it was time to act. Pulled the engine Jan 2. Engine on the stand and everything pulled apart and laid out on a worktable. (see post #21)

 

It was nearly the middle of February when I finally got the rebuilt short block on the stand and started to build back up. This project was relegated to weekends only; some weekends only a couple of hours, or nothing. That can really drag things out.

 

Pics below.

Short block on the stand;

Heads on;

Cams in and flip over;

Get the bottom side zipped up while I attend to the ghastly hard lines;

a bit of spot blasting and some good under-hood paint dealt with those;

Hard lines going back in;

and hard lines 2;

 

Starting to make progress here. The date on the last photo says I am at March 9. Probably 15 - 20 hours of very broken up time into the job since the buildup started in Feb just to give an idea of the scale.

[birkhoff]

Things are going quite smoothly at this point.

 

Installing the heads entailed no drama whatsoever. I started by flooding each bolt hole with 20W50 engine oil, then turned the engine to drain out for a good long time. Heads went on, followed by bolts and then torqued to factory specs. Everything felt perfect -- no squeaks or odd resistance. Very smooth operation.

 

A little glitch with the cams. Case halves were decked, as were the heads. The cam caps were trimmed and cam tunnels honed. In theory everything should have been smooth sailing, and three of the cams went in turning like butter, but one was binding (LHS exhaust). After much fiddling around I determined that the cam was rocking just a bit on the centre cam bore. Confirmed with a straight edge. So much for all the decking. Theses Subaru cases are something else to work on!

 

My machinist also mentioned that since the centre bore is not pinned, the cap sometimes goes in shifted a little sideways and this needs to be corrected.

 

Anyhow, long story short, I took out about half the rocking with a card scraper on the lower part of the cam bore, and then (since I did think I could feel a slight misalignment of the cam cap) I gave the cap a bit of a tap sideways before torquing down. Combined, these fixed the problem.

 

Prior to the adjustment, I could rotate the cam, but only with the cam gear on and then only barely. Impossible without the cam gear. After, it was pretty much like the others.

 

This seems like as good a time as any to talk about sealant. Subaru engines (maybe all modern engines for all I would know) seem to use a lot of sealant. And it has to go in just so or there is trouble. Take the cam caps. It is really easy to get too much sealant in there and mess up the oil passages. A solution I found to work well over the years is to get some little squeeze bottles as pictured below. Cut the tip to produce a small hole, and fill the bottle from your tube of sealant.

 

In the pics below I'm sealing the valve covers and half moons, but it is same idea throughout the engine, especially the case halves.

 

You can put as little or as much as you think you will need in the bottle. It keeps for a few days and then you chuck the whole thing and start again. Your tube of sealant will keep better too! The bottles cost about $1 each around here, with caps.

[birkhoff]

Back to the assembly.

 

Time to turn the engine back over and install the exhaust. My heat shields were paper thin. Thanks to a member here I got some good used ones, although as far as I can tell the shield on the centre pipe is not replaceable. First pic looks pretty good and completes on the bottom side of things.

 

Turn right side up again and get the timing gear and covers into place. I had one cracked cover that I knew of, and had purchased a replacement, but when it came time to swap in the old grommets, forget it. They were hard as the covers themselves. Had to wait a week for the dealer to get a few of those in. Note: new covers do not come with the grommets!

 

Timing belt was a breeze. On top of the parts in the kit (tensioner and idlers) I added a new crank gear. Mine looked ok but the tooth profile was a little bit polished and I figured, for that high stress area, the timing belt would appreciate a better fit with the gear. Who knows. Anyway, they are (relatively) cheap.

 

I was unsure about using the standard method of clamping the LHS gears together to hold them in place. I came up with I think a gentler solution of two door shims. Seemed pretty solid, but I know if something lets loose this could cause a major delay and backward step in the project. Duplicate at your own risk! Not sure what that socket is doing in the second picture. Definitely not installing cam bolts! Those were torqued the same way they came out -- with an old timing belt and everything in neutral position.

 

Cam alignment marks were pretty close; about where I would expect them to be considering the heads and block lost a combined 5-6 thou. Looks to be about half a tooth out. Third picture.

 

Finally everything buttoned up on the front end. I loosely installed the turbo and got all the piping in place before setting the m'fold since getting the intake pipe onto the turbo is such a pain the other way around. Fourth picture.

[StkmltS]

Thanks for the good updates. I can't wait to see/hear it fire up.

Why did you decide to replace the exhaust heat shields instead of paint/wrap the pipes?

[birkhoff]

Thanks for the good updates. I can't wait to see/hear it fire up.

Why did you decide to replace the exhaust heat shields instead of paint/wrap the pipes?

 

The goal is a 100% stock rebuild. I may need to sell this at some point and having it running stock, or being able to put it back that way quickly will be essential.

 

BTW, I noticed the value of these cars has dropped a lot around here since I bought in 2009. At that time they were trading at $20K plus. I didn't pay much attention between then and now, but a super clean 2005 MT Wagon came up at a local dealer with a sticker price of $6,900, which is quite a drop. I suppose that is good news for those who want to mod and experiment.

[birkhoff]

Aside post for cleaning AVCS gears.

 

I didn't have a metal to metal failure on the previous block, but I couldn't resist pulling the cam gears apart for inspection/cleaning. Easy to find walk throughs for that on the web. There is a video by a fellow at Outfront Motorsports that points out, correctly, that there is an issue with alignment when you put things back. The bore in the cam gear body needs to be aligned with the bore in the backing plate. There is only a single dowel pin to align things rotationally. Measuring the bore and comparing to the cam nose, there is a little over 1 thou clearance. So you can't use the cam nose to align, really. I followed the suggestion of the Outfront guy and made a mandrel that was a snug sliding fit into the bore for reassembly.

 

If you want to do this, beware the large formed O-ring at the back. They are getting pretty old now and easy to damage when you pry the cover off. All reports are these are NLA. If anyone knows where to get them, or how to fabricate new ones, I'd like to know. After doing one gear, I kind of chickened out and left the other one intact!

 

Oh, and you need a 5 lobe TP30 for the back bolts. I found a full set for $15 at the local tool place.

 

For the gear I took apart, nothing broken and no bits in there. Some significant polishing on the running surfaces at the vanes, but nothing that looks like is should be a problem for quite a while.

[birkhoff]

Time to do all the other stuff while you have the engine out

 

That last picture in post #42 was dated March 19. Eleven weeks since the date of engine pull.

 

Prior to this current project, I had a list of front end work that I had been putting off.

 

1. Power steering rack leaking; rebuilt unit on hand

2. Original axles with torn inner boot on driver's side; had two EMPI units on hand

3. Original front struts; had OEM replacements on hand

4. Original ball joints and tie rod ends. I knew from previous work that the BJs were starting to go. On hand

5. General cleanup of engine bay and any electrical attachment points.

 

How nice it is to work with the open bay. I used the hoist to advantage here. I could lift the front end way up for under the car work, and drop back down for over the fender work. Of course jack stands at all times as backup!

 

All this extra stuff ate up another 2-3 weeks.

[birkhoff]

April 7 I took the engine off the building stand and rigged it for the install. I've not found an ideal way to hook up, but with three chains you can tilt and level pretty much any reasonable angle in two directions. Three points define a plane, and all.

 

Second pic shows the approximate angle you want to shoot for in order to mate with the bell housing. Precise angle will depend on your setup. I used a Tilt-Box to pick off and transfer the angle and set things up. I suppose they have phone apps that do almost as good a job now. The tilt box is an amazingly useful thing to have around.

 

Last pictures:

 

Back side is ready for the FW and clutch assembly. In keeping with the title, a 100% stock DMFW and related gear is being re-used. I actually ran a 2008 SMFW for a while, which was good, but the dealer wanted $230 plus tax just for the disc, and I had all the DMFW parts on hand. Chain on the FW is for setting the torque on the FW bolts. I was working alone that day.

[birkhoff]

Moving the new engine into place

 

As they say, install is the reverse of removal. Except, not exactly. There are a couple of decisions that need to be made.

 

What to do about the turbo

 

For some reason, both times I have R&R'd this engine, it comes out fairly easily but getting the turbo past the bell housing flange on the install is a pain. It seems that just as the trans input shaft is engaging the clutch you bump the turbo into the flange. With enough twisting and worrying, and adjusting your rigging, it does go in. So you have essentially four options.

 

1. Install and torque the turbo and up-pipe prior to install, and then wrestle the thing into place. The factory approved method.

 

2. Leave the turbo off and then mating the engine to the transmission will be a (relative) breeze, but now you have to install the turbo in situ and I can't imagine anyone calling that a pleasant job.

 

3. Install the turbo, but leave the bolts loose, brackets loose and slack off the up-pipe to manifold flange so everything is sloppy. This should (in principle) help to wiggle to turbo past the flange, and you only have to torque everything up after and not deal with the awful inlet hose alignment and turbo drain hose connection.

I'll be doing this the next time (if there is a next time).

 

4. I think Max has an even better solution of swapping out the turbo-to-up-pipe studs with bolts. But this requires advanced planning. See post #146 in this thread.

 

Of course if you are running an auto, all this may be a non-issue. I have no experience with that.

 

Install plugs and coils, or not

 

I chose not, on the grounds that I had no way to prime the oil system while the engine was out. This was a long build and I had no idea if the oil pump full of assembly lube was going to prime quickly, or not at all. So I elected to leave cylinders open for the initial crank and be as gentle as possible on the bearings and starter while the oil pressure came up.

 

But then you have to install the plugs in situ and we all know that is not terribly fun. Do this before you install the airbox or it will have to come out again!

 

This is also the point where I discovered the used heads I built up had a stripped out thread on the #3 coil attachment bore. A very long evening with a cut off tap, and some modified bolts used as thread chasers and I managed to put it right. This was not the first such encounter on this build. If I can offer one piece of advice: chase all threads as you go, and repair as required, especially if the parts are new-to-you.

 

At this point I am working some weekday evenings in a race to the finish. On April 10, we have this, which looks depressingly like the pic from Jan 2 but that IS my new engine there:

[birkhoff]

Finishing touches

 

Attaching the accessories, exhaust and hooking up all the coolant and vacuum connections was routine. It kind of helps that I have done this twice already, and for some parts, like the downpipe, three or four times. It still eats up a chunk of time.

 

By April 12, everything is buttoned up and ready to go. In case some of you have forgotten what a stock LGT looks like, here it is.

 

I'm kind of torn. It would be nice to have all new shiny parts on the top of that new motor, but then, the well-worn look is satisfyingly in keeping with the sleeper status of the whole car. Who would guess that beneath this rough exterior lies the heart of a . . .

[Max Capacity]

Soooo, is it running yet ?

 

I chose to start my ej257 like the factory does for the first time. Turned the key to On, let the gauges sweep, start it. The oil pressure raises much quicker at idle rpm then it does at cranking speed. I guess I got lucky but mine started like it does every day, 2 or 3 cranks and its at idle.

 

If you haven't fired it up yet. Go over all the hose clamps and make sure they are tight. Seems a lot of us miss the ones on the turbo cooling lines.