New head gasket?

[Ethanol]

I purchased my '06 Legacy 2.5i last year with no maintenance history at all. Purchased from a small dealer who bought it at auction. This has left me wondering about the condition of the headgaskets as they are an expensive repair and known for failure. The car has 138k on it.

 

While I was working on it today, I happened to notice that the nuts on the exhaust studs appear to be very new (the zinc coating is still yellow and not rusty at all). I initially thought the cat must have been replaced, but the cat looks old and the bolts attaching the cat to the rest of the exhaust look original (very rusty). Upon further inspection, I noticed the timing belt and cam pulley appear very new, I also notice that the timing belt cover was damaged on the inside. I am trying to piece together this vehicles previous life. So far I have come up with the following theories:

 

A. The exhaust nuts were removed when the motor was taken apart to replace the head gaskets. (no explanation of damage to timing belt cover)

 

B. The timing belt snapped and there were a few bent valves and the valve train was rebuilt very shortly before the car was sold. (seems unlikely previous owner would pay so much to then get rid of the car)

 

C. The timing belt snapped, the motor was damaged, a 'new' 2.5i was swapped in, possibly by the small dealer. (The dealer mentioned nothing of this, and I asked a LOT of questions)

 

TLDR: I'm puzzled. No maintenance history, unexplained new parts, all my theories seem flawed.

Thank you in advance.

[RumbleRumble]

Maybe they just replaced the manifold gaskets and timing belt?

[GEE-OTTO]

B seems very likely and possibly the previous owner or dealer put it back together. What is more likely is the dealer bought it at auction with a blown motor for pennies, repaired it and sold it to you. They reused what they could (hence the timing cover condition)

[THE RZA]

if you have any friends that work at a dealer, have them run a car fax on it. You won't get the specifics of the maintenance history on the car, but you'll get a good idea of how often it was serviced.

[awfulwaffle]

For what it's worth, headgasket on my 08 Impreza 2.5i went at 98k. Here's a picture from when I first noticed the leak, which happens to include one of the manifold nuts. I've owned the car from 65K and drove it through 3 Wisconsin winters at the time this picture was taken, so if the nuts were as prone to corrosion as the manifold I'd expect them to have rusted up some.

 

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l23/thesteakosaurus/20161124_171928_zpsqawlayot.jpg

[Ethanol]

Thank you. Im impressed with how corrosion resistant these nuts are. I would upload pics, but for some reason I can not. The dealer had an autocheck report, but no carfax. I'll have to see if i can find it when I get home, but it says nothing about timing belt or head gasket repair.

Either way, anything to worry about?

 

EDIT: The autocheck report doesn't show maintenance history, only that there are no claims or accidents. Carfax has 37 entries, but I dont know if its worth $40.