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Help diagnosing engine trouble


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So I took my car on it's first road trip... Only around 500 miles.

Well anyway...

I was on my home stretch with the cruise set at 60 going up a 7% downgrade for atound 5 miles when I noticed my car was pretty mch in the red on the temperature guage. When I pulled over I popped the hood and saw that coolant had gotten everwhere and the overflow tank was comletely full. I pulled the black hose out of the overflow tank and it was covered in sludge. Not sure if it blew a head gasket or if it's just something small and stupid.

Forgot to mention that the coolant in the overflow tank drained after about 25 minutes. Not sure what caused it to do it.

Any advice would be awesome.

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what happens when you start up the car now smokey exhause and you would smell the coolant, also your gonna take a hit in power

 

theres liquid seal that may hold your car together for a couple hundred km but i think it makes it harder to repair the gasket fully

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sweet smelling exhaust, overheating like you described, coolant in the overflow tank, coolant in the oil, coolant everywhere, cold heat in the car...all point to head gaskets. go through the symptons, keep everything in check, and DON'T DRIVE LONG DISTANCES because you run the risk of warping the heads. that would be mucho $$ for a new engine, but it's gonna be kind of expensive to replace the gaskets. how many miles are on your 2.5?
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if it's already overheated that badly, I mean try the thermostat. it's probably a good idea to do that anyway, but don't run the risk of damaging that if you overheat the car again with the new one in. check the oil, see if there's coolant. sounds like a headgasket unfortunately :(
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FYI, these engine components are either really durable, or we got really lucky, because the temp gauge on this car was pinned many times and the car was driven overheating probably hundreds of times before we got it fixed, lol...

 

...and we take wonderful care of our cars but we just couldn't afford to do the repair at the time and it was our only car.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Our GT Wagon now has 168,000 miles on it and we blew the head gasket a little while ago. I drive mostly short distances (about 10 mi to/from work) but the first symptom of the blown gasket I noticed was the coolant smell and coolant overflow tank being over full. As I investigated further, I noticed there was black residue in the coolant overflow tank. As the problem got worse over then next couple months, I had to move about a pint of coolant from the overflow tank back to the radiator every day or I would see the temp gauge spike and return to normal while I was sitting in traffic. Since the car is in great shape otherwise (we are the original owners), we have decided to replace the engine with a fresh rebuild from CCR. Hopefully the rebuilt engine will arrive in the next week or so and we can keep the Subie on the road for another 12 years.

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I did my head gaskets a few months ago too. Cost me 1200. They also pulled the block out cleaned it and sprayed it with some aluminum color engine paint. Pit a new clutch in too. I thought that was a good deal. Mine over heated alot too. I drove it for three months dumping the coolant from the bottle back into the radiator. I never really had to buy any coolant. It wasn't burning it or mixing with the oil. The compression was just pushing it out the overflow. If your car is in good shape it's worth it!! These are great reliable cars. Buy felpro gaskets! Not Subaru gaskets. The head set with all the other gaskets and o rings is about 250. From advance auto.
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