Re: Resealing the motor
 

Boy that would be sweet...3 or 4 drops of oil on the exh. makes it look like you got a major fire under the hood....But hopefully you are right and it will burn off....I`ve "Gunked" it with 3 cans of the stuff,and a couple cans of brake parts cleaner after that....Found the leak, cam& crank seals....Prolly never been changed 115,000 miles.....Interior and exterior look verry good for that many miles, no rips, tears or dents an body rot..:)Little faded paint....
See ya...

Re: Resealing the motor
 

Did you do the Valve cover gaskets yourself?

I am having trouble getting the part number on Subaruparts.com. I can find just about everything else....

I have also developed a bad leak. I'm hoping new valve cover seals will fix things up. :(

Re: Resealing the motor
 

Here's the parts list from my SubaruParts.com order for the valve cover gaskets. There are two large outer gaskets that trace the perimeter of the cover, and two smaller gaskets per cover that go around the spark plugs, and 10 washer gaskets per cover, plus one valve breather oil separator gasket per cover.

I believe these are all part of the "resealing kit" they sell as well, but that kit also comes with a bunch of other gaskets I already got from my local dealership's parts dept.

For whatever reason my order is taking forever to get shipped... so my motor is still just sitting on the engine stand in my garage as in the pictures above. Once my stuff shows up, I'll get around to doing the gaskets and try to photograph the process for this thread (not that there aren't already a few good how-to threads already on the board).

Re: Resealing the motor
 

Nice job on getting it done. looks really good. :)

Tom

Re: Resealing the motor
 

Update time!

I finally got my package from SubaruParts.com. It required me emailing them and asking why they "processed" my order on the 13th, but still hadn't shipped it a week later. When it showed up, it was packaged in a Jimmy Johns box!? Something tells me my order fell through the cracks then got rushed out the door after they got my email. I've ordered a million times from SubaruParts.com so I'm just going to chalk it up to someone having the random "one of those days" I guess.

Anyway... with my parts in hand I was able to reseal the valve covers, install the main seals, cam seals and cam plugs, spark plugs, as well as swap the rear knock sensor (I did the front a while back, but with the motor out I could finally get to the rear one w/o taking off the intake manifold). I was also going to do the PCV, but even with the motor out, I'm gonna have to get a crows-foot 19mm socket.

Here are some pictures from the work, I'll annotate them later but for the most part, they're in order.

Valve cover resealing parts:
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1109.JPG

RH valve cover removed:
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1105.JPG

Tore out the old gaskets... work slowly to prevent them from crumbling apart. I was amazed they were working at all!
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1111.JPG

New gaskets installed!
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1115.JPG

Old and new spark plugs:
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1117.JPG

RH valve cover complete!
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1119.JPG

I used some hi-temp gasket maker to glue the ignition wire brackets back down, since they were all broken off.
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1120.JPG

Front main, plus the assembly lube I used to install the seals:
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1121.JPG

RH exhaust cam seal replaced, plus the socket used to press it in:
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1125.JPG

New knock sensor installed:
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1132.JPG

Full gallery of all the pictures I've taken: http://www.seccs.org/gallery/index.p...ne%20Resealing

I also did the LH valve cover, but the pics look pretty much the same. I've still got the water pump to replace, and then the timing gear to put back. Then the motor is pretty much ready to go back into the car! Hopefully it'll be running by Sunday!

Re: Resealing the motor
 

nice job! I'd like to do the same thing but have never worked on anything this low to the ground :) On the other hand, it'd be nice not to have to lift the engine hoist 9' in the air to get the engine out! :lol:

Any hints and tips to pull the engine out? Are the bellhousing bolts easy to access and any hard to reach connectors and such?

Thanks.

Re: Resealing the motor
 

There are four belhousing bolts. They're not too hard to get to, but they're messy if your car is like mine was, with a ton of oil sludge all over everything. There are also brackets on both the lower bellhousing bolts that have clips for the O2 sensor wires on them, don't forget about them when putting the motor back in.

Also, I had a bit of a hard time accessing the TC/flexplate bolts through the access hole on the top of the bellhousing. I ended up having the easiest time with a really long extension and a flex-joint on the socket, then accessing the bolt from the front of the motor with the extensions going all the way under the intake manifold.

Finally, the real crappy part of pulling the motor is doing it w/o bleeding the A/C. I left the compressor hooked up and just rotated it and set it on top of the battery. It's a tight fit as the motor comes out, and my guess is if your seals on the lines are original, all the twisting of the lines will result in a leak. I had already replaced the o-rings in my A/C lines fairly recently when I recharged the system, so I think I got away without leaking, but come to think of it, I haven't tried the A/C not that the motor is back in (when it's 12 degrees out, trying the A/C isn't a natural thought).

Here's what I'm talking about with the compressor:
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1154.JPG

It really puts a pretty hard twist on the lines.

Re: Resealing the motor
 

To wrap things up:

Over the weekend I finished up the work on the motor and got it back in the car. I didn't take a ton of pictures since I was focused on just getting the motor back in the car and running (I especially wish I had taken pictures of the WRX motor mounts), but I did take a few:

Timing gear all back together. I replaced one of the idlers because it was pretty squeaky... I'm kinda thinking I should have just ponied up and replaced them all... but that's another $150-200 or so. Hopefully I'll get to 300,000 miles before they give out!
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1144.JPG

New o-ring on the power steering reservoir. No more pulsing in the steering wheel now that the pump isn't sucking air!
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1147.JPG

Cleaned up P/S pump. I swear, I thought the pump was black until I started scrubbing it!
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1148.JPG

New o-ring on the high pressure P/S line.
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1152.JPG

Motor going back in!
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1155.JPG

Accessories and belts good to go.
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1157.JPG

All done!
http://www.seccs.org/gallery/Car%20P...g/IMG_1160.JPG

So after getting everything back together and filling all the fluids, the car fired after cranking over only twice. I had to top off the power steering fluid after cranking the wheel back and forth a few times of course. Other than that, there were no issues getting the car running. No fluid or exhaust leaks, and just a little burn-off of the cleaner that was left on the headers.

One thing that surprised me was how night and day the new motor mounts are! Going from basically one worn-out SVX mount (the other was torn in half) to two WRX mounts made a *huge* difference in responsiveness when getting on the throttle. The car feels much quicker, and it even seems to turn better w/o having that heavy-ass motor rolling around under the hood.

Re: Resealing the motor
 

wrx motor mounts fit svx?
Thanks,
Keith:)

Re: Resealing the motor
 

Not quite. You have to do some drilling/grinding and add a spacer to them to get them to fit in the SVX mounts.

TomsSVX has some good pictures in his locker.

Re: Resealing the motor
 

Good job on the motor...Damn it looks sweet all cleaned...I had to chuckle when you said you thought the power steering pump was black, I thought it was too....LOL...
Paul....

Re: Resealing the motor
 

Thanks!

I'm actually surprised at how much more I enjoy driving the car. After all, I really just cleaned up some stuff you can't see with the hood closed anyway... but I think there's just some added piece of mind knowing that I'm no longer leaking oil, and that I replaced the radiator hoses, the powersteering hoses (except for the high pressure line), one of the fuel lines, and pretty much inspected everything else under the hood.

The only thing I'm waiting on is a new o-ring for the dipstick. :lol:

Re: Resealing the motor
 

Thanks!
Keith:)

Re: Resealing the motor
 

Nice job dude! Forgive my ignorance, what's the advantage with using the WRX mounts vs SVX mounts?

Thanks.

Re: Resealing the motor
 

Grand Total $$$ ???? Minus Knock Sensor,Valve Cover Gaskets & spark plugs