Anybody have experience with a failed Suburu Head gasket.
Milo was on the way from Washington to Texas and made it as
far as SZP. Then the Soob engine had a mysterious over heating
problem towing a trailer.


Paul Lamar


No experience with Soob and blown head gasket, but with a Dodge Minivan, I
had an overheating problem that seemed 'mysterious'.

It would overheat, and when you checked the coolant reservoir it would be
full. When the engine cooled, the reservoir would go down as expected.

The problem was a small leak in the head gasket, which would put
combustion
gas into the cylinder space, driving the coolant out of the engine and
into
the overflow reservoir.



Bill Schertz
KIS Cruiser #4045
N343BS


Bill, did you try any chemical sealants such as duraseal or steel seal?

Paul Lamar

Yes I have as that is my business and I rebuild 3 to 4 engines a week, no
none of those sealants will work as the problem is the combustion pressure
is pushing past the gaskets into the water system and pushing the water out
the burp tank and so there is no way to plug the leak unless you could get
the sealant into the combustion chamber to shove it into the hole thats
leaking, hate to say it but you are best to go for a whole engine as you can
mill the heads when you replace a head gasket but you cannot mill the block
and the block warps as much or more than the heads so if you put a new
gasket on a straight head and a warped block it wont last long, I can do a
compete long block for $1500 to $1600 depending on which engine it is and I
fix all the problems that Subaru had to make it better than new.
Give me a call if you need more info.
Ken


360-834-4089


I don't know which engine is in that Subaru, but my sister has one and it
had a bad head gasket and this is a known problem.  They have an improved
replacement gasket that fixes it but they didn't do a recall and replace it
on their dime.

Steve Brazil


The good news is as far as Milo and family are concerned is they were able to plug
the leak with goo. After the engine cooled off it sucked all the coolant back
out of the over flow can. That would not have happened if the leak still existed.
That is part of the process. If the exhaust valve and intake valve is closed
hot air in the cylinder cools off causing a low pressure in the cylinder drawing
the sealant into the leak. This is somewhat of a crap shoot as the leak must
occur around the cylinder that happens to stop in that sealed condition.
Also of course the coolant itself also contracts drawing coolant in from the
over flow can.

There has been several recent breakthroughs in these stop leak type  fluids.
Prior to these breakthroughs most stop leak type products required you to purge
the engine of antifreeze coolant. This is no longer true of the better products.
The other breakthrough is a chemical reaction that is triggered by the high
400 to 500 F metal temperatures that causes the goo to solidify in the area
of the leak but not in the radiator.

Here is the web site that claims to be the best.
It is called Steel Seal. It is a clear liquid with no particulate matter
at all. It is rather expensive at $70 and they claim to have an iron clad
patent. "The product is drawn into the damaged area and seals the crack
with a thermo-chemical bonding process."

I have not tried it on a leaking rotary yet but
it sounds promising to fix the shrunk rotor housing problem due to extreme over
heating of the rotary. Milo has some on order to test it on the soob if the
stuff we actually used fails.


https://secure.steelseal.com/index.php/t2b


Paul Lamar