I’m thinking about buying a used 2004 Forester. It has 50,200 miles on it. The dealership that is selling it replaced the head gasket, timing belts/drive belts/thermostat.
1) do you think this means the engine has possible over heated? 2) Do you think this is a good sign or bad sign that this problem was addressed at 50,000? Perhaps it means it has been fixed or perhaps it a sign of more problems to come. Would love some opinions.
some stuff just breaks; however, some friends of mine had a 2000 outback that had head gasket problems while on a road trip and got it fixed at a subaru dealer. a couple of months ago the had the problem again. fortunatly the work was done less then a year ago and the subaru dealer here has to warranty the work. if you are buying from a authorized subaru dealer then you should be ok but make sure there is a warranty on the work and its in writing. If they replaced the thermostat it most likely went bad and caused over heating damaging a head gasket. timing belts are usually done at around 60,000 miles depending on maufacturer. they probly just put on a new one while the where in there doing the work. if it is a smaller “buy here, pay here” dealership with one mechanic in the back working out of cardboard box of tools then No Way. other wise you should be ok.
These things are always debateable. You’re using the word “gasket” in the singular. I hope you mean the plural because both should always be replaced.
It’s possible to have a head gasket leak without an overheating episode so it’s impossible to say.
My opinion is that every head gasket job, engine overhaul, etc. should always get a new thermostat. The problem here is that in the majority of cases this is not done.
They replaced the T-stat but for what reason? Preventive maintenance or because it was faulty and led to overheating? Getting a straight answer might be tough.
Overheating can also cook valve seals and ruin piston rings and this can lead to oil consumption problems.
There’s also the unknowns involved. Cylinder heads inspected for warpage and surfaced as needed (and believe me, warpage is common even though the heads are very short in length), gaskets properly coated (again, seldom done), and were the correct methods used in reassembly, etc.
Tough call. If I were going to plunk down money on this I would probably want to do 2 things considering the head gasket problem.
One is have a leakdown test performed. This can possibly verify a piston ring problem. There is no test for a valve seal problem but valve seals SHOULD have been replaced when the heads were off.
Two is being allowed to drive the car for a day on the open road. Buy the gas, put a couple of hundred miles on it and carefully inspect the oil both before and after driving it in an attempt to tell if oil is being consumed or not.
Hope some of that helps.
Thank you, I think these are all good suggestions and yes plural on the gaskets, sorry. Here is a complete rundown of parts it this helps solve the mystery: 2 cylinde gasket ; 4 gasket spark TU; 2 Valve C Gasket; 2 Oil Seal ; 2 intake gasket; 2 gasket; 4 spark plug; 1 timing belt; 1 v belt; PT871096 A/c; 2 Green coolant; tstat, gasket P0103400; It also mentions Cyclinder head gasket failure.
I think you will be getting a nice car. If you haven’t owned a Subaru before I think you are going to be in for a nice adventure. I have owned them since 1983.
It was probably traded because the former owner didn’t want to spend the money to have the head gaskets replaced at only 50K miles. It’s good that they’ve been replaced, otherwise you’d buy the car and you’d have to spend the money. And it’s good that you know it was repaired. They could have done the work, put the car on the lot, and never said a word.
Whether or not it overheated is unknown, but Subaru engines do not take kindly to overheating. ok4450 has given you very good advice, as he always does, about this vehicle.
I also wonder about the new thermostat. A new water pump and thermostat should be installed with a new timing belt, but I don’t see the water pump on the list. Another puzzle.
Is there a warranty of any kind with this car? Are you happy with the price?
Likely a warranty repair as Subaru covers powertrain 5yrs/60k. Even just over the likely case is the owner could have gotten it covered by SOA with a letter or if the dealership pushed. Easily covered if the owner replaced the coolant as prescribed at 30k mark. Interestingly you must install Subaru coolant conditioner (aka stop leak) at these things too no matter the engine. Even my WRX which uses a 2.0L turbo and is devoid of head gasket problems.
That being all said warranty repairs only cover needed parts and customer pays extra if they want water pump(not even due at 105k regular interval).
1996-2003 and some 2004 had a head gasket issue. Somewhere in 2004 (likely latter part) they fully corrected the premature head gasket failure problems. 2005+ you are really safe with the 2.5L.
Not knowing if overheating was involved would bother me a bit. It’s also possible this car could have been overheated in the past and the dealer may not even know about it.
Other areas of concern would be any questions about cylinder head flatness. The cylinder heads are very short in length and logic would dictate that a short length of heavy aluminum would not be prone to warping very easily.
However, I would guesstimate that of all the Subaru head gasket jobs I’ve done probably around 80% of them required cylinder head surfacing at the machine shop.
A small amount of warpage can usually be corrected by the torque applied to the head bolts, but there’s that unknown factor again; just how much, if any, warpage exists.
No mention of tensioner pulleys or water pump as mentioned. The car is going on 6 years old and when a pump goes it can either disentegrate and take out things in the top end of the engine or it can leak and saturate the timing belt with coolant.
An anti-freeze soaked timing belt will not last long either.
While it’s not required (in theory) I’ve always coated head gaskets with aerosol Copper Coat when doing a head gasket job on aluminum headed engines.
I don’t know if SOA still recommends this or not, but when I worked for Subaru we used to coat all gaskets with CC instead of the Subaru provided (and more expensive) Fuji Bond.
Still a tough call without knowing if overheating was involved or not and mcparadise is exactly right; Subaru engines do not take overheating very well at all.