How hard is it to swap the heads on a non-turbo flat-four Subaru 2.5L? I am looking for a winter beater and can snag a Legacy Outback Wagon pretty cheap, but it claims to have a bad valve on the #3 cylinder. Used heads seem to be cheap and easy to locate, but is this some major PITA to do? I have done head swaps on other motors (4AGE, D16A) but never on anything so...well flat. Worth the effort?
It is a job to be done with the engine out of the car. Very little room to pull the heads otherwise.
It's very easy. Also, the valves are very easy to change, so it would probably be cheaper to just buy the valve (or valves) and put it in the head. My trick to changing heads on a EJ25 is this: Take the two nuts off of the engine mounts (where the studs go through the subframe), jack the engine up so the studs clear the holes, hook a ratchet strap to the engine and the strut (or something equally solid) on the opposite side that you're working on, and use the strap to pull the engine over to the side. You will gain enough room to get the head in and out pretty easily.
16vCorey wrote: It's very easy. Also, the valves are very easy to change, so it would probably be cheaper to just buy the valve (or valves) and put it in the head. My trick to changing heads on a EJ25 is this: Take the two nuts off of the engine mounts (where the studs go through the subframe), jack the engine up so the studs clear the holes, hook a ratchet strap to the engine and the strut (or something equally solid) on the opposite side that you're working on, and use the strap to pull the engine over to the side. You will gain enough room to get the head in and out pretty easily.
and that, my friends, is why i friggin' heart the GRM board! Condensed to 50 words, that's a magazine tech tip right there.
that would apply to a 2.2 in a legacy chassis, too, yes?
need to do headgasket work...
You can lift and shift the 2.2 to give more room, but you really don't need to. There's enough room to work on the 2.2 heads where it sits.
If the guy hits the price I am willing to pay, I will snag it. I am going to pull the engine because I want to pull both heads, check everything out, swap all belt/hoses, etc etc etc. I have an idea of lifting it out and leaving it hanging and working on it like that.
In reply to 16vCorey:
I wish I heard this 6 years ago when my 98 outback needed head gaskets. That sounds way easy compared to pulling the entire engine.
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