What do you do when you find a used Subaru that seems to be in perfect mechanical condition? You get bored, so you buy a "Normal" Subaru with a suspect head gasket, to give you yet another project to play with.
Soccer Bat Mobile 23 Aug 2023 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
In honor of Steve's slur, I named it the "Soccer Bat Mobile" but Spotty said it looks like a miniature Hearse, so I'm just gonna call it Blacky. Typical Subaru story, a young guy in the very expensive leafy suburbs is given a one owner Subaru Outback "Luxury" model by a family friend as his first car. It has all of the luxury fittings, leather seats, better stereo than the grey one I bought two weeks ago, and a sunroof. I've never owned a car with a sunroof, and this one actually works and doesn't leak water. The car was regularly serviced, and he'd just bought new tyres and had the brakes done (it's done a couple of thousand miles less than my grey one) when it started to overheat.
He took it to a mechanic who replaced the water pump, with no improvement, then realised it was a head gasket. No water in the oil or oil in the water, but bubbling in the overflow tank when the engine is running. He is in the music industry and is going to London where he can work without any government red tape, so decided to sell the car. He advertised it on FB for $2500 so I offered him $2000 but explained that I couldn't come over for a couple of days (hospital) so he said he'd hold it for me, and didn't want a deposit. I drove my grey Subaru over to his place and we hopped in the black car and I drove it around for 30 minutes or so and the temp gauge didn't go past the halfway mark, it wasn't blowing steam out the exhaust, the oil was nice and clean (he'd had it serviced when the mechanic did the water pump) and there was no oil in the coolant, but it was blowing bubbles.
I've had very good results with K Seal on my B4 turbo, so brought a bottle with me, and after I'd paid him, he helped me remove the top rad hose and I poured the bottle of K Seal straight into the engine. He told me that his mechanic had tried another brand of sealant, that I've never had any luck with, and I'm pretty sure his mechanic used it on purpose to show the young fella that it wouldn't work, and instead Lockie (the kid) should pay him another $3K to replace the head gasket. I drove it home in peak hour Melbourne traffic, took well over an hour with plenty of "Bumper to bumper" action, but it didn't boil, but the gauge did go up to the 3/4 mark a few times, until the thermo fans came on and cooled it down again, where the needle would sit just below the halfway mark.
On Sunday I want to flush the cooling system to get rid of whatever the mechanic put in it, and I'll add another bottle of K Seal when I refill it with fresh coolant. If that doesn't fix it, I'll do the head gasket myself, just to give myself something to swear about. I'm giving the grey car to my sister, as the old 1994 Subaru that I gave her in 2015 is only running on 3 cylinders, even though she's been paying the local mechanic to keep it running, and they're telling her it's fine. She's an SES (State Emergency Services) volunteer, so she's going to give it to the SES depot to cut up when practising rescue work with the "Jaws of Life". I hope she takes a vid and sends it to me.
