Subaru 2.0T coolant bubbles

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DrDusty86

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My roomate's friend has a 05' wrx with a rebuilt motor by some "professional" shop in Houston that has been using coolant to the tune of a quart a day. No leaks. It has bubbles in the overflow about one every second about the size of a penny. If you wind it up and run it harder 4krpms/ 14psi it looks like a pot of boiling water so many bubbles. No oil in coolant or vise versa. When coolant if full it runs 190*.
The shop is to busy to fix it but tells him they don't think hg's. Twirp tuner shops= LAME IMHO
He is praying it is not the HG, but I fear it is.
Dusty
 
Originally Posted By: DrDusty86
...It has bubbles in the overflow about one every second about the size of a penny. If you wind it up and run it harder 4krpms/ 14psi it looks like a pot of boiling water so many bubbles. No oil in coolant or vise versa.
...
He is praying it is not the HG, but I fear it is.


What else could it be besides the head gaskets? Bubbles in the overflow tank that get much worse when revved hard, losing a tremendous amount of coolant that doesn't leak externally. Do these engines have EGR coolers? Not many other places pressurized exhaust gas can get getting into the coolant.

Praying is not the appropriate action here, taking it up with the "professional" shop to fix the head gaskets would be (assuming the rebuild was done very recently).

A quart a day, he's lucky it hasn't hydrolocked... yet.
 
So, Should we fix it or "wait" for the twirp shop in Houston to fix their mistake?
He offered to pay me, but I figured the shop may have hosed more and I will uncover a botched mess.
The shop claims they are back logged... They used Outboard boat motor spark plugs. I think this is going to be a monster mess
 
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I can't see repeating and getting a different result. And you have to find a Subaru experienced kind of guy.

That would be a great 'weekender'.
 
Steve, My fear is I will run into rounded/stripped bolts and other stuff. I don't want to have him mad at me if I tear in to it and find out a head bolt is rounded or stripped, then I'd be STUCK

I did a water pump on a 99 Chevy 3500 p/u that someone previously attemped and it had one bolt head broken off flush with the water pump body. I was lucky that day I still got the old water pump off and "slowly" backed out the threads to the broken bolt with vise grips.
 
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Originally Posted By: DrDusty86
They used Outboard boat motor spark plugs. I think this is going to be a monster mess


I think you're right about it being a mess.
 
Why on earth do people not first research their shop choices FIRST before they use "some random place".

If you have a choice between a hack shop and a authorized Subaru dealer ...I hate to say it but ...go with the dealer, at least they have a decent amount of experience with the specific product ,and if they screw up you have some recourse with SOA.
 
I just had a dealer do a HACK job repair. The FROD dealer is LAME..
South of Round Rock TEXAS, it sees like every shop does shotty work in my experience. Houston and San Marcos being the worst offenders. Lazy and incompetent come to mind. I had an Indy in San Marcos Quote almost $1200 for his "premium" struts for my car. Turns out they were $13 ebay junk.. I put MOOGs on for under $400 myself after alignment.
 
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Originally Posted By: DrDusty86
My roomate's friend has a 05' wrx with a rebuilt motor by some "professional" shop in Houston that has been using coolant to the tune of a quart a day. No leaks. It has bubbles in the overflow about one every second about the size of a penny. If you wind it up and run it harder 4krpms/ 14psi it looks like a pot of boiling water so many bubbles. No oil in coolant or vise versa. When coolant if full it runs 190*.
The shop is to busy to fix it but tells him they don't think hg's. Twirp tuner shops= LAME IMHO
He is praying it is not the HG, but I fear it is.
Dusty


so did the shop warranty their work? or is this a begging/blame situation? how many miles on the rebuild before this happened? otherwise this is useless speculation, other then its definitely a head gasket failure.
 
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Originally Posted By: nthach
Find a Subaru tech. That generation is known for bad head gaskets.


Not the turbo motors unless someone runs them out of coolant.

Why not try to burp all the air out of lines or looking for a leak before condemning the head gasket. What led the motor in for the rebuild in the first place? The 2.0T is a pretty stout motor stock.
 
A 'good' repair shop will have a sniffer tester for Hydrocarbons in the coolant, indicating a blown head gasket. It's possible that the coolant system just needs to be 'burped' and that it was never filled correctly after the work was done. Again, a good shop will apply vacuum and suck coolant into the system. Some cars are a royal pain in the rear to 'burp'.
 
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