this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
281 points (98.6% liked)

News

23397 readers
4843 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Replace the entire engine over a head gasket?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yupp. New HG for a subaru is nearly the same price as an engine and once you're in high miles it just saves time and money doing the entire engine. The engine takes about 4h to do vs a head gasket which is about 12h. It's stupid.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Head gaskets, plural, on a Subaru boxer engine! One on each side. The procedure for that job basically starts with step 1: Remove engine.

So at that rate, if you have a new crate motor on hand you can skip all the shit in the middle and proceed straight to step 2: reinstall engine. It doesn't surprise me the parts cost for an engine outweighs the labor cost for removing it plus taking it apart twice.

I'm not sure it's possible to get the heads out of a modern Subaru without pulling the engine. An older one where there was more room in the engine bay, maybe. But there's too much shit in the way and the unibody and wheel arches are like 1/2" away from the tops (sides) of the heads. I'd doubt you could get a wrench on all the bolts, let alone snake the head bolts out which are like 10" long.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

And what happens to the old engine? Does it get refurbished somewhere slow&cheap and become a crate motor for step 2 a few months down the line? Or thrown out?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Depends, but most likely it is either parted out or sent back to be refurbished. Failing that, it will certainly be recycled. There is a shitload of aluminum in any vaguely modern engine (like, from the 1990's onwards) so even the shadiest of shadetree mechanics will have it melted down for cash before just chucking it in a landfill.

Same thing happens with transmissions. It's nearly impossible to buy a new transmission for cars that are more than a couple of years old -- they're all remanufactured by Jasper or whoever.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The place I'm going through will take the old engine once it's out and refurbish it if they can or part out if the components are good. Personally I think they'll scrap it as it's over 150k miles

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yes there are companies out there that buy and refurbish engines. You give them yours as a core and they send you a 'refurbished' one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Honestly I didn't even know it was plural. There's no way to work on the engine while it's in sadly so the engine does have to be pulled, heads removed, get everything resurfaced, and since it's out replace hard to reach components or pay the price again a few months later. Knowing what I know now I won't be getting another vehicle like this. The old legacy models it was $1,200-$1,500 for the head gasket so when the shop said $3,000 I nearly had a heart attack. My shop did the right thing and said engine swap with a few buddies and save some serious money so that's our plan.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Honestly not that surprising. It's the same reason why electronics don't get repaired, they just get whole new boards installed even if it's just a single bad component. Labor costs can easily outweigh the cost of any single part.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

head gasket on a gd Subaru boxer engine, who coulda guessed. Anyone with the power of access to a search engine. Do your research and stop buying crap, people. If the junk don't sell, they'll stop making it