Blown head gasket, how?

I was driving my 95 Legacy LS wagon w/auto transmission yesterday and the cooling system exploded. I then drove it under 10mph for about one mile and found a good place to pull over. After checking under the hood, I could tell that the fitting on the radiator that the hose attaches to had broken.

The garage that I had the car taken to says that it has a blown head gasket. Says that this coolant system failure and a thermastat failure a couple weeks earlier (which I had fixed) were signs of it. I am just beside myself. How could it happen on this Subaru? I have checked the oil regularly.

Some vehicle history: This is a 95 Legacy LS wagon with auto transmission. It¹s got approx 150k milage. I have checked the oil regularly since I obtained the car (got it at around 144k). When I bought it, I had my garage check it out during the 48-hour grace period to make sure I was not buying a lemon. They found that the engine had some typical Subaru oil leaks and then fixed them.

Reply to
PCB
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It's a "Subaru"!! read back a ways on this group. You will find that this is a common problem, among some other goodies. Just keep telling yourself, this is a RACE/Rally car and these failures are normal........

Now it's time for a $2500 engine for a $500 car........

Reply to
Dr. Rastis Fafoofnik

Nothing lasts forever, and checking the oil has nothing to do with gasket failure. Have you had the coolant changed every 30K?

Even with regular maintenance parts will eventually fail. The head gaskets on my 1998 Forester went at 178,000. Fortunately, it wasn't a catastrophic failure like yours, so I was able to nurse it to my repair shop with no further damage.

These things will happen when you buy cars with that much mileage. Did you get any kind of a maintenance history with it?

I doubt your mechanic could predict gasket failure. I really don't know what you're asking here. Repairs are part and parcel of buying high mileage used cars. That's why they are cheap.

George Adams

"All good fishermen stay young until they die, for fishing is the only dream of youth that doth not grow stale with age." ---- J.W Muller

Reply to
George Adams

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "exploded" - sounds like the hose clamp failed - anything else?

Driving for 1 mile with no coolant in the engine warped the heads which in turn caused the gasket to fail.

What does this have to do with a coolant failure?

Which engine is this? The 2.2 SOHC or the 2.5 DOHC. The former is pretty much bullet proof, but the latter had many many head problems because the design was too weak. Search google groups for many many posts about this problem.

Reply to
Dominic Richens

Since you just got it, I'm going to venture a guess that something was wrong and the previous owner did a decent cover-up. It is quite possible that it was suffering from problems for a while, and for example, the former owner used some quick-fix product to hide the evidence.

A blown head gasket can be expensive, but it's not the end of the world. The engine should still be good, and with some new gaskets, good for at least another 100k.

-Matt

Reply to
Hallraker
[...]

I thought I had you killfiled!

This time stay there.

Reply to
GW De Lacey

Oh hurt me baby :)

Reply to
Dr. Rastis Fafoofnik

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