So here's the story. At about 48k miles, my 99 Forester couldn't go between oil changes without the oil lamp coming on. Dealer said front crank seal leaking and replaced it under warrantee. But the problem persisted, and I brough the car back to them several time, but the dealer said that it's normal to go through a couple of quarts of oil between oil changes, which I disputed since if it was normal, the oil lamp shouldn't be coming on. My fault for not pushing harder on this. That was about 40k miles and two years ago. Finally, it's come to going through 2 quarts of oil per 400 miles of highway driving and now the dealer can't deny that it is an oil consumption problem. They checked compression: three cylinders are the same, one of the cylinders is low; the spark plug from that cylinder was also coated black looking.
Dealer says that the best option is to do a short block replacement, and that the cost would be about UD$3k for parts and labor; I pointed out that this was a problem going back to when car was under warrantee that they never fixed. He talked to SOA's district service guy, and he said SOA would chip in $1k for it. Anyway, that still leaves me $2k in the hole.
Is this the way to go? What are the costs of a short block replacement?
Thanks
Rudy