harder cold start and tickover issues... ??

 

Cossy head gaskets are very similar price to standard one's I'm led to believe.

Cosworth 0.7mm High Performance Head Gasket Subaru Impreza WRX STI EJ25 (2.5L) £61.25)

 

If you're having your heads skimmed then you should be going for a thicker gasket as the skim will increase compression very slightly. You shouldn't have any starting issues with a slightly thicker gasket, first time i've heard anyone mention starting problems due to that.

Using a thicker gasket after headwork/rebuild is very common in the scooby community and generally the way to go. You don't want to increase compression on a scoob engine as that will lead to an increased risk of detonation issues down the line and you won't be able to use quite so much boost before detonation.

You could use upto 1.6mm gaskets which is not uncommon although you'll probably be fine with 1mm-1.1mm gaskets. Having a slightly thicker gasket for your scoob is a good thing and can only be of benefit.

 

Any news on your yet Duke - did it come back yet ??

My garage have my engine in bits and the warrenty company are visitng today to confirm the fault and sign off the work to get it rebuilt.

 

Heads were back yesterday or today. It should be finished tomorrow or Friday. Hope we have a happy ending to this tramtic experience! Can't wait for the bill, and my roadtax was due the end of November! £405 for road tax, wow.

 

Yo. I got my car back and all seems well. I haven't been able to put it through it's paces yet as it's been snowing and the garage told me to take it easy for 500 miles.
Does this sound right?

The bill came to £1700
This I was shocked at.
They have charged me for camshaft sprockets x2 £210
Are these needed? There seems to be a hell of a lot of gaskets too. I'll up the breakdown of the bill if any one wouldn't mind have a look over it.

Please help as i've already been shafted by the warranty company and 'could do' with not being shafted by the garage also. They spent £1000 on parts alone!
Beans on toast for Christmas for me!

 

Duke - The bill sounds about right to me, mine is around £1800 from what I'm told by the garage, although they have not yet quite finished.

Here's a rough list of the parts required to complete mine,

Timing Belt
Timing Belt Idler
RH Rocker cover gasket
LH Rocker cover gasket
Rocker cover gasket plug seals
intake manifold gasket
exhaust manifold gasket
turbo inlet gasket
joint pipe gasket

Then there were things like oil, coolant etc.

Funny you should say about the warrenty company shafting you. Mine did as well - with them initially saying they were not going to pay out at all siting 3 pathetic excuses. In the end with some threats of legal action and proving one of their points was an out and out lie, I managed to get them to pay out for 10 hours labour and the cost of 1 of the faulty head gaskets - which by the looks of the policy documentation is exactly what they are supposed to cover.

Just hoping and praying that this is the end of the issues now and nothing further goes wrong.......

 

Probably shattered the ex. sprockets by levering them off.
With the correct tools they shouldn't have needed replacing. Query this with them.

 

Here is the bill. If anyone would go over it I would appreciate it. Thanks.

 

Did you get the old parts? In particular the head gaskets ?

 

No, I didn't. Does this bill sound right? There seems to be a lot of gaskets. I'm going to go and question them over the camshaft sprockets today. What's the tool called used to take the camshaft sprockets off?

 

They should have charged you less just for that spelling mistake...Over hall It would worry me that they can't spell Overhaul baring in mind that's what they do for a living.

They've charged you £441 for labour costs. That doesn't sound anywhere near enough to do the work they've done.

It looks like the £325.50 they've charged also includes labour so the price you should be seeing is the cost of the skim only. Pressure testing is usually done by the engineering company that skimmed the heads as part of the process, they wouldn't normally let those heads go until they've pressure tested them so sounds like bollox to me the way they've listed and charged for it.

It shouldn't cost any more than about £150 to get those heads skimmed IMHO. Also a Cosworth Timing belt can be had for £135 so £110 for a bog std timing belt sounds like twice the price it should be. Cometic head gaskets can be had for £90 a set so £129.16 is way OTT for std ones.

The long and the short of it is it looks quite clearly like you have been ripped off on the price of the parts, and by incorporating some of the labour charge into the head skim and charging you only £441 for labour they are trying to make it look like they're really good guys and a cheap place to get stuff done.

You're right to be concerned but as you've paid it already there's not a hell of a lot you can do unless you can prove the sprockets were fine and they buggered them upon removal so there might be some negotiation for a part refund but you need to have all your old parts back for inspection. I hope they've guaranteed the work.

In all honesty the HGF on your car should have been totally covered by the warranty for all parts and labour. That means there is nothing for you to pay apart from perhaps the initial diagnostic cost of £45. I've had aftermarket warranties on cars before and whenever something has gone wrong it's always been completely covered and i've never had to pay anything. That's what your warranty is for. I would seek some pro advice form a Subaru specialist and then go from there.

Good luck with it

 

Duke - The labour on mine (once it's actually done) is going to amount to 10 hours plus and at a cost of £50 an hour - which is the majority of my bill.

The parts on mine dont actually amount to much more than £500 or so, it was all down to labour costs of removing the engine, stripping it and refitting it.

 

They did phone to tell me the engineering company have informed them that they can tell one of the heads has had some heat through it and the recommend doing the valve seats.
I said yes and they cost £105 per head.
I guess that's why the head work seems expensive.
Today I phoned subaru and the said the bill seemed right but the camshaft sprockets seemed a bit iffy.
After talking to subaru I talked to the garage and asked them to go over the bill with me.
They said that the sprockets were hard to get off, they had the right tool but they couldn't get them off (subaru told me they take the cam out with the sprocket on)
I questioned him about taking the cam out but the mechanic said he had to take them off for some reason.
They tried the tol and even tried drilling a bolt out but ended up spending nearly 40 mins trying to get them off.
He did sound genuine and the subaru garage said it sounded like they did a thorough job at a decent price.
I haven't been able to try it out properly yet with this damn snow but at soon as I can i'll give it a good test.
I just hope it's sorted now. Thanks for all the replys BTW

 

Hey guys. After my over heating issues it turned out to be the head gaskets. It was passing between an oil and water gallery. I used the cometic gaskets which i think were about £30-40 each. To get the job done i was £800, that included head gaskets, inlet gaskets, timing belt, 2 off pully bolts, oil, filter, etc.

 

i have the same problem with my SpecD PPP, have it booked in for cambelt service on thursday, i will get them to check it out.

i have a subaru used car warranty (cant remember its exact name) and it runs out in march.

is the subaru extended warranty ok?

steve

 

The extended warranty as part of a deal is no different than the original warranty in that it covers all the same stuff under the same terms and conditions. If you pay for a Subaru warranty out of your own pocket though it's bloody expensive. The older the car and the more mileage it has on it the more they charge.

When i bought my car it had already run out of it's original warranty so as part of the deal the dealer gave me an extended 1yr warranty which was great and offered some peace of mind. the car was already 3yrs old so if something is going to go bang or fall off in the next year i'm covered. The few silly niggles that materialised over that year were sorted out under warranty without fuss and at no charge to me. Brilliant!!

 

good to hear i also have the knocking rear shock problem so i will get that sorted as well

apart from that love the car

SpecD's ROCK