Everything you hear about what a bitch this is, well, it's true. It wasn't hard, or complicated, but just a shitload of steps. We had the Subaru factory manual and a Chilton's we weren't going to open except in case of emergency.
I don't think removing the motor would've made it any easier. As it was, we had no hoist, and we weren't going to pay to rent one, so screw it. It was pretty tight on the driver's side, but not too terrible. The only thing that was a real cunny was the egr heat riser pipe. We had a flare wrench, but still. Getting the spark plugs out was arguably the hardest part of the job - until we bought a few extra wobbles. We learned our lesson and installed the plugs before mounting the heads.
The fuel lines are easy to confuse. Take lots of pictures.
We were able to put the power steering pump and ac compressor pretty far outta the way. The hood we strapped back a bit to give us room for our large cheater bar.
It was a lot of work just to get to this point.
My favorite shot:
It didn't seem to damage the cylinder wall too badly. I mean, this motor had like 220k on it, so fuck it. It also sat for 18 months after the headgasket blew, so, yeah.
Our hack for holding the pulley: two 3/8ths extensions and a big-ass pry bar.
You can see how close the frame rails were to the heads. We installed the heads with the plugs already in there.
The motor with the intake removed, after we got the damned cams out.We had to acquire an extractor set from Harbor Sheight for two of the cam bolts, but we were lucky enough to be able to file them down and reuse them. We did grab some grade 8 bolts just in case. Whoever the last jackhole inside this motor rounded them for us. He also used the crappy gaskets, which is why we were doing this in the first place. We used Felpro.
I wish I had a shot of the camshafts, bolts, buckets, and shims all laid out with the cardboard box trick. Since we weren't going to mess with swapping shims to set the valve lash, it was imperative that we put everything back exactly where it came from so as to get as close as possible. To do this, we did one side at a time and installed the buckets, shims, and bolts right back where they came from. I gave the buckets a good soak in oil since we didn't have any assembly lube handy.
Full disclosure, the motor doesn't sound perfect - I'm sure we could adjust the lash a bit, but it runs just fine and it already has 500 miles on it as of this writing. To swap out shims on this motor, you either have to pull the cam or use this special tool:
Mistakes, lessons, etc:
When we torqued down the timing belt tensioner, it roated the tensioner clockwise a bit, which was enough to take some tension off the belt. When we went to start it, the timing jumped. I suppose we should've used a new tensioner. We were damned lucky the pistons didn't bump uglies with the valves. Also, note to self: be more sober for the assembly part of the show.
Also, one of the water pump bolts stripped the threads right out of the block. We opted to leave the bolt out rather than trying to make it stay in. I figured some water getting into the timing belt area was less damaging than a loose bolt. We probably should've lubricated the bolt, since it was steel getting torqued into aluminum.
