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Subaru Outback Overheating
I have a 2002 Subaru limited Outback with 99,000 miles on it. I went out to warm the car and turned the heater to low and let it sit 10 minutes. Took off to take Daughter to work and got halfway there and noticed that the car temp gauge went up significantly and there was a smell of gas and oil inside the car. I turned the heater off and the temp gauge dropped down back to where it normally stays. At the stop light I still had the heater temp on red (hot) from when the heater was on and could feel really hot air still coming from the vents and the gauge when up again. When I switched that to knob to cold it went back down. Ran fine and gauge was normal till the next light. It didn't go to where the needle had been going but it did jump up a little bit at idle. Anyone know what I could be dealing with here? And what can be done?
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#2 Head gasket(s)
Older Subarus (2000 through 200?) had lots of headgasket issues. If you had the Subaru coolant fix that they called for mnay years ago, they might help cover the fix cost. I don't remember the details exactly, but I think if you did the coolant additive they would give a 100,000 mile warranty.
I suspect there is combustion gas/byproducts getting into the coolant. That causes air pockets in the system, which can disrupt the flow. I doubt the things you were doing from inside the cab were impacting what the engine was doing in any significant way - you were simply paying more attention to it during those times.
Check your coolant overflow bottle. Do you see any oil in there (rainbow effect on the top of the coolant) or black flecks? Also, with the engine running, do you see any tiny bubbles being released into the overflow coolant? That's a sure sign of an internal HG failure. If you DON'T see any of those signs in the overflow bottle, check your oil (via dipstick and/or full oil change) to see if you can see any signs of antifreeze in the oil. You can also have an oil analysis done (analysis can detect antifreeze at tiny amounts whereas visual inspection only really works with major failures).
Another option, possibly more remote, is that your water pump is failing. On my '96 Outback, both the water pump and the head gaskets failed (the latter occurring ~20,000 miles after the former).
Either way, I'm sorry to say that the clock is ticking for you! :sick:
Kidding aside, I would want to know why the shops think what they think regarding your engine. For the "burp" crowd, what would cause such a situation if not for combustion gasses getting into the coolant? For the replace engine crowd, what brought them to that conclusion?
Did you check the coolant for combustion gunk? Even for the mechanically-[not-so-]inclined, this is a simple task: Pop the cover off the coolant overflow bottle and peer inside to see if any black specs are visible.
Good luck to you as this gets sorted out. I'm sure you'll enjoy the car once you have the opportunity to do so. I very much enjoyed the one I had.
The way to prove this is to bypass the heater element. Get or make a u-bend of 16mm metal pipe and disconnect the two heater hoses at the firewall behind the engine and join them together with the u-bend and two hose clamps. The overheating problem will go away for good. But of course, now you have no heater. The best solution if you want your heater to work is to cut both the heater hoses at a suitable spot next to each other and to fit a T-piece in each hose and join them together. (See photos). Then water can bypass the heater element keeping the thermostat functioning properly, and enough hot water will still flow through the heater element to warm up the car's interior. This is the best solution, because every time you have work done on the cooling system, air gets in and it is almost impossible to get it out of the heater element again. You then get erratic overheating problems when you least expect them, and the symptoms mimic a blown head gasket, with water being blown out of the radiator and the expansion tank overflowing. Alternatively one can try to clear the airlock from the heater element by disconnecting the left heater hose and back flushing the element with a garden hose, then quickly reattaching the hose while trying not to let air in. But the above solution with the two T-pieces to bypass the heater element has worked better for me and provides a permanent solution, and getting air out of the cooling system after any future repairs will not be a problem again.
In the photos, I used a straight piece of hose to join across the T-pieces in the one car, and I used a U-shaped piece of hose in the other car. The U shape allows one to get away with not getting the T-pieces perfectly aligned, but can be hard to obtain. However a spare of the U-shaped rubber bypass hose that attaches the metal bypass hose to the thermostat housing is the right shape and diameter.
See my photos here: - http://www.cargurus.com/Cars/Discussion-t17159_ds614293