2005 internal failure, repair or trade in?

[TwoFortyJeff]

How many miles are people getting out of head gasket replacements before they fail again? I am at 90,000 miles and I am debating if the $2000+ repair bill for replacement and machining is worth it. If it's still going to fail within 100,000 then I'd like to move on to a more reliable vehicle, even if I stand to loose a few thousand dollars.

Also, is there a way to tell if the car was overheated or not? I drove it 500 miles with the coolant leaking to the point where it was smoking when I got home (long highway road trip) but the coolant temp gauge never went above normal.

[mikec]

I think you have to tell us what was smoking and how much the coolent was low. If your temperature gage truly did not go much above normal, I wouldn't be worried. By the way, it's unusual for the 05 subarus to lose coolent: usually they lose oil, like my 02 is doing.

As far as the HG replacement, some poster will tell you it's good for 100K+ mi. Some will be less sanguine. From what I've read, I'm not confident of the dealership replacing my HG with the recommended Subaru replacement, if that's any help. Because it all all depends on whose doing the work.

[TwoFortyJeff]

I couldn't find the leak, but it's there is coolant everywhere on the drivers side. It either blew the cap off the overflow reservoir or came out of the bypass tube. The reservoir actually shows that the coolant level is "full." Seems like the old stage I internal failure, but on a newer engine. I believe the smoke is from the coolant contacting hot engine parts. I had my eye on the gauge the entire time and it was fine.

There are a lot of very good independent subaru shops that are known for good work. I know at least one will pull the engine and resurface the heads. Hopefully these engines have an MLS gasket available. I just don't know if good work is enough to keep this from happening again.

[grossgary]

done right you should be fine, i would key in on getting a good updated headgasket. folks are talking about aftermarkets, MLS, and using the turbo (which don't have headgasket issues) headgaskets for the non-turbo EJ25 - i'd be looking into options like that which avoid the original failure prone headgasket.

it's fairly typical for replacement headgaskets to last the life of the car - just make sure you're getting good headgaskets and it's done well.