Dealer cost for a head pull - and gasket job even with room for profit is like $1500 so its pretty normal to see prices around $1800 - $2000. Getting on Mother subaru's radar especially since your the original owner with lots of service history you might be very surprised by what Subaru responds with. Seriously I'm not kidding they handled mine at 65K and at 180,000 miles it was fine zero issues. So they might do some type of shared cost with you reducing your cost by a large marginI agree with grossgary's points. If you doubt the dealership, the only way to verify it is crawl under the front of the car with a very strong light, and look at the bottom of the head gasket. The leak point is normally on the driver's side at the rear of the motor. It's difficult to see but possible. It should not be wet with oil.
Alternately, you could go to another dealership. They probably would inspect for free. This time, however, ask to be allowed to look at the hg leak so you can be sure of it.
Unfortunately, $2500 is a common number for a dealership. One even wanted $3500 because they would have to also repair the muffler. I went to an Indi shop and it cost $1600 including the muffler.
This is standard head gasket replacement approach for the 2.5. The bolts are not replacement on the subaru engine they do reuse them! The only thing that really needs to be done well - is cleaning and prep of the surface so the new gaskets seat well. Subaru shops that do the HG job all the time will tell you for sure unless the engine was cooked they rarely ever find heads needing to be machined. The reason for this is that the heads are very compact and extremely durable compared to all the standard inline 4 and V6 and V8 engines where the heads are quite long and can be a bit fragile regarding warping and getting uneven etc.Update: Subaru USA is kicking in and dealer will replace head gaskets for $400 total compared to his original estimate of $25-2800. Considering the car is out of power train warranty by less than 4 months (only 52k miles) and oil leak almost certainly started before warranty expired, I thought Subaru might take of the whole thing especially since friend is original owner with all recommended service performed by the selling dealer.
Several things do concern me:
1. Engine will not be pulled and I read that it is difficult to properly torque head bolts with engine in car.
2. Dealer reuses old head bolts without measuring to see if they are stretched.
3. Dealer uses whizz wheel instead f block sanding.
I would appreciate any comments about these concerns. my impression is that the dealer is going to do a slam-bam thank-you ma'am job which may not last much beyond the 12 month warranty.
