"An Uplifting Story Of a Man Reunited With His Subaru.."

Yes!  Subie is Finally home!  Cheryl and I are very excited.   We got the message while running in Muscatine.  I figured we would make the reunion happen by being in the most inconvenient part of Iowa to rush back.  Had we stayed home, and waited patiently by the phone, we would still be waiting.  

So what is the "Damage?"   Well,  first let us talk about what was all done over the last month.  

New Alternator belt, New AC Belt, New Harmonic Balancer ( crankshaft pulley), New Sparkplugs, New Wires, New Timing Belt, New Waterpump, New Head Gaskets.  And they cleaned up the engine bay, replaced a small pig tail near the alternator,  Changed the Oil, New Filter, New Coolant, And replaced a rusty transmission tube.  All for just under $2000.  

Now,  $2000 bucks is a lot of money.   Thankfully,  we still had a bit in the bank and could pay it.  I know Gasket jobs tend to be around that price anyway, so really it would have been as if we had simply went in to replace the gaskets.  (Which were fine!  By the way... More on that later.)   By having this happen now,  we may have avoided a number of scenarios that would have left us stranded along the road somewhere.  We also discovered a number of problems that were fixed before they became headaches.

The Shop was cool about the whole thing.  They even offered to pay for half of the cost, since we payed for all the parts and only originally asked them to replace the Harmonic Balancer ( crankshaft pulley).  We figured out later that the "Dropping of the Timing" was not really their fault and was actually a carbon build up that we would have never discovered had we not cracked the engine open.   So.. "A Happy Accident."  So to say.

But Cheryl figured all that work deserved more compensation.  And we really were not as inconvenienced as we might have been.  We even got to go to two races and all of the Farmer's Markets that we wanted to. Cody said the engine still looks good considering having all those miles on it.   The pistons had good compression when he buttoned him  and Subie is running fine now. Hopefully,  for as old as he is,  the engine will perform much better now that all the fluids and gaskets have been refurbished and replaced. 

After giving Subie a bath and cleaning out the inside,  Cheryl set to writing down all the things we have done to him this shop visit.  The last time we did the head gaskets was at 203,000 miles. on 5/6 2016.  So those gaskets lasted 150,000 miles!  And were not technically bad, since they were forced to crack open the engine to take a look at the timing.  So had things gone smoothly, we would not have discovered the carbon build up or the spark plug issue.  

Speaking of Spark plugs.  I changed those out 60, 000 miles ago.  The recommended life of the spark plugs was 30,000 miles.  So.. they were a little past due.  

All in all, I'm just happy to have Subie back.  In addition to being "kind-hearted" with the price.  Cheryl also felt that by offering to pay the full price, we could "bribe" them into completing Subie faster.  I'm sure it provided the incentive.  

I'm taking the day off from Chalk as this blog post is getting longer than I had originally planned.  It will provide a much needed reference for my future self, when I look back and ask, "When did we get all that stuff fixed on Subie?"    As most of my "repair" posts are probably pretty boring for most others to read.   But I shall leave you with the latest Chalk drawing I did yesterday.  A Scottish Highland. Thanks for stopping in... And Enjoy.