Long story short, bought a 2004 STi w/ 75k miles, blew a headgasket only 300miles after I owned it. The engine was overheating and ended up warping the block to the point where a piece of paper could fit underneath the straight edge.

So I am dropping in a new shortblock fresh from Subaru w/ 1year warranty, all new engine gaskets, valve job, copperspray gaskets, ARP head studs, decking heads.

The only other surprises I found are that I have what looks like Perrin front shifter brushings, and the infamous crack in the VF39 turbo's exhaust manifold.

I already have a new set of Kartboy front and rear shifter brushings, is it worth swaping out the old Perrin and putting in the new Kartboys? I am going to put in the rear one regardless.

 

pretty intresting color. and headlights....

shouldnt buy from subaru. Your going to pay lots of $ for pretty mich an OE block when you could use the same amount and pick up a better quality block at a Shop. Eq for ex.

 

yeah i am going to repaint it the original color black, and I needed new headlights as the car was a salvage title and I needed to pass the brake and light inspection. These lights work well, kinda tacky, but they are growing on me. I will eventually replace them with some nice retrofits when I recover from this engine crisis.

 

The shortblock was 2grand even. After shipping, it would have cost $1930 for a new shortblock from a tuning company (lowest i could find online at least, and i don't want something that is just going to be faulty again).

 

Well knowing the stuff subaru uses now.... I have a hard time trusting the pistons and ringlands from them. Are you doing the full install yourself?

 

This.

You should have looked into finding a used longblock, and having a shop do a tear down and rebuild using much higher quality parts. Would have been cheaper, and much more reliable... And it would make mo powaaa!