I recently had a ruptured radiator on H3 from a rock somehow blowing out the bottom of the radiator and car overheated and dumped all coolant. Replaced the radiator and car still overheats which Subaru dealership says probably blown head gasket. They won't touch the car due to all of my mods. I tried Sonic, Rad motorsports, Munky works, and few others with no luck (Either no response back or cannot / will not do the job). Does anyone have any recommendations or know of a good subaru shop that will do a possible head gasket job? My car has been OOC for about a week and really want to start making repairs.

 

Streamline performance. Did mine there

 

any other symptoms? did you get all the air out the system after you refilled? losing any coolant, oil levels rising? irregular smoke? color of smoke if any? correct me if i'm wrong, to me, there maybe air in the system or clogged hose if overheating is the only issue. not ruling the hg out of the picture, same happened to my civic, but only time it overheated was while in idle, never driving around. sometimes we overlook the small things.

 

I replaced the radiator with a new mishimoto radiator, samco hoses, and a mishimoto thermostat. I burped it and topped it off, cycled the heater on and verified the fans were operating. I fired it up and let it idle then cruised around the block. I did notice white smoke but figured it was from spilled coolant on engine and pipes burning off.

I drove it across H3 and was maintaining temp fine untill I was on the down side of H3 by the stadium off ramp where the car rapidly started to overheat. I pulled over and checked for blown hoses. I found no blown hoses, only sprayed coolant by the reservoir / overflow. The overflow reservoir lid was popped and coolant was higher then normal. I let the car cool and later started it up to see if I could detect any leaks (which I did not notice any). I did notice White smoke was blowing out the tailpipe then.

I had it towed to the dealership and they could not work on it due to all of my mods. They said it sounds like a blown head gasket based on my symptoms. This leads me to where I am now, looking for a good shop or mechanic to help me figure out and fix my car. I figured I would post here, since there are a ton of super smart Subaru dudes here!

 

Replace your thermostat with an OEM!!!!!!!!!!! The aftermaket thermostats just don't seem to cut it. Jack up the front of the car and look under if there is seepage from the heads, did you check your dipstick (coolant on it?), did you look under your oil cap (Coolant / milky look / floating coolant residue),check the drain plug on the rad (mine was leaking when i got it, put some tape and its all good). have you checked the coolant recently you sure you got all the air out, it took me with my mishimoto rad about 6 cycles on and off to see i had no more air. hope that helps

 

Do a compression test. Best way before you go removing or changing everything. If its still good then you'll know the problems in the cooling system somewhere.

 

streamline performance, although i hate to refer you there since i have such a hard time getting an appointment in (usually at least 2-3 weeks) since they're so busy. +1 for the compression/leakdown test as you'll wanna know if there's any other problems that may have been caused in the span of the all this mess

 

Ill check everything out tomorrow (look for the symptoms) and try to burp the system again. Thanks for all the recommendations. Hope its something simple. I appreciate all the help.

 

I had a mishimoto radiator too and they are know to have a bad drain plug on them new,..put thread tape on it to be sure if the compression test comes out ok .

 

I checked the drain plug today which had no issues. Checked the hoses and topped off coolant. Fired it up and ran it to burp the system. It remained cool but later was bubbling in the coolant reservoir tank. The car was blowing out tons of white smoke. I am going to try to do a compression test as soon as I can. I did not see any issues with the oil.

 

Hmm, skipped timing belt?

 

If it skipped a tooth or something why would it bellow white smoke? I was always under the impression it would just run like crap. Or smash valves.... I have a handy burping kit, it takes the place of the rad cap and you can see the bubbles coming out, i ran the car for almost 20 min and kept seeing little bubbles until it finally stopped ( this was the 6th cycle...) I noticed with my mishimoto the drain plug leaked when i got to temp, it was slight but it was noticeable. Also did you replace the hose clamps with ones that are tie in type? The stock clamp ones tend to loose there clamping force...

 

I did replace the hose clamps when I put on the new hoses. I am blowing out a massive amount of white smoke out the exhaust pipe.

 

Use a cooling system pressure tester...take out all your spark plugs and pressurise your system...crank your engine and see if coolant sprays out of your spark plug holes...

 

If you can't get or borrow a pressure tester then get a block tester....test the gases coming out of your radiator for combustion gases. ..