Mark: Hi, it's Mark Bossert. I'm here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver. Vancouver's best auto service experience and we're talking cars. How you doing Bernie?
Bernie: Doing very well.
Mark: So today's victim is a 2012 Subaru. What model is this one?
Bernie: The Forester XT turbo model.
Mark: Oh my goodness. So what was going on with this vehicle?
Bernie: The vehicle was towed to our shop. The engine had suffered a bad overheating issue. It was at another shop, possibly the dealer, I believe. They wanted to change the head gaskets and gave a fairly substantially high price quote and the people decided they wanted to bring the car to us. See what we could do with it, since we do a lot of Subarus.
Mark: So what did you discover?
Bernie: So what we found is the radiator had suffered some severe ruptures in a couple of spots. Looked like the radiator literally blew apart in a couple of spots. The engine had definitely overheated. The complaint of the customer, they were driving it and there was no heat inside the cabin. So they kind of drove the car a little harder and they found if they drove the engine a little harder and revved it higher, the heat would come in. But obviously at that point, the coolant was level was probably too low.
Things that overheated. I think the radiator had kind of blown up sprayed coolant everywhere. Possibly the head gasket, you know, pressurized the cooling system too high because that'll happen to. Too much combustion pressure and blew the radiator up. If I say blown up, it wasn't like it would arrive with in chunks, but you know, there was big splits in the tanks, top and bottom. So pretty severe.
Mark: And that's, that's almost always, or always from overheating?
Bernie: Not always. I mean, radiators tanks will split from just old age. They're usually plastic. And so they'll split and crack but when they spew out like that, there's usually too much pressure in the system. And that can be from overheating.
Mark: Let's jump into some pictures and we'll go into the story. So here's our vehicle.
Bernie: That's the sporty hood scoop. Provide a little bit of cool, fresh air for the turbo and the intercooler.
Mark: So we've got some pictures here of the engine out. So I'm going to say, Oh oh.
Bernie: Yes, exactly. Yeah. So this is an engine removal job. We weren't sure at first whether the engine would even be salvageable or whether we'd have to replace it with a, well, new is not available, but a good used engine if we could find one. So we pulled the engine out and we took it apart you know, examine the cylinder heads. Had the cylinder heads sent off to a machine shop for pressure testing.
The good news is the heads were not cracked and the engine did not appear to have been overheated too badly. So the cylinder heads did need to be redone, a valve grind and so on. So we had all that work done. This is the engine reassembled afterwards put back together.
Mark: So there's a lot of plumbing on top of this. That seems a little bit more than a normal Subaru. What's different about this engine?
Bernie: It's a turbo. If you look on the right hand side, you see sort of a goldish colour, rusty, goldish colour area. That's where the turbo sits. That's where the exhaust pipes attach to the turbo. The turbo sits in that spot right there.
Mark: And I think you mentioned it's twin overhead cams as well?
Bernie: It's a twin overhead cam too. If you look at the front view of the engine, you can see the sort of two round dimples in the timing cover. And so that's where the cam shaft, the cam gears go. These engines use a timing belt and they actually use the timing belt version of this engine for quite a lot longer than they did with the single overhead cam. And we've done a few podcasts on those. It's a guaranteed cylinder head gasket. It's a guaranteed needed repair on a single overhead cam Subaru. But the double overhead cams usually last quite a long time. We don't do head gaskets on them very often. They're much tougher. I think they put a better gasket in and they don't leak. But if you overheat it, they will.
Mark: So, so far we've replaced the radiator, redone the head gaskets, check to make sure that the engine isn't wrecked basically from overheating. What else was it? Valve grind.
Bernie: Valve grind, yeah. We were sort of pondering why this had happened. So a little more backstory. Quite recently, prior to the vehicle overheating, the vehicle had gone in for service to have the timing belt replaced, a bunch of other items including the water pump, which is proper thing to do when you do the timing belt. Doing a little research, we found that using aftermarket water pumps, some aftermarket water pumps can cause these engines to overheat because they don't flow coolant as well.
So of course, one of the first things we did, we took the engine apart is let's have a look at the water pump. And here's a comparison to the water pump that was installed on the vehicle. And if you look at the one on the left, that's an original OEM Subaru pump. Now you can notice a difference. If you look at the blades, that's called the impeller. The bladed device. There's seven on the one on the right, and eight on the one on the left. Obviously a slight bit of difference there. You can also notice that the quality of the shaft in the middle of the impeller, the drive shaft, it's sort of more robust on the one on the left. It sticks out further. The one on the right, the impeller, it's basically a shorter shaft. I mean, they just try to make things just a little cheaper. The shaft isn't really gonna matter to the quality of the pump, but maybe over time it might wear out faster.
But what we noticed, this is the big notice and it's hard to show it on pictures, but where that red arrow is pointing, there's a gap of about two millimetres between the edge of that impeller blade and the metal housing of the water pump. And if you look at the OEM one again, hard to see in pictures, but this gap is about half a millimetre. So substantial difference in terms of how this pump is going to flow coolant through the engine and having good flow is essential on this particular engine. Using good quality parts makes a big difference to how a car works.
Mark: So a turbocharged engine just puts more pressure on the engine. That's its whole purpose. It rams more air in there, so it creates more heat. Is that fair to say?
Bernie: Exactly. And the turbo needs to be cooled as well because you've got exhaust flowing through there. So it's a source of added heat to the cooling system as well. So it's pretty critical. I mean, that seven blade impeller may not make much of a difference on a regular type of engine, a non turbo, but on the turbo, you really need everything you can get to properly pump coolant and you know, keep the engine cool. Plus the engine itself runs hotter because there's more horsepower and more energy to pull down.
Mark: More power, more push on the pedal.
Bernie: Yeah, exactly.
Mark: Alright, so pretty much a pretty expensive change or a mistake. Let's call it a mistake to have put in the wrong part in this case.
Bernie: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And this is a sort of area where we have to tread carefully in the aftermarket business, because you go to a dealership. I mean, one positive thing is most of the time, not always, they'll put in the OEM parts, which is great because they're meant to work with the car. I mean, sometimes they're not as good as they could be. And there are sometimes better aftermarket parts.
But generally, you know, as an independent shop, we always look to get the best quality parts at the best prices and make sure that what we put in is going to be as good as the original. And there are aftermarket pumps that are available. They're as good as the original. You just have to know which brand you're buying. Be picky.
Mark: It seems like a minor mistake, but it turned out to be extremely expensive for the owner.
Bernie: Yeah. Expensive, stressful.
Mark: Downtime, et cetera, et cetera.
Bernie: Downtime, yeah.
Mark: If you need service for your Subaru, the experts to see are at Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver. You can reach them online at pawlikautomotive.com. You can book right there online or you can call them, (604) 327-7112 to book your appointment. You have to book ahead. They're always busy. Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Thanks so much for watching and listening. Thanks Bernie.
Bernie: Thank you. Mark. Thanks for watching.
