Hello and thank you for your time.
My car is a 2008 Subaru Forester automatic 4EAT 2.5L SOHC naturally aspirated with a Jasper remanufactured EJ253 motor. About two years after having the Jasper motor put in by StageCoach auto in Tennessee (I can remember where exactly in TN because the engine threw a rod while I was driving south on 75 headed to gulf coast from Cincinnati ohio) I had the head gaskets begin leaking. It took me a little while to diagnose on account of the leak wasn't the oil or coolant but rather the exhaust gases leaking into the coolant jacket causing the overheating and such. By the time I figured it out the coolant had started to mix with oil at which point I stopped driving it and replaced the head gaskets myself with the felpro multi layer steel head gasket kit. Now unfortunately I didn't have the money to have the heads decked and milled so I cleaned them as best I could and checked them with feeler gauges and put them back together. They weren't dead flat but I didn't think they were all that bad but I don't have the experience or expertise to really know for sure. I only knew there was no way for me to pay a machine shop so I did what I had to do knowing there was a good chance I would be having issues again further down the road. Which is where I'm at today. The gaskets are leaking again and quickly advanced to the point that I've had to stop driving it again and am preparing to change the head gaskets again. My question(finally, huh) is do you think it is worth it especially if yet again I can't afford to have it milled by a shop. Is trying to flatten the mating surface by the sand paper and a large pane of glass method gonna get me to a better repair that will hopefully last more than a year and a half or am I kidding myself. Any advice or alternate suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm hoping to keep the car as I'm still paying it off and it's in relatively good shape otherwise, all things considered in the rust belt. Oh yeah, it has 170,000 miles on the car and during the periods leading up to head gaskets failure I was cautious not to drive it while overheating but rather modifying what I could to help it run cool ish as much as possible. Sorry for the short novel and thank you for your time and knowledge.
1. Take the heads to a machine shop for proper rebuilding.
2. Use Cometic head gaskets. They are superior to Felpro and others, and do not require re-torquing like most others.
3. Get a set of ARP studs. They can be torqued much higher than the non-reusable stock head bolts.
large pane of glass method
glass is too flexible.
Sometimes, if the head isn't too bad, you can glue down a section of sanding belt on a scrap piece of granite counter top to get the job done, but the shop has the milling machine or surface grinder specifically for this job.