Hey Scotty, Whats the deal with Subaru head gaskets? I have owned 4 Subaru's and all have developed head gasket problems. 2002 Outback, 77,000 miles blew a head gasket and overheated, 2003 Forester, 129,000 miles blew a head gasket and over heated, 2005 Forester, 135,000 miles blew a head gasket and over heated, 2010 Forester, 88,000 miles and the head gasket started leaking oil. I sold it before it blew. I love the way they drive but hate the reliability.
They have definitely had some major struggles with them. I hear these days things have gotten better though, but I can only speak from what I've heard as I haven't owned or serviced any recent models.
From what I've seen it appears the head gasket problem was finally resolved when Subaru's overhead cam engines were redesigned to use a timing chain instead of a belt something like 10 years ago.
I am of the understanding that the era of bad head gaskets was in the late 90’s and the 2000’s.
Modern Subraru’s in theory, shouldn’t have the head gasket problem anymore.
In short, Subaru used poorly-designed head gaskets for about a decade on their normally-aspirated 4-cylinder engines. It is no longer a problem but they took way too long to fix it.
From my understanding the issue started in the late 1990's with the introduction of the EJ25 engine. The previous EJ22 engine did not have the same problem. The problem was with the head gasket used on the normally asperated EJ25 engines. These engines use a single layer metal head gasket with a composite coating. The coating would wear away over time and cause a leak. The turbocharged EJ25 engines used a multi-layer all metal head gasket and did not suffer the same problem. When replacing head gaskets on the normally asperated EJ25s, some mechanics would use the head gasket from the turbo engine. Since this is a thicker head gasket it would require some milling of the heads to help compensate for the reduction in compression due to the thicker head gasket. I believe in the last years of the EJ25 Subaru did fix the issue and of course the new F series engines do not use the same design.
