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hey guys,

chasing some info, recently my sister cooked her engine really bad and had to find a replacement engine for her 98 outback with the ej25D engine.. and to say it was hard to track one down was an understatement, none of the wreckers had anything and all pretty much said that those engines had shocking headgasket and recently i've been offered two cars from people with the exact same problem.. is there an easy way to switch them out to the later SOHC engines or is it do the heads and hope the bottom end is up to it?

regards
tyrone

I'd rebuild the old engine. The new aftermarket head gaskets are a lot more reliable then the original Subaru ones, I'd also use Permatex copper spray on them. Not worth changing to the later EJ251 engine as these have head gasket issues too.. albeit not as many but they still aren't as reliable as the EJ201. The price to buy and convert to the later one would be around the same cost as rebuilding your old one and a lot less headaches.