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One question...would a cylinder head with a possible internal crack cause over heating and exessive pressure in the cooling system? FYI...It is a subaru 2.2 Boxer engine...another question would be, is how do I distinguish which head it would be, since the boxer engine is a 4 cylinder with 2 banks, so it has 2 heads. What i was going to do is pull both heads and just look for the bad one. Another thing is that the car is sluggish and spits and sputters through thr rpm range, especially in the lower rpms. So I guess I am going to be pulling both heads. but if anyone has some info, its appreciated...thanks.
Yes, that's a sign. Could be a head gasket. (you hope you hope you hope)
Do you have gray coolant with bubbles?
Is it missing on any cylinder? Pull the plugs and look for water after it cools off. If you find a wet plug, or a really bad looking plug, that might be the one.
Recently, a member here got great advice about his Nissan. Should you not be so lucky, you can try:
Looking at the plugs can often tell which cylinder is affected. Run a compression test before you remove anything. A cracked head can let exhaust excape into the cooling system or it can let coolant excape into the exhaust or oil. either way you wll have to remove the head. Hope the engine has not overheated because that can very quickly fry one of those engines.
well I didnt even think of a compression test...usually i would, damn...oh well i just got done tearing my left bank head off, just hoping it was the one...and i think it was because i found a pretty ruptured head gasket. So i am gonna put a new one on and throw it back together and hope it was the problem. If not, the other side will be torn apart and then inspected for problems.