 Hey guys, welcome to another Subaru Engine Repair series. So I did call a machine shop. I wanted for them to do valve lapping, head decking, just overall check, cleaning and if any valves need replacement then they would do the work too. So two heads, because it's Subaru, they coded me for 700 dollars, which is quite a bit, that's just labor. No extra parts involved. As far as the black goes, decking, cleaning and honing and or boring out the cylinder walls, that's at least 300, 350. So well above 1000 bucks, 1100 or so, to do it properly at a machine shop and I know they do good work, I would know for sure that this would work. And that, I didn't even ask, I forgot, that did not include the crankshaft polishing. They would also measure out the new pistons that I would provide them with and they would bore out the cylinder walls according to the new piston size. But I can do all that stuff myself. It's not going to be as precise as the machine shop for obvious reasons, you need some heavy machinery to do all that, but it is doable, a garage like this and some knowledge. Let me explain to you what I mean. So let's start with the heads. So on one of the, I believe on cylinder number one, one of the exhaust valves was leaky. I did a leak down test right before I took it apart. One of these was leaking. We do have two valves, or I should say four valves per cylinder, two intake, two exhausts. Campshafts are okay, these cups are also okay, they're going back in. These guys are also okay so that the top end of the head, I don't need to worry about. Now as you can see, I took one valve out. So this is the passenger side head and these two guys are the exhaust valves. I don't know which one was leaking, one of these was leaking. See the black dots on the seat of the valve? That needs to be addressed, there's no cracks. The only thing I probably could not check is if the valve is bent slightly in any way. I don't have any special tools to actually check that. Let's take this one out and see what it looks like. Here's the suspect. There is a special tool, it's like a big clamp where you squeeze the spring by attaching this big clamp to here and underneath or on top of the valve and it squeezes the valve spring. Then you can take out these, I forget what these are called, but you can do it without a tool or without a special tool. Just use a socket, make sure the socket is bigger than these clips that hold the spring in place. Just hit it a few times, make sure it's a good solid hit. There goes one, it went somewhere, so this is the spring. I'm going to keep it in order because the valves need to go back in the same spot. I'm going to flip it over, take the valve out slowly. I don't see any cracks, it seems like it's more dirty. On this side, then here, you see it, this one actually might be bent. It's all shiny here, but then as I go 180 degrees, it's kind of darkish here. I'm referring to the seat of the valve, so right here. These are the seats of the valves. I don't take engines apart on a daily basis so I don't remember the specific names for a lot of these different parts. No, no, this is like your regular wear on these seats. No cracks, maybe it is bent, who knows. That's why doing it myself is questionable. But what you do, it's actually simple, it's just time consuming, everything's simple when you know how to do it. I would clean this up, make sure there's no dirt, no debris. Then you put this sandpaper-like paste on the valve or anywhere, on the seat or on the valve. And you start with a coarse paste and you want to clean this up too because you want to be able to put a suction cup right on top of the valve. Then you lubricate this part so it turns freely when you put it back in. This top side of the valve is clean suction cup on and you rotate it until you get a nice clean surface. The goal is to get rid of all these imperfections here. So check this out, I just took it to my wire wheel station, carefully cleaned it up. The top, the bottom here, I did my best not to touch the area where the valve sits. That's going to be done, while I'm still thinking about it, by lapping it with that coarse paste. And then fine, you want to go from coarse, you want to go to fine paste. But yeah, it looks much better, especially the outside. So all of these, even these, can look like that, there's just 16 of them. I did some light blocking on all the surfaces, where the black connects and where the heads go. So now we're going to check for flatness with this straight edge. I got a two thousandth filler gauge right here, which you do, first you got to make sure this surface is clean and you simply try and fit the filler gauge at different angles and see if it fits. It doesn't on this one, let's check this one. This is two thousandths, let's go with 15.0015, this was 0.002, this is 0.001.5 or 1.5. 1.5 thousandths or whatever. Going in but dragging, this is the middle, there's always the problem area. See this part, check this out, that's why this is important to clean it. If I put it here, it goes in but drags, right? If I go put it here, on this dirty part, it's going to go in much easier. So got to watch out for these things, I'm not going in at all. So it's just this dirt here, probably on both sides, that's making that happen. Yeah, I'd say the black is good, at least where the heads go on. But we're going to sand it down anyways, okay? I got a straight board from Home Depot, cleaned it nicely, then I got a piece of glass on top of it, just to make sure everything's even. And then 220 cent paper, and I sprayed some adhesive on this, on the glass, so the sandpaper sticks. Still using the 1500, nothing goes in here, shouldn't be fine, I'm going to basically slide it over and try and do it dry first. So I checked these surfaces where the black meets, and this I'm just going to go file it down a little bit, I don't want to take off any material from this side. Cleanliness is key here, make sure this is clean, I'm just letting its own weight do the work. But look at the progress, these lines are almost gone, that's what we want to get rid of. Just a few more passes in, and we're done. Still with the 1500, it's dragging here, so I'm not even going to bother going to 2000. 2000 is allowable, so we're going under the sub-row specs, kind of fits here, but drags. So I bet you 2000 won't even fit, let's see, yeah, see it drags. The intake valves are perfect, not even touching these.