So, a friend and I just replaced the head gasket on my 2005 fxt. Previous owner did pretty much everything wrong with the previous head gasket (not even the correct head gaskets for turbo’d Subaru’s), and it’s pretty evident many shortcuts were taken the last time the engine had major service like this.

Now that we have the engine back in, when we run the engine, at about 3000rpm, oil starts pouring around the driver’s side cams. We aren’t 100% sure which cam is guilty of spilling the oil, (or if the cams are the issue at all), because the engine has to be running for the leak to pour profusely, and running requires us to have the cam gears and timing belt on. However, we have not had the chance to try replacing the avcs (intake) cam seal yet.

We tried replacing the exhaust cam seal again to no avail, and are sure we have the cam seal set to the correct depth. The chance of the head gasket being backwards is very very low, because we have pictures of the gasket on the head studs correctly right before the head was put into place and torqued down. It also appears to be coming from either the cam seals, or the valve cover gasket area, but again, we aren’t sure which.

It was not leaking like this before the head gasket replacement, and the only changes we’ve made are new gaskets (a full oem gasket kit), cleaning up the valves and pistons, a new timing belt kit, and using arp head studs. This particular head did not need machining on the engine block side. (It was less than .001” of variance from one side to the other, so well within spec).

Any ideas? In all likelihood, it’s just something dumb we’ve missed, but we just aren’t finding whatever we did wrong. Any ideas help, and we appreciate all the help we can get. I’ll also be posting on the forums, but they are down for maintenance right now according to my browser, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Thank you!