Swapping the Engine in My Subaru

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Some weekends you recharge in the mountains. Others you spend covered in oil in a parking lot, and honestly, those are just as good.

My Subaru Outback had been fighting me for a while, so one weekend we set up shop in the parking lot and got to work.

We started out hoping for a modest fix, replacing the valves and valve guides on the original engine to bring it back to life. I pulled the cylinder heads and we went through the valvetrain piece by piece.

But the old engine had other plans. After a lot of work it became clear it was simply done. So we did what any stubborn mechanical engineer would do. We pulled the whole thing and swapped in a fresh engine.

Out with the old, up on the hoist and out of the car.

I did this alongside my great friend and master wrench, and what could have been a frustrating repair turned into one of my favorite weekends of the semester. Engine hoist, hand tools, a cylinder head on the bench, and a lot of laughs. There is something deeply satisfying about understanding a machine well enough to take its heart out and give it a new one.

A clip from the swap

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Watch the full vlog

We filmed the whole weekend. Here is the story from start to finish:

New engine in, hood closed, and back on the road. Not a bad way to spend a weekend outside the lab.

Cars |

Swapping the Engine in My Subaru

A clip from the swap

Watch the full vlog