I was having some issues with engine noise in the Saabaru and decided to swap rather than rebuild the engine. I got this EJ208 from a Canadian importer that gets low mileage engines from Japan. This is how the it started getting this mailed to my house.

I unwrapped wrapped it and got it mounted on a stand for what was to come. I then pulled the old engine out so that I could start to swap over accessories to the engine on the stand. As you can see, beers and hammers are required.

All was going fine, until it wasn’t. I had a bolt that broke swapping over the cross flow pipe for the coolant. It took a week to figure out how to get it out. I tried slotting it to remove with a flat head screwdriver, welding the broken part to a nut so that could unscrew it, but nothing would work.

After much time i drilled a hole into it, filled it with PB Blaster and then heated a thick drain plug glowing orange and placed it along side the metal the bolt went into. This was an attempt to use heat to make the metal expand and get the penetration oil to soak in.

After it had a chance to soak in i tried to use an EZ-Out reverse threaded tap to get it out. Well as soon as it was not threading into the bolt it snapped the bit. The end end result was drilling that out and tapping the bolt one step larger. This little bolt was the hardest part of changing an engine.

I rebuilt the top of the engine and took it off the stand to get the new clutch and flywheel installed.

Then slapped it back in the car. After priming the oil system and fuel it started first try.