I decided to be nice and offer to replace my brother-in-law's timing belt for the cost of parts; for reference, he has a 1996 Subaru Legacy Outback, 2.5L DOHC. So basically that means that when replacing the timing belt, there are five different "things" that need to line up just so, to ensure that the engine runs properly and everything is timed correctly. It is generally believed/known that the Subaru 2.5L engines are "interference" engines which means that if the timing isn't right, the pistons get acquainted with the valves in all the worst ways; like a drunk/high sorority chick at a frat party with the entire football team. Terrible things happen.

I started at 10 AM, pulled his car into my garage, removed the radiator, timing cover, belt, rollers, and water pump; this took about 2.5 hours. At that point, I installed the new water pump/thermostat, lined up the cams and crank, put the belt on, put the new idler pulleys on, then timing cover, then reinstalled the radiator. This last part brought me up to about 5 PM. So, yes this job took me about seven hours. I put the key in the ignition and started it up...except it didn't start up. It just kept turning over but there was absolutely no pulse; the engine was not going to actually start.

Now I'm starting to fear the worst, thinking that I didn't line things up correctly. You should understand that when the timing is off and the pistons say "sup?" to the valves, things bend and crack and the engine is pretty much DESTROYED. Most Subaru owners would say that one has "grenaded" the engine because the damage is catastrophic. Fearing this, I had to pull the radiator and timing covers (another hour of work) just to get to the belt. At this point,  Ahzlon came over to assist and pointed out something that confirmed my fears: I had aligned the crank to the wrong notch and it was a 1/4 rotation back.

I couldn't deal with it then, it was already getting close to 7 PM and the daunting task of doing the entire build over again just to find out that I probably owed my bro-in-law a new engine...was just not in the cards that night. The next day at work I did some research and found that I was not the only person to make this mistake. In fact, there were a lot of these threads online. Then I came to an absolute gem: apparently the engines from this year were designed so that the pistons could never come in contact with the valves! Hoping and praying that the internet was right, I made it home with a faint glimmer of hope.

I immediately started lining things up (properly, this time) and had Ahzlon come verify it for me. Then we figured we'd at least see if it would start, even if only for a couple seconds (it had no radiator or coolant at that point). So we put the key in and it started turning over....but no sign of the engine actually starting. My heart sank. Now I was frustrated and confused because everything was right and it still wasn't working. After about a half hour of pulling my hair out, just before I was about to pull the belt off again and jump into another two hours of work, I asked my dad to turn it over once more. He ran the starter for almost a full minute before there was finally a brief sputter of life, then a couple more...then finally the engine, having blown out all of the unburnt fuel from the day before, finally started taking over and at last, a stable idle. It was only running for three seconds but that was all we needed. The sound of that car starting can only be likened to a choir of angels singing out in immaculate chorus.

We buttoned everything back up (another hour and a half of work) and turned it over again to let it idle for a while; everything was fine and I can not describe how relieved I was. But that didn't last long because shortly after things got up to temperature, it kept rising. We couldn't drive the car for more than 100 feet before the temperature became alarmingly hot. So now I'm worried that I installed the thermostat incorrectly, or I messed up the water pump. I was looking at another full teardown and another six hours of work. I literally could not believe it, and I refused to believe it. So I started adding more coolant even though the radiator seemed full. After about a half hour of idling and adding coolant, finally things started to stabilize and we were able to take the car for a proper test drive.

After two days of work, I finally finished the job. But at least I was able to save my brother-in-law $800 in labor. I think he was still grateful even if I did almost destroy his engine. I'm not working on anyone else' car from now on.