A couple of weeks ago, Car Bibles writer Chris Rosales bought a cheap Subaru Outback. The car wasted almost no time popping its head gasket, so before he could take the car on any real adventures, he had to go pretty deep into repairs.
If you want to catch up on how how Chris’ latest Craigslist acquisition became a major restoration project, you can read about why he picked up a 2005 Outback 3.0R in the first place and how it immediately exploded to get up to speed. The next phase of that, plus some more goodies, can be found in this rundown of a few Car Bibles stories we posted this week.
Car Bibles is generally focused on DIY-related content, practical advice, cultural commentary, and automotive entertainment celebrating low- to medium-budget motoring. We’ve stepped up our schedule to six posts a day each week—including a daily feature photo—so if you like what you see below, I would love to see you over on our site to check out the rest of it! Anyway, on to the roundup:
Removing My Subaru Outback’s Flat-Six Engine Was Actually Easy and Fun
Though it’s mostly four-cylinder Subarus that are somewhat notorious for blowing head gaskets, the flat-six in Chris’ Outback didn’t want to be left out of the cliché. Less than a month after he bought it, the vehicle started overheating catastrophically and, unfortunately, the fix required replacing the head gasket.
Rather than try to do the job with the engine in the car, which would have been very tough considering its horizontal configuration, Chris just pulled the whole thing. Luckily that part of the job was actually kind of fun, as you’ll see in this post.
Lordstown Motors Is Screwing Over More Than Just Investors
The Lordstown Motors saga is still whirling around and some representatives of the company are still adamant that it will, at some point, start selling electric pickup trucks. So far it hasn’t been able to do much for investors or eager customers, but the region that was promised a revitliaztion by way of a shiny new factory could be the one that suffers the most. This post has some insights from Ohio—specifically the Mahoning Valley—where the EV startup is trying to get its factory running.
The Acura ILX Is an Overlooked Enthusiast Gem
Acura has served up some of the best sport compact cars and modest sport luxury vehicles ever—and, of course, the mighty NSX supercar. But the ILX sedan, its last vehicle to ship out with an optional manual transmission, doesn’t seem to get much love even though it looks pretty enticing on paper.
This post gets into why you might want to take a look at the car that’s basically a high-class Civic Si.
How I Spot Bad Paint and Panel Gaps When I’m Looking at a Used Car
Not all automotive body damage or accident history is obvious—sometimes you’ve really got to know what you’re looking for to inspect the sheetmetal of a used car. Here are some tips and insights you’ll want to take with you next time you’re peeking around a vehicle that might help you spot a previous repair.
The Mazdaspeed Protege and Protege MP3 Were Great Cars of the Ford/Mazda Alliance Era
The Mazda 3 has been a celebrated sport compact car for years now, but its predecessor, the Protege, had some cool variants in its heyday as well. The Protege MP3 and Mazdaspeed are pretty rare now, but they represent a cool moment in car history and their design has aged well. This post takes us through what made them so neat. Did you know Callaway, the same outfit that tunes Corvettes, cooked up the MSP’s turbocharging system?
If you liked any of those stories, I hope you’ll join us on the regular over at Car Bibles. Our comment section’s always open and we’ll be doing a lot of experimenting throughout the year as we look for new and fun ways to bring automotive entertainment to you. Now, have a great summer weekend.