Everything You Need to Know - Subaru Cooling System

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THIS IS NOT A PHYSICAL PRODUCT.

This product page is dedicated to being your all-in-one source for information on the Subaru cooling system.

The $5 purchase price is intended as a thank you, a "buy us a coffee" option if you were able to make use of this information. The $50 purchase option is for a consult call which we will reach out to you to schedule.

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Everything You Need to Know About the Subaru Cooling System

For no less than the last 10 years that we have been running our 2014 WRX up Pikes Peak, we have been challenged by cooling issues. Through the years we have tried a number of different things to try to keep the car cool on the full 12 mile run up Pikes Peak, from different radiators, water sprayers, an electric water pump, and more.

All along the way, we have documented the things that we have tried, what has made improvements, and what hasn't helped.

We created this page to group all of the videos and blogs that we have on our site on this subject into one place, and you can find all of that information below.

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If you still have any questions after going through this information, you can reach out to us though Live Chat, or you can submit a question via email.

If you would like to schedule a special 1 on 1 consultation about your situation or issue, you can do that here as well. This is available on this page or as a separate part purchase. Once you sign up, we will send you an e-mail with some available dates and times so that we can get your consultation scheduled.

We will put points on your account afterwards equal to the cost of your consult that you can use towards any parts you will need!

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Should I Burp My Coolant?

For the cooling system in your WRX or STI to work properly, it can't have any air present in the cooling system. On many cars it is fairly easy to get all of the air out (also known as burping) of the cooling system.But this process is a bit more complicated on a Subaru EJ engine. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is because the thermostat is placed on the bottom of the engine, not the top, and the second is because of the boxer engine design.We had Jon's Sonic Yellow WRX in the shop to replace the timing components, and as part of that we had to re-fill the engine with coolant and burp the system, and we put together a video talking about that process.

Sometimes the smallest parts can make the biggest differences. As we start down the path of the Subaru Cooling System, we have to start with a video we made recently talking about the different radiator caps that Subaru uses on the WRX and the STI. Subaru uses a 1-way and a 2-way radiator cap on the factory cooling system. If you haven't heard of that difference before, don't feel bad. Up until recently neither had we. But it turns out that which type of radiator cap you have in which location makes a huge difference.

So big in fact that if you are having any overheating issues at all, the very first thing that you need to do is to take a look at your radiator caps. After you watch this video of course so you know what you are looking for.

The other seemingly simple detail to pay attention to is the location and function of the factory coolant expansion tank and the coolant overflow tank. We detail those in this video:

With these key pieces of information in mind, we will go back to how we were working to improve the cooling system on our WRX race car for the 2021 Pikes Peak Hill Climb. Here we focused on making big improvements to the ducting of air through our radiator, and changing the radiator itself out from a Mishimoto X-Line radiator to the Killer-B Motorsports radiator.

Cooling Changes to our Subaru race car for the 2021 Pikes Peak Hill Climb

Here are the details of the issues that we had at Super Lap Battle 2022

Now at the beginning of 2022, if you follow us on Facebook or Instagram, you may have seen that we took our Pikes Peak car to run at Super Lap Battle at Circuit of the Americas for the first time. And you may also have seen that our race didn't go to plan, and once again we ran into cooling issues at the track.

Why we got rid of our radiator cap

As we have continued to work through this cooling issue, we dedided to make what might be though of as a radical change to our cooling system. we removed one of our radiator caps all together. But with what we now know about how the Subaru cooling system works (definitely make sure you have watche the video on Subaru Radiator Caps before you watch this one), we think that this makes a lot of sense.

Was it the head gaskets?

At this point, it really did seem like it was possible that all of our overheating issues could have come down to issues with our radiator caps. But even if that was the case, the car did overheat a number of times even just at Super Lap Battle. We feal now that we have a better handle on our cooling system than we ever have had, but there is still that concern about headgaskets in the back of our minds. What if our headgaskets have been a part of this issue all along as well.

We decided that we couldn't risk simply guessing on this point, and that we had to go through the engine to find out once and for all. So that is what we did. So was it the headgaskets?

Thanks for reading/watching and thanks for your support!

Complete Coolant Hose Kits

We have compiled a comprehensive database of coolant hose kits for every model and year of Subaru and broken them out into specific kits with everything you need all in one place. Check these out below to service your car's coolant system.