yes Don,
subaru engines ..great and awesome as they generally are,
are known for 'head gasket issues' .  Quite common.  Not until over 100K
miles usually.

they can be intermittent with this issue.
Basically exhaust gases displace the coolant in the engine ....water
pump can't circulate a gas ..
It can be hard to identify too.
A sniff test on the pressure bottle my  not reveal hydrocarbons i the
coolant.
I've seen the sumptom so bad it puffed up a brand new waterboxer coolant
pressure bottle like a football.
Sometimes there's black soot in the coolant.

you probably have a SOCH 2.5 ...
if head gasket work is done, it's super important to get the heads
resurfaced.
it turns into a big job often ...'expanding' to timing belt, oil seals,
tensioner and guide wheels and more.

as for used engine ...there's ..forget his name ...it's a very funky
subaru only junk yard in Gaston , Oregon .
Basically a ravine full of subaru's in the woods near a small town north
of Corvalis. .  John is the guy's first name.
there it is brain ..John Lemley.

Scott

On 12/11/2015 7:10 AM, Don Hanson wrote:
> I've been reading all the helpful suggestions on the overheating diesel
> vanagon....   I've just been through something quite similar with my S.O.s
> Subaru forester 2.5 liter....same weird  almost instant overheating
> (sometimes, sometimes not at all)   Been to a couple of shops with it now
> and the mechanics  have been stumped.....Internet wisdom says
> "headgasket"....so what are you Subie conversion guys and gals doing for
> motors now?  I am being quoted around $3k for a rebuilt motor or a
> headgasket repair on that car....someone bartered it to her in the first
> place, so we're thinking just junk the thing and get another..What say you
> Subigon peeps?
>
>     On the overheating diesel.....I have an inline gas motor in my van (same
> castings as a diesel motor), mounted with diesel coolant hoses and
> bars.....Mine has some hose routing that is.....'devious'?   anyhow, there
> are some very arcane bends and junctions in mine that make no sense to
> me...though I have been successful in driving it around for some years now,
> I never bothered to try to follow the coolant path....it worked when I got
> it, so I kept it the same..
>
> When I first began with this van, I changed all the fluids and of course,
> got a big air bubble in the cooling system...and being a Vanagon
> Rookie....I went...."Hey, it can't be overheating, the heater is blowing
> cold",,,,and then I read up on bleeding the systems...I could easily and
> clearly see a stream of bubbles coming out of a small hose that spliced
> into the larger hose that returns coolant to the pressure tank...."De Nile"
> syndrome caused me to say...."Good, all that trapped air is coming out of
> the cooling system"....but of course, it was a now-leaking headgasket....I
> drove it over 3 thousand miles, Portland, Oregon to Mexico.... with the
> leaking headgasket.    I got really good at topping up my radiator at gas
> stations on that trip.....I could go along with my eye on the temp gauge
> and my hand near the heater outlets...When the heater stopped heating, I
> would stop for gas, knowing my coolant level was getting low....I made what
> I guess is a Libby  Bong....I took a length of steel brake line and mated
> it to a small funnel with an "S-bend" that allowed me to insert it into the
> radiator bleed screw hole on the top of the  radiator....It became second
> nature:   Get out the big flat screwdriver, release the grill, take the
> 13mm wrench and finesse off the bleed bolt.  Grab my gallon of coolant and
> pour it in till the bleed overflowed....close up, take out the gas hose and
> proceed for another hundred or two miles....
>
> When the trip was done, I pulled the head and lapped it at home on my
> bench, to true up the head surface, puttin another head gasket in. All has
> been good now for another 50k miles or so.....The strange thing on Vanagon
> cooling systems is that they aren't very consistent, sometimes....
>     Another tip....do NOT rule out the possibility of coincidence.....I've
> encountered two completely un-related problems on a single vehicle....it
> does happen.  I once did an alignment on my 928 Porsche racecar and it
> wouldn't start after.....We scratched our heads and racked our brains
> trying to figure out what we'd done to cause that....when it was actually a
> failed engine control module that just coincidentially  failed while we had
> it up on the rack....
>
>   anyhow, Subie motor source for cheap?  anyone?  happy friday..
>