My wife was driving in heavy traffic and put on her directional to make a left turn, the car dashboard lights started flashing and the engine stopped which came very close to a accident because she was 3/4 through making the turn and stopped abruptly. She tried starting the car and it finally started, she pulled over to the side of the road and it died again. I came to where she was and tried starting the car, it started but the check engine came on and all the lights started flashing and the car once again died. I called a tow truck to bring it to my mechanic.

He checked it out and when he started cranking the motor over it sounded like there was no compression or the timing chain went. He took it apart to the timing chain and we noticed that the timing chain tensioners were not pumped up since they are pressurized by the oil system. Upon further investigation we found that the oil pressure had dropped due to the motor overheating, causing the chain tensioners to loose tension allowing the timing chains to skip teeth on the gears thus causing valve/piston damage. We then set the chains to the proper timing marks and took a compression test on all the cylinders, there is a 50-70 lb loss in compression between cylinders.

Now the problem is what caused the engine to overheat? We checked all the possible causes and everything checked out correctly except the throttle body gasket was damaged for age or heat.. Does Subaru have an existing problem with this EZ30 motor overheating? Are there known reasons to overheating or oil pressure loss? Prior to that, we have always had the oil changes religiously at 3000 miles and all maintenance has been done on time. If anyone has answers to this I would appreciate a email if you don't mind. Thanks