Oh what a relief it is to be finished putting the Subaru back together. It took me a month to do, 6 rolls of paper towels (to wipe my hands with and soak up spilled oil and coolant), several scraped knuckles, and half-a-gallon of Fast Orange hand cleaner. I finished putting it all back together late last night, but I waited until today to fill it up with oil and coolant. I didn't want to try starting it last night only to find out that something was wrong, then end up worrying about it while I tried to sleep. When I cranked the engine over today, it started right up, but it was running rough and at a very low idle speed. I let it get up to operating temperature while I looked for oil or coolant leaks, and there were none. I shut the engine off, topped off the oil and coolant, then took it for a test drive. After a while, it started running much more smoothly--I think it needed to burn off all the coolant and other gunk that got in the engine when the head gasket blew. Now, it's running just fine, but there are a couple of other things I need to fix now.
Two of the exhaust manifold bolt-holes (one on each cylinder head) are stripped, so I need to get some Heli-Coil inserts to fix that. Also, the exhaust flange right before the muffler isn't sealing very well, so the car's a little bit noisy. I broke the bolts off of that flange when I was replacing the clutch, and I think the replacement bolts I got just aren't doing the trick. Plus, it could probably use a new gasket on that flange. The valve lash could really use some adjustment, because the camshaft on the left side is making a lot of noise. I wish I'd have done it when I was putting everything back together, but I didn't think it was that important. Now, I'd have to take almost everything back apart to adjust the valve lash, and I just don't feel like working on cars right now. If it gets bad enough that I can't stand the noise anymore, I'll fix it, but for now, I'm content to drive the car as-is.