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I’ve pulled out the engine of my 2005 Subaru Outback to replace the head gaskets, and gotten to the point in this procedure where I need to pull the cams out of the heads to take the heads to a machine shop.
The rockers come off with regular bolts, I believe they’re 12mm, but the plate that holds the upper cam bearings and stuff is held on with some weird torx bolts and they’re pretty damn tight, at least on my heads. A T40 ALMOST fits, but it’s a little loose and I very much do not want to round these bolts off and have to go drilling and tapping into my cylinder head. I did some research and found out the fastener is actually a “Torx Plus 40” or “TP40”. I didn’t happen to have those in my tool box, but I found some on Amazon.
Lisle is a pretty decent tool brand and these are actually the correct size. You could obviously get away with only buying a TP40, but most of them I found were in the $14 area and this whole set was $29. It seemed like a good idea to have the entire set. If you’re noticing the standard T40 Torx in your tool box doesn’t seem to fit right and you’re scared you’re going to round the bolt off, this is your fix.
