Just out of curiosity - why are you doing it yourself? This should be covered under 5 yr / 60k miles powertrain warranty. Are you already past 60k miles on your Forester?

 

This..you need to jack up the engine on at least one side.

There are circular gaskets on the bottom of the tubes where they mate against the head.

 

Spark plug tube seals are what you are talking about. There is a seal in the valve cover for each hole.

Re-reading your post, you may want to figure out a few things before you start taking things apart. You should not remove the cams.

 

I'm fully capable of making any mechanical repair. That being said, the warranty is still good but only for another 1500 miles. I've had this thing into the dealer so many times for oil leaks, I just don't want to deal with them anymore. The car actually runs great otherwise but it's to the point of once again heading towards actually dripping onto the driveway. It's only a matter of time. Unless there is some serious problem with the sealing surfaces in this area, I guarantee you it won't leak again after I fix it.......

......however, if I have to dink around with jacking the motor up and/or pulling the cam to reseal the cam carrier to the head, then I think I may say the hell with it lol. That's why I made this thread to find out stuff like that first.

This may sound weird but except for catastrophic failures, sometimes I feel like my hands are tied during the time my vehicles are under warranty when I just wanna fix the damn thing. Dealers always argue and fight over every little stupid thing unless you bring them a bent rod that just shot out of the oil pan. Sometimes I just want to take care of things myself and get it over with. Dealers (and the manufacturer) are disorganized bureaucracies of the worst sort. I know someone may jump in here and say their dealer is the greatest thing since sliced bread but in the 15 years or so that I've been buying cars under warranty, I have yet to find one that knows what the hell they're doing.

 

I know it has been a while, but is there any update to this? Did you get it to stop leaking?