Damaged Exhaust Valve: Subaru Legacy

[Blipvert]

My poor Legacy L Wagon. 1996, with only 65K miles- and it's got a
verified bad exhaust valve... under load, the engine will misfire, and
ye olde "Check Engine" light illuminates in full dysfunctional glory.

While $1200 for the repair seems about right, given the placement of
the exhaust valve in the engine... anyone else had similar
experiences? I may end up cutting my losses and selling it to a local
subaru shop (not the one that diagnosed the valve) for $3000.

When an exhaust valve starts failing under load like this... how long
will I have before the car's completely unusable and becomes a big,
misfiring Fuji Heavy Paperweight? Thanks... just looking for ideas and
possible commiseration... any input appreciated.

-Blip

 

[Terry Bygate]

I recently purchased a '95 Legacy. Before purchasing it, I looked at the
ratings in consumer reports, and saw that the '96 & '97 models had a poor
rating for the engines. I was concerned about that and asked a mech. about
it. He said that some of the '96 engines had dual overhead cams, and that
they had some problems with bad exhaust valves.