Hey All, Car is 2002 WRX Stage 2 promap (up/down pipes) 190k miles I was home visiting family and took the opportunity to use a heated garage to change my oil and do a few other things to my car. While test driving it after I had finished something happened while driving normally on the highway. Instantly the car begin a slight shaking while the gas was pressed even a little bit. I limped it home noticing a loss in power and response, similar to a slipping clutch. No CELs went off. After cleaning the MAF and air filter I took it for a spin around the block, same issues. I noticed while idling the engine shook quite violently, I thought maybe I cracked a ringland so I checked for smoke coming out of the exhaust or oil fill cap (heard that was a common occurance) and didn't notice any even after letting it idle for a little while. Since I had work the next day back in the cities I left it at home and took my parents extra car up. My dad took it to the local shop for a compression test (mind you this is a town of 2000 people and probably the first Subaru they've done a compression test on) the results came back 150-120-120-85 I had them note the spark plugs and they reported nothing unusual about them. They did however say the car was running on three cylinders likely because of a coil pack. I found one cheap and had it sent to them just for testing. My question is, where do I go from here? What can I expect repair to cost on this? Do I need a complete rebuild with compression being all over the board? At this point it's probably not worth throwing that much money into this car. It's difficult because my car is three hours away so I can't get to it to test other things.
More than likely you will need to have your cylinder heads rebuilt. The next step would be a leak down test to find where the fault is,
Thank you, I called the shop and hopefully they'll do a leakdown today. I should also note that I haven't noticed any oil consumption either. Are there local people that could do the work for cheaper than a shop? Sorry I probably need to do research on my own but I'm just trying to get her up and running again should that be the direction I go in.
Sorry, should've noted that as well It's in Mountain Lake MN 56159 the southwest corner of the state. Thank you.
The symptoms sound similar to my 02 wrx when it burned a valve, but my compression was even lower in the cylinder with the burned valve (35 maybe). Heads were rebuilt and the car was fine after that.
