RIP conrod bearings. Got some questions for the rebuild (sti)

Can attest to Aluminati's quality.

My ACT stuff chattered, but only at idle, and no louder than a slightly noisy diesel engine. It sounded like the valves were rattling around lol, with your neurosis in regards to noise it may drive you insane... the giveaway is that it disappeared once you pushed the clutch pedal. Never had an issue outside of that, and I used it in everything from daily driving up to track days. I also ran the pro-lite flywheel (the lightest) and never had a cell or any codes - some people do. With the street-lite that you're going with, you should be perfectly fine.

 

I got the aluminati tgv deletes. Much like.

I'm OK with noises when I know what they are. My wrx would do something like that and it sounded like a tob until I realized the clutch slave push pin was squeezing against the clutch fork. Once I knew what the noise was, I was OK.

It's ordered and on the way so I'm committed.

 

Good news is jm had headbolt washers that I was missing and kept the project moving for..

Bad news is I found a broken dowel in the exhaust cam avcs.. (not for the cam itself but the preload spring.)

I bet I could get away with slapping it together a as it but I don't think I would enjoy ripping it apart.. Ran to the dealer and they want $200+ for a new one... So... I'm not sure what I'll do..

Edit. I think I'll end up fixing it instead of buying a new one. Should be easy

 

Eating my words. Bought a few things from ACE to fix the problem, but found out pretty quickly that I couldn't extract the sheered dowel from the old cam gear. I think enough patience and the right tools, I could have gotten it. I have neither of those. I'm going to have to get the exhaust cam gear from a dealer tomorrow or possibly online.

Despite the lack of a cam gear, I did install the long block into the chassis (with the new clutch). I know timing is a lot easier out of the car, but I felt had to get at least something today.

Lastly, I wanted to take the time to say thank you to @jmyhre05 for his wise wisdom and help on the head stud washers, despite being super busy! I really appreciate it!!

Edit.. I was just thinking about it.. Does any one know the best way to prime the oil? The block i had was sitting for a while so it might be a bit dry. Plus the new pump is installed. I assumed pulling the spark plugs and cranking it over would be sufficient but wanted a second opinion.

 

You can pull the ignition fuse, otherwise my subarus you would hold the gas pedal to the floor while cranking and it wouldn't fire.

 

This is what I've always done and works well. Unhook the crank sensor so it won't try to squirt fuel or spark. Give it several long cranks...you should see your oil dummy light go off as you crank it. Some guys prime the oil pump with assembly lube before installing, but I've never done it that way.

 

Pretty much. I feel bad for the guy, answering questions from clueless newbs (myself included) all day.

 

Little update.

Feeling the pains of a used block last night. Was working on the car until about 2 when I discovered the accessory bracket bolt holes are less than ideal.. I need to pull the brackets off again and chase the threads.

I was so close to firing things up last night though. Before the intake went on I pulled plugs and cranked the block over to prime oil and I got 10 psi of pressure through the system. I also put a leak down test on cylinder 2 out of curiosity (and ease of access), and got about 5-10% loss.

My plan is to do a full leakdown and compression test after it runs and the oil has a chance to fully pressurize.

From a tuning standpoint, I actually decided to drop my dynamic advance ignition table to 0 (not DAM but the actual table itself), to prevent the ecu from adding timing while I do my health checks. I also lowered target boost and wgdc. Planning to drive through the tank of gas that's left and change the oil out of paranoia. Then I'll toss some 91 and check for knock.

Edit: stuck all of the parts I needed on and it fired right up! Gunna put the rest together tonight.

Edit 2. Drove the car tonight. Ran great except the first time around the block when I forgot to tighten the bpv. Other than that it looked normal on my monitors. This clutch is gunna need some getting use to..

 

So I went for a drive and threw a cel. Oddly enough it took 3 trips before it threw P0019, which is basically the LH exhaust cam gear is reading 34-37° while the RH gear is at 0-3°. I pulled the timing cover off and the intake and exhaust cam line up on the timing marks from what I can tell.

My car ran good while driving but it had a little hesitation and sounded a little different so this makes sense. My best guess is that the spring preload dowel on the LH cam broke off during the install like the right hand did during disassembling.

I don't think it's the position sensor since it's advancing avcs in parallel with the intake cam. I also don't think it's the physical timing since the intake on the driver side didn't throw a code and matches the intake angle for the other side.

Im hoping someone can validate what I'm saying makes sense.

Update: pulled the cover off the cam gear and it looked like the spring is rotated too far so my guess is its the dowel. Gunna spend more money. Whoohooo.... :/

Update 2: driving my old spare car (which is now my dad's) to bloomington subaru for the cam and the sparkplug shot out of the cylinder head. Turns out there's maybe 4 good threads holding it in. Having the worst luck right now. Not sure how to tell the farger, but luckily it was close to home so I ran back and threaded it in and opted for the girlfriends car.

 

Oil analysis came back a few days ago and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. The analysis showed almost no moisture or fuel and the viscosity was expected for the milage. The silver counts was high in the first two analysis done, but strangely dropped 1ppm.

It was surprising to see the copper was 10 times higher than my cars average but only 3 times higher than the universal average. The report suggests the person doing the analysis thought I reassembled the block and it still needed another flush as opposed to it being the oil from the failure... Maybe because the rest of the report looked good?

All and all, I'm not sure if the analysis missed the root cause or if I had done something wrong. As far as I'm concerned, the report isnt of use to me.

The car itself is running great but is definitely noisy. Might be due to something like a bracket being loose or the not stock clutch doing not stock clutch things. The top mount doesn't have the tgv guard to bolt up to so it's just hanging out. I might make a bracket or bend the existing one to fit that a little better.