So with that being said, Thanks for attempting to get me to listen. Just bought the car and put just a little over 3,000 miles and had a miss and oil and coolant consumption. Checked the compression on the 34,xxx mile engine and low and behold..... 60 psi in the #4 cyl. 130 in the #2. Soooooooooooooooooooo no reason to check all of them as it is for now and large paper weight. At least after all this, I will have 2 turbo's!!
This was before me, so what happened before? That sucks to hear though, I cant imagine how i'd feel if that happened to me
Not sure what you mean? I (personally) feel somewhat helpless. It is one of those "patience" moments. Big deep breath, and another..... one more for good measures. Naaa didn't help. Just p!$$ed. So now have to get her fixed asap. It what it is and will be what it will be.
I wasn't clear before sorry, I just assumed, since I haven't been here long, that maybe something happened before I came on here, and this happening is the result of that...
No worries. Bought the car up in moorhead, had 30,xxx miles on it. Thought the turbo was going out. Apparently I am suffering from ringland failure.
30 grand seems really low for something like that...factory defective or just beat on? Regardless, that really sucks. Do you have another car to drive for now?
Yeah, from what I have seen on Google (thanks Nuke), it can happen whenever it feels like it. Some cars with mod's go 80,000, other's go 1,000. Even stock car's are having this issue with a wide range of mileage. Either due to a bad tune, being beat to death or poor craftsmanship. I am by no means a subie expert. Not even a generalist.
The new setup never happened. I bought all the stuff and completed the install of the turbo and dp. Took the old hks dp up to Matt at RS motors (sold it to him). Talked with him and he realllllllly encouraged me to do a compression test. Figured everyone yelling compressoin test, there had to be some legitimacy to it. So, I was hoping to prove everyone wrong. Now I am being proven wrong. I should have listened to everyone at the begining. Could have saved me a turbo and such. Hence the title.
If I didn't have to work I'd come down and help/ watch the game with you... Sorry to hear that... Plus side essentially new motor, new turbo.
It's all good. Have a Vf-39 for sale $2800, have some slightly used wrx 565cc injectors for sale also..... a steal at $800!!
Ringland failure CAN happen at any time on the 2.5's. Idget's STi died at like 7,500 miles. I am praying that my block will be blessed with high mileage like my 2.0.*fingers crossed* Sorry to hear about the damage, i know it's a set back...but keep your head up! Things will work themselves out for you, i have faith! I honestly wish that Subaru would take responsibility for this. They sould at the very least stop selling ALL shortblocks from the dealerships until they resolve the issue. I would have rebuilt my 2.0 if i would have really known about how bad the 2.5 was/is. Or at least tried to come up with extra cash to go aftermarket on the pistons and other internals.
Have (2) 18gxt and a vf-39, not going to sell either since, I wont get what I have in the blouch and the vf is still good so no reason in selling that for change.
While I agree that stock cars should not fail like that I don't think the picture we see on the interweb tells the whole story. I'd be willing to bet those folks with stock cars didn't drive them very conservatively while having some some bad gas, or while extremely warm, or while bouncing off the rev limiter, or while pulling WOT in 5th a time or two. The issue isn't with the blocks or pistons, it's with knock. 04-06 had the same pistons as the 07+ cars and they didn't have near the issue the 07+ cars did.
Is it just me or does some of these coments contradict each other? I am sure that I could sit here and tell you how my driving isnt aggressive or that I don't do 100mph pulls with 4- 300 pound people in the car. Would it matter? I'm sure that most of what I say will be disreguarded and any attempt to get the one's that have never had this happen to understand the feelings of ridicule when speaking about this issue is minutiae. What is below is my personal take on what I have seen and my little experience with my subaru. I am sure I will get bashed but it is difficult to believe that just subaru has issues like this and the only reasoning is related to bad tunes or bad gas or actually driving your stock car. I'm not talking about a huge turbo on a stock longblock. The copious amounts of ringland failure with the wide range of mileage and even mods, leads me (but who am I) to believe that there is more to this than just a tune or bad gas. Running a cylinder too lean will cause pistion failure, I have even seen rings melt but to hear about this much premature failure would have me concerned. Do I expect anything to change from this? No, it is however about my car so I feel entitled to chime in. Driving a vehicle conservatively is for good gas mileage and longevity. When I purchase a car, any car, I expect a reasonable amount of reliability and longevity. It is the job of the cooling system that the vehicle has to properly cool the engine and components under any normal driving conditions, this includes going wot in 5th gear. It is the job of the ecu and its tune to pull timing to combat knock. To not do this shows an issue with design. Who here really expects to buy a vehicle from the factory and then take it to a tuner so it will run better and safer?? If I spent 40k on a chevy corvette or 4k on a ford escort, I dont expect ringland failure from the above listed responses. This should be one of the strongest components in the engine. I ran one of my previous car for 130,ooo miles and then turboed it for another 40,000 miles. Never had any ring or ringland issue. I may only be 34 but my hx of vehicle ownership has never lead me down a path that involved ringland failure as much as it has been thrown at me about this car. With that being said, with any new addition to my garage, I enjoy learning as much as I can and also enjoy actually driving my car's. If it comes to light that this is not the type of car that enjoys that, I will move on. As for now, I will fix it and do what everyone else does and cross my finger's and toe's and arm's and leg's that this is just a one time event. It has been a responsibility of mine that I personally take care of my car's and do the maintenance to them. It hasn't let me down so far, hope this is just a small speed bump. rant over, not even worth .02
I didn't say it was just gas related but if you are running a tune that's close to the edge (stock for example) and get a tank of gas that isn't up to snuff and push it hard (such as high gear wot pulls) then guess what happens? Do more reading and you'll see some of the bigger national names in built blocks tell you the same thing. Replacing blocks and pistons isn't addressing the problem of why it's happening to begin with, knock.
I didn't either. So you take a showroom floor car and run it on a dyno to test, lets say the transmission, this is supposed to cause "knock"? Ending in engine failure. Sorry hard to keep up when you keep editing your post. lol So your assuming that I, who have continously admitted to knowing very little about subaru's, am going to just throw some pistons into a block and turn the key? You ever bought a 18,000 dollar car, drove it off of a car lot and then have it blow up 3k miles later and be told that I should have had it TUNED after leaving the dealership? Just wondering
I guess I'm not sure what you are getting at or what you are objecting to. The original post I quoted was to say that the block (or pistons) isn't the cause of the ringland failures. If it was the 04-06 STIs would have had the same issues. Beyond that you seem to be doing a good job of confusing yourself.
Yeah that is what I am doing. Your right. Confusion is the key. No its a tune. Or bad gas, or 5th gear wot pulls. Now it's block or pistons. What ever am I to do.
Too much? Funny though..... right? lol I started this to inform everyone I should have listened about the compressoin test. This wasn't to get everyone on a ringland failure debate. I personally don't care what caused my car to fail. It shouldn't have happened. I will see soon enough what the problem is.
Well then this will really twist your head. A compression test won't always tell you that your ringlands are cracked. There's been plenty of folks that pull the pistons out after #4 goes only to find that another had a cracked ringland as well and tested fine.
My comment was based off of what Matt(Bikerboy) told me at RS Motors when i decided to buy a stock 2.5 block instead of building one. And i trust him more than anything that i read on the internet. He stated that "It is not a case of 'IF' they fail, it is a matter of 'WHEN'?" I don't drive my car like a d-bag and had Ronnie tune the car conservatively and this is still what Matt was telling me. The ringlands FAIL...period. But, it is what it is. Either "build" the block, or take the risk.
Let's just put it this way. I was going to buy the more expensive evo x but ended up buying an 07 sti and putting away the 5k difference for when the motor let go.constant data logging and monitoring... tune at 50 miles. Custom tune after a conservative break in... What I've heard about the ecu's variable maps and knock correction strategy, combined with the piston material, cylinder pressure/temp, and the massive swings in temperature we see up here convinced me to expect a rebuild early. Id be surprised if there aren't hundreds of cars running around with cracked piston crowns or ringlands that don't even realize it. Power loss can beanywhere from negli gible to undeniable depending on where the crack originated and how far into the ring seats it propogated. You could liken it to the vf39 cracked wastegate flapper housings.
Draw your own conclusions. To me, when one of the top block builders for Subaru's tells you that their block isn't the fix that says something. Sure, forged pistons will most likely prevent ringlands from cracking in the future when the stockers would have but you still aren't addressing the actual problem of what's making them crack in the first place. And yes, when the stockers go it only makes sense to drop in forged. But until they go you might as well do your best to keep them around as long as you can.
This is your documentation? Everything that you posted show's that Subaru has a large part in the reason for the failures. You contradict yourself with what you have posted above. Changing the pistons isnt the answer...... Changing the pistons and a good tune is the answer. Either way, I ask that you stop with your frivolous postings in this thread, start your own if you like. This is just to document what is wrong with my car. It appears that all you want to do is bash other's opinions. I am not interested in what caused it as much as I am ensuring it doesn't happen again.
If you call me expressing my opinion bashing someone else's then by all means that's what I did. The only person making snide comments is you. Go figure. Try reading that all again. Then notice I quoted Crawford and and another vendor. I didn't say those things so it's impossible for me to contradict myself. Read the rest of what you bolded, "if you do pistons and no tune then yes you are not really fixing the problem...". That statement and the others I quoted are saying the same thing I've said since the first post, fix the knock. Good luck.
Feel free to delete the garbage, mine and his. Would like a clean thread. Just waiting to hear back and see what the damage is.
