TLDR at the bottom. Here it is, the Perfect Storm (pstorm), named by my drunk friend one wintery day in 2005 after he noticed the various blues and white reminded him of the movie. 93 Impreza L AWD, 1.8l Auto with 160k, a WRX catback, and my Legacy Turbo rims. It ran quite well, but it was not my DD. About 2 years ago I did the tbelt, flushed the fluids, removed the WRX catback for a 2005 STi catback singletip and took it to school to become my new DD. Driving to Duluth, Thief River Falls, and Grand Forks all the time added up and i managed to get up to 190k miles without a sweat. Though, finishing up finals week last semester the pstorm started to drive sluggish. Then it got worse, and even got to a point of it not being able to idle at stops without killing. I try every bandaid I can, being OBD1 its not throwing any codes so I can't really pinpoint it. I finish up that semester and fill the pstorm up with all my crap to drive back to the parent's place, before I leave I check all the fluids and everything checked out fine. Taking 35 south from Duluth I am holding fine at 70mph when it starts to lose power... around Hinkley I start noticing that I am having to give it a lot of gas to keep it at 70, the AFR gauge is solid open loop and I'm getting worried that I won't be able to make it home. Get to Flake before I have the gas pedal on the floor and pstorm is holding at about 67mph, but now its starting to shake like its running on 3 cylinders (or less!) I get to 694 and 100% wot i can go 55mph, I crawl off my exit ramp and neutral drop the car home where it kills halfway up the driveway... kapoot 191000 miles. It sits there overnight and I check it out in the morning only to be greeted by an engine dumping raw fuel into the exhaust and running on 2 sometimes 3 cylinders with a very consistent metal clicking (not quite rodknock sound). I investigate! The culprit: see that key in the crank sprocket? see how its all mashed and warped? timing on the cams is off by about 1.5cogs from the crank.. that would explain a lot! Since the car is old and junky I dont want to rebuild it and buying a new crankshaft is not at all worth it imo. So I get my buddy's welder and do my best to weld it back on without removing the engine or radiator.. Why? because I was starting my summer job in 2 days and I needed it working ASAP. viola, there you have a disgusting looking cranksprocket. I had to grind out the inside of the pulley to be able to get it over the excess metal, but it seemed okay. Pulley did wobble a bit though, which might've been its ultimate downfall. Anyway, decided to do some body work since we had a lot of excess bondo and scrap metal. Here is a great picture for all the blues, and you can see the black spots which are primered bondo replacements for hand-sized rust holes. (notice no black plastic bump strip on the doors!) Well the car stayed this disgusting mix of colors all summer, I really didn't care. Had no issues with the welded crank all summer, until my last day of work. I actually turned it on in the parking lot to leave and noticed a slight knocking sound it drove okay though. It didn't make the sound while driving and seemed okay enough to go out that night. In the morning I start it up and o wow was it knocking bad... check the oil and it is still full, dirty, but full! Drive it to my parent's place and am having serious detonation issues over 3k rpm. I was really stressing out because my last semester was starting in a week. [YOUTUBE]_kEmhdSBnOY[/YOUTUBE] Ouchhhh, so I start taking it apart planning to rebuild it while looking for a new cheap shortblock. While disconnecting everything I notice that the driver front CV is torn and throwing grease all over. So, might as well fix that too! I don't think this axle nut has every been removed before, or it had been impacted on because I could NOT get it off with my dinky airgun. Enter the 5ft breaker bar: This picture doesn't do it justice, but I was able to spin the front tires while they were still on the ground with this before the nut finally released. Getting all that out and disconnected was not too bad. I unbolted the torque converter from the rear plate thing (mini flywheel? silly automatics) before removing the engine. It didn't matter though the torque converter decided to come out anyway and empty a lot of the transmission onto my parent's garage floor :ugh: so I put the torque converter, which was quite loosely hanging onto the engine, back into the transmission and starting cleaning all the ATF. There was probably 2 quarts worth With the mess cleaned up and the engine out, time to start taking it apart. I notice there is a lot of hay under my intake manifold, but didn't really notice anything crazy until I took it off: Is that some sort of nest? :laugh: I had a good laugh, before throwing it out and continuing on with my mission. Managed to get the heads off and noticed what was broken almost immediately. When I turned the engine by hand the back piston would sit at TDC a bit before it moved, aka there was a lot of play in the connecting rod. I remove the oilpan and find a lot of shavings, like if you would take a razor blade to aluminum. I stopped there for the day and went back to engine shopping. Found a 1994 "timing is bad" ej18 with 120k for 100$ from a salvage yard in southern MN, and called them in the morning to find out it was a front end collision victim and the subframe cracked the timing cover and hit the water pump pretty hard. I took the chance that the block was solid and nabbed it. I switched out the pulleys, waterpump, and most the nicer things from my engine to the newer one. Redid the RTV all around the engine, new valve cover gaskets and grommets, filler neck oring, and since the newer engine was from a yard it didn't have the AC pump on it. My old one was broken anyway, so I removed all the lines from the engine bay (-18 pounds!). Got the newer engine all pieced together that same day, and since the RTV needed some cure time I decided to sleep for a few hours. After a light breakfast, back in the garage. Engine is almost ready to go in! Finish up by double checking the RTV, and all the oil seals are good, then put the tbelt on and in it went. Connected everything together, filled it up with fluids and turned it over by hand a few times to make sure nothing crazy obvious was going to go wrong. Primed it several times and turned over for 5-8 seconds and it was running! Huge relief! Burped and topped off the coolant, topped off the ATF, double checked all the bolts, everything went better then expected! I was expecting to pay 300$ for an engine and parts, and only ended up spending about 200$ in parts/fluids/gas. I didn't replace the headgaskets because All the twincities dealerships couldn't get them in for several days, which was not going to work for my schedule So i spent a little bit of money to refit the car with a new paint scheme. My friend just bought a spray gun, and we had to test it out on the car. Satin black rustoleum from HomeDepot only took 5 quarts to do the whole car with 2.5 coats. And it was done, just in time for me to move back north. I am making small talk with my drunk friend and he insists the car is no longer the pstorm but the Sifi, and as much as I tried I couldn't get him to explain it to me. He said it had something to do with the SIck paint job and the way its a FIghter and never accepts defeat and avoids the junkyard at all costs. haha, he insisted I told the story. TLDR; Perfect storm was named because of its rattlecan blues, crank sprocket became loose so i welded it on, then the rod ate the bearing and wore out the crank so I got a new engine, but didn't spend a lot on it so I also painted it. The guy who named it Perfect storm also named it Sifi based on the SIck paintjob and the willingness to FIght to avoid the junkyard. Anyone want any parts from the old ej18 let me know, also have lines and pump for the AC! Also what color should the rims go? Gloss black/Blue/Silver/White/Black with blue lip? open for suggestions
wow nice job! as i said before, that is an amazing color, i may just have to borrow that color idea from ya.
