BRZ Rally Car

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

I'm buying enough that I should be able to do the front cover and oil pan on the new engine, and have enough left to rebuild the entire original engine.

The manual says to put the sealant on the cover, and I'm trying to trust the manual this first time.  We'll see how it goes, the "upside" to the order I'm going in is that the engine needs to come out again when I do the big suspension changes so I'll have a good opportunity to check my work.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

The parts harvest from the old engine has begun:

 

Apparently the guy who removed the 2016 engine I'm picking up bashed the front cover into something and cracked it- this gets me a discount but also means I need to reuse the old one.

They sure did use a lot of bolts to hold the front cover on:

 

I'll have to clean this extremely thoroughly:

 

And eventually this too:

this photo alone sums up why I don't do boxers... or any piston engine really. I am really bad at timing chains and cam timing setup. Luckily with the rotary it only goes together one way so I don't have this headache

looking at the back of audi V8s though may as well be art, look but don't touch...

In reply to fidelity101 (Forum Supporter) :

Agreed, Subaru engines are just ridiculous.

And one want to be extremely careful gluing that cam cover back on, sealer intrusion into the engine was one of the leading reasons for the Valve Spring recall to go bad and wipe out the bearings.

In reply to NOHOME :

I understand about the sealant, that's why this one has an oil pan full of sparkly bits- somebody got crazy with the RTV and plugged stuff up.

Subaru engines are ridiculous, but so is nearly every other engine in some way.  Point me to a "perfect" engine so I can put one in everything, please! 

IRON DUKE!

GOBLESS

I like the Beams swapped BRZ.

MrChaos said:

I like the Beams swapped BRZ.

thats what it should have been always. even the alfamiata got to keep an alfa engine...

In reply to fidelity101 (Forum Supporter) :

Alpha Miata? Think you mean fiat Miata. 

Wonder if Mazda/fiat saw the brz reception with two manufacturers selling the same thing, and thought better of it. Kinda wonder the market results if they would have come out with a reliable Toyota motor for the thing. But as we've seen with supra, Toyota fired all of their engineers years ago. 

Engine in the corner of shame:

I'll stick the bad cover on it to keep stuff out of it after I get the new engine.

Per Seth's advice, made some alignment pins- turns out Merkur CV bolts are the same thread and I have plenty:

Do yourself a favor and cut a slot in them so you can use a screwdriver to get them out. It's easier than grabbing them with pliers. Not that I've had a moment of panic when I thought I couldn't get one out or anything. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to NOHOME :

Point me to a "perfect" engine so I can put one in everything, please! 

M20B27. Doesn't even need oil according to prior experience

Dont know how I missed this!! Following along :D

New engine has arrived!

So the "cracked front cover" consists of some damaged sensors and a cracked off mounting boss, which let a cam position sensor come loose and leak:

As far as I can tell there's nothing else that would leak if I make it possible to bolt the cam position sensor back on.  Would I be a total idiot if I tried to JB weld this little threaded chunk back on and run it without ever removing the cover?

(Adding picture edit)

Dont. Check it out properly. Lot less work of you're wrong or the engine is damaged somewhere else. Also, will that void warranty?

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :

The warranty language is very fuzzy, probably intentionally.

I would vote to JB weld it on and run it as-is, it's only a couple minutes to pull it back out if it doesn't work right?

It's coming back out when I do the strut towers...

Ooh, considerably healthier looking oil pan on this one:

JB weld, chase thread, done

I suspect the JB weld will eventually give way to the force of the bolt in those threads and/or the bold will never seat tightly.  You'd probably need to weld weld it to get it to be stable.  But, if the worst that can happen is the cam sensor comes loose again and leaks oil all over the place, I don't really see the issue.  

The factory RTV is incredibly resilient- I think I've got my scrapers technique down now though.  For little grooves, a cut ziptie end is the perfect tool!

I would probably JB Weld it, then run a couple of cute 1/8" roll pins in at slightly different angles through the meat surrounding the threads.

So the cam sensor has an o-ring and is a press fit into the hole because of it.  It really just needs to be held in so it can't vibrate out- how about I hold it in with something else?

There are a few bolts right near it- if I grind the corner off of this extra wiring bracket from the other engine I can do this:

Hmm.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

You are reading my mind. Hang a bracket off the nearest bolt Make it so that you can have a threaded hole and use a bolt to push on the sensor .

or if the sensor can stand to be rotated. relocate the hole

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

That looks pretty close to me.

Speaking from near total ignorance on the Subie engines - would there be the possibility of making a gasket for that timing cover?  Seems like someone might have tried that.