I have a few friends that are convinced the engines are great as long as you deal with the few problem areas for a given year (like the valve springs on yours) and then something about a tune that gets rid of the lean areas. I knew it was an issue on the turbo cars, but they insisted that fattening up the fuel in a few spots (and maybe lowering redline?) made the motors bulletproof. I wasn't convinced that fixing a stock car so it would be as reliable as my Honda/Miata sounded good, but they were at least somewhat convincing.
i know in track conditions brz/frs's love to wipe cam bearings but i think that is just a subaru thing.
In reply to MrChaos :
Do they have cam bearings or just journals in the head?
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
Interesting- any chance they could pass along their source for the "just don't blow up" tune?
mazdeuce - Seth said:
In reply to MrChaos :
Do they have cam bearings or just journals in the head?
sorry i meant wiping the cams from oil starvation in the heads
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
I don't have that info. And all of my BRZ type contacts are people I talk to at autocross and that doesn't happen any more. When we get back to that I'll chat them up and see what I can find.
Consider Nissan 240SX at all? Drift/import tuning hype definitely drove up prices and destroyed a lot of nice cars. I know you have the BRZ, just curious on thought process.
In reply to turtl631 :
The 240sx could actually be a really good platform- the rear suspension is a little wonky but everything else seems pretty decent and there are certainly a lot of engine options. I think a few people rally them successfully too, but as you mentioned the constant upward price trajectory is a pretty big deterrent, and it's getting difficult to find a clean shell to start from.
Hard to argue with $50 wheel sets. Looking forward to watching this come together. "BRZs" make cool rally cars.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:
In reply to turtl631 :
The 240sx could actually be a really good platform- the rear suspension is a little wonky but everything else seems pretty decent and there are certainly a lot of engine options. I think a few people rally them successfully too, but as you mentioned the constant upward price trajectory is a pretty big deterrent, and it's getting difficult to find a clean shell to start from.
honestly at this point its cheaper the buy an imported auto s13/14 or non turbo sr20 than it is to find a clean 240. There is a 240 that runs at TVR region fairly successfully. this car 
which won the Southeast division for SR and got 4th or 5th at nationals last year
MrChaos said:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:
In reply to turtl631 :
The 240sx could actually be a really good platform- the rear suspension is a little wonky but everything else seems pretty decent and there are certainly a lot of engine options. I think a few people rally them successfully too, but as you mentioned the constant upward price trajectory is a pretty big deterrent, and it's getting difficult to find a clean shell to start from.
honestly at this point its cheaper the buy an imported auto s13/14 or non turbo sr20 than it is to find a clean 240. There is a 240 that runs at TVR region fairly successfully. this car
which won the Southeast division for SR and got 4th or 5th at nationals last year
That's our old venue at Frostburg. at the 2016 East Coast championships. They came to the 2017 East Coasts as well. Won SR both times, as I recall - though I felt kind of bad for them coming all that way and then SR class was basically them and a local guy in a Volvo 240 who they crushed. I was hoping they'd bump up to PR. If they had, they would have finished 4th in that class right behind three very fast drivers (moxnix, Jeremy Sitar, and Chris Helgeson). So that's saying a lot since gravel tires were way faster than snow tires at that venue. Logan is definitely a fast driver.
That year was crazy in MR at East Coasts. The top four in that class finished with a total spread of like 1.1 seconds over 12 runs. I managed to jump John England on the final run and got him by 3/10ths - and then he went on to win nationals that year by like 1/10th of a second! I think that year we had 5 or 6 drivers in that class who had previously or would be in the future on the podium at nationals in MR.
Oddly enough, looking back at the results, I don't see Chris entered with the Gravel-Machinegun-Mustang. Why weren't you there that year?
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
Chris showed up after buying the Merkur and picked up a 13b from me at that event.
EvanB (Forum Supporter) said:
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
Chris showed up after buying the Merkur and picked up a 13b from me at that event.
Good memory! I didn't recall that it was that specific event , just remember he showed up at Frostberg with it. Then again, we did a lot of events there.
irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:
EvanB (Forum Supporter) said:
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
Chris showed up after buying the Merkur and picked up a 13b from me at that event.
Good memory! I didn't recall that it was that specific event , just remember he showed up at Frostberg with it. Then again, we did a lot of events there.
I remember that. It was the first event I had my e30 back running at with the m52, too.
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
That weekend was the most that I ever overloaded Chief- by the time I got home I had the Merkur, several sets of wheels and tires, all of the spares that came with it, three differentials, and two engines.
I took some measurements so that I have something to work on while the car is stuck at the dealer for who-knows-how-long:
I'm not planning on doing anything I couldn't have done with cardboard and tape but when the opportunity to use a computer instead presented itself I jumped on it.
Now I have to put the car back together and get it to the dealer.
Well, it's out of my hands now. Yes, I drove a little further to get that parking space:
I'm nervous, to be honest. This is totally alien to me.
you priced long blocks or junkyard engines yet?
In reply to MrChaos :
$2500 appears to be the lowest "I need this to work when I drop it in, and I need it today" price that I see for used engines with warranties. Cut that in half for engines I would need to go through before installing, and cut it in half again for really messed up ones. The engine that's currently in the car certainly seems salvageable so in all likelihood I would try to fix whatever is wrong with it instead.
To be clear, I'm not nervous about it potentially needing an engine- 10 days ago I thought that I was going to have to pull the whole thing apart and figure it out myself, and that didn't bother me. I'm nervous because I've handed the thing off to a new car dealership, which is the sort of place I never step foot in, much less hand off any work to. They have a phone message, a checked box on a form, and a hand written note all saying to call me before performing any additional work that falls outside of the scope of the recall, but I'm still irrationally worried about getting screwed somehow. This isn't necessarily because I think anyone involved here is out to get me, it's just that I'm acutely aware that this is a part of the car world I have no experience in.
They will find something else wrong beyond the warranty work, I'm curious to see what they find.
Got a package from Gartrac!
For whoever needs to know this, mk2 Escort top mounts have the same bolt pattern as FRS/BRZ ones give or take 1/8"
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
What brand/size are those springs? The 2.5" id eibachs I have fit really loose on my perches but those look nice.
In reply to Nesegleh :
2.25"ID springs from Gartrac's site as seen here. I figured the extra bit of clearance up front wasn't a bad thing, and an adapter for 2.5"ID should be easy enough if I decide to go with those instead.
Update from the dealer: they did their assessment, went "oh boy that sounds not-awesome," and sent the info and a video to their field engineer, who apparently gets to determine and dish out anything from "do the valve springs per recall and touch nothing else" to "new engine" to "tell this guy to berkeley off" so we're now waiting on that assessment. Talking to the service guy on the phone, he seems to fully understand where I'm coming from and seems to think at worst I'm going to get everything back with the recall performed and the noise at least somewhat diagnosed. I'm hopeful.
