Well it certainly wasn't my driving. My abusive, merciless driving.
NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz after Apollo 13 suffered its catastrophic oxygen tank explosion which wiped out the fuel cells and other vital systems: "So what do we got left on the spacecraft that's good?"
Here's the bad news: Our crankshaft is bent. A good twenty thousandths, the shop said. There's no grinding that away.
The good news is that a new crank isn't exorbitantly expensive. We got one shipped from MyImportParts.com for $330. And since we're replacing the crank, there's no sense in resizing the rods. Our stock Subaru rods were supposedly serviceable if the shop were to resize them.
No, to accompany a new crank we figured we'd stock up on everything for the rotating assembly: Manley Performance Sport Compact H-beam connecting rods and Manley pistons, which come with Total Seal rings. We got our ACL race bearings from IPG Parts, who recently also helped us troubleshoot our yellow Miata.
In fact, the only thing that's not getting replaced in this shortblock is the engine case itself—and even that's getting overbored, because it's beyond its out-of-round spec.
To seal everything up, we got a complete StreetPro gasket set from Cometic, including their multi-layer steel head gaskets. By the time we're done with this, we should have no more reliability problems—at least from an engine internals standpoint.
Our first crankcase fill will be with Maxima Racing Oil's break-in formulation. We'll follow that up with their RS synthetic motor oil.
Stay tuned to see what caused all these problems in the first place.
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I thought this thing was for sale? Glad to see it sticking around, will it more boost now?
We might add boost, but it would require a bigger turbo. 18 psi is all the stock turbo could muster. We'll cross that bridge after the car is up and running reliably. Currently, the goal is to build it and make sure everything's in good, working condition before we go any further.
Oh, and the Subaru that was for sale was our other, non-turbo Impreza wagon:
http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/project-cars/2000-subaru-impreza-wagon/selling-our-subaru/
This beast is taking you guys to task... But I am glad you guys are doing it right.
After seeing this engine...are we sure more boost is the way to go? I mean, the crank was bent...
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