04 STi Blown engine question
 

A friend of mine just had his 04 STi die on the freeway. The engine is dead, but we wont know the cause till tomorrow when the dealership is open.

Has anyone heard of this happening to others or is this an isolated incident?

thanks.

Car have any engine mods?

Haha, no none whatsoever. He drove it hard but kept up with maintenence and was respectful of the break in period. The idea behind no mods was not voiding the warranty. However, given that he had his fun with the car, I'm wondering if the engine will be under warranty. I'm guessing a new engine could easily run 9k for that thing.

one dumb person i knew also had a wrx. he raised the psi and put a blow off valve on it. one cold night the engine ran to lean (to much air, not enough fuel) and his engine got f'd up.

yeah that can happen if you are careless and play with the boost on FI cars. oh well.

theres only so many oxygen molecules a molecule of gas can bind with...

Warranty should cover it, unless they can prove he was using it for racing purposes. Hard to do with no engine mods...

I would sure think that the warranty would cover it. With no engine mods, the factory is going to have a hard time denying that claim.

Hmmm...this is sounding better for him. I read some post about an evo that was auto crossed then brought back to the dealership and they told him to fuck off more or less because he joined scca.

He called me earlier and bitched about his rented camry and how it makes him feel like "a plant that a dog pissed on"

Haha

and Im driving a 13 year old NA 91mr2.

hah.

thanks for the second opinions. ill keep this updated in case it can be useful in the future.

out of curosity what shop is he taking it to?

I believe he will be going to the Subaru dealer that he bought it from. He lives in Santa Monica and I swear I've seen it on his little license plate frame but its not coming to me.

I thought they built good strong cars.... I have never heard of one of thre engines blowing up!

I have, and every time it was because the boost was turned up too high on a cold day and it blew after running lean.

^^^^I've heard that's the main cause, and the WRX's have weak first gears... so don't launch them hard...

Oh well that will fuck up any engine:D

Hmm...dealership says it should be under warranty as long as he can produce documentation of maintenence performed. Still unable to get the exact cause of the engine failure. I hope to find out soon.

A lot of people take the car for more than it is. One of the biggest problem with using a boost controller on a WRX with the stock TD04 is that it is running at almost its maximum efficiency (FHI's engineers did a good job picking that turbo, that is probably why they design cars) and when they are asked to do more (18-20 psi) the have a tendency to spike in pressure. This "overboosting" (sometimes up to 25psi) is what destroys a lot of motors.

The temptation of cheap power is too much for people. I wonder if the people who claim the magic of cranking the boost on stock cars ever considered why it just didn't come that way from the factory.

Not to hijack the thread, another big cause of blown motors in these cars is bad gas. There have been several in cali. that have gone already because of the 91 octane out there.


edit: I just read my post and want to add that I drive a GDA and love the car. I just don't like when people (in general, not your friend) take "AWD rally car" to mean cheap dragster.

Finally, this has just been resolved. the story is this:
car shipped with ecu that was not set to run with 91 octane gas.
car was detonating a lot when it was first purchased.
octane booster was religiously used and finally ecu was replaced with the propper one.
turns out head gasket had been damaged from the prior detonation, coolant gets into oil, and then we get the sad ending.

so why did it take so long? get this:
subaru usa doesnt sell crate engines for the STi, so for two months subaru sent the dealership piece by piece for them to assemble a new engine for this car.

ultimately, everything was underwarranty as the cause was determined to be the improper ecu settings.

ps
not sure if the problem with the gas was actually too low of an octane rating or that we just have shit gas out here. both sound like good candidates to me, heh.

Yikes....that just gives me one more reason to buy domestic.

No replacement engines on the US shores at all from the factory OEM? That's down right neglectful. Can you imagine the hell GM would catch it somebody blew his LS1 in his Vette and was made to wait for weeks to get it fixed because they didn't have a replacement readily available.

Sent it piece by piece? I'd be calling every four hours, and somewhere between the third and fourth pistons, I'd fly to Japan and kick somebody's ass.