Victor L

Hi all,

If anyone can give me any bit os help/info it's be greatly appreciated!

Last night I was heading home in MY94 and allthough I didn't give it a thrashing - a go but not a thrashing - and I felt a loss of power and noticed grey smoke - quite a bit coming from the exhaust. Luckily I was near home so I nursed it back. I tried it this morning and it's running like a dog very shaky and still smoke, from the exhaust. I have to keep hitting the throttle to keep it alive of else it dies.

This happened suddenly and I'm worried. I can get it looked at but it means getting it around 70 miles away and don't want to cause more damage by driving it - so trailor???

Any help or info will be read thoroughly and very much appreciated...

Cheers

Victor.

Denz

this happened to me in a Seat Toledo 1.9 dieslel it turned out the head had cracked.

Im not an expert, so dont quote me on that !!

Hopefully im wrong!

Denz

Gerg2

Bummer.
When you say it runs shaky it sounds like its not running on all cylinders. If this is the case dont run the motor as you will do more damage. You may have to get it towed to be serviced.

I dont think its the turbo coz I've seen one let go and it blew white smoke in very copious amounts....but I could be wrong as it wasnt an Imprezza.

NEway as usual, hope its not too serious.

Moz

Has it been standing a while?
Mines been in the body shop for close on a month and when I picked it up today it was terribly jerky and lots of smoke, just seemed like damp to me.

popeye

I suffered a blown turbo on a Nissan Silvia I used to own years ago. The symptoms were blue smoke belching everywhere (far more so when idling), and running very lumpy. Dunno if this helps. Good luck anyway.

[This message has been edited by popeye (edited 06 October 2000).]

SeanT

This happened to me recently with MY93 WRX, and I had people saying it was the turbo, headgasket etc all of which were valid ideas, but it turned out to be the pipe between the intercooler and turbo had come away, I had the same symptoms as you have, lots of smoke very irratic and shaky idling and cutting out if not reved. I had no check engine light on either. So if youre intercooler has been removed recently check it.

Hope it turns out to be nothing

Sean

Blackscooby

Had smoke on 2 occaisions. One serious, one not.

Not serious (to wallet) ~ IC pipe blew off between IC and manifold. Lots of smoke, engine was running so rich that it choked its self. Would not rev watch so ever, hardly pulled.

Other occaision. Engine visibly shakes, loss of low down torque, no power below 4000. Tonnes of blue oil smoke on start up. Takes some starting. Turned out to be a cracked / holed pistion. Blew oil through the BOV and into the engine bay/

Those are my experiences anyway. I'm somewhat mechanically challenged so I wouldn't like to guess whats up.

Ta

Mark.

Pete Croney

Victor

To try and get something good to come out of this, can you please tell everyone how you got it to run at 1.15 bar.

I get asked if we chip WRX cars, all day long. When we recommend people to Bob Rawle for a fully remapped ECU and tell them that it will cost £1000 to £1200 they think we are taking the... (I think it is excellent value)

They then ring up XYZ who sell them £300 of boost controller or chip and bleed valve.

An engine swap or engine rebuild is normally over £2-3000, much more if uprated pistons, rods etc are fitted.

Please use this oppurtunity of saving others from the misery of such an event.

Victor L

Well I had a bit of time with the car at the weekend and found that it seemed to be firing on three cylinders. I took out the plugs and found that the top of one of the plugs (back left when facing the engine from the front) was gone - gone before the curve.

I tried to get plugs meant for a subaru but only managed to get iridium plugs. Put them in and found it to tick over an awful lot better but still slightly noisy and has a tendency to cut out every so often.

When taken for a spin there is hardly any power - you can take of slowly but it feels like I'm towing a trailor....

Any help suggestions of what it might be would be greatly appreciated. Sitting here worried.

Regards

Victor L.

Pete Croney

Victor, if the heat melted the plug, I would be certain that its has holed a piston too.

Victor L

Thanks to all of you who have helped with info/suggestions. Any more would be greatly appreciated. Any clues as to amount of work needed and ballpark figure for cost etc would also be appreciated. I'm going to try and sort someone who knows Subaru engines well to have a look but based in the west of Ireland I am hoping I'll get some info on who would be best from the Ireland - North and South forums.....

But any info on level of work and cost???

Victor.

Blackscooby

Victor,

Sounds very similar to what happened to mine. What boost are you running ?

Mine holed a piston, and sounds somewhat similar in symptoms.

Hope that it isn't though.

Mark

Victor L

Pete & Mark,

I was afraid that was what it might be - especially with the top of the plug gone. Boost cuts about 1.15 bar...

Did it cost much in £, time and effort to repair???

Victor.

Blackscooby

Victor,

I didn't replace the std UK pistons with Subaru stuff, but went for Cosworth pistons which cost about £800 + VAT. Plus the work to strip the engine etc.

At the time I was Sprinting mine so other work was performed as well so the final outcome was scarey.

Not sure how much time it would take to just rebuild the engine with new pistons. The worrying part was that mine was more than driveable at the time. The initial diagnosis was a knackered turbo, so we swapped the turbo and ran it again before we realised it was still poorly sick.

The worst bit was the stress of requiring it back for another event !

Cheers

Mark

Blackscooby

Pete,

To avoid undue misery and much wallet stress I've moved away from "bleed valves" to a more elegant solution. Fuel controller and boost controller installed and set up by DP Motorsport in Warrington.

I ran above 1.5 bar on my UK94 on a bleed valve, until low and behold it went "pop" and blew a piston. Only after blowing the IC off !!! See

Victor L

Pete,

Believe me, I am annoyed, gutted that it has come to this...

I got the car and there has been a lot of work done on it in Japan (quite a lot probably not even realised by the company who imported it).

I know there has been quite a lot of discussion regarding petrol and octane boosters etc and octane level of petrol - but a question that has been running through my mind - would/could I have avoided it if I tried to run it with 97 & octane booster to try and bring it near 100???

And to all who read this - it's soul destroying realising that you could have avoided getting yourself into this situation.

I am currently seriously considering the likes of a link system... But here in the west of Ireland not only means an outlay of £1,000-£1,200 but also travel, boat, travel ~ lots more ££.

It would be nice to think - well it's just a few hours drive away.

Victor.

pat

Victor,

there is a lot of speculation here with few hard facts. I think it's fair to say that it's still not clear why your engine is behaving in this way, and the first thing that you need to do is to stop using it (cynics may now point out that I should have taken heed of this advice myself, but that's another story entirely).

OK, you need to find out what has gone wrong. First step is to run a compression test. It's not big, it's not clever (you don't have to be a genius to do it) but it will answer some questions :-) You can buy a compression tester for the princely sum of about UKP 12-14 from Halfords. Remove all of the coil packs and the spark plugs (you obviously know how to do this, from comments above!) and unplug all of the injector control wires from the injectors (no point in flooding the poor thing!).

Now, one at a time, screw the compression tester into the cylinder head, crack open the throttle and crank the engine about 5 turns. Take a reading, write it down for later reference. Unscrew and redo this for each cylinder 2 or 3 times to be sure that you didn't have a leak or anything. Use the highest figures you have for each cylinder.

You should see figures between 140 and 170 PSI for each cylinder. If this is the case then the problem is not with a holed piston or a damaged valve (read: not as wallet unfriendly). If the one cylinder is reading low, then it's a big "ouch".

If you are low on compression on one (or more) cylinders, you may want to think about a replacement engine or a rebuild. In many cases it is cheaper to just buy and install a replacement engine (but you won't have a "known history"). Rebuilds are (if done "properly") about UKP 1800. Not wallet friendly but at least it will be a pukka job.

If there is no problem with the compression then there is probably a problem with the turbo. This is unusual since the MY94 cars had Mitsubishi TD05 turbos which are big and strong (read: difficult to break). But they can and do break, so you may be "lucky". You'de be looking at about UKP 200-400 for a replacement turbo. My gut feeling would be to buy an el-cheapo unit, which may have done (say) 100,000 miles, then send it away for a rebuild. The rebuild will cost less than 200 quid and you get new bearings and seals, so essentially a brand new turbo; the proviso here is that the wheels are OK and the shaft is not, err, shafted :-) Check and if any of these is damaged, send the turbo back as it's not "fit for the purpose". Basically you can get a "brand new" turbo and see change from UKP 400; not bad!

If the engine has gone, now is the perfect time to think about stronger internals. All depends on how long you intend to keep the car, of course. But I'de say that once you crack open the block (if you do go for a rebuild) then it'de be a sin to put back standard internals. Look at Cosworth, STi or Omega (WRC) pistons. Very nice, not cheap though.

AFAICT, the standard conrods are a poor design, they use a passive oil feed to the little end bearing (read: there's no pressurised oil feed to them!). You may like to get a set of rods with a proper oil feed. Places like Farndon Engineering, Arrow or Carillo can make excellent rods (you can even get titanium, but at UKP 400 a rod, you'de need to be seriously committed!). The standard crank isn't bad, it's good to about 400 BHP, but it is worth balancing it (will last longer at the same power, or same length of time at higher power). You may also want to look at reworking the oil feed to number 3 cylinder (the one that had the melted plug, they are notorious for running hot!).

Finally, get a good engine management system, a COMPLETE solution (which controls fueling, ignition and boost) so that the car may be setup safely once it is running again. It's not cheap, but it could save you a lot of grief in the future!

Hope this helps,

Pat.

Victor L

Pat,

Cheers for the detailed info and the time to put it here. Much appreciated....

Reads like a some show on TV about cooking up one hell of an engine.

Cheers

Victor.

ps. will post updates as I get them...

Victor L

Just of the phone with the guy I had look at it.

As everyone expected - low on compression for that cylinder. He had a look at the ECU as well and found that the original chip was plugged out and replaced with a board with two chips. Unfortunately, no markings to give an hints.

He has a similar job on at the moment, which gives me a few days to contemplate what path I take.

He has suggested that maybe reverting back to the normal ECU status and sorting the piston etc.

Now this is where I have many questions - i.e. Plans to go to Oz aren't that far away so a complete fork out of ££ for a dogs-blx rebuild seems nice but think lots of extra ££ could go elsewhere. This brings me to the likes of the Link - this would replace the 'board' in mine and make it more stable. Would a replacement engine, rebuild using standard parts or rebuild with a bit of life to it be the best option.

Time for a pint and a few days of deep thought. Who knows - birthday on Monday - might have to get myself an unexpected present considering the situation I'm in.

Again thanks to everyone who contributed info/thoughts/comments etc - please feel free to add more as the more informed I am the more of an informed decision I can make.

Regards

Victor.

jwhitton

You might also want to try a Motec ECU from Powerstation. I had a drive in their STi with one on it and can confirm it was a very quick car alebit with larger turob etc etc.

pat

Victor,

If you have an MY94 ECU then the odds are that no chip has been replaced. JECS left a socket, a 28 pin 0.6 inch pitch DIL, should it be necessary to alter the information in the ECU (since the microcontroller is one time programmable, so cannot be altered). In the event that a new control program / map was needed, they could drop in a special chip, the MBM27C1028, made by Fujitsu (but no longer made).

The MBM27C1028 was special in that it has a multiplexed 16 bit address and data bus, VERY unusual for an EPROM! Since they aren't made any more (and are SO unusual that there are no direct replacements!) tuners whoi want to "chip" this ECU will use a little mezannine board with two EPROMs, each 8 bits wide (and maybe a PAL or some sort of address latch).

Removal of a "chip" is easy. Just unplug (or desolder) it, then find "J1" on the board and reinstate it as a link (no reisitance, just a link). The ECU will revert back to its default map. Job done.

Seems that you're gonna have to split the block or buy another one. If you do split it, then it would be a shame to waste the opportunity to play. This will get expensive, and to get the most out of it, I'de suggest a good replament ECU mapped by a good tuner. If you just want to get it running again, it will be easier and cheaper to buy another engine and drop it in!

As far as ECUs go, I have yet to find the "perfect" one. None have everything I want (bar the Pectel T10, but not even I am crazy enough to spend seven thousand pounds on an ECU!) they all have good and bad or lacking features. Rough price guide... PossumLink about UKP 550+VAT, MoTeC M48 Pro UKP 1580+VAT, Pectel T6 UKP 1850+VAT, Pectel T10 UKP 7000+VAT, Bosch Motronic MS3.1 3100+VAT, Autronic UKP 1200+VAT. All will require fitting and mapping. Some are straightforward to fit, some are a real pain (to the extent of going from negative swithing to positive switching, ie rewire the whole engine!). All are complete solutions (unlike HKS FCON-V or Unichip) and will control every aspect of the engine's operation.

Cheers,

Pat.