HI SOOB

I have a 3 month old WRX thats puting out 297bhp at the flywheel. There is a Blitz front mount,larger turbo and Unichip, plus decat and induction kit.
the trouble is that its blown the second engine in a space of a month.
I have now been told by some tuners that I need bigger injectors/fuel pump and others say forged pistons and stronger rods.

The problem I have been having prior to the recent failure is that when under acceleration at around 70mph on fifth gear it feels like the engine is coming on and off the power ever so slightly, its not a nice even pull up the rev range. I was told by the mappers that it could be to do with the piping and larger turbo and also when I let the trottle off slowly you can hear a chatter through the induction kit. When this happens the car "jolts", almost like the throttle is opening and shutting when backing off.

The long and short of it is, the garage are wanting to replace the engine with a stock WRX engine again. They are going to stip the blown engine and try to detemine cause of failure. I have sourced a spec C (sti9) bottom end thats out the box new for£800. This will be stronger and providing the mapping is done correct it will be perfect.

SO, was it/ is it ever possible to get 300hp safely from the standard WRX. No uprated injectors or internals, just stock block.?????

HI SOOB

Dark Blue Mark

280bhp would be achievable with a TEK2/3 and a full decat. 300bhp with different turbo etc.

What was the mode of failure on the engine? Was it piston melt, or broken rods etc?

The trouble is, it sounds like you dont know the history of the mods and who did them? Simple answer is to get it to a "reccomended tuner" with a rolling road, and get it anaylysed. You need to go through the mods and their setup piece by piece, to see whats been done, then get someone to analyse the map on the Unichip.

Good luck!

MB

john banks

My MY00 UK block which is nigh on identical to your WRX block did 406 BHP without a complaint and was sweet when removed.

It is all in the tuning, the right parts and caring for the motor.

I did have larger injectors but that is not relevant to bottom end integrity whatsoever - they can be changed by an amateur in their own garage in quicksticks. Marginally more difficult than changing plugs.

HI SOOB

MB I don't know the cause yet. It is being spriped tomorrow. Your right too, I just got the car two weeks ago and the previous owner had the mods fitted and blew up with hi too. The car is only 3 months old and covered 6000 miles!I dont know the turbo model it was from G force, thats all i know.

John, you are in my neck of the woods from what I know, I'm near Perth , I know you are further north. It was Dastek who mapped it, they seem good and don't doubt it. I just wanted to know if 300 was good from the WRX and to find out what road to go down when re building.

HI SOOB

john banks

There is little point in incurring labour charges to strip the block if you are just fitting another which is usually the cheapest method. I'm in Fife.

300 BHP from a WRX engine is trivial and should not even tickle its structure.

If you are getting something going so horribly wrong that it is destroying engines so quickly with so little power, the answer is not to put tougher parts in the engine but find out the reason why this keeps happening! This is not normal, and is not a consequence of merely running 300 BHP, these engines can take far more than that. Almost every engine failure is not related to running too much power IMHO!

hacmeister

Hi Hi hoob,

I have had similar problems before, and in total had three engines let go.

1st was my MY99 uk car which did No3 big end at 36k.

2nd was my Sti V which did No3 piston 1 week into ownership. (faulty AFM)

3rd was same car and straight after rebuild by garage! (same faulty AFM)

I think John is right, its all in the tuning and combination of the correct parts.

Best advice I can offer (for what its worth) is to get it checked out by a tuner before you use any boost. Fitting a Knocklink is something I would also reccomend, if ya dont already have one...

I had a nightmare until I had the car checked/tweaked by a 'tuner' prior to and on the rolling road.

Since then no problems after a further 35k miles, well gearbox has let go so I have a six speed comin.

Hacmeister

nom

It's unbelievable that these garages don't understand the faulty MAF problem. I mean - how can they miss it?

Also...hmm... methinks the mapping might be a crock of ****e. Sounds to me like they didn't bother looking at what the fuel is doing - as in: is there any?
I don't suppose you have any monitoring in there, do you? AFR, knock, etc.? You shouldn't need it if it's set up properly, but it doesn't sound like that's the case!

dowser

Replace engine and get it mapped/checked by a decent tuner (ie; not the one used so far), there is no excuse for allowing this to happen and a decent tuner would see the fault or correct their mapping that is causing the failure.

My advice would also be to dump the Unichip in favour of an EcuTek remap of your existing factory ECU. As John mentions above, 300 hp is no problem for the hardware - but detonation is......

Richard

Butty

iTrader: (2)

Soob,
To give a bit more help, I think we need to know stuff like:

On what terms was the car bought with this level of "tune"?
If from a garage then surely it has a warranty - all this hassle you're going to should be in their court.
If bought privately then the liabilities are all yours (as you were aware of the previous blow up) and you need to get to a recommended tuner. Those ones saying injectors/fuel pump, con rods etc over the telephone are bull$hitters.

In either case, an analytical investigation of the car is needed. There is no easy fix over SN, just helpful and intelligent advice but done without seeing the car in the flesh.
You really need to get your garage (if its in their court) or you to see a recommended tuner to sort this kind of grief out.

Nick

Floyd

iTrader: (9)

I've read that a lot of people have had high load hesitation, even on standard engines let alone remapped (EcuTek) ones. I seen it on several cars, 5th gear 2800 rpm, full throttle and they pull but not smoothly. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the maps as AFR was green and no Knock lights.

I assumed it was a Scoob 'thing'.

F

nom

It seems to be a Scoob 'thing' on cars that use the MAF

More likely to be a MAF thing - I have read (elsewhere, ie not from the ScoobyNet 'font of knowledge' ) that the poor little hot wire gets very confused when the pressures are flapping about the 'equal' state (ie at spool-up) as the air sort of doesn't know where it's coming from... causes interesting MAF values & so 'interesting' fuelling.
Can lead to all sorts of peculiarities. It's the which led me to think something more sinister was afoot that the usual MAF tendencies at spool.
One thing to discount - the shudder & chatter when gently releasing the accelerator can lead to some BOVs not picking up on the pressure change, ie not dumping, so the air blocked by the throttle plate gets rammed back through the compressor wheel, causing the chirpy noise. Shouldn't harm the engine per se, but not too good for the turbo, especially if it's an IHI unit

ZIPPY

Floyd,i had a TEK 3 done on my MY01 which was running 292 BHP and it didnt like full throttle too quickly one little bit,it would boost eratically but if you held back until the boost had built slightly then gave it some WOT it pulled 1.25 bar all day.

All the Ecutek 3 cars i've driven have this hesitation problem but you learn to drive around it.

I showed this to Pat after it was mapped and was told 'they all do that' i believe Bob Rawle was trying his best to map out this problem.

Pete Croney said he cured it by over compensating his fueling on a specific map but his consumption hit the floor.

Zippy

jimsmy

I had similar symptoms when my engine (MY99) blew due to a faulty MAF. It felt like hesitation on hard acceleration but was actually massive detonation.

Regards,
Jim

EMS

It´s probably mixture (LEAN!) related, as your new age car runs standard injectors and fuel pump........ I am maxing out the standard injectors already with a standard turbo to achieve a decent mixture. Running a big turbo requires the use of bigger ones.

Mark.

skydiver

Its defently the mixture.
You must upgrade your fuel pump (walbro or sytec) and try to find four injectors from STI RA (subaru code 16611AA370).

HI SOOB

This is making for a good case here mateys. The car was purchased from a garage who sold the car when new 3 months ago, and it blew the first time with the previous owner. It has full throttle gear change and launch control and they put it down to the fact that the owner was using the FTGC when it blew up(he admitted it). I am happy to do as much research as I can to learn more on the subject, the garage are not 100% clued up an what spec to build to and are also not wanting to just throw another engine in and blow it too. The mappers are not holding their hand up, and I'm not saying they should, but unless there is something obvious when the engine is striped, then I dont know what to do.
When some of you are mentioning the MAF, what do you mean by faulty? When the unichip is unpluged and run on factory ECU there is no code showing a fault. I know there is no code because only a few days prior to the engine going I put her back in to have a running fault checked out. What happened was when I gave her a little stick out of a junction and made her work up to fourth gear then eased off, all was fine, but when I went to accelerate again the engine went rough and almost went onto a limp mode and would not boost/rev up. If I accelerated very gently then I could make a little progress.
I had to wait a day till they could look at it. They said all they could think of was an oxygen sensor. They fitted one but said it showed no change. They were unable to book it into the mappers but said it would be ok to drive her. So I got the car back( i needed it for work) and awaited the call to tell me they wanted the car to go to get checked by the mappers. The car seemed to run better when i picked it up but was still poor under load. On cold start the idle was up and down but ok when hot. The rest you all know. Changing gear at aprox 6250/6500 into 5th and rattle, game over.

Its begining to sound more and more like a map problem as most say the engine is good for it, apart from the fuel side.

By the way the turbo is an SR 30 from G-Force. Spoke to the todayand they say its good for 330/340bhp. Roller bearing. It ran 1.2 bar

HI SOOB

Meant to say that no I dont have any info in car. Got the afr meter from the old car to go in and the boost gauge. What is the Knocklink benifits?
Sorry, can understand and build engines but electronics loose me.

hacmeister

Knocklink gives a visual indication when there is detonation or 'unusal' engine noise.

Fitted mine when second engine rebuilt and showed massive detonation.

Wished id had one first time round!

Think BRD do one, got mine from JW racing...

HI SOOB

Still waiting for garage to srtip engine!!!!

nom

The engine strip will probably show that something wasn't right, but I doubt it'll produce any information of any use! Too many engines have been stripped in the past & come up with useless information. Always, obviously, the driver's fault... one blew - apparently - because the driver had the audacity to remove his foot from the accelerator when on the motorway. Oooooo, how could he have done such a thing:
It'll be det related in some form, most likely. But many things can cause det. Typicals are: using the wrong fuel; failing MAF; bad map (so too much boost, too little fuel or too much advance). With a standard UK car, it's the MAF. With a JDM, it's either failing MAF or more typically, the wrong fuel. With a modified car, a lower standard of fuel used than was mapped for, or a failing MAF if the MAF is still in use (as it is with a unichip), or bad mappers. Normally it's bad mappers, as a good mapper will point out the potential weakness of the MAF to the client, and the fuel to be used, and also have AFR & knock meters fitted so they can be monitored... Also, they will typically run the car on too little fuel with too much boost and too much advance just so they can provide you with a piece of paper with a big BHP number on it, & couldn't care less about the longevity of the car.
Hence the highly-booked nature of places such as BRD who know what they are doing

Simon Lines

Hi All

I have to agree with JB, 297bhp + std injectors + std pump = 2 x blown engines

Cheers

Simon

HI SOOB

So who is the best for mapping in the country. Looking at say up to £1000 for job done.