falconer

I bought my first Subaru (95 WRX ) a month or 2 ago it had a blown engine but the garage replaced it with a used engine from a breakers yard.

After it started to misfire I decided to check the coil packs and change the plugs.
3 of the 4 coil packs were badly cracked. I thought I would swap them for the coils form the blown engine as I also got that in the deal with the car. That was when I noticed that the engine that is in the car now uses twin bolt coil packs and the engine that came out uses single bolt coil packs.

So I basically have 3 questions

1. Can I use the single bolt coil packs to replace the twin bolt versions

2. Is this a know redesign of the coil packs making the engine from an earlier wrx or is the engine from a legacy / forester?

3. If I can’t use the single bolt coils dos anyone know where to can get twin bolt coils form as a part number searches revels nothing

myblackwrx

iTrader: (1)

1 Don't know i would expect no
2 Engine is from a Legacy.
3 Camskill (Cheap Tyres Discount Tyres & Japanese Import Car Parts Spares Tuning Performance ::) may be able to help
May be worth having a word with David at Welcome to the API website

orbix

I have a set of used 2 bolt coil packs, bought in error.

The bolts are different sizes, 2 small bolts vs 1 large bolt.

The guy advertising these coil packs at the time said they were for an early impreza engine as well as a legecy engine so I bought them without checking the part numbers

APIDavid

iTrader: (4)

The two bolt coil pack engine is the old Legacy engine with rocker finger actuated valves. It is not designed for the high revs of an Impreza and if you use lots of revs you will start breaking rockers.

Do you have any recourse to the garage that has fitted the wrong engine and turned your Impreza into a mongrel ?

Good Luck

David APi

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falconer

Thanks for the info Dave that is not what I wanted to hear

What year of legacy are we talking about just so I can got back and shout at them like I know what im talking about lol, well in not laughing that much

APIDavid

iTrader: (4)

That brand of 'old type ' Legacy motor was in it up 'til early 96, after that I am sure they changed to a more WRX type motor, but as we see so few of them, I am not the best to answer. Maybe a Legacy forum will pull up an 'expert '

It is the two bolt thing that gives the game away, any engine with 2 bolt coil packs is wrong for a WRX or any turbo Impreza for that matter.

Good luck callme if I can help at all.

David APi

falconer

I have spoken to the garage on the phone and he used 247 spares website to source the engine and he has an invoice stating a WRX engine. I will go round and speak to him / see the invoice and fined out what company supplied it

But I think all that will happen is the engine suppler will ask for the engine back and charge a restocking fee which means the engine will need to come out be sent back at a lose to me.

Would have the garage that fitted the engine had to alter the coil wiring connector to get it to work. Or would it have just plugged straight in and they didn’t know any better
I’m getting a bit angry now but I don’t think iv got much come back

Badbird

id have thought that if your wrx was in a garage for a new engine and they fitted a non wrx engine wether they knew or wether they diddnt the garage is at fault and its not down to you to go to the engine supplier, id have thought you were entitled to return your car to the garage, if they wont take it threaten them with reporting them to the trading standards authority,
if their recipt says wrx engine untill someone proves that that is not a wrx engine There for should never have been fitted to that car, you will not get a lot done. you will probably have to pay an expert to attend your garage assess the car and write an expert witness statement stating that that engine is not a wry engine, The garage can then go to their engine supplier for the right engine, Most garages would prefer to do a free engine swap rather than face an investigation by trading standards...
ask,
David API as a trader/engine supplier he would probably have a good idea what the garages responsibilitys are

falconer

Hi that situation would be nice unfortunately nut so

By garage a mean mechanic garage (the one I use for all my motors).
I bought the car from the owner of the garage who got the car cheap from a customer who could not afford the rebuild.
I came along one day and he know I was looking for a impreza and we settled on a deal I would pay a fixed price and he gets the car sorted. replacement engine timing belts mot the lot.
He kept his word even after a few problems with alarms and doggy ignition barrels that he then also fixed.

So all I really have is the misrepresentation of the suppliers and a man that probable has had his fill of me. All labour / parts have all came out of his pocket so far.

I thought I was getting a good deal but now I have no real comeback

It’s probably cheaper for me to run it till it pops and then get the original rebuilt or start rebuilding it now as that was always in the back of my mined

Leg@cy

iTrader: (2)

My MY92 as standard had the 2 bolt coils.......

so probably the engine is circa 1991 - 94

they performed admirably at 290bhp and no issues while taking it through the rev range....

Badbird

yup that puts a different light on th whole saga,
well if it was a good deal and the car was cheap and it runs well just enjoy it

probably wouldnt hurt you to start collecting parts as they come available on here, I have an open deck set of STI cases with rods/crank/Standard forged pistons I also have a 2.5 crank make me an offer the stuffs just in the way
I may have some V3 STI heads with seriously uprated valve gear/cams valves ect for sale in the near future but that stuff wont be cheap, there are always bargins to be had

Leg@cy

iTrader: (2)

It's not all doom and gloom having a LEgacy engine in there !!

Just to help the clouds open and put a bit of sunshine on the subject.... it may be a Closed Deck Block as some of the earlier Legacys had them as standard

APIDavid

iTrader: (4)

Given the facts of this drama, you have no real choice but to run it 'til it goes bang. lt might not.

Worry about repairing your old unit when it goes bang, not before.

OR you could strip off the heads off the WRX old motor overhaul and clean them. The fit them to the Leggy bottom end. It'll probably blow a head gasket long before it goes bang I reckon, in which case you are prepared with WRX heads ready to go. You'll sort of end up with a hybrid WRX motor, but with the right 7000 rpm heads on.

Either way do nothing now except buy the cheapest coil packs you can find in case it goes bang next week.

We probably have a few at nothing money, as we bring in an amount of old Leggy motors for certain spares.

David

falconer

Thanks for the info people

API Dave I will probably be giving you a call in the new few days looking for coils.

It is defiantly a closed deck engine. The guy at the rolling roads showed me the hatching

The head gasket will go? Why, what psi did the legacy’s run because my car is running 12psi on a z4 ecu and tdo5
I was planning to up that as iv already bought the polar performance chip but that seams silly now :-(

APIDavid

iTrader: (4)

Composite material head gaskets quite often fail soon after a secondhand engine is fitted, as they have stood for an amount of time out of a car and they 'dry out ' Then once refilled with water/coolant mix, fill up like sponges and then blow.

We would probably have released the pressure on the head bolts and then re-torqued them to squish them a bit. Probably just to make us feel better about it, rather than having any serious beneficial effect.

That is just one of many reasons why we try not to sell used Subaru engines, that have not had any amount of proper testing done. And in our case we have a decent history of the mileage and so-on from Japan.

David

PS The ONLY confirming test for CDB is the hatch marks around the oil filter casing. [ if you don't want to take it to pieces ] Hatch marks elsewhere are not consistent, but they are always there on the filter housing, never let me down yet as a reliable factor.

APIDavid

iTrader: (4)

Stick with the Z4 - I don't like those ' home made chips ' if you want my advice.

David

Legacy_Turbo_EJ22G

David, AFAIK the Impreza turbo engine doesn`t run any higher rev limit than a Legacy Turbo engine with rockers. 7k on both. The only difference between a legacy and WRX engine, is that the pistons on the legacy is flat, the head cc is a bit higher, it`s rockers instead of hydro buckets, and it`s a few sensors with different contacts, so it`s easy to swap them with each other.

Coils up to 96 wether it`s Legacy or WRX, are prone to breaking. I`ve replaced both my coils, and sourced several sets of "better" coils for a couple of WRX`s with misfires, and still haven`t failed to prove it`s worth yet.

Also, I`ve ran my old legacy engine at 15+psi, and so have loads of others. They aren`t as weak as people believe them to be.

falconer

Dos the bolts have any effect on the electronics of the coil i.e. ground

Or dos it just hold the coil in the head because if the connecter is the same I don’t see why the single bolt coil wont work plus it’s the coil that was originally in the car so I think the wiring will match

subaru ra500

iTrader: (6)

you can fit the one bolt coil packs. i did it to mine