Some good results there, looking forward to put a 6 speed in my wagon this weekend!

MOT is due on the 10th...

I've booked it in on the morning of the 11th. Going to change a few bits this weekend, new Superpro front ARB bushes, new OEM Subaru front ball joints, and OEM STI front drive shafts.

Quick update. Car passed its MOT with flying colours :D.

I've replaced the front ball joints and anti roll bar bushes and also fitted my Eibach camber bolts to the front which I've had forever and never got around to fitting.

The ball joints were a bit of a pain in the arse, the passenger side was fine, pinch bolt came out and the ball joint dropped out of the hub fairly easily. The drivers side however was a complete pain in the arse, pinch bolt snapped, drilled it out completely. The ball joint totally refused to come out of the hub. So I gave in and bought a low mileage Hawkeye WRX front hub and fitted that instead :lol:

I managed to ding my passenger front wing whilst undoing the strut bolts for the camber bolts :(. So maybe an excuse for doing a saloon front end on it.

I've also replaced the back box with a Ninja as the prodrive box had split and was blowing.

And finally my turbo / header tank has given up and is leaking at the bottom so I've ordered a Mishimoto tank to replace it with which is rather lovely, polished alloy and tig welded :).

Some Pics of the header tank:

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Tank installed:
Attachment 29072

Tank leaks:
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:brickwall:brickwall:brickwall

Very annoying.

Yep. They are going to replace it. Hopefully the next one doesn't leak. You'd think they check the welds are good before they sell the product, but maybe not!

That's poor for a mishimoto product considering what they charge for stuff.

Indeed, not overly impressed TBH. Especially as I bought it to replace my OEM tank which had a leak and it's doing the same damn thing!

OK so some things will be changing.

I think the heads are lifting under boost on the 2.1, I'm getting a ton of bubbles in the overflow tank (like a boiling kettle), I've got black flakes in the coolant which I believe has come from the coating on the RCM head gaskets. It's not overflowing out of the overflow though or loosing coolant just loads of bubbles. I've tested said bubbles when they've been raging away and cannot get it to fail the sniff test but I can't see what else would be causing them.

It all started when I had a hose pop off the turbo nipple, which meant it overboosted it's tits off!

Options are pull the 2.1 out, take the heads off, refresh it all with new bearings, hone, rings etc. Or what I'm more swayed towards is sticking a 2.5 in. It'll be a closed deck 2.5, Mahle 2618's, forged rods, heat treated crank etc, 11mm ARP studs. And run a GT3076R on it.

Either way the engine is coming out lol.

In other news I bought a new daily:

Attachment 26621

E46 330i SE Auto, 96k on it when I picked it up. Lovely to waft about in and still has a bit of meat under the bonnet. I got it mega cheap too :D.

I don't know if newage have the same set up, but on a classic there is a hard pipe with two flexes running from the header to the overflow one of those was kinked on my friends and was spitting coolant out on boost.

I've been through the cooling system with a fine tooth comb really. I can't find anything that wrong tbh.

I've just ordered RCM headers and a full 3" exhaust.. lol.

Ok so engine came out a couple of weekends ago and I put it on a stand ready to be stripped down. Weather was nice this weekend so I sat in the sun and stripped it down and pulled the heads off to see what had gone on.

Lots of parts removed and boxed:
Attachment 25798
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Turbo side / Drivers side head removed:
Attachment 25800

Signs of gasket failure:
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Passenger side head removed, looks better but not convinced it wasn't also leaking:
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Pistons and bores look nice and clean, engine has done just over 30k miles. I'm ordering the new lump this week :D

So this just arrived:

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Mamba GTX3076R, 3" inlet 5200 cover.

Also a 3" Silicone turbo inlet hose.

Same side on my lump nor turbo where my gasket leaked, only very slightly and other side fine.
Think it's common for that side to go first.
Mine was very slight but got sick of checking coolant so pulled motor to investigate, my guess is my studs or the first time mine overheated was enough to start the gasket off as the Subaru gauge is sh1t and once needle goes up then more or less the damage is done, so it's just a waiting game till it gets worse.
Like yours my block itself looks fine but I'm going to fit new acl bearings and check and just sell block as I'm going 2.1 CDB now.
I could just refit my block but can't be arsed redoing job later when I want 2.1 cdb anyway.
So hopefully summer I'll be back on road.

I'm going with a 2.5 CDB now. Part exchanging my 2.1 against it.

I just wanted to get the heads off to see what had happened. Mine never overheated or lost coolant, it just bubbled the crap out of the overflow tank. All started when the hose from the turbo nipple to the boost controller split which meant the car had no boost control and boosted its tits off which I think stretched the stock head bolts.

I couldn't get it to fail a sniff test either, even when it was bubbling its arse off. It was clearly failed though.

Spec on the new engine:

-Ej257 block converted to closed deck, rebored to 99.75mm, 14mm threads for Headstuds
-Ej257 crank
-ACL race bearings
-Mahle 2618 forged pistons
-11mm suabru oil pump
-New crank seals
-2.0 stiv7/8 avcs heads, fully rebuilt and skimmed
-14mm headstud kit
-RCM 1.5mm MLS headgaskets
-New cambelt and waterpump kit
-New seals and gaskets as required

Nice spec on the new build bud :thumb:

I have just bought a similar spec build for mine (albeit SCD with 11mm ARP studs) from jonnyricer on here - I was also going to go 2.1 but then changed my mind.....

What made you change direction Scott?

What power are you aiming for with this build and the Mamba turbo combo?

Cheers,
Paul

Looking for 450+. The turbo is rated from 460 upwards. Around 500 would be nice :D.

I could have refreshed the 2.1, but the cost of doing that vs part exchanging it against the new engine didn't work out all that much different. My 2.1 also had Mahle 4032 stroker pistons fitted, whilst they probably would have been ok at that sort of power level I'd rather have 2618's.

The 2.5 is also going to give me a lot more torque, better spool, wider power band etc "more area under the curve" as they say.

Nice!! Good luck on the 500:thumb: that would be a beast sleeper

Wow - surprised the costs are pretty close, definitely sounds like the way ahead then.

I am looking forward to the added torque lower down too - will be on an MD321H, to start with anyway :north:

Look forward to seeing your progress/results bud

Paul

Little update. Slight change to the engine spec. It's now going to have a 2.5 crank, +2mm longer rods and Manley 2618 Stroker pistons. It will give a better rod angle.

Engine should be with me at the start of next week. I've asked for some pics as it's going together :).

Got some pics from WMS of how the build is coming together:

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Short block is done, heads going on soon.

Very nice.

Lovely, nice to see wms popping up again :thumb:

Progress update...

New lump has arrived, last weekend I took the 2.1 off of the stand and put the new 2.5 on there and have started building it up and taking what I need off of the 2.1 (water crossover and pipework, knock sensor etc).

I also cleaned up my RCM headers with a wire wheel and painted them with some XHT paint and re wrapped them. This coming weekend I want to get the headers onto the lump so I can see what the turbo position looks like and how it'll sit with the intake manifold etc, get the intake manifold, turbo inlet etc on. Then the following weekend i'm hoping to have it in the car :D

Due a bit of an update I think...

The last few weeks I've built the engine up, exhaust manifold on, inlet manifold on etc. The turbo took a bit of work to get to fit as it's obviously a fair bit larger than a stock turbo, I had to grind and remove material from the inlet manifold and cut down the intake on the turbo itself as it was protruding too much. Got the fuel rails on breather hoses etc.

Then at the weekend I fitted the clutch and dropped it into the car, went it pretty easily, I had to do some more grinding on the gearbox bell housing to get the turbo to slide past it. It's now bolted into the car, the clutch is working as it should.

Next weekend I'm going to plumb it in, coolant, wiring, fuel, exhaust etc and try to get it fired up. The first start will be done on the original ECU, injectors, MAF, MAP sensor etc just to make sure it runs as the MAF should be able to fuel the extra 350cc of capacity or so. Once I know it runs ok I'll be fitting the ID1000 injectors, new Map sensor, plumbing in the Front mount intercooler, induction kit etc and having a running in map put onto the new ECU so it can drive it and get the engine run in.

Once it's run in I'll put it onto the rollers for some power maps!

Seems photobucket has ruined all my pics :(

Yep. You've been photo-fcuk-eted.

Well she runs! Got it fired up last weekend using the stock ECU and 565cc injectors with the MAF plugged in so it could sort the fueling for the bigger lump. Ran really smoothly. I didn't have time to get it fully up to temp so that's the next job. Then swap in the ID1000's, new Map sensor, plumb the FMIC in etc and have a running in map put onto the Alcatek.