Bells and whistles aren't my thing, so does anyone want to help and I can forward on any useful advise.



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Dear Mr. Croney,



I am a Subaru Ýmpreza driver and I got a problem which I cannot solve. I’d like to share with you in case you might help me. I love my car and you know that once you drive it you cannot like any other one


I had adjusted the Apexi (Air Flow & Turbo Walve Control AWC) on my Subaru. We used it around 10,000 km with that system. Our car was on 42,000 km and on the way back home the machine acuse us a problem. We went to the service and saw that the second cylinder was gone. We need to change the pistons and the rings to a one bigger step (0.25 ). After all we check the machine and no errors appeard on test machine both on electrical and mechanical. So we started use the car. The service said that it happened from the bad fuel (low octane).



Any how the same problem apeared again after 1,500 km. Same problem same cylinder. But this time we are lucky that we realize the problem and we stop the machine and we took the car by lift carrier. We open agaian the machine and we saw that the same thing had happened to the same piston. The top of the piston was melted or dissolved. We are lucky as this time we do not need to change all the pistons and rings but only the broken one (the second). So we need the rings only as the pistons are available. They ussually sell them as 4 pairs, it doesn’t matter.



Dear Mr. Croney , I ask you a favour to search about this problem if the same thing happens to anybody else. Or did they heard about anything about this kind of problem. It might be a problem on the car or on the brain of the car as at the service there are 3 more cars same as mine wich 2 of them they are from the same year 1999. Please kindly help met o solve this problem if you can as I afraid and I don’t want to happen it again. The most bad thing it is that we cannot find a sollution to our problem. They cannot give any guaranty that it won’t happened again the worse thing is that in case it happens again the machine got one more last chance to change the pistons and rings and later we will need to change the whole machine it will not be able to be repaired it again.

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It would be quite useful to know how he set the Apexi unit up first - what the boost levels and solenoid duty cycles were.

Sounds like cylinder no 2 runs very hot...if that's from too much boost (lean A/F mixture), or a shagged injector...
My bet's on the boost thing. :D
He wrote something about bad fuel quality - which means his mechanic saw signs of det...which prolly was induced by too much boost (hot exhaust temps...and a det or 2..whammo).

Case solved...

Pete - this isn't a step in one of your "anti-fiddle" campaigns now is it? ;)

/J

Thanks Guys.

Jerry, no I was expecting some charts of safe set ups etc from people that had used this kit.

Just kidding with U mate. ;)

I know your opinion on EBC's.. :D

If he wants safe, why doesn't he just set it to "OFF"???

Craig, give me a call please

cheers mate
scott

Any idea what boost he's running....mines still safe at over 60k miles running a sensible 1.2bar, nothing wrong with evc's except operator error and greed!!

Hey Nito your Greed is about to set in very soon yeah;-)


Moe

Pete, I'd think he would need to take this in steps ... first, bring the car back to standard, remove Apexi, and get the engine fixed (making sure there is nothing else bent etc, but you know more about that then I do). He should then drive it without the boost controller to be sure it's unrelated to that. They should also check injectors, fuel pressure etc etc to make sure it's not something as simple as that.

In other words: it could be the Apexi/crazy boost whatever, but it could also be another reason as you know standard cars have been known to loose an engine.

The melted piston is *probably* due to boost, but it may be a mistake to just assume...

About bells & whistles: whatever brand/gizmo people use, most of the time people want to up the boost. If they keep it sensible (on MY99/00, TD04L, say 1.2 bar tops) your car should not blow up, providing you have good fuel, and the car is in perfect working order. If the gentleman is from Italy, the problem may lie there (most stations only have NUL, I heard they have SUL in some places since this summer)

Anyway, pure speculation of course, but it's hard to diagnose these things over email.

HTH,

Theo