Expensive end to my holiday
 

Coming back up France yeterday afternoon, got about 100km from calais, on my way to Zeebrugge, and the Knock Liink started lighting up. At the same time the oil temperature went to 120 degrees and it's pressure dropped to 2bar:(

Drifted onto an Aire de repos, (rest area), and it's rattling and banging like a good'un.:(:(:(:(:(:(:(

To cut a long story short, it's now in a lock-up in Canterbury, awaiting relocation to me, probably on Wednesday, and the RAC suspect big-end bearings.:nono:

So.............what could have caused it to go? It had plenty of oil, and I was doing around 85-90 when the problem hit.

Secondly, Ive spoken to Carnetix, and they are chocka with work at the mo, but I'll probably have to save up anyway, so Glenn gave me some advice over the phone and also a minimum ballpark figure for a rebuild....(I don't fancy a second-hand engine, you don't know what you are getting),.....anyone who's had a similar job done give me a ballpark figure, or point me at anyone THEY REALLY trust, as I do Carnetix? Car is a 98 UK.

sounds like the oil pump packed up

I'm genuinely gutted for you mate... and feel bad that when I heard a quite knocking a couple months back I didn't shout at you loud enough :(

As said on the phone just now, call plenty of tuners like API RE Motorsport etc and see what their take is on cost etc.

RE Motorpsort is in York and recommended very highly (remember my mate Matt had his STi engine built there) and is quite close which is lucky. "ilogikal1" on here :thumb:

Ah well, you have a Zantia :D :p

Was one of my first thoughts, I did see the oil pressure drop a couple of times, but not alarmingly, on earlier days. On the day in question it was running a steady 4 bar at 80 mph, which it has done since having the heads removed for a headgasket job.

no way, not the ideal end to a holiday for sure. very unlucky. where abouts in the country are you? bottom end going seems to popular, i did mine about 2 weeks after i bought my 2006 spec c racing an r6:brickwall
do you plan to source a rebuilt engine or having your old engine rebuilt. you could talk to api as they are very good with standard whole engines i believe they do trade ins on old engines for a new rebuilt engine.
if you decide to repair your old engine and you plan on keeping your car spend the cash forge the engine and future proof against future probs not cheap but if you drive your car hard necessary. for that if you look at going to that extent try scoobyclinic (who are currently building my new race car for time attack), rcm,(excellent) and other companies tha i havent used but have excellent reports and results are zen, subaru4u, litchfield performance.
depends where you are and who best meets your requirements:thumb:

Condolences mate.

All speculation (especially without knowing more about the car), but sounds like something critical like the oil pump kicked the bucket. :cry:

I would seriously suggest giving David at APi a ring regarding likely costs. He'll advise even if you want to go elsewhere and his estimates are rarely out by any appreciable degree.

My guess: assuming a stand rebuild, figure on 2.5k. Do yourself a favour though and don't go for any suspiciously low quotes offered by a local mechanic, it invariably ends in tears when people only have to pay twice to get the job done properly by someone who actually knows what they're doing!

All the best,

Ns04

Sorry to hear about your car, that sounds like my worst nightmare!

I hate reading threads like these.. Make me worried and paranoid about mine :(

Are all the Impreza oil pumps pretty weak or does it differ between imports and UK cars etc?

Having spoken to Jeff earlier and hearing the first quote he got for a standard rebuild (and it was very high in my opinion), I suggested he talk to David and get his advice and ideas on price first. The fact I had A1 customer service from all at API on my gearbox 19 months ago certainly keeps API in my thoughts and recommendations. :thumb:

That's bad news!

Clearly a KockLink can't save your engine - it just tells you that it's gone :(

At least you had your holiday ....

API are highly rated.

Do you have the ability to DIY? Could save you £1,000's and give you a lot of pleasure too.

surely a 98 UK model is a write off with a potential bill like that

scrap it for parts and realise £500/600 put that on top of 2.5k needed for a rebuild

and that would get you a pretty good car -- imho

I would of thought oil pump faiure like some many other's have said and I too would recommend API as they re-built my engine and alway's do a sterling job :thumb:
API Engines

:rolleyes:That's a bit like saying "Clearly Penicillin is useless. 81 years since its discovery and we're still not immortal".

There are plenty of circumstances where a KnockLink (or other third party noise monitor) can and will save your engine. What they obviously can't do is mitigate or forewarn against all possible failure modes.

Sorry for your woes, just happened to see this on Ebay about an hour ago if its any use to you. I don't know the company though but might help


Impreza STI V4 engine 92-98 Fully rebuilt Forged piston on eBay (end time 28-Aug-09 20:38:49 BST)


As has been said above, API are a good bet. I had the engine built for my rally car there and all was good and built just to my spec.

Good Luck
Cheers
Rob

For 3k it could be "back to square one" :cry:

JohnD
PS The Knocklink wasn't listening for the frequency of failing bearings, so it didn't fail in it's duties!

Been too knackered to do much today, left home in France at 7am, French time, so up from 0545 English time, finally arrived home this morning at 6am English time, pretty long day:(

Anyway, I'm going to await my wife's return from Australia, now scheduled for Wednesday, before doing anything. Methinks it might be a long wait until something can be done:( Been an expensive summer;)

As regards the KnockLink, it probably saved me seizing the engine solid, and finding myself with a dead car on the hard shoulder. :eek: Not much, I know, but it DID warn me and I DID lift off.

Unfortunately, it wasn't an instance when a warning was much use.

Sorry to hear your bad news Jeff.

As for breaking the car for spares... :eek:

Some of us will swallow hard and take the bill in our stride, common sense gets left in the wardrobe. I'm probably going to need some gearbox bearings next, or a replacement rear diff. :(

dunx

I wouldn't considering it's a one owner Scoob in very good condition with lots of mods. At least he knows that it's him thats only ever ragged it etc... with a £3000 Scoob you may end up with another dead engine in someone elses car :lol1:

2.5L forged torque monster rebuild Jeffro :D:D:D

A std. 2.5 makes for a torquey road car...

dunx

All will be considered, but no decisions will be made in haste. TBH, I can't see it being repaired before Christmas, probably even Spring next year;)

In the meantime, it'll be Shanks' Pony...........or ring up CoB when it's raining:D

had you done any top speed runs shortly before?

I had touched 120 briefly, on a private track, of course;)

:lol1: ;)

+1 for the 2.5 rebuild! :D Assuming the rest of the car is in good nick :)

Jeff I know a lad with a std. 2.5 in a Type-R, he may be persuaded to demonstrate it's prodigious torque VS grip phenomenon.... I loved it !

dunx

The lifecycle of a typical bearing failure (for whatever reason, debris, starvation, excessive temps and/or excessive load - the latter two is very common on Imprezas) goes a little something like this:

The first signs of a bearing failure is a drop in oil pressure.

The reason being is the clearance between the suspect bearing(s) and journal becomes excessive. Oil is therefore lost through the gap between the bearing and journal. This causes a loss in oil pressure, and also starves other bearings of oil flow and pressure, lack of oil flow through brearing causes their operating temps to rise. This in turn starts a vicious circle where other bearings wear and fail, causing even more loss in oil pressure, to the point the oil pump cannot meet the demand to maintain an adequate boundry layer between the journals and bearings. By then bearing wear becomes exponential, pressure drops significantly, excess wear debris created then contaminates other bearings, compounding the failure even further. By then the engine will start to sound like a bag of spanners.

Continued driving after that stage usually leads to a bearing being starved to the point it seizes onto the journal, spinning the shell inside the conrod, then bending and snapping said rod before throwing it out the engine block.

This can happen over 50 miles or 50000 miles; depending on severity of the cause, if its intermittant (i.e minor detonation under load, and therefore highly dependant on driving habits) and the state of tune the engine is in.

Of course the pump gets blamed due to the drop in pressure, but in many cases the pump is not at direct fault. Barring the sticky PRV and backplate comming loose, there is little to go wrong on them.

Get your fueling checked (MAF? http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...es/biggrin.gif ). If its found to be duff, consider renaming your knocklink to a big-end-banging-link. http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...ilies/wink.gif

The car is running a LINK remap by Bob Rawle, no MAF is included.

This will be the usual heat-soak-related failure at high road speed where the air cannot get through the top mount intercooler fast enough. Intake air temps rise, det starts and the shock load on the rod of the detting wrecks the big end bearings.

The oil pressure will diminish too at these speeds as the oil temperature will have been through the roof at 120 mph.

All in all a failure waiting to happen. Knock link should have picked up the det, as it should have picked up the rattling big end. After all, if you tap the engine block with a screwdriver the knocklink will light up. [ It's the simple test to see if it still working ]

Don't forget that at 120 mph the engine will have been doing about 5000 rpm, which is 83 revs per second........ Doesn't take long for an engine to wreck itself at that speed.

Tough luck Tanyatriangles.

David APi