Quote:
Originally Posted by maslin
Almost 100% chance the sealant is either being removed or applied incorrectly.
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I work for one of the big sealant and adhesive suppliers. Liquid injectable gasketing is pretty state of the art, and it's been practiced for about 15 years.
Those sealant lines are pretty ridiculous. Modern cars are not built to use much of anything, and certainly not litres of liquid gasket.
If someone can get hold of a crank with the failure, check the bore for the oil galley to the failed rod bearing. It will surely be closed up with something. If it were to be pushed through to the bearing face, the material would smear and burn. This could lead to carbonization, which would be identifiable on the journal faces.
The fact that the failures are so heavily skewed to Toyota shops indicates it is a reassembly issue - it's not hard at all to dismantle an engine, but it is quite difficult to get it back together properly if you are completely unfamiliar with it and the necessary prep work during disassembly. Were there also failures on Subies, it would be more difficult to assign the fault. However, Subie techs would know exactly where and how much sealant to apply to their standard boxers. The apples fall not so far from the tree, so it is unlikely this motor deviates significantly from standard Subaru assembly technique.
<-- armchair failure analyst, has done technical background on engine class-actions before and willing to address this from the chemistry side