Has anyone had a warranty claim denied? Seized engine! Pics of teardown added 6/5

[Dave-ROR]

Originally Posted by CSG Mike

His positive battery terminal cap is taped too. Maybe it's part of the requirements for teching in Japan.

Tiny ass battery too. I guess to hold the cover down to prevent shorts on the battery. Strange indeed.

[CSG Mike]

Originally Posted by Dave-ROR

Tiny ass battery too. I guess to hold the cover down to prevent shorts on the battery. Strange indeed.

Looks like a motorcycle form factor battery. I do have an affinity for LiFePO4 batteries...

[brillo]

I'm not clear from the various injector issue threads if the ECU fix (be it your tuner or the factory flash) has any material impact on performance of the car. My interpretation is that it doesn't but I wanted to confirm.

[Marrk]

Originally Posted by CSG Mike

We're not the only ones having issues.

My Japanese is a little rusty. In fact, anything beyond "sushi" and "sake" and I'm lost.

What kind of site is that? Are they racing-tracking the car?

[SkullWorks]

Originally Posted by Ozzman

I'm starting to wonder if your cat failure is ultimately what killed the engine.

The misfires probably overheated and killed the cat, and once it started falling apart ceramic particles were ingested into the cylinders leading to the engine's untimely demise.

wow...just wow

What are you even trying to talk about?

at what point does your car draw air (enough to clear an entire header tube like a bong)thru the exhaust valve? let me answer that....NEVER

there is no EGR "valve" on this motor like there have been problems with in the past (QR25de's) allowing catalyst to endup back in the intake (where things enter the cylinders, usually air and fuel)

Subaru uses the valve timing to create internal EGR.

To answer the next question, no catalyst cannot slide up the header tube next to the valve and wait for an EGR cycle to get sucked in, how do I know??? let's just say i got upclose and personal with the cat in a FA20 header and there is a fibrous material similar to motorcycle exhaust packing just prior to the cat in the collector area, a sufficient amount to prevent broken catalyst from migrating that direction.


Please people there are alot of folks that don't know the difference in poorly constructed guesses and info, let's not start a mass panic where half the members gut their cats because someone with no idea what happens in an engine declared the cats are meowing their way into the combustion chamber and killing motors...FFS people seriously

[SubieNate]

Also, this isn't a turbo motor with a cat before the turbo to cause damage like some of the early WRX's. Definitely a side effect of what happened and in no way part of the cause.

[FRSBRZGT86FAN]

As much as I hate to pick sides I have to side with you here assuming everything you said is true, but what we think doesn't matter:
1) I did not know companies today searched cars up on the internet to find out how they are being used, but it is not an invasion of privacy as you publicly posted those videos up there for everyone to see.
2)Subaru/Toyota/Scion HAVE ALL marketed this car for track use and being modified, you can use this in your defense.
3) There are very few other options the only option now that will have the most effect is to lawyer up and take some serious legal action. Most likely I think you got one of the bad batches of FA20 and honestly the way that they are reacting to it makes me want to you payed for this car, they tear it down, then immediately can't explain the damage so they blame it on track use. Frustrating I know . But It really is time to get a lawyer get your money back and hopefully either get a new FR-S or have everything rebuilt by an outside company.

[CSG Mike]

Originally Posted by FRSBRZGT86FAN

As much as I hate to pick sides I have to side with you here assuming everything you said is true, but what we think doesn't matter:
1) I did not know companies today searched cars up on the internet to find out how they are being used, but it is not an invasion of privacy as you publicly posted those videos up there for everyone to see.
2)Subaru/Toyota/Scion HAVE ALL marketed this car for track use and being modified, you can use this in your defense.
3) There are very few other options the only option now that will have the most effect is to lawyer up and take some serious legal action. Most likely I think you got one of the bad batches of FA20 and honestly the way that they are reacting to it makes me want to you payed for this car, they tear it down, then immediately can't explain the damage so they blame it on track use. Frustrating I know . But It really is time to get a lawyer get your money back and hopefully either get a new FR-S or have everything rebuilt by an outside company.

I'd like to point out that every competition video (including "fast time of the day" type competition) is in my s2k, not the BRZ. There are no videos of the BRZ ever being driven outside of a HPDE or open testing environment.

In fact, the Willow Springs International Raceway video is so casual that I'm having a conversation with my passenger as I'm driving. I sincerely hope that's not what they're referring to when they say that the car was raced at WSIR.

[Marrk]

Originally Posted by FRSBRZGT86FAN

As much as I hate to pick sides I have to side with you here assuming everything you said is true, but what we think doesn't matter:

2)Subaru/Toyota/Scion HAVE ALL marketed this car for track use and being modified, you can use this in your defense.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Again, let's not confuse the non-binding statements of advertising copy with the legally binding statements of warranty copy.


Welcome to the fray. :happy0180:

[Tainen]

ah crap. I started noticing the detonation last year after we put the first set of headers on the car... made it loud enough to hear pretty easily. I hope no long term damage is done. Argh. I just figured that it was light detonation that Subaru knew about and was OK with, meaning it wasn't doing any harm since it wasn't under load when it det'd. Thanks to @PERRIN_Jeff for pointing out the detonation to me last year... hmm.

[Xero-Limit]

I think I got through most of this thread but a few points stand out:

1. That cat failure is likely HEAT, not so much knock. The DI seals maybe knock, but the cat is usually a heat issue or manufacturing defect (i.e. qr25). EGR is built in to the valve overlap, unlikely to suck in cat parts, but possible if the tune had too much exhaust cam with a stock header.

2. The car absolutely 100% definitely knocks on gearchange on the stock tune. We tried back in january to iron this out by reducing down low timing thinking it was the cause, but turned out it was just when we were getting on the throttle. Scratching my head until #3....

3. The transient timing has been changed with the A01X (the X being region/trans type). This has been available on the EcuTek platform and we've been copying the newer transient tables into the older tunes that were not available until a few days ago (the AT).

4. This has shown a reduction in the on throttle knock counts, but it is not entirely eliminated, knock sensors always generate a bit of noise. It does not seem to be as patterned though after the update.

But your failure screams heat to me. Which makes little sense since the stock tune is so rich up top. DI sprays above 5000 and it sprays late in the combustion cycle, so it ends up having an additional cooling effect. So it definitely seems like an oddball and subaru should be taking care of it based on the information presented. I can see them denying a warranty claim on the cat if it was put to track use, but not warrantying the whole motor is another story. If I had to guess I'd say the knock blew the seals out, causing you to run lean, and then destroy the cat in the process. If you pop that header off and look at the valves, see if any are melted, and what color they are. While the sodium filled valves are pretty damn hard to melt, at these temps you may find some other evidence there as to what may have happened.

When I look back at the stock tune we had multiple instances of 4+ KR with stock timings. On the flashed tunes with the latest revisions, I'm seeing fewer and less severe (1-2) events from the logs here and sent in so far.

[Carwhisperer]

Hope it all gets thrown into the MT sooner than later. Thanks for the info Mike.

[Marrk]

@moto-mike: Is he ECU revision that Toyota-Subaru is offering likely to address the transient timing? Or are they looking at something else for this problem?

Just want to be clear.

[Xero-Limit]

Originally Posted by Marrk

@moto-mike: Is he ECU revision that Toyota-Subaru is offering likely to address the transient timing? Or are they looking at something else for this problem?

Just want to be clear.

What I see is a TSB that shows the exact difference in the transient pull back in the A00 revision (what my car came with 2/2013 off the lot) and the newer A01 revision (obtained march or april) when you look at the graph. The amount of it and range of operation correlates exactly. If you look at post 288, where you can see the table, that is the one we are referring to. As of now, both the MT and AT, are now covered in the US as well in our database. If that is the source of the problem we will find out only once a few more months go by and people run this revision. I've actually added even more retard into the transient mapping and no loss of performance so far.