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

[ATL BRZ]

Originally Posted by Gords_zenith

Just throwing this out there- with your said coil overs and aggressive street tires, is it possible that there was an oil starvation issue due to the high cornering G-forces, thus causing your con-rods to grenade their bearings to the point of allowing the piston to travel that extra distance to contact the DI injector blowing the seal? Totally hypothetical.

I can understand the oil starvation bit as its an engine that isn't friendly to oil scavenging due to the design of a flat engine. Just thinking aloud here, please don't scold me.

Pretty sure our oil pans are baffled to prevent that from happening. Never heard of oil starvation being an issue when tracking these cars either based on the empirical data coming in from those monitoring oil pressure. I'd say your theory is not plausible.

[P@ul]

Originally Posted by CSG Mike

Some clarification here. Coilovers does not change ultimate grip of the car AT ALL. Tires do. Coilovers can change the load balance between front and rear tires (as can other mods) via spring rate changes, and the combination of spring and damper will make the car settle faster and absorb imperfections without upsetting the load on the tires.

Your ultimate grip may have not gone up but your average lateral load sure as hell did, corresponding to the faster lap times. Area under the curve. And, technically, you changed your tires so your ultimate grip did increase (something I thought was irrelevant, hence why I didn’t bring it up).

Originally Posted by CSG Mike

Let me also point out that the car is blatantly designed with adjustable dampers in mind. Check out your rear trunk. There's a hole precisely where the top of the rear damper is. The ONLY purpose, that this hole can possibly serve, is to allow access to a rear damper adjustment. Or allow the hose for an external reservoir for the rear shock. Hmmm...

There’s also room for a cage too! Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you should do it, lol! Racing breaks shit. This is a brand new car and you’re clearly one of the pioneers here. I don't think the car should be blowing a motor in this situation and I hope there’s a factory solution. Subaru doesn’t have the greatest track record here, no pun intended. WRXs’ oil starve and blow up, and eat transmissions as well. I hope this gets solved or kiss Scion goodbye and say hello to the Prius Motor Company.

[Gords_zenith]

Originally Posted by ATL BRZ

Pretty sure our oil pans are baffled to prevent that from happening. Never heard of oil starvation being an issue when tracking these cars either based on the empirical data coming in from those monitoring oil pressure. I'd say your theory is not plausible.

Hmm. Just because you haven't heard of it yet in this car, doesn't make it not plausible. Tons of cars have oil starvation issues if the g-forces get higher than what was anticipated. But I still could be wrong about starvation being a problem unless someone datalogs the oil pressure while tracking to rule it out. IIRC the Z06 which is a dedicated track/street car has a dry sump system to prevent starvation. The only thing that I'm not obviously not 100% sure of is the piston hitting the DI due to stretch from the bearings grenading, but I guess if that was happening than there would be other evidence such as smashed spark plugs and maybe valve damage. Hope this gets figured out sooner rather than later though.

[CSG Mike]

I highly doubt running 225 or 235 tires are going to cause issues. Now if we were running 285 hoosiers, like race vettes, different story.

[dsgerbc]

Originally Posted by ATL BRZ

Pretty sure our oil pans are baffled to prevent that from happening. Never heard of oil starvation being an issue when tracking these cars either based on the empirical data coming in from those monitoring oil pressure. I'd say your theory is not plausible.

Direct starvation is unlikely. However, there could be more blowby getting into intake, leading to oil consumption and detonation. It's more of an issue on tracked STIs, but with grippy tires I guess it could consume enough oil during the session to cause starvation.

A lot of STI folks that track their cars install air-oil separators for this reason.

[ATL BRZ]

Originally Posted by Gords_zenith

Hmm. Just because you haven't heard of it yet in this car, doesn't make it not plausible. Tons of cars have oil starvation issues if the g-forces get higher than what was anticipated. But I still could be wrong about starvation being a problem unless someone datalogs the oil pressure while tracking to rule it out. IIRC the Z06 which is a dedicated track/street car has a dry sump system to prevent starvation. The only thing that I'm not obviously not 100% sure of is the piston hitting the DI due to stretch from the bearings grenading, but I guess if that was happening than there would be other evidence such as smashed spark plugs and maybe valve damage. Hope this gets figured out sooner rather than later though.

Someone did monitor oil pressure while tracking, I think @Dave-ROR did and I know he's not the only one monitoring oil pressure on track.

I'm not going to argue with you but the wild speculation is getting old already.

The issue is the direct injector seals failing due to detonation between up shifts because the transient ignition retard tables are not optimized (flawed) in the factory ecu tune. 91 octane gas and lots of heat in the block on track increases the risk of said detonation. The seals fail, cylinders run dangerously lean and boom.

I don't know how many times this needs to be repeated before people stop speculating otherwise...

Originally Posted by dsgerbc

Direct starvation is unlikely. However, there could be more blowby getting into intake, leading to oil consumption and detonation. It's more of an issue on tracked STIs, but with grippy tires I guess it could consume enough oil during the session to cause starvation.

A lot of STI folks that track their cars install air-oil separators for this reason.

The front crankcase vent that recirculates into the intake gets hardly any blowby while n/a. The rear PCV does, however. I run my closed loop catch can from the rear PCV and it accumulates a little bit of oil every few thousand miles.

[Gords_zenith]

Originally Posted by ATL BRZ

Someone did monitor oil pressure while tracking, I think @Dave-ROR did and I know he's not the only one monitoring oil pressure on track.

I'm not going to argue with you but the wild speculation is getting old already.

The issue is clearly the direct injector seals failing due to detonation between up shifts because the transient retard tables are not optimized (flawed) in the factory ecu tune. I don't know how many times this needs to be repeated before people stop speculating otherwise...

Wow, ok cool. I didn't even realize that was an issue for the upshift. Can you link me to the page. I would like to learn more about this.

Here's some evidence that the baffles maybe to blame under extreme conditions.

http://www.iwsti.com/forums/2-5-lite...on-08-sti.html

"IMO the flat baffles are a double edge sword. Let me explain... Upon severe corner loading our Subaru motors will pump the outside facing head full of oil LONG before actually spilling out of the pan. Something the baffle will do nothing for. While the baffle increases the spill out angle from the pan, it also decreases the angle required for oil to flow back out of the outside facing head, meaning it can pool oil under lighter cornering loads.

From my experience, I've not come across a baffle that fixes the subaru oiling problem. A higher capacity pan will gain you time in the corners and eliminate the probability of starvation (vs. OEM)."

Anyways, I've made my pitch, now I will continue monitoring this thread for progress.

[P@ul]

Originally Posted by Gords_zenith

Hmm. Just because you haven't heard of it yet in this car, doesn't make it not plausible. Tons of cars have oil starvation issues if the g-forces get higher than what was anticipated. But I still could be wrong about starvation being a problem unless someone datalogs the oil pressure while tracking to rule it out. IIRC the Z06 which is a dedicated track/street car has a dry sump system to prevent starvation. The only thing that I'm not obviously not 100% sure of is the piston hitting the DI due to stretch from the bearings grenading, but I guess if that was happening than there would be other evidence such as smashed spark plugs and maybe valve damage. Hope this gets figured out sooner rather than later though.

There's an explanation in a different post explaining that high rpm detonation is causing displacement and wear on a nylon collar seal on the DI injector. http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...2&postcount=65

If you "grenaded" bearings, your injectors are the least of your worries.

[ATL BRZ]

Originally Posted by Gords_zenith

Wow, ok cool. I didn't even realize that was an issue for the upshift. Can you link me to the page. I would like to learn more about this.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36008

[FirestormFRS]

Originally Posted by maj75

I am an attorney and you have no clue what you are talking about.





Lastly, the winner does not get their attorney's fees paid by the loser. Each side pays their own attorneys' fees. (Unless the contract states that attorneys fees are recoverable, which I do not believe the Subaru warranty does) The winner can sometimes recover a portion of their costs (like expert fees for testing and testimony). That makes it difficult for most people to sue the company. The fees come out of your recovery. If we are talking about an engine that's worth, say $8K, an attorney could easily run up fees higher than that. So if you win, you still lose.

Again, good luck and other than moral support, don't look for legal advice on a car forum

You're not a very good attorney then. Under the Magnusson-Moss Act this would be a breach of warranty case. Should Mike prove the manufacturer was at fault for this failure. Should he win he would be entitled to the cost of bringing the suit and reasonable legal fees.

Especially for forum "lawyers".

[Gords_zenith]

I dont want to side track this thread. Thanks, Wow, I didn't see those threads before, but those injectors are definitely a concern. So how is retarding the ignition timing going to prevent that, less cylinder pressure while shifting?

[Opie]

Originally Posted by Dave-ROR

You did get warranty service on your Subaru after you raced it in a timed rally competition.. so did plenty of others... just saying..

Yeah, Subaru goes above and beyond what they should do under warranty all of the time. But nobody ever makes forum posts about that.

[Opie]

Originally Posted by FirestormFRS

You're not a very good attorney then. Under the Magnusson-Moss Act this would be a breach of warranty case. Should Mike prove the manufacturer was at fault for this failure. Should he win he would be entitled to the cost of bringing the suit and reasonable legal fees.

Especially for forum "lawyers".

You need to re-read the Moss-Magnusson Act as you clearly do not understand it if you think it applies to this case.

[Opie]

Originally Posted by ATL BRZ

Someone did monitor oil pressure while tracking, I think @Dave-ROR did and I know he's not the only one monitoring oil pressure on track.

I'm not going to argue with you but the wild speculation is getting old already.

The issue is the direct injector seals failing due to detonation between up shifts because the transient ignition retard tables are not optimized (flawed) in the factory ecu tune. 91 octane gas and lots of heat in the block on track increases the risk of said detonation. The seals fail, cylinders run dangerously lean and boom.

I don't know how many times this needs to be repeated before people stop speculating otherwise...

Until you have proof of this occurring you are also speculating. That's why the internet sucks. People believe things simply because they read them.