Spun Bearings and now more Issues
 

Hello everyone, this is my first post on here and unfortunately it's a negative one but I need to get some feedback.

My BRZ is a 2013, never had any issues except when a rodent chewed my wiring harness but that was a year ago and replaced by the dealer, no issues further. 71,000 miles, all maintaince was performed by the book. No Issues ever.

Fast forward to the end of July 2017 I'm driving to work and I hear a horrible rod knock then about 30 seconds later the car shuts off. I get towed to the dealer and they tell me I "destroyed" two bearings, I need a new short block. My extended warranty covers it after I give them my service records and now I have a brand new short block. for about 3-4 weeks now. I needed a new clutch and pressure plate also and they replaced those for just parts cost with no additional labor (thank you!). Two weeks ago I get a p000b code and the car is running intermittently, dealer replaces the OCV which after arguing I had to pay for ($170). A week later, the same issue again, now I also hear a loud rattle when accelerating (some members on here posted videos of the same sounds at the same times and said it could maybe be an exhaust leak or heat shield. The car will stall at idle after it gets hot, I stopped driving it till Friday when I can take it to the dealer.

So last Monday I missed work because at 5 am my serpentine belt snapped because the dealer/technician also forgot to tighten and/or locktite the bolts for the alternator which lead to one backing out, hitting the belt and tearing it. The technician also left a screw driver in the engine bay, never put the rubber cap back on the alternator wire (no big deal really), and wrote in pen on the strut tower "#merica" (not a big deal but you're defacing someones private property who you trust NOT to do this).

So a friend of mine is a tech at a different company (not Subaru), he said what I am thinking - should have replaced a long block because now I probably have metal fragments from the spun bearings contaminated through everything which is blocking the OCV's and affecting the CAM timing. Now I'm not a mechanic by profession but I've replaced motors in cars before when I had a few 3000gt's, motorcycles, rebuilt them, etc.. so I have a pretty good idea how things work.

Has anyone else had problems similar to these? How did you handle it with the dealer? I'm hoping the service manager (who seems sincerely apologetic) will take care of this but I think the damage has already been done.

WOW! ....... some rough time with your BRZ.....:sigh:

Welcome to the forum .......:)

I'd suggest you ask the dealer to fix what is broke and not stress yourself out over what else in the engine might have been stressed by the spun bearings.

Let's hope the engine will settle down and run right.......:thumbsup:


humfrz

I'm curious how you spun bearings? Has it been burning oil? Has it ever run low on oil? Did you spin it under high g-load while winding it out? Every time I've spun one it's been under high g-load.

I kind of agree with you about contamination. I've spun a lot of bearings over the years and I've never had top end issues after rebuilding. But it does seem odd that you are suddenly having other problems. There must be a connection.

If you spin a bearing, anything that touches oil like oil coolers or the heads need to be disassembled and hot tanked.

Anything else and you risk contamination and ruining any replaced components.

^^This. And if they don't have a hot tank, or receipts they are inept and I am sure you mechanic friend would agree.

Yup. Hot tank or receipts would be what would keep me from contacting SOA and telling them to reign in their dealer.

My oil pump drive gear shattered and spun two bearings, and I had the engine replaced under warranty. They ordered a new short block and a bunch of various parts and built it there in the shop, and I've had no trouble at all out of it in the past 12K miles. They treated me very well.

Based on that contrast, it seems to me you might want to look for another dealership to take over from here. Is there another one nearby you can take it to?

seems like the 13 and some 14's have serious issues the later years don't. Al the more reason for Toyota to just cover repairs.

UPDATE**
So I dropped it off at the dealer.
They are replacing the heat shield in the engine bay and going over the entire car to make sure all the bolts and everything has been put back in order, torqued, etc. etc. like they should've done in the first place.

I asked why only the short block was replaced, they said the heads and everything else has been thoroughly cleaned before putting the new short block in and nothing else was needed. Expressed what I believe to be going on and basically told them I want a refund for the OCV I originally paid for the first time that the warranty didn't cover. The service manager told me they will look everything over and as long as its a fault of their own or because of contamination it's a possibility. I understand he can't jump to conclusions and just refund money until they inspect it so I told the service manager this and basically told him they need to do the job right, I'm not coming back again. Hopefully, this is the last time. They are accommodating giving me another loaner car (third one) while they fix this, I really hope they do me right this time. :bonk:

That's the best part, normal driving! lol. I was on my way to work, cruise set at 65-70mph and out of no where...BANG!

Wasn't low on oil, just did an oil change a few thousand miles previous and I check regularly (I once had a problem with a car loosing oil and I've been paranoid since). Never ran low. Once I did a burn out at about 45k miles for maybe 15 seconds. Never redlined.

I never beat on the car, I treat it better than my girlfriend now that I think about it :thumbup:

Dude. Time to pull out that lemon law card. Hopefully they would work with you and there would be no need to a lawyer.

Really? I would think that if I have the same issue again after this then it would be time to go that route. I've never dealt with any lemons (my dodge is more of a turd than a lemon).

Pennsylvania will lemon law a 4 year old car with >70k miles since purchase?

:eyebulge:

I think he's well past that, nobody is legally obligated to help the OP at this point, all warranties and consumer protection are up (except for the extended warranty stuff which wasn't mentioned)

My ex bought a Buick with the legendary l67 engine naturally aspirated. Widely known as one of the most bulletproof engines ever made. The previous owner babied the car it's entire life. Had under 100k miles (86k rings a bell). Maintenance followed to the T. All invoices and records as proof. She had it maybe 3 months and it spun 2 rods on a road trip. (All fluids changed immediately before being out up for sale).

There's is and always has been a trend with babying cars.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

90k on my Forester's built motor, every time she's driven she is driven to the limiter multiple times, 24psi of boost is achieve, and I've grabbed rubber in at LEAST 2nd gear, often 3rd. She's my outlet for power, and any problems she has I associate to the 195k on the clock, (supporting components.)

My 86 Celica GT-S was driven to 215k on the original clutch, engine, everything but starter and alternator. Bone stock. Redlined multiple times to and from work.

I'm a firm believer that cars are meant to be driven - hard. Very few cars come to me that were being driven good and hard and have failures. I see low mileage turbo/piston/clutch failures all the time where the owner was 'babying it as usual' and 'not taking it to redline - I've never done that!'.

That said, lots of cars are making too much power for their supporting mods and have a failure. That's a different issue.

Properly built cars that are driven hard are a different story. One of my customer cars is a stock block 185k 2010 WRX. Every single supporting mod in the book and protune done by 10k miles, and he's making 330whp. He only swings by for maintenance, and for me to inspect the mods/ensure everything is as expected. :thumbsup:

(AOS, full exhaust including equal length header, TGV/EGR/Airpump deletes, dyno tune, bushings galore, ACT HDSS.)

UPDATE**

Monday I got a call saying it was fixed, the OCV was defective (same one that was originally replaced, sounds too coincidental to me given the situation). They apparently went over the entire car, changed all the fluids and filters so now its like were starting over again.

Well The service manager drove the car to and from work for three days (I asked them to put some miles on it and make sure its fixed), drives great no issues. I told them it better be, just the OCV, if there are anymore issues, even the slightest noise I WILL be back.

Drove the car home and put about 100 miles on it so after the dealer did the work it has about 200 miles on it now. Going to see what happens now. I'm praying it was just an odd coincidence given the fact that my luck trends like this and that said this is the last chance I'm trusting the dealer to fix what could be their mistake.

fingers crossed!

@Jay161

I've had nearly identical issues that you have had.

June of 2016, about 48,000 miles I had my motor pulled to get an oil leak fixed under warranty. They resealed the oil pan and cam plate.

September of 2016, about 52,000 miles and I had my first CEL with P000B. They replaced the OCV and I went about my way.

April of 2017 at about 65,000 miles my car threw a code for P0016. Dealer replaced the OCV and it came back after 8 miles. Took the car back and they replaced the cam sprocket and ECU.

June of 2017 at about 69,000 miles I spun rod bearing #4. Replaced short block.

Not even a week later it threw another P000B. Dealer deemed that the short block had a defective main bearing, causing low oil pressure. So they replaced the short block again, along with a timing cover, another cam sprocket and another ECU.

600 miles later, and it threw another P000B. And this time it sounded like it still had a knock ever since I got it back from the dealer.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the metal shavings from the initial spun bearing have fully contaminated every oil passage in the motor.

I am going thru s spun bearing on my 13 frs with only 45k mile:

April 2017
Oil leak and reseal timing cover

April 2018
Oil leak again and reseal timing cover

June 2018
Oil leak again and they replaced timing cover

July 2018
Oil leak again and dealer trying to figure out issue with Toyota

Sept 2018
Engine rebuild with new cams, rod bearing etcs etcs. Can was in the shop for 2 months

Jan 2019
Finally spun bearing

Been dealing with Toyota and they even extended my warranty for total 8 years.

I am tired of going thru endless repair. I pushing them for a brand new engine
Otherwise I might be coming for new short blocks every few months

Never skip any required Maintanance and oil is full with only 500mikes when spun bearing occur

LS swap!

Time to trade that puppy in - :iono:


humfrz

The dealer has replaced the short block under warranty and I am going to pick up the car today. Will see how it run

Another case of using too much sealant and blowing the engine? Did they say why this happened?

Nope they did not and the only replaced the short block on one side and now makes me worry all the metal shaving that got into the other side and how do they clean it. On top of that they put a dent and scratch on my bumper and fender. Shitty job and never care about customers car. Unbelievable

The term "short block" refers to a fully assembled block with crank, pistons, rods, bearings and rings. What makes you think they only did a block half? A block half is like 1000 and a whole short block is 1800. Seems a dealer wouldn't bother doing one block half and then spend all that time reassembling everything and risking another failure. It's worth the extra money to have a plug and play repair.

After having the timing cover on and off at least 5 times I think that is a pretty safe bet!
I have been saying that improper sealant (even from the factory) was the major cause of the bearing failures in the early 13s but was shouted down by most that it can't possibly be that and had to be something else. Now we are seeing that it can indeed be that and nothing else.
I feel some what vindicated.

There does seem to be a pattern with timing cover reseals but I still am confused about how loose packing in the cover area would ever make it back to the pan or anywhere that would restrict flow. Excessive packing on the timing cover also wouldn't protrude into any galleries that I can think of. In the case of BestFRS's car they rebuilt the heads which means they would be cleaning packing and reapplying packing in an area that would easily make it down to the pan. Same for the recalls, they work on packing in the head. There are some areas on the block that could also protrude into oil galeries. But the block isn't touched on the recall or on the work BestFRS had done.

Edit: You know what, going through my pictures from my rebuild, the bottom of the timing cover is wide open to the pan. So yeah loose packing would get right into the pan and into the pickup filter.

The timing cover is the heart of the oil system on these engines. One bit of sealant breaking off can plug up the works. You may never even find it if it is shoved in a gallery someplace.


This guy explains it well.


[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtYl2k6abI[/ame]

Yes the pump is inside the cover but it isn't open to the cover. It's all sealed off under all those plates as seen in the video and away from the edges of the cover where all the packing is. So no galleries would be directly exposed. The problem would come from the packing draining back into the pan and then clogging the pickup filter. But after playing with this packing I am not even the slightest bit convinced that excessive packing leads to material breaking away and falling into the engine. This crap is incredibly elastic. I pulled at some of the excess packing on my engine just to see if it was plausible and it doesn't just flake off. You really have to work at it to make it break off. Actually MRT has another video where he pulls at this stuff and although it breaks off you can see it takes some stretching. I've used various FIPGs in the past and this Threebond stuff is nuts. It doesn't get hard as a rock and brittle. My opinion is that early models had issues not from excess breaking off but from excess oozing into galleries. Not in the timing cover though because the packing is not even remotely close to any galeries. It's the 4 drains from the heads, the cam caps (which the recall instructions warn about) and the packing between the block halves that would block galeries. But my theory doesn't explain the failures after repacks. Maybe those failures come from packing being scrapped off during cleaning and then landing in the pan which would end up in the pickup filter. But it's hard to believe techs would be that careless.

But It's easy to visually inspect every gallery on this car with the exception of the crank. All the others you can look from one end to the other (after removing plugs). To check my crank I simply blew compressed air in there to see if anything came out. Nothing did. There was no packing in my drained oil, oil filter, pickup filter, pan, pump, galeries, OCV filters, cams, cam gears... nowhere. All I found was packing blocking 60% of one of the 4 drains leaving one of my heads. I'll just have to assume that was the cause of my failure. I've seen others report blockage of the 5th main where the halves are glued together but mine wasn't blocked there.

I suspect if Toyota/Subaru finds a pattern to these post-recall failures that they will issue some sort of revision to the documentation. It would be interesting to see what that revision is.

I didn't mean that the pump was open. It is where you pour the oil in. It is the very beginning of the whole system. There are several reports of the sealant being found inside of failed engines. You have read them. There are even pictures someplace.

I think most people would consider the sump or maybe the pump to be the start of the oil system and not the filler neck. You sort of make it sound like the cover is under pressure and excess packing is going to get blasted away when in reality oil simply drains through it with gravity. I just don’t see packing breaking away because some oil dribbled on it. Anyways, I’ve not see the reports of loose packing in the pan. I’ll have to do some digging tomorrow.

I don't think I am explaining it well. The timing cover requires massive amounts of sealant. Some of that sealant can either break off and float around in there or be forced over passages when the cover is installed. All of the oil that goes into the car enters and passes through that big open area and those passages. It would not take a whole lot of sealant to block a passage enough to reduce flow and pressure on an engine that already has fairly low flow and pressure. The video I linked explains this concern very well even if he doesn't specify sealant and just refers to "gunk".
Is it because it is just to easy an explanation that people are convinced there must be something else and they are on a quest for a more complex mystery cause? Sometimes the easy explanation is right. I have followed these failures for 5 years and based on the info at hand this explanation just makes sense.


http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showt...ne#post3054764 Post 22
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showt...45#post2210345 Post 158
https://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107959
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121863
https://www.ft86club.com/forums/show...51#post2825351 Post 133


https://youtu.be/obPG5ywHyMU?t=126

The packing on the timing cover only gets close to one oil hole to the right hand head and even that one has a decent size gap between it and the packing. The packing also have a grove that the packing sits in which should keep it someone isolated. You would have to go crazy nuts with the packing to get it to bleed into that gallery. The only other thing the packing routes around are the 32 bolt holes.

Here is a clip from the manual. There are some places with packing in the middle of the cover that people may confuse as oil galleries but they are not. I marked those in red. They are just bolt holes. The one and only oil gallery near the packing I marked in green. The only other gallery in the timing cover is the pickup from the pan which you can see is very far from packing.

https://i.imgur.com/gdCIbif.png

All I am saying is I don't see the timing cover being the big risk with regards to packing. It's the block halves and the heads.

Edit: That MRT video you linked to is the one I was referring to in my other post. Look how hard he pulls at that packing to break it loose.

The first post you link to is talking about the #4 main being blocked isn't even near the timing cover. It's caused by over packing the block halves which I've already pointed out.
The second post does support your theory where they say packing blocked the gallery marked in green in my image.
The third post you link to is talking about the same area that your first link was talking about. It's between the block halves.

Ya. Sorry. Reading back it most certainly looks like I meant only the timing cover. I just sort of picked it as the most commonly removed part. To be more clear my thesis covers any and all parts that use the sealant. The issue is sealant wherever it comes from not the cover.
I just don't understand what happened to using proper gaskets really.


Pretty difficult to say how much force he used. Looks to me like he just randomly picks some off with zero effort.

I'm in total agreeance with you then.

To separate the packing you have to cut at it. In the recall instructions they specify an SST which is simply a wire with handles on the ends. I used a combination of techniques to separate my cover and in the process you end up with packing all over the place and bits that are still attached but dangling. Those are the parts he pulled off with ease but if you watch a little farther past the timecode in your link you will see him pull at one that hasn't been tampered with and you will notice he has to stretch it a good bit before it snaps. That was the experience I had with mine. I'm pulling at it and thinking, "yeah no way this shit falls off in the engine".

I could see someone doing a repack and while cutting it open bits could drop into the pan without knowing. The wire tool seems like it would do a better job of sort of heating the packing and melting through it making much less mess. Kind of like those wire tools for cutting PVC. They basically melt through the pipe rather than cut it. If I have to pull mine apart again I'll be getting one of those tools.

Anything small enough to get past the screen in the pickup tube is then captured by the oil filter.


I have a feeling that something else is going on here.

But loose packing from the clean up would probably be big enough to not pass the pickup filter which could be catastrophic. If it makes it past the pickup and clogs the oil filter it's no big deal because it will just bypass. I just can't believe a tech would be so careless to contaminate it with that much trash. I just can't think of anything else that could go wrong with the oil system with regards to a cover repack or recall job.

That would be an awful lot of shit to suck up in there. I'm trying hard to take a reasonable stance because we both know how much Tcoat loves dealers. I don't want to set him off ranting about self-righteous DIYers again.
:scared0016:

Replacing the short block with labor cost 4500 and I had the valve spring recall done at the same time.
When I got my car, the dealer had put a big scratch and dent on my from bumper. Every time they mess up my car.
Toyota and the dealer have easily spend at least 10k repair on my car. My extended warranty will run out in 1.5years. They extended the warranty due to all the issues I had.

$4,500.... lol
They put forged piston on a closed deck block?

So they made you pay for the short block and labor?