How many miles FA20 engines can survive with track use?
 

I know it's really generic question but it comes from fact that multiple people tell me that "I'll break the car if I'll keep driving like this". And by driving like this they mean clutch kicking, aggressive gear shifting, redlining this thing all the time on daily basis and so on, so on... I'd say it's safe to compare to track use (maybe not exactly but let's just take some well known, worst case reference point).

On the other hand I'm trying to not hammer it on cold, always waiting for oil to get to 80-90 deg before crossing 3k rpm, always monitoring oil temps to not exceed 125 deg C, using motorsport grade high HSTS oil, changing oil and filters every 10k km, using high octane, high quality fuel, regularly maintaining car etc...

So I really wonder - apart from consumables like clutch, bushings, suspension components, tires, breaks etc - is this car going to fall apart significantly faster just from driving it hard? Are there any non-consumable parts that may easily fail due to hard/track driving? Us it gonna start burning oil hust from redlining? Is there any way to prevent such damage with some additional maintenance or better driving technique? Basically "Is there anything I can do to be still able to drive like an idiot and not trash my car completely in 2 years?". And how soon should I expect failures caused by hard driving to show up.

Don’t drive like an idiot. Respect your equipment. I’d hate to be the guy that buys your car when you’re done thrashing it. Regardless, keep the oil changed.

that's assuming he ever sells it.

increased abuse means increased maintenance.

no one is really going to be able to give you a solid answer, as every abuse is different.

How to. I mean it's sports car. I'm not going to drive 1500 rpm on 6th gear in city. If I wanted such experience I'd get Skoda Superb or some other boat. It's lightweight rwd drivers car, it's meant to be driven hard. If it's not ootb, then how do I prepare it to be driven hard. How do you properly drive hard without damaging your car? What actions are most harmful to car and what things I should avoid? (or what things I should upgrade because they were not prepared for hard driving out of factory). Are there some guides about proper and responsible driving like an idiot?

I mean I'm not driving like in GTA across pavements, curbs, grass, potholes, speedbumps at 100 kph xD But still I do pretty much daily drive it similarly to how I'm driving my MX5 NB on track days and Miata Challenge events - really high rpm to squeeze every last hp from underpowered engine, quick shifting, quick clutch operation. I mean sure I'm doing my best rev matching but when you shift quickly it will always "kick" a bit and I believe synchros are not too happy. Also I'm having some problems with wheelhop occasionally when launching and everyone who feels wheelhop immediately screams that oh my gawd car is gonna fall apart. Basically stress you experience during beating your best laps on track days... but daily.

And while I don't really worry about my MX5 in a sense - when I was buying it, engine already burned oil and it already required some work so I just accepted fact that you need full engine rebuild from time to time - I wouldn't like to just trash BRZ and decide after 5 years well sh*t, time to get rid of it. I hate when people just give up on cars and I don't want to be that guy who kills another BRZ hence I'd like to do everything I can to mitigate stress and damage caused by harsh driving - from both sides - car maintenance / build up as well as adjusting my driving to avoid those absolutely worst actions.

I'm not afraid of maintenance costs, servicing and small repairs - I'm more afraid of serious damage that is fatal to car. Inb4 no I'm probably not planning to sell it. When I'll decide I'm done with it as daily I'll most likely try to replace my MX5 with it as dedicated track car but it'd be desirable that it survived until then, hopefully without rerebuilding engine 7 times along the way xD

But I guess it's understandable that it's hard to give any advise just from reading descriptions as indeed it's hard to describe what each person means and perceives as driving hard :/

Maintain it and it will be fine, use the appropriate oil. I have over 100k on my car and a ton of track days. Get UOA periodically to gauge engine health. There are guys running their cars with more miles and way more track days than me with healthy engines.

Maintenance is huge factor. If you are in doubt with "X"part or "Y" fluid, replace it/them.

Mine is a stock FA slapped to a Borg Warner EFR 7163 twinscroll turbo with low 400whp. I track it consistently throughout the year. Like others have said, maintenance is key. Mines been heckin reliable as I've been boosted for ~60,000 miles.

https://i.imgur.com/RWwPxPg.jpg

so the thing to understand here is the shock load you're putting on every bit of the mechanical bits.

when you pop the clutch like that, you jerk every bit of the driveline from the motor, the trans, the drive shaft, rear diff, half shafts, and rear wheel bearings. it's putting additional stress on every single part that rotates, which means that every single rotating part will need to be replaced much faster than before. 'lifetime' before, might mean only 50-100k km now.

i rev my car out for fun. every time it leaves the garage, it bumps the rev limiter.

since the first day i got the car, i hung a necklace and pendant from the mirror. don't feel right driving a car without something off the mirror--habit from the past. anyways, most times, the pendant doesn't bounce. doesn't move. and when it does, i feel bad.

daily driving the car, it gets better, more natural, more unconscious, to be paying attention to what that pendant is doing. if the pendant bounces, it means the driveline is being unnecessarily taxed...

find your rhythm with the car-- the car's providing feedback to what works and what doesn't. if you're snapping the car into the next gear, you're the one avoiding what the car is telling you.

Be smooth. Limit mechanical and thermal extremes. Replace parts before they wear enough to damage other parts. I need some tougher CV joints. Outers have a bit too much lash.

You are pretty lucky. Boost is a crap shoot with these motors and at near 400WHP guessing your in the 15-18PSI range

You'll get better answers on the troll thread

34k track miles....stock, original engine, transmission, clutch, TOB.....

To answer this title.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...oards-logo.jpg

Buy cheap hard tires instead of kicking the clutch.
Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance.

It will last 100,002 miles.
That's it.

Or
160,937.619 kilometers. Depending on where you are.

I have 50k miles on my supposedly cursed, recall ridden model year 2013. 15-20k of those are very hard track miles.

Like others said, maintenance is key. Limiting your tire selection to 200tw tires doesn't hurt either.

My maintenance schedule on my track only car is oil change every 6ish track days (averaged about 25-30 track days/year in 2017-2019), brake fluid once at the beginning of the season and again somewhere around June/July. Diff and trans fluid at the beginning of every year. Seems to be working good.

After seeing blown up subies and reading all the FA horror stories I have started to think that I am on borrowed time. But she just keeps going.

When you look really really close at these stories you see that there are maybe a couple of hundred actual individual issues resulting form the cars themselves. They just get told so loudly and repeated so often it looks like far more. Even the recall failures are a drop in the bucket compared to how many must have been done.
The reality is we are probably looking at well under 1% that had failure due to actual defects in parts or design. This is in line with any other car ever made, even the mythically "bullet proof" ones of fanboi lore.
The number due to driver abuse/screwups, poor maintenance, bad modifications (tunes, overboost, etc) and other issues not related to the actual cars will be the vast majority.

That is why I am plasti gauging my rod bearings this winter along with doing a leakdown and compression test. I've seen enough oil starvation on track that I am considering that maintenance with this engine being over 100K. That being said, I have seen oil pressure dropout into the teens and single digits a lot and it is still going.

People have such a negative opinion on the FA that running engines go for relatively cheap. I refuse to rebuild one of these. I will just swap in a running one (prob a 2017+ engine) when the time inevitably comes.

Side note: I met a guy at a track that had an IAG engine and I could not believe how much he paid for it. I can swap in used engines 3 times before I got to that amount!

I'd prefer not to risk losing another engine on track. If the rod bearings look slightly worn and on the looser side of spec, I will swap another set in and call it a day. If they look bad I will likely just get a new short block. Checking the rods should be doable with just pulling the upper pan assembly off.

You should be in the clear after the recall.

Clean, properly filled oil= longevity.

The recall issues were a roll of the dice. Either the tech knew what he was doing or he didn't. Mine didn't. 3K miles in and that was all she wrote. To add insult to injury he didn't tighten the clutch fork so in the middle of the freeway with a rod knocking, the clutch went out in the middle of stopped traffic.

Yeah I know I have been damn lucky. 14.5 PSI. Full send through Road Atlanta / AMP. Hitting up Barber at the end of the month.

Money shifted it to what appeared to be 9k once. That was a scary event.

PSI means nothing.
14.5PSI out of a 13G is not the same as a a GT286 or a GT3582.
That number also changes with mods.
PSI is just a measure of restriction.

The actual power output is what really maters in this case.

If I ever boost my FA20 its going to be a baby turbo with boost by gear and a damn good tune targeting around 300WHP and 230-250WTQ on e85

Have you thought anymore about an Accusump? I'd be curious to see if it would keep you out of the single digits.

It'll completely fall apart into a mess of liquids and shredded metals the EXACT MOMENT you hit that mileage.

So be prepared for that inevitablity.

That is probably very close to when my FRS STARTED it's track life!

Yeah, accusump will be next if the baffle isn't enough. I am still toying with the idea of moving away from the FA though so I am not too committed to any decision right now. I've had my cursor over the buy button on many a K series lately :D

I beat the shit out of mine. Engines are free. Once you sell the rest of the parts off the engine donor parts car.

Mechanical Sympathy goes a long long way, especially for a car with a motor as funky as the boxer.

Drive it for 15-20 minutes before thrashing it, and keep in mind if you're driving a car that doesn't have an oil temp gauge that your coolant temp will reach it's max plenty before your oil is near being fully warmed up. I never got costumed to banging my car off redline in any of my enthusiast cars. Especially on the street and doing casual mountain driving or back roads I never felt the need to impersonate an F1 driver. I always shift around 6,500 if im really "pushing" the car. All of this though is completely subjective.

Change your oil every 3,500 to 5,000 depending on your driving habits. Changing your oil is the cheapest insurance policy for your engine. 6QT Mobil / Castrol / Penzoil / Whatever & a Tokyo Roki should be less than $45 USD at most.

Enjoy the drive! These cars were made to be driven. I know plenty of folks who regularly race and track their first gen cars who are well over the 100,000 mile mark on original transmission and engine with no fear or worries. Again, mechanical sympathy goes an extremely long way.

I feel like 8 out of 10 times we see a car on here that has randomly died prematurely it's due to driver negligence. motors don't just die. There's always a reason.

Rod knock at 50k this, Rod knock at 60k that. Show me their driving habits and they'll speak for themselves.