Originally Posted by hotrod1442 (Post 3617681)

I'm new to working on these FA20 engines, the one I'm dealing with currently is a 2013 engine with 70,000 kilometers (43K miles), and has significant camshaft journal wear on all four cams. Has this been a common issue with the FA20 engine? Is there a known camshaft journal oiling issue that needs to be addressed?

I'm replacing all four camshafts, and both cam carriers, but want to be sure I do what I can to make this set live a bit happier life.

The four oil strainers/filters that the front journals get fed oil from were very clean, so I'm assuming the oil going to the rear journals was also clean.

I decided to use a blow gun to confirm flow to all the feed passages to the journals, but it's proving to be a bit hard to confirm that there is adaquate flow.



I removed the threaded plugs at the end of each galley and used a borescope to have a look down the length of the galleys. I was expecting a clear path from the rear of the cylinder head, all the way thru to the ball bearing plug at the front of each galley, but found what appears to be a restrictor with a very small orfice drilled in it. I guess they are trying to limit oil flow to the rear of the cylinder heads (rocker pivots, center and rear cam journals)

Anyhow, I thought I'd inquire as to whether this cam wear has been seen by others at this kind of mileage, and if there is any remedies to lessen the wear issue.

Originally Posted by blsfrs (Post 3617685)

FWIW: I don't know how far along you are with this project but most folks are going with a FA24 swap rather than mess with rebuilding a FA20.

Originally Posted by blsfrs (Post 3617685)

FWIW: I don't know how far along you are with this project but most folks are going with a FA24 swap rather than mess with rebuilding a FA20.

Originally Posted by hotrod1442 (Post 3617688)

Not a complete rebuild, more like a freshening/inspection/reseal job. This engine will see very little "hard driving" (mostly just an around town car), just trying to sort out any known issues while I have it apart.

Previously, before we jumped ship over to these FR-S's, we drove a couple of high mileage 2000 Celica GT-S's,.........one with 370.000KM, the other @ 450,000KM. Those Toyota/Yamaha 2ZZ's seemed to be BULLET PROOF!

With all the Subaru FA20 engine failure stories I'm reading, I'm starting to second guess our decision to jump into the Subaru deal. I understand that a fair bit of the failures relate to lax maintenance practices, lack of attention to detail while applying FIPG, running the engine low on oil, etc. But with the shear volume of engine failures, coupled with the wear that I'm seeing inside this engine at least, have me wondering if there are a few design issues that need fixing to make these things live.

The area that seems to be a common thread to all these failures is lubrication,...... or lack there of, to be more accurate.