Engine failure - 38,000 miles

[extrashaky]

Originally Posted by gramicci101

Your desk needs to be cleaned.

I'm using all that stuff. Right now. Even the oil sample container and the box of .410 shells. I swear.

[Bigmaxy]

The thing is that most people on these forums probably don't own a completely stock vehicle. So any stats being gathered here would be skewed.

You would have no way of knowing if the 98% of owners who never visit a forum dedicated to this car have a failure or are completely happy.

Only someone in Subaru/Toyota head office truly knows the full story.

I must say though, it's my opinion that these engines do appear to be very robust with no inherent problems. Some lemons will always exist though. (Knock on wood here big time after writing that) :-)

[BRZnut]

Originally Posted by Monogram

That is not my point at all. In each and every case of engine failure, there are either mods, lack of maintenance, or major accidents involved.

I'm still waiting for someone to post a singe engine failure where the vehicle is unmodified, has been properly maintained, and/or has not been wrecked.

Next I'd like to see a cross reference of engine failures by age of driver.

How about this guy? Stock engine that self destructed when he jump started his dead battery:


http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showt...ght=jump+start

[evan]

Originally Posted by BRZnut

How about this guy? Stock engine that self destructed when he jump started his dead battery:


http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showt...ght=jump+start

There's a monster peeking at us from behind those ports. Feed it ($$$).

[billwot]

Originally Posted by Monogram

Seriously? Perrin Intake does not make it a stock engine. The previous one I looked at had a Perrin crank pulley and it lost a crank bearing.

This appears to be a serious over-rev situation (most likely a downshift at high rpm). There is no way this engine damage was caused by someone starting a vehicle: No way.

Yup. Looks the valves developed a close personal relationship with the piston. Definitely not caused by jumping the battery.

[extrashaky]

Originally Posted by Monogram

This appears to be a serious over-rev situation (most likely a downshift at high rpm). There is no way this engine damage was caused by someone starting a vehicle: No way.

Yes way. As I mentioned on the other thread for that failure, there are other ways a valve can hit a piston besides over-revving. I had a TR6 that once that had a valve spring break and take out the retaining clip at the top of the valve stem, allowing it to drop right into the cylinder. This was under light acceleration and was nowhere near the rev limit. The valve made contact because the part holding it in place failed, not because of interference while over-revving.

Obviously this engine is set up differently, but the first thing I thought when I saw that bit of ejected bearing on the first page of that thread was that there was a catastrophic failure in the head that allowed the valves to travel too far. That could certainly happen from a cold start.

My gut tells me the OP did absolutely nothing wrong there and just had a freak failure. I might not believe it either if I hadn't seen it happen myself on one of my cars.

[BRZPDX]

I really fucking dislike this thread.

[extrashaky]

Originally Posted by Monogram

There is way to much damage for this to have happened at startup. I have seen many failed engines over my lifetime, and the story does not match the damage.

Could be. But my gut still tells me this is the one time when the seemingly unlikely story is actually true. From what he said, it sounds like he let it run rather than shutting it down immediately. He also said he revved it to 5000 RPM when he started it.

You saw that pile of shards that was left. If you run that engine for 15 seconds while idling at 1000 RPM and coming apart, that's 250 revolutions for all those pieces to be bouncing around in there. I seriously doubt it would take very long to amass a serious collection of divots in the head, much like what that nasty pic showed. And it sounds like he ran it longer and revved it so that he shard-blasted everything in that cylinder.

Over-revving is the obvious assumption, so I can see why one's mind might jump there. But having been on the other side of that argument ("Really! I was just driving along! I wasn't racing!"), I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

[rice_classic]

Originally Posted by extrashaky

He also said he revved it to 5000 RPM when he started it.

A wise man once gave me a piece of advice when I was very young and it holds true to this very day.

That advice was..





"If you're gonna be stupid, you better be strong."

[BRZnut]

plus..if you look at the end of that thread, damage was covered and his car made new again. So no fault of the OP for the failure. Also, I would not consider his Perrin intake as an engine that was modified to any great degree.

[Mr.Zoolittle]

I was at my local dealership two days ago and the tec said they replaced a "cooked" engine in a FR-S. Makes me want to get out of this. I had an MR2 Turbo with 212k miles on it. No engine problems.

[Mr 286]

Originally Posted by BRZPDX

I really fucking dislike this thread.

I posted it to let the community be aware of another failure on a car that is driven normally in mostly city traffic, has been well maintained, not modified beyond the TRD exhaust and is one of the first of these cars to hit the dealerships.

I pretty much knew it might devolve into arguments about the reliability of these cars, or people wanting to blame my age, my driving habits, my maintenance, the accident damage, mods, solar flares or anything else but the fact that the engine simply failed and can fail even when properly maintained ...

[Mr 286]

The cars are generally very well engineered and put together, but there are some issues here and there. I've had some items serviced well before the guy backed into me. I had tons of issues with other cars like my old Mazda3, but this is the first time I bought a brand new car that needed a new engine block after less than 40,000 miles. And designing a car to run on fuel that isn't even available in most markets is absurd. Either have 93 octane or just deal with "acceptable" amounts of detonation? Get real.

My MR2 Turbo has an upgraded intercooler, running well above stock boost, 3" exhaust, suspension, and more. Even with a couple times having air in the coolant system causing it to boil over (common MR2 issue), and being driven much harder than I drive the FR-S its race-engineered 3S-GTE is still holding strong.

Nonetheless, once everything is back together and I have the car running again I'll let you guys know how it's going and my impressions of the new motor. I'll be trying to just drive it normally as before, and not be paranoid that it may be a ticking time bomb lol

[extrashaky]

Originally Posted by Mr 286

And designing a car to run on fuel that isn't even available in most markets is absurd. Either have 93 octane or just deal with "acceptable" amounts of detonation? Get real.

93 octane is available in the majority of US states. Some guy on the Corvette forum did a survey.

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c6-c...cross-usa.html