Potential Cause of rumored GR86’s blown engine? Seal packing(RTV) was peeled off

[OkieSnuffBox]

Originally Posted by Petah78

Now i am super paranoid and would like to drop my pan just to take a peek. Was your GR ever tracked? How was it driven?

Want to guarantee that if it does happen and they can see you've dropped the pan they're going to give you a hard time?

Just leave it. 5yr/60k powertrain warranty. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen well within that period.

[Rustyoid]

challenge accepted. gonna drive it even harder now!

[Petah78]

Originally Posted by OkieSnuffBox

Want to guarantee that if it does happen and they can see you've dropped the pan they're going to give you a hard time?

Just leave it. 5yr/60k powertrain warranty. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen well within that period.

Very valid point. As Rusty mentioned, drive it like you stole it and make sure the oil is changed at the dealer for service records.

[wlindsey97]

Originally Posted by Petah78

Very valid point. As Rusty mentioned, drive it like you stole it and make sure the oil is changed at the dealer for service records.

Can dealers actually deny warranty over documented self completed oil changes if this failure were to occur?

I keep receipts, pictures and full documentation every time I change my oil. I'd rather not have to drive an hour and a half to get Subaru to change it.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by wlindsey97

Can dealers actually deny warranty over documented self completed oil changes if this failure were to occur?

I keep receipts, pictures and full documentation every time I change my oil. I'd rather not have to drive an hour and a half to get Subaru to change it.

No. As long as you have the documentation to prove the work.

[OkieSnuffBox]

Originally Posted by wlindsey97

Can dealers actually deny warranty over documented self completed oil changes if this failure were to occur?

I keep receipts, pictures and full documentation every time I change my oil. I'd rather not have to drive an hour and a half to get Subaru to change it.

Like TCoat said, you don't have to. I take my cars to a reputable indy shop to do it because I'm lazy and don't want to screw with having to dispose of the used oil.

I can do it during the week, and log on to their WiFi and keep "working" and essentially get a few hours out of the home office.

[JusTheG]

Originally Posted by wlindsey97

Can dealers actually deny warranty over documented self completed oil changes if this failure were to occur? I keep receipts, pictures and full documentation every time I change my oil. I'd rather not have to drive an hour and a half to get Subaru to change it.

I want to assure that most warranty claims will need to be covered by Dealerships to submit to OEM's with sufficient documentation to prove maintenance intervals. Question is if you put liability on the shop, dealer, or the manufacturer as those claims will imply differences on the cause of the defect. As long as you monitor your Powertrain with appropriate servicing, the limited or extended warranty you have with the manufacturer (Subaru in this case) will be what the claim will need to be issued under.

Originally Posted by Tcoat

I am going to tell a little story here.
Back 2014 and 15 (long before the spring recall debacle) there were a number of mysterious engine failures due to oil starvation. I went back through older threads and managed to collect around 30 reported cases. Of the cases that actually gave detailed info there were more than 20 that included excessive sealant in the oil pickup. Of course there would have been many many more that never got reported here but with the data we had it was statistically probable that the majority of the failures were due to blocked passages and/or pickup tubes. All of the affected cars were very early 2013s

So, anybody that works in automotive manufacturing knows just how much is done by robots. In this case the sealant on the timing cover and oil pan are almost guaranteed to be put on by robot. It is exactly the sort of task that robots USUALLY do better than humans. Robots do however screw up (often because the human that taught the task did a piss poor job) on a fairly regular basis as well though. Yes these engines had been used for a short time in the Ascent but the differences in the overall construction likely means they had their own set of programing including the sealant application. Even being out by 1 millimeter or a few extra grams of material applied can give the results seen in the picture here. This type of failure is not unknown in the early production runs of anything new.

I also want to echo TCoat's explanation and provide context for what these sealants usually can lead to. You can have RTV (Room-temperature vulcanizing) materials dispensed on a variety of products and the amount dispense, type of curing process (amine, platinum-cure, hygroscopic, etc.), and the cure time will affect the lifetime of the product. RTV sealants are usually robust in withstanding temperatures and vibration, BUT the issue is on the dispense side for having leak failures or inappropriate dispense locations. Changeovers increase the likelihood of the RTV pump failures and dispense head having multiple issues with weight dispensed and thickness of the bead. I can't count on my hands the number of times I saw dispense weights that were just wrong and caused scrap/defect at Visual Inspection (VI).

I knew some examples of this oil pan back for the Zenki generations saw the accumulation of the RTV near the edges of the oil pan. Guaranteed, if the Robot/Dispense gantry did not align itself to the dispense pattern for the BRZ/GR86 pan then you would see the accumulation of RTV on the interior of the oil pan or on the outer edge towards the screw holes. How much RTV you see dispensed in that strainer portion of the oil recirculation piping means the pattern REALLY got messed up from changeover, robot programming sequence, or just a dispense head malfunction. How that went through VI or QC means that Subaru will add some inspection for that dispense process now. 0km reviews are going to be a big discussion for Subaru if there are these examples of misplaced RTV.

[blsfrs]

They ought to go back to plain old paper or cork gaskets. They might leak but they never get sucked in to the oil pump.

[NoHaveMSG]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

So, anybody that works in automotive manufacturing knows just how much is done by robots. In this case the sealant on the timing cover and oil pan are almost guaranteed to be put on by robot. It is exactly the sort of task that robots USUALLY do better than humans. Robots do however screw up (often because the human that taught the task did a piss poor job)

lol I wish I still had pictures of some CNC welded large parts I had done where it wasn't set up correctly. A couple of the axis where indexed like 1/8" off, it was pretty funny.

[raisingAnarchy]

Can you access the rear oil pan bolts without lifting the engine on these cars? Just did a KillerB oil pan swap on a 2019 STI last weekend and what a PITA, even though I've done it in the past.


To those talking about dropping the pan to inspect, I would try a boroscope the next time you do an oil change first. Might create more problems than you solve by dropping the pan yourself and having to reinstall with fresh gasket maker. There's an important sweet spot on how much sealant to use (obviously, given the topic of this thread).

[FrickingReallySlow]

no need to lift engine, dropping Pan requires dropping the OEM header. Simple job in a garage. Just need a 24hr cure.

The best consensus technique I believe is to spread the RTV with your fingers so that its a thin layer across the mating surface on the pan and not leave it beaded it up.

@Opie got told by Subaru that they were not selling short blocks and saving them for repair. Maybe they already knew something was up earlier this year.

Originally Posted by raisingAnarchy

Can you access the rear oil pan bolts without lifting the engine on these cars? Just did a KillerB oil pan swap on a 2019 STI last weekend and what a PITA, even though I've done it in the past.


To those talking about dropping the pan to inspect, I would try a boroscope the next time you do an oil change first. Might create more problems than you solve by dropping the pan yourself and having to reinstall with fresh gasket maker. There's an important sweet spot on how much sealant to use (obviously, given the topic of this thread).

[FrickingReallySlow]

Hey at least they're color coding the RTV to tell you where its from

drive it hard and document those oil changes! Bathtub failure curve baby

[CincyJohn]

Originally Posted by FrickingReallySlow

Hey at least they're color coding the RTV to tell you where its from

drive it hard and document those oil changes! Bathtub failure curve baby

Could someone explain to me a few things regarding these pics/failures?

One, why do they all look like a coiled snake? Shouldn't they look like small and medium bits of random crap? I mean, I guess I can imagine that a HUGE bead would create overflow beads on both the inside and outside of the pan and that eventually it just all comes off at one time together (or slowly, over time, gets sucked into the intake in one piece). But in that case, shouldn't the tech see the excess on the outside of the pan and flag it?

So, are these cases where the robot puts the bead too far to the inside of the pan making the overflow bead almost entirely on the inside?

Second, why wouldn't the other four sides of the strainer provide enough flow to prevent catastrophic engine failure? Is it a case where 90% of the flow comes through the bottom/top of the strainer?

[NoHaveMSG]

Originally Posted by CincyJohn

Could someone explain to me a few things regarding these pics/failures?

One, why do they all look like a coiled snake? Shouldn't they look like small and medium bits of random crap? I mean, I guess I can imagine that a HUGE bead would create overflow beads on both the inside and outside of the pan and that eventually it just all comes off at one time together (or slowly, over time, gets sucked into the intake in one piece). But in that case, shouldn't the tech see the excess on the outside of the pan and flag it?

So, are these cases where the robot puts the bead too far to the inside of the pan making the overflow bead almost entirely on the inside?

Second, why wouldn't the other four sides of the strainer provide enough flow to prevent catastrophic engine failure? Is it a case where 90% of the flow comes through the bottom/top of the strainer?

Or too much. In the case of the oil pan if the bead is squished out the whole chunk drops into the oil pan without getting chewed up by any moving parts. Here’s a crappy FIPG job done by a Toyota tech who “doesn’t build crap engines.”

…he built a crap engine.