The EJ engines. (1 Viewer)

[anomalousdecay]

Can't seem to find any specs for the thing. I wonder what it runs with.

 

[brent012]

Re: P Plate Legal WRX?

Can't seem to find any specs for the thing. I wonder what it runs with.

Just a body kit, so it'd be a 1.5-1.6 with like 100-110hp.

 

[anomalousdecay]

Re: P Plate Legal WRX?

Just a body kit, so it'd be a 1.5-1.6 with like 100-110hp.

Something my ej25 could beat around a circuit

 

[Havox]

Re: P Plate Legal WRX?

Something my ej25 could beat around a circuit

Which is far from slow to begin with, a bicycle would beat that Kia around a circuit

 

[anomalousdecay]

Re: P Plate Legal WRX?

Which is far from slow to begin with

Tbh its in bad shape right now.

Still would beat that kia in a circuit in the hands of the right driver

Getting it fixed up (I pushed it too hard doing off road drifting, that it was literally saying 80 on the speedo during drifts when I was only going about 40, and now it shutters like crazy probs because I shifted 0.1 sec too late (I was just about finished from the night of drifts and ready to leave too : ( ) when it redlined a bit excessively or from hitting a pothole in the grass so the engine mounting might have problems). Can't drive it at the moment now because there's way too much shutter and power output loss : ( The thing went hard. Have some pics of the grass being rekt lol.

 

[Havox]

Re: P Plate Legal WRX?

Tbh its in bad shape right now.

Ah that's a shame, I've given over to the idea of rolling maintenance. Just fix it as it breaks and there'll always be something in rough shape. My old brake discs got cooked so I upgraded to 2 piece slotted and now have to fix a slow oil leak from what I suspect is the main seal at the back of my block.

 

[anomalousdecay]

Re: P Plate Legal WRX?

Ah that's a shame, I've given over to the idea of rolling maintenance. Just fix it as it breaks and there'll always be something in rough shape. My old brake discs got cooked so I upgraded to 2 piece slotted and now have to fix a slow oil leak from what I suspect is the main seal at the back of my block.

I just want to keep it for the next few years until fulls. Its done me well and I'm quite surprised the punch it gave. Thing with it being so old is that we just wait for something to go wrong, then we fix it. Its entirely my fault though. I'm pretty sure if I didn't drive it the way I have, then it would last another 5 years with no engine issues. Quite an easy thing to maintain an ej25 if you drive to road standards.

Wait where is this oil leak?

(We need a whole thread for Subaru's lol there's too much to talk about and we've kinda gone away from the focus of this thread lol).

 

[Havox]

Re: P Plate Legal WRX?

I just want to keep it for the next few years until fulls. Its done me well and I'm quite surprised the punch it gave. Thing with it being so old is that we just wait for something to go wrong, then we fix it. Its entirely my fault though. I'm pretty sure if I didn't drive it the way I have, then it would last another 5 years with no engine issues. Quite an easy thing to maintain an ej25 if you drive to road standards.

Wait where is this oil leak?

EJ series engines last forever if looked after but I find they're very finicky about services and oil. Miss an oil change, have dirty filter or faulty sensor and they'll let you know how unhappy they are. My EJ255 was misfiring a few weeks ago from a dirty MAF sensor and it didn't seem to like a fairly new air filter a mechanic gave it. I'm not particularly happy about factory Subaru engine mounts, the block will slam into firewall with a sharp enough 1->2 shift and I'm considering stiffer ones but that will may increase cabin intrusion a bit too much for a GT car.

I'm not sure exactly where it is (had a cursory look and am guessing), it's below the heads and above the sump but the car is due for service and the leak itself covered by warranty owing to a recent engine rebuild anyway. The long block is less than a year and sub 40k km old.

(We've totally derailed the thread...Oops.)

 

[anomalousdecay]

Continuing here (would be good if a mod could help move some posts, but otherwise its ok).

EJ series engines last forever if looked after but I find they're very finicky about services and oil. Miss an oil change, have dirty filter or faulty sensor and they'll let you know how unhappy they are. My EJ255 was misfiring a few weeks ago from a dirty MAF sensor and it didn't seem to like a fairly new air filter a mechanic gave it. I'm not particularly happy about factory Subaru engine mounts, the block will slam into firewall with a sharp enough 1->2 shift and I'm considering stiffer ones but that will may increase cabin intrusion a bit too much for a GT car.

I'm not sure exactly where it is (had a cursory look and am guessing), it's below the heads and above the sump but the car is due for service and the leak itself covered by warranty owing to a recent engine rebuild anyway. The long block is less than a year and sub 40k km old.

(We've totally derailed the thread...Oops.)

We had a "check engine" light driving us crazy and it turned out it was an airbag sensor that was faulty lol.

Well to be fair, if the MAF sensor was telling it that there is a problem with air intake, you would want it to not run as a precaution. Its like how when you are coding, the best thing is when the compiler tells you of your error, rather than having nasty bugs later on. I'd rather have a dirty MAF sensor telling me of a problem than waiting later on when engine damage has been induced. Also, the MAF sensor dictates the air/fuel ratios. So you would be better off having it misfire than run and starting having bad ratios.

I'm thinking that my problem is the engine mount. Mechanic is yet to come so will have to wait.

Not sure about the air filter. Haven't had problems like that of my own. Why is it unhappy with the air filter though?

That's a pretty powerful quick shift lol. Depends how you feel about the space in the thing. I'll keep you updated on the extent to which my damage is. If it is the engine mount, then you've pretty much proved your point. Then again, the past 3 months my one has been through a lot (the actual owner of my ej crashed it and past month I've pushed it too hard).

Not sure about 255's. About 15000 km ago I changed my rocker covers and that completely fixed my oil leak problem. Btw mine is a 25D.

 

[Havox]

The check engine light came on? Odd that it didn't set off the airbag light instead. I know if there's a catastrophic engine failure, ALL the lights in the dash will flash and boost will be cut to next to naught. The engine light itself is pretty redundant in the 4th gen.

The MAF sensor didn't read as faulty nor did register any error codes which I thought was odd. I did notice that the car was running far less boost than it should have in the weeks leading to the clean up.

Totally not sure why it didn't like the air filter, just trialed a different brand and it ran like a dream immediately afterwards.

Well if you think about it, at full boost off a launch from 1->2, you can put quite a lot of torque on the drivetrain particularly if you yank hard enough on the short shifter. It's a repeatable and very loud BANG if I do it hard enough and I more or less avoid trying to achieve that 5.7ish 0-100 time for fear of damaging the car.

It's the first time I've had an oil leak in this car, it's under warranty so I'll let the shop sort it out. The other time I almost ran the block dry literally burning the oil from a cracked main bearing. The car was very well looked after so I'm not sure how that happened.

 

[anomalousdecay]

The check engine light came on? Odd that it didn't set off the airbag light instead. I know if there's a catastrophic engine failure, ALL the lights in the dash will flash and boost will be cut to next to naught. The engine light itself is pretty redundant in the 4th gen.

The MAF sensor didn't read as faulty nor did register any error codes which I thought was odd. I did notice that the car was running far less boost than it should have in the weeks leading to the clean up.

Totally not sure why it didn't like the air filter, just trialed a different brand and it ran like a dream immediately afterwards.

Well if you think about it, at full boost off a launch from 1->2, you can put quite a lot of torque on the drivetrain particularly if you yank hard enough on the short shifter. It's a repeatable and very loud BANG if I do it hard enough and I more or less avoid trying to achieve that 5.7ish 0-100 time for fear of damaging the car.

It's the first time I've had an oil leak in this car, it's under warranty so I'll let the shop sort it out. The other time I almost ran the block dry literally burning the oil from a cracked main bearing. The car was very well looked after so I'm not sure how that happened.

Yeah I know its odd. This all happened 5 years ago back so there may have been something regarding the airbag light (not too sure now).

Shieet. I'm lucky that did not happen to me otherwise I literally would have been stranded in an empty area with nowhere to go until help arrives. I'm giving up off-road drifting in isolated areas for good now.

The MAF sensor probably had no problems with it. The dirt must of been cumulative, especially if you felt the loss of boost.

Lol. That's quite odd indeed.

I've done some launch type runs in mine (chuck in neutral, rev to 5000, launch in drive, but fails every damn time to skid more than 1 m lol). I heard slight bangs then. Now that I've realised, mine chucks a slight bang from 2 -> 3 at 40 kph. Thing with mine is that its auto lol (wish it was manual though, and because no-one I know drives a manual, I actually have no experience in one which is quite a shame, despite knowing the works behind manual driving and being a person who continually chucks the auto into neutral when rolling up to a set of lights or stop). I've somehow managed a ~9 or ~9.5 time despite the age on it. Though mine never knocks when changing gears at full speed letting the auto do all the work. Avoid doing the quick times now on. Its not going to benefit you in the long run.

Maybe with the performance models they are more prone to problems? I mean this is the case with many performance vehicles in comparison to their low performance manufacturer's models. Come to think of it, this is the first time I've experienced any engine damage (apart from worn out rocker cover's).

 

[Havox]

Shieet. I'm lucky that did not happen to me otherwise I literally would have been stranded in an empty area with nowhere to go until help arrives. I'm giving up off-road drifting in isolated areas for good now.

Maybe with the performance models they are more prone to problems? I mean this is the case with many performance vehicles in comparison to their low performance manufacturer's models. Come to think of it, this is the first time I've experienced any engine damage (apart from worn out rocker cover's).

I managed to limp the car down from the Blue Mountains back to Western Sydney with a cracked big end bearing and warped block so it wasn't too bad. The car ran, badly but it was running. It could have been a lot, lot worse. I'd accidentally locked my keys in the car and needed to get the NRMA up into the middle of nowhere to unlock the vehicle so I really wasn't having a good weekend that time.

To be honest, I think anything with a turbo will cause twice as many headaches than N/A even with identical performance. Turbo cars are just run to a much higher level of stress and things inevitably wear out quicker. As much fun as boost is, I actually prefer a really big N/A engine with boatloads of torque than a peaky turbo.

 

[anomalousdecay]

I managed to limp the car down from the Blue Mountains back to Western Sydney with a cracked big end bearing and warped block so it wasn't too bad. The car ran, badly but it was running. It could have been a lot, lot worse. I'd accidentally locked my keys in the car and needed to get the NRMA up into the middle of nowhere to unlock the vehicle so I really wasn't having a good weekend that time.

To be honest, I think anything with a turbo will cause twice as many headaches than N/A even with identical performance. Turbo cars are just run to a much higher level of stress and things inevitably wear out quicker. As much fun as boost is, I actually prefer a really big N/A engine with boatloads of torque than a peaky turbo.

Woah that's pretty intense. Having a warped block regardless is difficult to deal with. Do you mind me asking what caused all the damage? Seems pretty terrible. And having your keys locked in is even worse. In mine its pretty difficult to get your keys locked inside, because you can't lock the car in the first place (doesn't auto lock once one of the doors close within 20 seconds) without having the keys with you.

Go for a H6 Heck I may try to keep to my current one for a bit longer until I have the income to support taking care of the thing. Though the good thing is that my dad saw a WRX today and said "why didn't we get one of those since its smaller and has less blindspots than these big 5th gens". Then I said that there were simply none to buy at auctions, all were too overpriced at the time, and that I can't drive one yet lol.

 

[Havox]

Woah that's pretty intense. Having a warped block regardless is difficult to deal with. Do you mind me asking what caused all the damage? Seems pretty terrible. And having your keys locked in is even worse. In mine its pretty difficult to get your keys locked inside, because you can't lock the car in the first place (doesn't auto lock once one of the doors close within 20 seconds) without having the keys with you.

Go for a H6 Heck I may try to keep to my current one for a bit longer until I have the income to support taking care of the thing. Though the good thing is that my dad saw a WRX today and said "why didn't we get one of those since its smaller and has less blindspots than these big 5th gens". Then I said that there were simply none to buy at auctions, all were too overpriced at the time, and that I can't drive one yet lol.

Don't know what blew it up, totally stock car with factory boost on the middle setting most of the time. Subaru says that it's not an uncommon issue with the EJ series engine and I'm disinclined to believe them. I'd only had the car for a few months previous and the service history suggests that it was a dealer baby and I'd only serviced it from the dealer I bought the car from up to that point. The damage meant that I (obviously) had to have the engine rebuilt, the pistons and heads remachined and polished and since then I've had my rear Limited Slip Diff give up the ghost and require replacement as well.

I had a look at the H6 and decided that they didn't have as much power as the turbo and didn't come with the STI package I wanted so that was a no, no. Going twin turbo on the 3.6L is a very tempting proposition for the distant future thouhg.

 

[anomalousdecay]

Don't know what blew it up. Subaru says that it's not an uncommon issue with the EJ series engine and I'm disinclined to believe them. I'd only had the car for a few months previous and the service history suggests that it was a dealer baby and I'd only serviced it from the dealer I bought the car from up to that point. The damage meant that I (obviously) had to have the engine rebuilt, the pistons and heads remachined and polished and since then I've had my rear Limited Slip Diff give up the ghost and require replacement as well.

I had a look at the H6 and decided that they didn't have as much power as the turbo and didn't come with the STI package I wanted so that was a no, no. Going twin turbo on the 3.6L is a very tempting proposition for the distant future thouhg.

I highly doubt its common. Have not heard of such cases before especially with a car that is a dealer baby. Kinda tough getting the engine rebuilt and machined. If you're rear LSD is ghosting then you'll be losing quite a bit of power. Would have cost a fortune to fix all this.

You mean as in one of these lol?

 

[anomalousdecay]

Thanks for the thread switch over whomever it was

 

[Havox]

I highly doubt its common. Have not heard of such cases before especially with a car that is a dealer baby. Kinda tough getting the engine rebuilt and machined. If you're rear LSD is ghosting then you'll be losing quite a bit of power. Would have cost a fortune to fix all this.

Fortunately repaired under the purchase warranty. The LSD wasn't however and they wanted to charge me 9k for a new one, told them to get lost and had it done for about half that. Still a boatload though unfortunately

 

[anomalousdecay]

Fortunately repaired under the purchase warranty. The LSD wasn't however and they wanted to charge me 9k for a new one, told them to get lost and had it done for about half that. Still a boatload though unfortunately

Daaaaaaaamn.

Most Subaru parts are not too expensive aftermarket, but as soon as you get to the parts that are specific to the AWD or Boxer systems, the prices skyrocket.

Man this car has taken you through a lot. Kinda makes me think that I'm gonna need a lot more safe cash than I expected (I was thinking 50% on top of the price of the thing) when I go WRX or GT.

 

[Havox]

Man this car has taken you through a lot. Kinda makes me think that I'm gonna need a lot more safe cash than I expected (I was thinking 50% on top of the price of the thing) when I go WRX or GT.

To be fair I'm far from gentle as a driver but yeah, it's had it's engine out more times than I care to remember.

 

[anomalousdecay]

Speaking of not being a gentle driver, I'm currently on 3 pistons. One of the cables for the spark plug is fried.

I can't believe it blew it like a fuse after going to the redline. I've redlined so many times before, but this time it just went.