:wow whats goin on?!!!
fuhk
Whats going on is someone messes with their ecu tuning while driving on the street and has no clue what incorrect timing will do…to a shitty to begin with head gasket design. I guarantee you that headgasket has a huge blast mark in it from detonation at r.p.m. A.k.a seat of the pants dyno tuning…not smart. Obviously not the builders fault, headbolts are headbolts are head studs the only difference are head studs aren’t tourque to yield. But fastener tourque is what it is, you set it with a wrench and thats about it.
As a Volkswagen tech. you’d be correct…as a Subaru tech you’d be horribly incorrect. ARP includes “generic” instructions with their bolts (as we all know) which states to torque them to 80 ft/lbs and let rip. Not so fast my friend. Subaru boxer engines can NOT be done this way. Period. There is a very specific torque sequence for the studs on ANY Subaru motor (anyone that’s ever wrenched on a Subaru can attest to this). You must start by torquing all the bolts down, in correct sequence to 20 ft/lbs…followed by 40, 60, and 80. Shortly following you must RE-TORQUE them back to 80 as the bolts “settle”. This is 110% necessary for the bolts to seat and seal the head properly. It’s not even debateable. If there was a “huge blast mark” from detonation you’d see it on the walls, pistons, a lot of places in the motor before the head gasket would just let go. Obviously your statement is also coming with no knowledge of the person who tuned the car, either. The gentleman had over 100+ passes on the stock motor with his tuning on the car WITHOUT a problem. He also had several passes with the 35R on the stock motor before the motor, after years of racing and hundred(s) of passes, let go. Now in a shot timeframe the motor has had…how many issues has the motor had since being rebuilt by the aforementioned poster and shop had its hands on it? Zero. There were several issues that were kept quiet and resolved on their own, and even found the builder calling the client for advice on another Subaru that found its way to their doors through his personal referral. Builder calling the customer for tech support…intreaguing?
P.S. there was no “seat of the pants” dyno tuning. There are MULTIPLE programs out there (i.e. Enginunity, ECUFlash, ECUExplorer, ect…) for Subaru that allow you to log EVERYTHING in real time and monitor your changes. Feedback Knock Correction (Subaru) would have shown if the motor was pulling timing due to detonation or any other issues. If the ECU was not pulling timing, and felt the car was running strong, I find it quite the quandry that the head gasket would magically let go out of nowhere with no warning signs at all through the multiple logging hosts that are designed specifically for the Subaru.
That’s funny given I tuned my car using a stock block and I make more power than the majority of imports in the area.
I got several friends who went LOW 10s in my platform with NO dyno tuning too. Hell, Monet went LOW 9s @ 166MPH on a piggyback with NO dyno tuning.
Plenty of people go fast without a dyno.
But, you have a point. You can easily break your shit doing your own tun ing but you can do that with or without a dyno. Also, I don’t think that’s what happened here as Celtic pointed out.
Quite true. Multiple 450+WHP 911 Turbos and Audi CIS 5 cylinder turbos here with no dyno.
Truth be told inside that motor. I’ll wait and see what Jay wants to do. If he decides to have me build the motor this time around the full tear down + pre-inspection will yield many answers right from the get go. That step is up to Jay at this point. He’s shopping around for a place to go next. I already replied to his inquiry on my capabilities here. Just hope the best for him and the car with the amount of BS he’s dealt with up to this point, shop induced or not.
:jawdrop
Possible that there is more damage than just the head?
I am the guy who put the motor together. Its all apart, been refreshed and ready for assembly. Not too much carnage to look at other then a badly blown headgasket and a piston with a rough skirt. I’d like to keep the information factual. If anyone wants to come by the shop to see the parts or discuss what could of happened or ways to prevent it I am down. I’d rather not argue on the internet, people who are not involved in any way are making claims about how parts were installed?
not to mention it makes Synapse look bad, and the fault may or may not be theirs.
Per Boxer, sounds like you might not be doing the assembly. I am not an assembler but I’d like to know what caused this damage. I have also read how ARP head stud installation can cause this exact problem.
I was hoping someone would mention this. To be honest, I could give two shits if it makes Synapse or any other vendor/shop/person/etc… look bad. It’s not fair for ANY customer to have this information hidden when they are making the choice on where they want to have work done. Aside from the huge amounts of money spent by people on their cars, some people take it very serious. How would you like it if you brought your car to shop a and get it back all fucked up only to find out a forum/individual/shop/etc… hide the information? Fear of this information getting out and affecting revenus is exactly what forces them to perform good work.
This is not geared towards Synapse but just, in general, how information is hidden from the public. I am tiired of the bad shit never getting aired out and only the good. It’s not fair to the others.
I know i’m not doing the assembly. Thats what started this whole mess is that fact that I do not want to put it together. I’d like to deal with matters in a civil way, and this thread is already too far gone for that.
I would hope you’d want to square things away with the customer? But, your post indicates otherwise.
I most certainly would. I’m sorry for not going into great detail, its just one of those long stories that really doesn’t belong here.
+10. It’s always true that 1 good job will bring another in, 1 bad job will lose you 10 and the reason why most shops “hide” the screw ups. Everyone makes mistakes and are entitled to it, but they need to stick to their guns in reality and back their claims and customers requests when needed. There’s always a rotten apple of a customer in every bunch who fucks shit up real bad, Jay is not one of those apples. When I get comments like this in my inbox it just makes me shrug:
Hi, we talked in the past about my engine build and I was wondering if you could give me some references on your previous work… i.e. ej257 builds in the 400-500whp+ range that held together.
Basically Morgan at Synapse told me to fuck off and take my shit elsewhere. The engine is completely disassembled right now and the car is sitting behind Synapse with no motor in it. I want to do some research this time so I don’t get screwed again…
I have no ill-will towards Synapse or any of the guys there. My business and customers do not coincide with anything they do and they haven’t struck a bad cord with me at all. It’s nice to see some good work roll around for a change. They can build a fierce Honda for certain and I’ll give them credit for that without pause. I have however been around doing this work for quite some time in this area and have seen a fair amount of shops come and go during the span and have “corrected” many issues from those previous shops who have screwed people over from crap work. I’m not at all saying this was/is the case with Jay’s car, but unless Jay is lying in the quote above it’s just sad.
I’m not one to slander any company or business that’s doing the right thing, especially one trying to make it’s way in todays economy…
Again, I just hope the best for Jay and the car no matter who builds it. In the end that’s what really counts.
Synapse will do their best to make their customers happy. My cousin burned up a piston on cylinder 3 on his turbo B16 tuned by synapse, no fault of synapse. He got a used piston and synapse gladly assembled the engine and retuned it for free and it later made 405whp on race gas.
I disagree but that’s fine.
You are right. Everyone does makes mistakes but are you advocating hushing it? It’s tough situation but I always seem to side with having the story out there. I’d be furious if I went to a shop that screwed over a few people and no one told me.
The same goes true for success stories but as the story goes, only good seem to make it out.
any engine has a specific torque sequence you must follow, most in 3 steps and the after run re-torque is recommended, but not required. dont think your subaru is an engine created and forged by the hands of god. and im Very Intrigued by this
I never said it was forged by the hand of god - but SOA, along with every manufacturer (Cosworth, Axis, ect…) that offer short or long blocks for Subaru - state that you MUST (note, must) follow the torque sequence carefully as the APR’s are extremely sensitive to the motors. A lot of people choose to stick with factory studs (Cosworth uses their own, Suby specific hardware) simply because they’re easier to instally and are much more forgiving than a minor error made when installing the APR’s.