Awesome!

And just in time for the Solo event! Oh wai...

If you come down this weekend, let me know. I'm gonna be at Paul's shop tomorrow.

I'll be driving down and back on Saturday. Gonna try to leave before 10am, so that puts me in Sac around lunch-time.

The motor spun another bearing during break-in. My season is over before it even started. The car is for sale:

http://www.seccs.org/forums/showthread.php?p=117330

Damn Scott, I'm sorry. I can't imagine how pissed you are right now:(.

Sorry Scott...

Damn Scott... I'm sorry to hear it man. :(

Man, that really blows.

Sorry, I meant to have a frowning smiley, not a smiling smiley:(.
If you want a new car with reliability and a warranty I would stay away from subaru, Try an audi or something buddy.

Since when is Audi more reliable than Subaru?

Sorry to hear it Scott. That has got to be frustrating beyond belief!

just trying to make light of the situation, a little dumb humor usually helps...
and obvious sarcasm

Well, the only car I can think of that's fast and fun enough, not too expensive, that I could autocross and drive daily ('cause if I'm getting a new car, I'll probably unload the SVX too) is a new STI. Sure there are a few other cars I'd consider (used Vette, used 911, used S4, new A5, 135i, 335i) but they're either all too slow and too expensive to make them STI fast, or too impractical as a DD. Plus, I sorta want the familiarity of a Subaru... learning to drive another car fast would be a good learning experience, but I don't feel like I'm missing out too much not knowing how to drive a Vette. ;)

Anyway, if it looks like I'll be able to sell the WRX (I'm not holding me breath, I'll probably have to put a new motor in it just to sell it...) I'll start a "what should I buy thread". Right now, I think I'd rather just worry about selling the WRX, or sorting out some way to make it reliable w/o spending so much money on it my GF leaves me.

Don't you have most of a 2.0 block left? Throw it and the stock ECU back in before selling?

Just a thought.

Sorry to hear about the spun bearing.

Actually, that was something Aaron and I discussed (me, Aaron and Tyson were hanging out in Roseville right after I got the news of the motor). I think the effort of getting that 2.0L up and running will be just about the same as tossing a stock STi motor in the car, even if the cost may be less.

Really, I just want to get rid of the car as-is. If I'm going to have to work on it a bunch more, I might as well fix it and race it myself. Hell, even if I just put the 2.0L in there, I might as well race it... 250hp is pretty slow compared to the 450 the car had, but it'd still be fun. But I bet I break it again... it's just the nature of racing, shit breaks, and it's just too much work to keep up with, and it's too expensive to pay someone else to do the work for me... just in fuel alone it costs me nearly $300 to tow the car down to the Bay and back.

Damn dude. Damn.

Sorry to hear the bad motor news :(

someone recently told me, "if its got boobs or wheels its going to give you problems" seems quite true in my life

^So your saying that you should never date a woman who has a boob job and is in a wheelchair?

Sorry to hear about this. Good luck with the sale.

:lol: well just expect mad problems if you do !

Just a quick summary, because I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea about blame for this issue:

Mike Warfield tunes, what, 20 Subarus a week probably? I'm sure he knows what he's doing. When the motor failed, he was about 400 miles into the break-in, and was just starting to get into the boost and rpms... the car was running 11:1 AFRs and no timing, so the chance this was a detonation issue is pretty much nill, unless there was something else wrong with the motor (fuel pressure, injectors, etc) in which case the failure is my fault since I did the assembly of all that stuff. It's Mike's opinion that the bearings on the motor we size incorrectly and clearanced out during break in until failure as the car behaved similarly to a new race motor he had a bearing issue on. Now, Mike's pretty much an expert on this sort of thing, so he opinion means a lot to me, but at the same time, no one can diagnose this just by listening to the motor. We need to pull the motor apart to figure out what happened.

Now, AIMS built the shortblock, so if there was an error in the bearings (i.e. they put in something they didn't intend to put in there) then hopefully they'll take responsibility for the failure. However, there's a very good chance that they put in the correct stuff and "shit happened", as it sometimes goes. I just got off the phone with Robert at AIMS about the motor, and he's interested in taking a look at things. So, I'm going to pull the motor for him and strip it down to the long block so he can take a look at it. Maybe the bearings are the wrong size as Mike thinks, maybe the crank just didn't polish up as good as we thought... But at the very least, we'll know what failed, even if we can't figure out why it failed.

But ultimately, unless we can sort out specifically what went down, the blame for this failure is on me. I'm the one that assembled everything aside from the shortblock, and it's the 1st time I've ever put something together like that. The chance that this is the fault of one of the pros is far lower than it is that I botched something along the lines.

I just don't want folks getting the wrong idea. I don't want to be one to assign blame or stir up animosity over crap like this unless it's warranted. So far both Mike at GST and Robert at AIMS have been very helpful and professional regarding the situation.

WOW! I'm totally bummed to hear the news. I was hoping to see you raising the bar at Fernley. I'm still learning the whole race prepped gig, I'm three meets (5 track days) into the new motor I put in my RX (blew the first one at THill in October), and I almost hold my breath everytime I head out onto the track. I dynoed the RX7 on Saturday and was pleased with 173 RWHP! Hope you come out to Fernley this coming Saturday. BTW my 2006 C6 vette is on auto trader for $35K, but I understand your feelings on sticking with a Subaru. I'll be shopping for a DD/AX Subaru after the vette sells.

Mel

Man, I'd love a Vette for the track, but it's just so impractical for real life. :lol: $35k for a C6 is a pretty nice deal too... but that's what a new STi costs, which while it wouldn't be a Track Trials car, I could autocross and Club Trials race it, and daily drive it even in the winter. If I'm buying something new it's gotta handle DD duty too, 'cause my SVX won't last forever.

Scott, sub-$5k Subaru daily drivers are everywhere, and reconditioning them is a cinch. I would think continuing to seperate your DD from your track toy would be more of a logistical issue for you than a financial one.

I have a really nice sub-$5k Subaru daily driver. It's the reconditioning part that I'm sick of! :lol:

It helps when your sub-$5k daily driver originally sold for $9k, not $35k. ;) If I hadn't thrown $2700 worth of suspension at my red wagon, it would have a clean, straight body, be freshly painted with a good condition RS (or similar) interior, and still be under $5k.

Alternatively, a lot of fairly clean RS examples are going in the $6500-7500 range these days.

Sure the SVX used to be expensive, but my only problem with it is the '96 Legacy tranny in there! :lol: 'Course, now that I said that, I'm sure I'll spin a rod bearing on my way home from work. :(

Actually, what you need to do is emulate my "rear end me so I get full retail replacement cost" daily driver upgrade program. :lol:

No thanks. The $2000 I'd get for the SVX wouldn't cover much towards for a new daily driver when compared to how nice the SVX is.

Yeah, the SVX is definitely choice #1, until you get sick of the FWD and/or something really breaks. If it was an Impreza, you would never, ever be more than maybe $800 away from being back to a green board. But, it would never be quite as nice as the SVX is now.

just get an old impreza, throw a bunch of base wrx parts at it(and a motor/tranny swap....and some suspension) and have a cheap and disposable race car. you can codrive my hunk of junk this season if you want to see what its like.

TWSS

Ok, jesus, stop, for the love of god.

See this?

http://www.hooptywagon.com/img/ani/weirdkiss.gif

That has like 98% *less* fail than you. Quit trying so hard. :lol:

Thats what she said...not to me but still.

Jesus, I'm gonna have to lock my own tech thread, aren't I. :roll: :mad:

Sorry Scott.

So whats going on with your engine? Has the machine shop checked it out yet? Has the point of failure been decided?

As soon as I have time to design a storage shed, submit the plans to the builder and city, get it signed off (takes about 45 days), build a shed, and get all the crap out of my garage so I have room to work on the car, I might start to figure it out. :mad:

Why go to all the trouble instead of just buying one?

Okay, then all I need to do is draw up the plans for the shed we're going to buy, submit the plans to the builder and city, get it signed off (takes about 45 days), build the shed (a shed kit is just as much work as building from scratch, except you have less wood to cut), and get all the crap out of my garage so I have room to work on the car.

But it doesn't really matter. The chances of Lennar approving a shed is next to zero. We're going to have to wait until the neighborhood is totally built out, then transferred to the HOA, then try to get the HOA to approve it. We'll have a shed probably sometime in 2010.

Well, there should be someone in the area that has pre-approved send designs they can just toss in for you, like TuffShed or somebody. They go in like manufactured housing, one wall at a time. But, you have other issues with Lennar obviously.

Then you can fix your motor!

Scott, you know Cory (through Nissan) would be happy to pull that motor out for you without a shed.

**cough**

This is not a hook up and you know it. :P I phrased it very clearly. Cory is a mechanic at Nissan, a commercial shop and he works on Subarus through the front door of Nissan service all the time. They have done I think two club member engines in the past 6 months for which I could probably find threads on. :P Johnny's comes to mind as the most recent.

Scott, Are you sure that you need Lennar to sign off on the shed? How big of a shed are you going to build because as far as I know if it less than 120sqft you don't need a permit from the City. If you need any help building a shed or questions let me know as I know most of the City inspectors and may be able to help expidite the process.

It's one thing to have a stock motor pulled out and another one put in. It's another to roll a trailered racecar up to Nissan and have them pull the motor and deal with a rolling around a motorless car. Is Cory going to leave my car on his lift for 3 months while AIMS checks the motor and I source a new shortblock to get the car running? Or am I supposed to load up a motorless car and get you and 6 other people to push it up my driveway and into my garage, that I still don't have room in.

Or, I can make the room in the garage where I can pull the motor and leave the car in one spot until I can get something back into it and get it running. Plus, I'm not exactly keen paying $1000 to have yet another motor pulled when I have everything I need to do the work for free at home... you of all people should understand that. :P

My GF is a commercial property manager, I think she's pretty on top of figuring out what's up. She talked w/ the HOA folks and they directed her towards Lennar, as they're still the decision making body for now. Lennar told us don't get our hopes up, but feel free to submit our plans. :roll:

They also told us however that we do whatever we want as long as it's below the fence line. So, we're looking at tossing up a small storage locker, but the closest thing we can find is a crappy 3'x8' metal shed. I'd rather a 4'x8' wood shed, but I'm gonna end up having to build it from scratch, which is more time and money than I really want to spend, especially since I'd eventually like to put in a 10'x12' unit with room for all the lawn/landscaping tools, some tires, plus some additional room for Lisa's projects.

I never said they wouldn't charge you. I just proposed it as an alternative instead of waiting until 2010 for your shed and free time. And I couldn't find the sarcastic smileys for that suggestion post. :)