Ventilated EJ25 Subaru

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Turbo_Manx_Maniac

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Went to borrego friday to do some riding with my friends. On the first ride coming back to camp from fonts point, I went around a tight corner in 2nd and stood on it on the way out. As usual boost comes up and I lose traction and I see the warning light on the tach come on (7K) and after a second I hear a bad noise. Oil light comes on, and the motor is desperately trying to slow down hard but I stay in it a bit to get off the road. After stopping, I notice my rear view mirror has an oil mist on it as well as most everything on the whole car, I turn the key and its locked up. Time to get out and look....

Well there is oil everywhere, I mean everywhere. I wave my buddy over and he tows me back to camp.

I pulled the motor today, and she has a serious problem lol. I can see the rods or what's left of them through the hole in the top of the motor. 

Long story short, on one cylinder the piston is now a cigar tray (Per punchdrunkmonkey). I think the rod pin said goodbye to the piston and then proceeded to smash and bang everything around the area eventually breaking in half and breaking a hole in the case. The inside of the case and the crank are all banged up and destroyed. Funny enough, the small piece of rod left on the rod journal still spun around perfectly. The oil pan has about 5-6 red solo cups worth of shrapnel. Unfortunately the piston touched the head per the marks on the piston. A valve job would fix it no problem, but I'm not going that route.

The good news is that this motor has seen 12 seasons, its a JDM motor I bought from Outfront and only swapped the head gaskets for thicker ones to lower compression for boost. I run meth injection and 91 pump, and I usually run 10-11 psi. The turbo is a BB GT28. It was tuned by Outfront and over the years I've tweaked it a bit, but the remaining pistons look great and all the rings move freely and are not caked up. I think I just found the limit of stock pistons.

I'm going to call Outfront tomorrow and see what they have for motors so I can be running again for new years.

And because everyone likes carnage....enjoy.

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JB Weld will fix that right up.... I've seen it... Now it's time for an LS with twin turbos and a Albins.... just do it... the economy needs a boost. 

 
Damn.. but definitely got your money's worth out of that engine.  Curious to see where you decide on the next engine.

 
I wouldn't look twice , buy another JDM motor and do it all over again, Shoot 12 seasons with the same motor you can't beat that. There aren't many hondas, LS,VW or anything else that last that long. 

 
I will most likely do another JDM, there are a few newer ones like 2012 ish that are 2.5 turbo motors nearby. I just dont know what I need to look for, I dont want to re-do everything on the car, would like to keep my throttle bodies and intake. This one had really high compression stock, even with really thick headgaskets it was in the mid 10's, like to get something in the 9's if possible. Was thinking about an EZ30 with no turbo, but the torque will probably kill my tranny.

 I have a built 091 so I'm going to stay around 275 FWHP.

I posted a pic of the back of the old motor, hopefully @John@Outfront or someone else knowledgeable on Subarus can tell me what year and type of motor to look for. I'll buy from John is he still sells JDM motors.

 
I don’t have any jdm motors any more. Stop selling them close to 7-10 years ago. Too much risk. So all 2.5 are rebuilt. A new sti shortblock would be a great option but heads need to be rebuilt too. 

 
if the other pistons still look great; wonder if one injector wasn't flowing the same as the others.....

 
This will be a long reply but I hope I get my info across.  I ran into a very similar issue last year.

I picked up a rail that had a 2.5 turbo engine, running on e85. It was/is running a megasquirt ecu. The previous owner had popped an engine 10/12 years ago then swapped in a JDM. Ran it for who knows how long. Put it into the trailer. Then sold it and that's when I got it. Had a great 1st weekend. Ran around 50 gallons of e85 through it. Put back in trailer.  Boy took it to Gordon's over Xmas. Pulled it off trailer. Didn't run right. Long story shirt we spun a bearing. Thinking since we didn't know what ratio of corn to run, we ran it lean OR bad tune. 

I started looking at JDMs online but ended up finding a 2012 2.5 sti motor.  Picked it up for ~2200. Over time I got lucky and sold 800 to 1k parts of it. As it came with intercooler and exhaust. 

I soon found that the old intake, fulel rails,  injectors would not work with the newer heads.  Ended up talking to @John@Outfront and he said my older heads would work on the newer block. That way I could keep intake, rails, etc.  I ended up having outfront do a valve job and clean the old heads. I think it's 550. Then you will need to swap everything over. I am about 80% done.

The only difference so far is I wouldn't have gone with an STI as the pistons are different.  From what I understand the standard wrx pistons are better geared for compression and as such we went with a thicker headgasket for STI block.

I'm hoping to have it completed by this weekend. Then found a kid on facebook to look at my tune and go from there. My brain still hasn't figured that dilemma or potential dilemma out.

Hope that kinds helps

Jonathan

 
I just did the sti block swap from all JDM 98 or earlier heads with 2.0 intake. Everything swaps. I put forged Manley pistons for more strength while I was there. Set the compression ratio at 8.4:1 with the thickest head gaskets Outfront sells. Tuned at 8psi boost. 290hp of the dyno.  Just came from Thanksgiving 4 days no issues so far so good. 👍🏻 Easy way to fix it if you wanted to do the work. 

 
I just bought the RA STI shortblock from Outfront. I am also having them rebuild my heads as I know I bent at least 2 valves. John calculated I'll be around 8.6:1 with the thinnest head gaskets, my heads were 48 ish cc's. 

 
i have a rebuildable long block turbo motor for a hundred call me gary 909 214 8930

 
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