Hi All,
Got a story to tell that happened to me back in 2001.
BTW: Grab yourself a drink or a snack before you read on
Back then I had a MY99 GC8 for about a year. Just after I bought it (2000), I decided to fit a full turbo back 3” zorst, Uni-filter & Turbosmart Type II
BOV. I was happy with the mild power increase but was quite happy to leave the mods as is. After a while I noticed the engine warning light coming on every now and them. At any time, hot or cold it did not matter.
Back then I was much less knowledgeable with cars and as a result simply ignored the light. The car continued to drive without any problems but gradually (over 4 – 5 months) the warning light started to come on more frequently. Stupidly (I admit) I continued to drive my $35,000 investment (remember…2000)!!
During this time I also remember hearing what sounded like “small ball bearings being dropped on the bonnet at high speed” whenever I was around 4000RPM & above (Of course back then I knew nothing about ‘detonation’).
One day (November 2001) driving along the Mitchell Freeway northbound on a pleasant sunny Sunday morning, I was cruising at around 100KPH in 4th gear (believe me I remember this event well) when all of a sudden I heard a fairly loud “bang” coming from the engine bay. Instantly a very large, thick plume of grey smoke around a couple of hundred metres in length was coming out of the zorst. Of course by then I knew something major was wrong.
I was able to get of at the hutton street exit and turn and park the car on a side street of Frobisher Rd. Straight away I turned the car off and got out. Grey smoke was bellowing out of the engine bay (no exaggeration)!! It was a very distressing image (Something that I still remember to this very day).
The next day I got it towed to RMS who ended up doing a full engine rebuild. I detonated Piston 2 and as a result it also damaged the bore it was living in as well. I ended up spending nearly $7.5k as I decided to do a full engine rebuild.
I started to investigate why this happened and after around 4 weeks of searching and talking to other people around the world on the net who had similar problems I came to this conclusion. When I purchased the Uni-Filter it got dirty pretty quickly so I decided to service the filter. I had the correct filter which specifically stated on the instruction sheet “DO NOT USE MORE OIL THAN RECOMMENDED TO OIL THE SPONGE FILTER” Instead of following precautions and warnings, I cleaned the sponge then oiled it according to what “I” thought was suitable.
During the 5 – 6 months of heavy and hard driving the filter oil coated the air flow meter element to the point that it became useless (this was latter verified upon inspection by RMS and replaced during rebuild. The element was so oily that it had a fairly thick coating of oil. The engine warning light was telling me either that it does not get a good reading from the airflow meter or that it was not getting the right air/fuel mixture reading (the tech minded people here at Perth-WRX will come to their own conclusion with this).
I wanted to share my story with others who might have an engine warning light coming on occasionally (hope no one does) to immediately get it checked by a Subaru Mechanic. I know heaps of guys here are experienced and know the warning signs but this story is more for the newbie’s (as much as the experienced) that may not know or that have limited experience with high performance cars (or any vehicle for that matter).
Thank you all for taking the time to read this.
Adam
P.S Hope the drink or snack lasted as long as my story!!