dgoodhue

Is the ej257 or ra block not worth it for the better parts?

I looked at the interchange of parts for STI, not the RA short block. The crank was the same, the rods in the STI changed in the later ones, but the 5th Gen used the earlier EJ257 rods which is also share with most if not all the rest of the EJ255 motors.

The EJ255 in the 5th Gen is really a cross between the the EJ255 and EJ257 motors with smaller exhaust cams and the pre FA20 low mount turbo setup.

Yes most site ignore the 5th Gen or assume they are the same. I went to a place where they were parting out a 2010 GT. The engine had been taken and the transmission was laying on the ground. One of the E25 heads (5th Gen head) was on the ground. I made a comment to the seller about the head on the ground. He said something along the lines of that he bought the car for the transmission and didn't realize about the cable mounted shifter. He sold the engine to friend and did realize that this EJ255 was so different.

I would get a 5th Gen GT EJ255 for the oil pan bolts. You don't have to omit an oil pan bolt & drill tap the bolt for the extra bolt that 5th Gen have.

The 5th Gen also have different pistons/heads (E25) than the other EJ255/EJ257. It still isn't clear what our compression is 9.5:1 or 8.4:1. I kind of want to CC the 5th Gen heads and pistons, but I don't want to spend the money on the equipment, which I don't know if I will ever use again. (I am done with building up motors with ported heads/different pistons etc, I will just buy a faster car from the factory)

Alright, alright, alright.... Chip missing from the exhaust valve. Some said burnt valve. Is that what this is? I wouldn't think a burnt valve would be a chip missing. Also, where did the chip go and do I need to be concerned? Cylinder is fine, one of y'all said could be carbon and sure enough, that's what it is.

 

From here. I could just repair the head and slap it back on. Honestly, I would like to beef it up a little and increase some hp. 325-350 range. What are yalls suggestions to achieve this as economical as possible? I have $7k set aside. Obviously, I don't want to spend all of it. Especially if I'm looking at just a rebuild. I don't care about name brands or looks. I only want what works well for the money. Also, clutch suggestions.

As mentioned, the exhaust valve eroded from being open, so it wasn't large chunks going through your turbo, cat and exhaust. I wouldn't worry about it.

As for the 325-350hp, is the whp or crank hp? They do about that at the crank with a dyno tune. You can keep it simple on repair and just rebuild the heads and install ARP head studs. It is up to you whether or not get a new short or install new bearings/rings. With just the tune you can get away with the stock clutch. My car has a catback exhaust, dyno tune and upgrade bypass valve and it made 292awhp/340wtq. I use the stock clutch.

If you want more (235-2350awhp) you really need an upgraded clutch, down pipe, and turbo upgrade. You also probably should do the STI exhaust cams while you have it apart, it might not be a bad idea to even do that on stock motor if you going to get it dyno tuned.

Not a fan of loud exhausts, but the Q300 supposedly isn't too bad. I mainly just wanted it for the stainless and dual exhaust. It had already been replaced once by the previous owner. The car only has 80k and it's on its third exhaust.

Someone must has used a cheap quality aftermarket exhaust. From my experience with 5th Gen (I have owned 2010, 2011, and 2x 2012) in Northeast, I can see the factory exhaust lasting 8 years in salt belt environment (the rear muffler flanges seem to be the parts corrodes the quickest). No way would it rust through two factory quality exhaust in 10 years.

Trying to find a good video or write up on removing this engine. I'm only coming across earlier generations or different platforms. Is the engine removal the same for other models or day 4th Gen legacy?

There is 'walk (talk) through on engine removal in this section'. I can't imagine it being all the different than the 4th gen. The biggest difference is that you want to disconnect the exhaust manifolds, turbo, and turbo connections and remove them from underneath not with the motor. The engine has 1 motor mount in front, the other 2 'motor mounts' are on the transmission.

So 5th gen cannot any of the EJ257 then, based on that oil pan bolt hole difference you mentioned?

People have used EJ257 block, they just leave 2 bolts out or drill and tap one of the bolts. I read the casting is thick for the bolt holes too, but I can not confirm that. I only have 2010-2012 EJ255 motors.

Attempted to change the right rear wheel bearing and couldn't even get the axle nut off because it is so badly rusted...decided it is time to get a new car. This thing has me busy every weekend and I'm sick of it.

I totally understand. My prior car that I have before I bought a 5th Gen Legacy in 2012, I was constantly working on. It had a problem every 2 months, it seem like once I fix one thing another part started to fail. I sold to a coworkers brother for $1500 and warned him. I know the problems continued...

As for the axle nut did you use a chisel on nut to remove the crimp Subaru put in? The bearings would have probably been a pain to get out anyways.

The EJ257 is the short block used in the Sti and is a little cheaper than the EJ255 which came with our cars. Although earlier years (05, not sure about 06) were basically EJ257 IIRC. You get a slightly better block with the EJ257. It may end up change the compression a little but it should be fine in the end. I am running the EJ257 'type RA' in one of my cars and it's just fine.

And yes, it is plug and play. No real change in hp/torque.

 

 

Edit: I keep forgetting this is a 2010-2014 LGT thread. What I wrote above should still be fine though.

I would recommend the factory EJ255 for the 10-12 though. The prior EJ255/Ej257 is missing an oil pan bolt that 5th Gen has and I read that one of the oil pan bolt hole is slight off so it also can't be used. The 5th Gen has different pistons as well. The service manual says it has higher compression, but I haven't confirm that yet (I have seen contradicting information)

I wouldn't assume the motor needs to be rebuild based on the borescope picture. The cylinder hasn't firing and that could be the carbon build up from the piston that is being clean off the top of the cylinder.

What is the motor's oil consumption? If around around 1000 mile per quart I would fix that while the motor is out.

You should be able to replace the valve/machine the seat, however all the rest of your valve are not far behind from burning. So you need to adjust the all valves. The machine shop I go to charges me $1000, $500 for new valves and $500 for the assembly, repurchase the hears, clean up of the seat. I asked him why he doesn't adjust the valves with the shim buckets, he said it is just as expensive to replace the buckets as it is to replace the valves, replacing the valves pretty much bring the tolerance back to specs.

For the bad new news, you have to pull the motor. You might as well replace the clutch and timing belt/water pump while it is out unless they have been just replaced. If you are in the rust belt you will likely need to replace a few parts as well. With a clutch, timing belt, engine gasket kit, it is going to be at minimum $1000 and probably closer to $1500 in parts in addition to the head work. I would imagine the shop labor is around 24 hours. This could easily be a $5K+ with $100/hr labor

I spent my September fixing my Outback's suspension and turn out my brakes were replaced with cheap parts a few years ago, so they also needed to replaced as well. So i am back on the Legacy GT.

I gave up trying to find a used driver's side mirror assembly and bought a new one off ebay. (every one that was in good condition, the seller wanted more for a used part than a new one) I installed the mirror with relative ease. I just had to pry up on the mirror and used multiple screw drivers to unlock the tabs on the caps.

I pulled apart the short block, that I bought from Aphex28. I started last week but I didn't have 3/8 drive 12 point 12mm socket to get the 4 block bolts that are in coolant passages. (My 12 point 1/2 drive sockets didn't fit). Everything looked good internally, so I am going to rebuild that. I clean it up, power washed, dried, and oiled the block. I put the pistons in parts cleaner and bagged an oil the crank. Lot of parts all over the place. I am going to place what hopefully is my last parts order from Subaru for this car.

I am really on the fence on selling the GT and leasing a Gladiator. Been thinking about getting back into a Jeep for awhile, and yesterday my wife gave me the go ahead.

You kind of missed the boat on all the incentives. Jeep just dropped all the incentives in October on them including the affiliate and tread lightly incentives. They probably aren't coming back in the near future until the supply issues eases. From the time I order my Jeep in February, the price has also gone up over $2k and lost $1500 incentive that I got.

I've heard that the Gladiator is meh. Some people say that it's lacking power, and I don't understand the point of buying one for the price...

Falcor has had Jeep's in the past. The 3.6 in my fiancé's 4 door Wrangler isn't lacking power. It's 0-60 time is in the 6 sec range. In a tall vehicle I don't think I need any more power. As for the what the point, what other truck can you buy that has removable top and doors? It is a compromise for one size fits all if you only have one vehicle for off-road, bed and open air driving.

I assume this is 5th Gen GT EJ255 (turbo motor). Unless recently replaced, you should replace the clutch & timing belt. You should check the valve clearances which will likely need to be adjusted. If it is a salt belt vehicle, some of the turbo shield, and water cooler lines will need to be replaced from rust.

As for the motor, if it has broken ringland, it is pretty likely it had damaged the cylinder wall to the point it require to bored. You will have to pull it apart to inspect it and measure it. If doesn't have damage, you could replace that piston, rings, and bearings. I would probably recommend just buying a short block from Subaru if needs any machine work. You also need to figure out why it had detonation which broke the ringland. It will happened again even if you use better pistons.

The poll simply asked if your headgasket failed, and the thread title sounds like a more general question rather than specifically the turbo engines.

The post topic is

'how many owners head gasket failed EJ255 turbo'

Should I include my 5M-GE Supra headgasket from the 1990's that failed? or my 2009 Outback's 2.5i EJ253 headgasket that leaked?

My 2013 Legacy 2.5i headgaskets started to go bad at 85k miles last year. We got it repaired under warranty and then sold the car.

You didn't have an EJ25 series motor or EJ255 which is the turbo motor.

I have been using the orange rain-x for 15 years now. I use regular rain-x on my windshield and the orange rain washer fluid maintains that. Prior to that I used use have to apply rain-x every month or so. I think it is great. If you friend had nasty build up he didn’t have a clean windshield to begin with. I owned a VW where they had a note about it not being compatible with windshield washer fluid sensor. I used it for 5 years on my 1st Legacy, 4 years on my current one.

One note is that I tried the Green Rain-X once in the summer. I still had some in my reservoir and found it froze at 25F and my washer fluid.

would kill for a jetta tdi sportwagen

My ex-wife had a new 2014 6MT TDI JSW. She had it for 80k miles before VW bought it back. I can't imagine there are very many of them on the road, unless it is older one. VW's buyout was slightly more than I paid for it new even when you include all the fees, sales tax, loan interest. It was a POS, it was great when it ran. It had couple electrical gremlins in the 1st year. The sunroof got jammed which seem to be common issue. I always had issues with water collecting in the intercooler on cold high humidity days. It left my ex wife stranded for a collapse fuel filter, iced Intercooler, the DPF crack and was smoking when it was turned in.

I did like the TDI 6MT combo and it got great fuel economy for what it was.

Thanks again everyone with the replies,

 

I am in the process of getting into contact with Subaru.

 

I got my car back and it feels great with the new transmission.

 

Unfortunately I noticed on my invoice that the technician damaged 2 ball joints and they also replaced them while the car was being worked on. I immediately noticed that I seem to have lost some power steering.

 

Is it possible that the power steering was damaged while the transmission was being worked on? I do not know know much about cars and am not sure if the two are related.

To remove the transmission, you have to disconnect the front axles. The ball joints were likely damaged while removing them. The power steering could have been damage while replacing the transmission. It is very tight under where the engine/transmission connects and the power steering rack is under that connection. I would check the power steering fluid level and check for power steering leaks. (The power steering uses ATF)

Also check the main bearings in the strut top hats. I had my front ones separate around the bearing and it caused very audible clunking.

The rear mounts do not have bearings. I would make sure the rear top hat bolt in the trunk are tight. Maybe it did not sit sit right when tighten or they forgot.

I had a truck that I bough used where the rear suspension had a clunk, I went to replace the rear shocks and found the person (likely mechanic) who replaced the shock previously had forgotten to tight the top 2 bolts. The shock bolts were rusted like it has been installed like that for 5+ years, apparently either no one complained or they couldn't figure it out. Simple fix for what likely very annoying for any driving the car.