awfulwaffle

Yeah, a thing I learned about POR-15 is that it takes a looooooooooong time to cure. When I was doing the inside, I came back every other day to put on coats. What are you using for paint? I have some 33A paint in spraycans that I used to color-match my grille. I'm sure it's a decent match for this paint color when it was fresh, but the sun exposure definitely makes a difference.

Our systems need to be bled as far as I'm aware. Start with the wheels off the ground, engine off, and crank the wheel side to side until the reservoir level stops dropping. Then fire the car up, and keep cranking the wheel until things smooth out. May be too late if it started dry and damaged the pump, but who knows.

No, wait till you get a tune. If you're feeling sketched out, don't run boost control and just loop a piece of vacuum hose from the compressor discharge to the wastegate. Or, just stay out of boost. Either will be safe.

Blew mine at 170k while first learning to tune, lifted a head. Not the motor's fault, though.

Finally had time to grab an oil sample and bring it in to work. Draining down through a filter for a few days, then we'll get it in the SEM to do some spectroscopy. Also grabbed some filings off of a spare crank I have sitting, so I can get a profile of the steel's signature to use as a reference when analyzing the oil. Simultaneously sent a sample of the same oil to Blackstone. Based on some UOAs I got from a friend who builds some fun cars and has an STI with a similar build list to mine, it seems like the lead spike I saw may not be a killer - just a sign that some bearing contact occurred at some point when I was romping on the car. This seems to mesh with the fact that oil pressure is fine and there are no new noises. Going to make a thread on this once I have the spectroscopy results and the Blackstone UOA back, so we all have some reference material. While I wait, got cracking on the only spot of body cancer the wagon has. Ground away the big spot of rust on the outside, found more inside, cleaned that up with a long porting bit, POR-15'd the crap out of the inside of the fender and in between the outer and inner sheet metal layer, and closed up with a piece of sheet metal trimmed to size. Need to stitch it again and re-flatten, as I went a little light on filler and see a few pinholes. Then smooth, paint, POR-15 the backside again to make sure I didn't expose any metal by burning through the first coats of paint. Not as bad as I thought it would be, first time doing any kind of rust repair beyond the poke-it-with-my-finger-till-it-falls-off method.

Price drop bump. Maybe one of these days I'll actually fix the crunched pipe

I use a 3D printed seal driver for the rear main. That said, it still takes some finesse and isn't a sure shot deal like the tool you linked. If you want, though, I can make you one for the cost of shipping.

I recently got to breathe a whole lungfull of that DEI wrap fibergrlass, pulling it off after it started to disintegrate 17.5k miles after I installed it. Run only during the warm season. Did a great job rusting up my ELH despite the 5 layers of header paint on it. Would not wrap again.

Picked up a flare of lead and copper in my last UOA, 20k on build. Happened to be the latest OCI in a sequence testing how long I can stretch it on E85. 1800 miles on Motul Xcess 10W40 when this happened. Interestingly enough, I've sent in an 1800 mile sample w/ similar driving style that came back looking good, with Amsoil Euro blend 10W40. Need to do some more assessment before I decide whether to run these for another interval and re-analyze for science, or split the block and re-bearing the thing right now. No change in oil pressure and no bad noises, so I'm inclined to run it if I don't find any play in the rod bearings thru the plug holes. The UOA did pick up 1 ppm of nickel, which could be either an alloying element in some metal that came off the crank (there was a bit of iron too), or it could be the layer in a bearing between the surface babbit and the main bearing layer. The former seems more likely since it's just a trace, but waiting on a call back from one of the graybeards at King to get his thoughts. On the plus side, one of the materials guys at work is going to show me how to do my own UOAs, which should be pretty neat. Kinda wondering if I should take tiny bit off of an old crank and see the ratio of iron to nickel in the steel.

I'll be the first to say it - should have bought another car if you wanted to go fast. While you can bolt some custom made turbo kit onto your car (see ~5k bill to do correctly unless you're a fabricator yourself, in which case knock a couple grand off), you'll run into the issue of tuning the car. Running anything beyond a tiny bit of boost will nuke a naturally aspirated motor with the stock tune. There are no tuning options for the 6th gen NA cars' ECU that I'm aware of, because why would there be. So, expect to spend another several thousand dollars to get a standalone engine management system into the car, and be ready to end up with a bunch of the features your car came with to likely be disabled in the process. By the time all that's said and done, you could have gone and bought a car that came set up the way you want from the factory.

Woof, that blows. Like others have said, at least its all replaceable. Hopefully you're back up and running soon.

Looks like my HKS ELH is cracked somewhere - lost about 300 rpm of spool and can smell fuel on power. Interestingly enough, 300 RPM is less than the offset between peak boost and peak torque on this setup so the peak value in Virtual Dyno hasn't changed a whole lot. Definitely changed the trend to either side of peak, though. Yet another excuse to get the big turbo on the car. I might actually do it some day.

I told my friend with an 09 sedan that he'd have to graft a truck cap to the back of his car to be eligible.

Wonder what the logistics of renting a track for a day would be, or to set up an autocross or something...

Armando does. Also has a Legacy!

I'm down for either. This is what PTO is for.

Same, but from Michigan

Dum dum learned a lesson. Went to do the 15k mile oil change, and found the DEI Titanium header wrap of the same vintage disintegrating. Applied to an HKS stainless header, 3 coats of Rustoleum header paint, and then sprayed with the DEI sealant after application of the wrap. Between the disintegrating wrap and rust spots, looks like all the advice against using is likely true. On the bright side, if the header has to come down to get cleaned up, I might as well go a bit further right? BCP x500 and EWG pipe that have been sitting in a bin for 6 months are on deck for next time I have a full day to work on the car. The current 5MT is already missing half of reverse, let's see if this setup deletes any of the forward gears. Yeehaw.

No chance. One will be obscured by the AC compressor and the other by the PS pump. I'd stick oil pressure in the forward top oil galley where the OEM pressure switch is, amd oil temp in the aft top plug that's unoccupied.

I went to a Kein trans mount from Group N after my Cusco diff brace didn't eliminate driveline shudder when putting the power down hard. Absolutely love it. NVH is totally manageable. Plus it's made by a guy who works for Lada, so it's pretty much a tractor part.

Back plate gets RTV around the perimeter. So does the oil pump. There's also a couple of bolts that need some sealant, would have to consult FSM for which.

Me likey. I have a dedicated BtSSM phone but it's blocking the passenger side vent. Your install is way cleaner.

<.< >.> The wife's has had zero problems. Though, we didn't go the route of getting exhaust AVCS to work and set the cams static. I have a hard time imagining what kind of trouble a reasonably experienced shop would have with one, aside from the tuning aspect of it.

Damn that sucks bad. Hopefully you can find a shell to transplant to.

I think it really depends on what you want out of the car. There's a lot of ways to end up with a 'better' car than a 2.5i, depending on what you're trying to do. Knowing a rough budget would help too methinks.