The other thing we may not have mentioned; you could have just as easily gone in drivers door first.
While it's a big hit financially you don't have any permanent injuries.......or worse.
The other thing we may not have mentioned; you could have just as easily gone in drivers door first.
While it's a big hit financially you don't have any permanent injuries.......or worse.
In reply to Tom1200 :
Yeah I've thought about it, that's another possibility if I'd tried to avoid the post later in the slide with a technique that could cause a transition. The whole thing keeps reminding me of Allan Simonsen's wreck actually.
The fact that I didn't get any meaningful injuries will probably help me feel less bad about it in the future, but I don't think it's doing anything right now 
Stopped by the shop to drop off more parts today and had a look at the crank & pulleys with the mechanics. We're going to try fixing up/inspecting the pulleys from the outside and running it if no damage is obvious. Right now if we try to thread the crank bolt back in, it makes about 3 turns before it jams and moves to the side. The bolt itself appears slightly bent, but it could be that the threads in the crank are messed up. The pulley itself is also messed up so I'll try to get another cheapo lightweight pulley since stock damped ones are known to spontaneously disassemble themselves, and fresh crank pulley hardware. I'll also need yet another grooved idler pulley because the oil dipstick tube embedded itself in there. It's probably going to be about a $200 gamble. If the crank threads are messed up I suppose the best thing to try would be to put a fresh crank and bottom-end bearings in, but that's getting to be a pretty big gamble in terms of parts & labor cost.
GameboyRMH said:The fact that I didn't get any meaningful injuries will probably help me feel less bad about it in the future, but I don't think it's doing anything right now
Stuff happens to the best of us, let alone the rest of us.
Try not to beat yourself up. You were doing a thing you love and this time it didn't work out. You're dealing with the consequences as best you can, which seems to be pretty damn well.
Avoiding consequences isn't a good enough reason not to do the thing you love.
If the crank threads are messed up, drill and tap whatever size you can make work. What's the worst that happens, you ruin the ruined crank?
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
Was thinking about that, may be worth a try, I'm just worried about how hard it could be to align a DIY'd crank bolt, the factory crank bolt on these can be troublesome enough...
In reply to GameboyRMH :
Doesn't the pulley seat on something else? It's not ALL on the bolt.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
There is a flange the pulley sits on but pulley alignment seems to be very sensitive to the tension and condition of the bolt, these often need fresh crank bolts to seat properly, I had that issue when I first tried to put an aftermarket pulley on while reusing the original bolt.
The most custom bolt and pulley combo in the world is still going to be cheaper than rebuilding one of these, I'd bet.
It takes a lot to bend a crank and when you do, they usually bend pretty far back, where the stress riser is. The bolt will thread in and out just fine but the crank will wobble a lot.
A thought... are you certain that the bolt was tight before? Eliminating the harmonic damper means there's going to be a lot of torsional shaking going on and the bolt may have been loose already, so the threads of the bolt are damaged not from the collision, but because they had been rolling around in the crankshaft.
I hadn't checked it with a torque wrench recently but it was threaded all the way in and the pulley was running straight. If the pulley gets wobbly the belt tensioner starts to chatter. It also has a dual-mass flywheel to help keep the torsional shaking under control.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
That's at one end, though. A Subaru engine is short but it had four crank throws and five bearings and it ends up looking like a Jenga like stack of plates and hockey pucks. Very little torsional rigidity. Subaru tried to help by using fairly large journals but there is only so much that can be done.
So today I found that there is another video of the crash, with working audio but from pretty far away:
Here you can see the two videos synchronized in splitscreen. Note that the static camera audio will go slightly out of sync due to the distance to the mic:
https://viewsync.net/watch?v=HByMQJ4UNtM&t=1.94&v=kjTWY5L30AA&t=0&mode=solo
In reply to GameboyRMH :
Why don't I see any course workers out there? No one in that club ever hit cones?
In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
That was during fun runs (after official runs are finished), so we kind of run the course to destruction at that point.
Just something to think about, if it hit hard enough to damage the crank, it may be worth thinking about where the line is between being fixable for cheaper than buying another one and wishing that was the case before you spend too much money on parts.
If fixing up the pulleys from the outside and firing it up isn't successful, then it'll be time to bring the spending on it to a stop and mothball it because I won't be able to afford to get it running any time soon by any approach. DIYing a crank replacement after that could be an option. The supply of used FA20s or FA24s might improve in the future as well.
I just watched someone write off a newer Boxster at an autocross, it got loose and snapped back and went head on into a k rail at race speed. Driver was fine, but it definitely can happen pretty fast.
Back when I still rode sport bikes we always said, "95% of the time more throttle is the answer, 5% of the time it ends the suspense."
Sucks about the engine, I'm in the "get another pulley, tap the crank and see what happens."
Went to the shop to pick up some parts I would try to fix up. Had to pick through some I wouldn't be trying to fix up as well.
AC condenser and radiator:
Oil cooler. Looks like all the lines and fittings may be OK, may just need a new core with its brackets and custom mounts. The worst damage would be on the underside of this where it hit the crank pulley, I didn't want to make a bigger mess by picking it up:
Radiator fans. The only thing salvageable out of the whole assembly was 1 fan motor, even the 7-blade fan was cracked and misshapen. An OE-spec aftermarket unit from Rockauto was only $20 more than the cheapest possible way to piece one together so that's what I ordered. Still 50% cheaper than local aftermarket options and about half the cost of what the dealership's offering.
Front bumper. I was thinking I'd try to stitch it up to either sell to a drift kid and start filling in the financial Theia crater this crash has carved into my life, or possibly run it myself if necessary. Here's where I got with about 10 minutes of elbow grease, those creases in the part between the headlights are super hard and don't seem like they'll come out without some heat though. Also the top strip with the mounting holes is mostly cut off and hanging on by a thread, I'd have to add some strips of material to glue it on with.
The grille looks surprisingly reusable, all I'd need to do is stitch together the crack in the middle and epoxy-glue on the edge that's hanging off:
Headlights are looking worse than they initially appeared. The driver's side just has some minor-looking damage to the clips on the back, but the passenger side has some clips completely broken off, and the area with the crack looks like it's spread open too, that one may not be reusable.
CAI setup. Luckily the tube is fine apart from some scraped-off powdercoat, filter was crunched but I was able to straighten it out pretty well. The airbox was completely mangled though, and it's 1/8" steel, so it won't bend back easily. This is a madly expensive filter setup one of the previous owners put on but it does just barely make room for the oil cooler, I've contacted Grimmspeed to see if they could sell me just a replacement airbox. If that's not an affordable option, I'll probably end up fabricating a replacement out of sheet aluminum.
I'm just waiting on a replacement lightweight cheapo pulley and then I'll have all the parts needed to put the serpentine belt system back together, the replacement radiator and radiator fan assembly should be here soon too.
Dropped off all the pulley stuff and other engine-front bits today that will be needed to try reassembling and firing up the engine. This will give me some idea of how many years the car will be in storage and how big of a PITA it will be while it's there. At this point whatever happens, the plan is to put all the parts I have so far on the car and then store it before my bank account sucks air. Also pulled off the oil cooler so if they try to fire it up the remaining oil won't spray out through it:
You might try boiling water on the bumper cover. I've read that it works better than most other forms of heat and won't damage the paint.
Got the new all-aluminum radiator and replacement radiator fan assembly to drop off tomorrow.
The more I look at the crank pulley the harder it is to imagine that the crank isn't damaged. I strongly suspect this is going to be a multi-year ordeal.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
I'm still here, following this thread and hoping for some good luck.
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