What do we really know about that Toyota GR86 engine failure?

Please don't think the manufacturer attitude is a recent development.  I have a few scars from dealing with a stone wall attitude from a rep concerning a customer vehicle.  We had a C70 convertible that would shut off when driving.  My tech narrowed it to a $900 control unit, that the rep refused to authorize.  The car ended up as a lemon, I got paid 40 hours diagnostic time on warranty, and the field tech rep that spend an entire day found the issue.  The $900 control unit I couldn't install.  The cherry on the sh@t cake was that a factory employee bought the car for 40 cents on the dollar (it's a lemon, don't forget) and then tried to extort accessories from me.  Can't make this stuff up.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

When I worked as a Toyota mechanic something like 40 years ago the dealership and the tech got something like 80% of what the job normally paid.

Note to self....never buy a Subaru or Subaru powered anything.

kevinatfms said:

Note to self....never buy a Subaru or Subaru powered anything.

LOL, buy a Ford. The manufacturer with the most recalls in history. 

z31maniac said:

kevinatfms said:

Note to self....never buy a Subaru or Subaru powered anything.

LOL, buy a Ford. The manufacturer with the most recalls in history. 

Yah... the majority of Subarus have no major issues, which is why you see people trade their old Subarus for new ones instead of changing brands.

My Subaru lived long enough to rust itself to death.  Likewise the rusted and wrecked WRX that I bought last year had a good engine at 203k miles, despite obvious signs of neglect like a corded spare tire, numerous hoses underhood broken (boost control? nah we don't need that)...

People don't complain that the engine outlasted the car they just rammed into a phone pole, though.

Now, if one were to say "never buy anything with a timing chain", THAT is something I can get behind.  Timing chains are noisy, bulky, far more difficult to service, and less reliable.  You don't have to worry about a timing belt jumping a tooth because the oil pickup sucked air, you don't have to worry about the water pump leaking into the oil with a timing belt.

My mom had a 1.6L bugeye Impreza she bought new in the early 2000s, she sold it a year or two ago with the engine never needing anything but ordinary routine maintenance, most of the problems with it were the brake hydraulics and ABS system.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Every now and then I hunt the JDM importers for EJ16 or EJ15 engines.  So far, nada.

An EJ15 with a stroker crank should be awesome for combustion chamber dimension reasons under high boost.

Another video of a hobbyist/Motorsports enthusiast pulling the pan on the new gr86

From that video ^ Yuck. I have a feeling this will be a TSB or recall. Look at how much was squished on the inside of the pan.

^One mistake in the video above is that he says the older FA20s have the same oil pickup - they don't, they have a more traditional pickup seen at the top here (vs. an aftermarket high-flow pickup below):

The older models with the FA20 also don't have any record of excess RTV issues except as a result of having the engine opened back up by the dealers for recall work.

There are really two issues here.

1. RTV in the oil pickup screens. How widespread is it? How much is too much?

2. Warranty claims denied because of ______ use. It's come to light because of 1 and is becoming important due to 1.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

z31maniac said:

kevinatfms said:

Note to self....never buy a Subaru or Subaru powered anything.

LOL, buy a Ford. The manufacturer with the most recalls in history. 

Yah... the majority of Subarus have no major issues, which is why you see people trade their old Subarus for new ones instead of changing brands.

My Subaru lived long enough to rust itself to death.  Likewise the rusted and wrecked WRX that I bought last year had a good engine at 203k miles, despite obvious signs of neglect like a corded spare tire, numerous hoses underhood broken (boost control? nah we don't need that)...

People don't complain that the engine outlasted the car they just rammed into a phone pole, though.

 

Now, if one were to say "never buy anything with a timing chain", THAT is something I can get behind.  Timing chains are noisy, bulky, far more difficult to service, and less reliable.  You don't have to worry about a timing belt jumping a tooth because the oil pickup sucked air, you don't have to worry about the water pump leaking into the oil with a timing belt.

So there's the old head gasket thing, which was a big deal. but if we're being honest, pretty much every manufacturer has had at least one of those type of things so that's not exactly uique to subaru.

My conclusion, having now been involved in the ownership of two old and one new subaru, is that they're generally fine ***as long as they're well maintained and left vaguely stock***. They're no 90s toyota that can go a million miles on like five oil changes and zero other maintenance. But if you keep decent oil in them and don't weld the wastegate shut, chances are the engine/drivetrain won't be the thing that ultimately does the car in. Unfortunately, at least in the performance car segment, they seem to attract the type of people who generally aren't capable of doing either of those things. And to their credit, having driven a first gen wrx, I totally understand why nobody can/could manage to leave them stock.

In reply to tremm :

If the schmutz was making it through the pump, there would be no issue.

I wonder if the car has networked gauge info that can take minutes before a warning light comes on, like my Volvo...

tremm said:

Is it possible to do any diagnostics by cutting open your used oil filters?

TBH I don't know what the largest particulate size is that could make it to a filter.

I guess they could get pureed by the pump? Maybe you could catch something by straining the used oil through a mesh bag.

I'm mostly wondering what guys who just bought a >$35,000 car would be thinking. I think step 1 is: 'Is my engine one of the ones with excess silicone?' And I'm trying to think of the easiest way you'd confirm/deny. I think used oil analysis tests for silicone; but I'd wager not in a way which is useful for assessing whether your pickup screen is partially blocked.

I'm guessing that if you have silicone all the way to your filter, you're berked. Blocking the pickup screen seems like the most attractive of the failures - at least it is 'easy' to reverse. Only the magic 8 Ball knows if you have (partially) blocked galleries. Spin the wheel in XX,XXX miles to find out!

As a guy who ordered one, and is expecting it in the next few weeks. 

I'm not worried. It has a warranty, and all the national media attention has ensured Subaru is paying attention. I'm still planning on doing what I planned, I have the suspension and duckbill spoiler here. I'm ordering wheels and a catback this week, and once OEM Audio finalizes their 2022+ package I'll get that as well. 

A sub 1% issue doesn't bother me. 

tremm said:

Is it possible to do any diagnostics by cutting open your used oil filters?

TBH I don't know what the largest particulate size is that could make it to a filter.

I guess they could get pureed by the pump? Maybe you could catch something by straining the used oil through a mesh bag.

I'm mostly wondering what guys who just bought a >$35,000 car would be thinking. I think step 1 is: 'Is my engine one of the ones with excess silicone?' And I'm trying to think of the easiest way you'd confirm/deny. I think used oil analysis tests for silicone; but I'd wager not in a way which is useful for assessing whether your pickup screen is partially blocked.

I'm guessing that if you have silicone all the way to your filter, you're berked. Blocking the pickup screen seems like the most attractive of the failures - at least it is 'easy' to reverse. Only the magic 8 Ball knows if you have (partially) blocked galleries. Spin the wheel in XX,XXX miles to find out!

We cut open the first filter and there was definitely some silicone confetti in there (three different colors of it, no less). People have also started sharing photos of tiny particles on the dipstick. No idea how that correlates to the status of anything else in the engine though. I think it's pretty safe to assume that all of them have some amount of stuff in the pickup, but so far that alone hasn't been proven to be a death sentence.

I guess the big question is how long are these things going to shed RTV before they settle in?  Time for the aftermarket to sweep in with a big ass oil pickup that will tolerate RTV accumulation?  Somebody get on it!  ;)

In reply to Tyler H :

Describe the installation procedure of that big ass oil pickup :)

Can a borescope be inserted through the drain to inspect the pan and pickup?

There should be only one color, the light gray stuff that everyone uses.  (Generically call it Hondabond)  You can razor big 1/2" wide fringes of it off of the inside of GM 3.6 timing covers, wide bits from Honda oil pans, etc.

The question I have is not "why so much" but "why is it coming loose", and now a new question "what is really coming apart?"  Multiple colors mean something is coming apart besides form in place gasket material.

No Time said:

Can a borescope be inserted through the drain to inspect the pan and pickup?

Nope. 

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

The question I have is not "why so much" but "why is it coming loose", and now a new question "what is really coming apart?"  Multiple colors mean something is coming apart besides form in place gasket material.

All good things in moderation, yes, but... you raise an interesting point. Hondabond should be able to cope with oil exposure just fine. Windage, perhaps? Rotating assembly bits REALLY close to the edges of the pan? Gremlins in the oil, wreaking havoc?

As for a solution, is it possible to install a screen around the pickup? The oil lines on my dry sump setup have screens in each line, before anything gets into the pump. I check them each time I change the oil, just in case. Total area is quite large, so I'm not worried about contaminants, but it would be an extreme solution for most situations. I'm thinking how fuel tanks and oil pans have trap door baffles, but with screens, so you would have a secondary opportunity to catch contaminants before they have the chance to clog the primary oil inlet screen.

A while back when my Excursion gave me some intermittent low oil pressure, my problem was also a clogged pickup screen.  I didn't save the "stuff" but it looked very similar to what's in the pictures of the GR86 strainer.  As far as I'm aware it hadn't been opened up before and I don't recall it having a ton of RTV in use anywhere.  Is it possible that something else could look like strands of RTV but is actually something else?

In reply to te72 :

A screen to protect the existing pickup screen? Sounds like addressing the symptom, not the cause. 

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to te72 :

A screen to protect the existing pickup screen? Sounds like addressing the symptom, not the cause. 

Sounds like just moving the problem upstream a bit. I guess if you gave the screen more surface area at the same time, it would be an improvement.

We're not exactly sure what we're going to do. We'd like to at least clean out the pickup once autocross season is over. But from what we've seen, just pulling the lower pan and trying to scrape out the stuff from the tube doesn't seem like a good solution. We really don't want to disassemble the engine to properly clean it (or pay someone else to do it) though. I think at the moment we've landed on taking it to a dealer to have them inspect it, then if (when) they find stuff, hope to talk them into warranty covering the full clean out. That's probably a bit optimistic though.

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to te72 :

A screen to protect the existing pickup screen? Sounds like addressing the symptom, not the cause. 

Yo dawg...