Hi.
I have a big problem with my wrx that I bought last week.
The car had just been serviced at 100000 kilometres. Everything was done, timing belt etc. etc.
I noticed that the garage had put in Bosch filters and I was not happy about that. I also noticed that they overfilled the engine oil, it was all the way past the little notch on the dipstick. The engine was not completely cold when I checked, but it was not very warm either. Since I didin't have any oil at the time I thought to change it the next weekend.

Last friday I was driving home from work, the engine seemed slow, it didn't happen very much over 4500rpm's
I tried to flat it a few times to redline and suddenly it began knocking from the engine. I turned it off emidiatly to check the engine. I opened the hood and everything looked normal so I started it again and it sounded good when not revving. When I revved the engine it started to knock again from 2000rpm's and up.

I phoned the garage and they came to pick the car up. (It's unfortunatly not a Subaru dealer)
He claims that the knocking comes from the lifters and that it's normal when putting synthetic oil in.
I don't believe him at all.

Does anybody know what had happened to my engine?
Can it be the overfilled oil that caused the problem?
Please help!!

Excuse me for my bad english. I'm from sweden.

/Robban

 

sounds bad unfortunately....................depends where the knocking is coming from but could well be "big-ends"??

fully synth defo doesn't make a loud noise that can be heard when driving!!!

alyn

 

The noise wasn't very load, but I could here it inside the car.

What do you mean by fully synth defo?

 

Alyn mean's fully synthetic oil definately does not make a loud noise that can be heard when driving.

 

Ok, thanks.

I first thoght that the noise was coming from the left head when standing in front of the car.
But after further investigation it came from the middle of the engine. Doesn't the big ends sound very loud and get louder and louder every second?

When I came home I had the engine running a while when I investigated where the noise came from. Also shouldn't the oil pressure light go on when it is big end failure?

 

Indeed it should. It might be worth trying to contact Marky-San on here. He had an engine fault which sounded like big end's but wasn't. Never did find out what it was exactly....infact, it was API that done the work. Maybe ask APIDAVID.

 

Ahhh!! Finally some light in the darkness..

Will contact both of them rigt away!
Someone else who knows what the problem was with his car?

 

the oil light often doesnt come on when you have big end failure as the light goes out at 2.5psi oil presure. Even with damaged big ends you can see over 14psi.

If the big ends have died, you can normally tell by fast idling the car at around 1500rpm, you will hear a thuding noise from the centre of the engine, especially when reving up and down through the 1500rpm range.

overfilling or using sythetic oil shouldnt cause any engine noise or failures, whats most likely is the boost solonoid gets full of oil and the car overboosts. Do you know which oil they used? anything less than a 5W-30 isnt recomended.

 

From the mileage i presume the WRX you have is pre97. If so then different types of oils have made my hydraulic tappets either quiter or louder.... at times they can make the engine sound like a diesel . It's hard to really tell where a noise is coming from when you have injectors ticking, boost soleniod etc. If it is the tappets like the garage says then the noise would be more of a ticking than the deeper 'thud' of the big ends.

Tony.

 

I found out today that it's probably a piston failure.
The company who sold me the car stands for all the costs and I will probably get a new engine with fewer kilometres.
Thank you all for your help.
I will update here when I know more.

 

Any news Robban?