The one about the engine… PART 2!

It’s been awhile since I last updated the blog about the engine… A lot of ups and downs throughout this engine build process that I’ll bring you along to see the roller coaster of emotions I have been going through.

This has been a 5 month process from finding out the engine was cooked till a few days ago when I finally picked up the car. To recap what happened on the last post, I’ve been chasing an oil leak for years now and could never figure out why the STI engine was pissing out oil. Dropped the car off at Metro Performance of Socal and they found the culprit which was silicone in an oil galley plug…

Which leads us to this… a brand new short block built with forged CP pistons and basically all new components inside and out. The engine is completely overbuilt for what is essentially a car with no power mods besides the recent protune that was done by Sean at MBT.

The overbuilt motor for stock power might not make sense to you but it makes sense to me. These cars are already fast out of the factory and I honestly don’t care to chase numbers. What I care about is reliability and drivability. Being able to beat on the engine all day long and fixing the horrible factory Subaru tune is way more important to me.

This new engine did not come without it’s own issues though. There were some unexpected issues when it came to the engine. Once Metro Performance dropped the engine and tore it apart, they noticed that the heads might not be in the best condition. The car currently has 82k miles on the odometer but they are thinking that the engine looked like a 100k+ mile engine with the wear and tear on the block and heads which is concerning to me since this entire ownership, I had no idea of it’s maintenance history nor did I know if it’s the original engine or not.

I could do two things: 1) take the risk and resurface the heads and hope that there is enough material left or 2) buy new OEM heads and start fresh and come out with a brand new complete engine. Obviously I opted for option 2 even though it’s way beyond my budget now for the engine. At the end of the day, I’m glad with this decision and don’t regret it at all. I would hate to have an issue down the line cause I tried to save a few dollars even though the engine build cost me a kidney already.

The 2 cars in the background are the sole reason why I went with Metro Performance. They both highly recommended Metro Performance to build their high HP engines and it made my choice pretty easy to go with them! It’s pretty wild to see 2 Limited STI’s in the same place and I wish I took more photos of all 3 of the cars together!

After 6+ months of waiting for the block to be built and getting all the parts ordered and installed, I am extremely happy to have the STI back in the garage. With that, I made a quick Youtube video to document this part of the build and can’t wait to do more fun car things with the car!

Thanks- Kurtis