The rings were so stuck they broke the ring lands between the oil ring and the #2 compression ring and the #2 ring and the #1 ring. You can see the cracks here. Normally detonation causes the top ring land to fail first but those were all fine! The oil ring drain holes are all filled up with baked goo as well.
This piston had a chunk missing out of the ring land. The stuck rings would not move as the piston moved up and down and this put a huge stress on the ring lands.
With all that mess going on, you would think the cylinder walls would be messed up but no, they were like brand new with the exception of some goo around the top of the cylinder above the #1 ring.
15 comments
GD STi stands for for something else in this case, lol. Love your transparency with the EJ. I’ve pondered doing a straight E85 tune in my Subaru, but now I really don’t want to.
Thank you for more Subaru content.
Mike, what about the oil/lubricant additive some people put in alcohol fuels? Maybe using that with each tank of E85 would help prevent the wall wash down you experienced?
E.g. like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/19769-18-Additive-Alcohol-Cherry-Scented/dp/B0093DGPJ0/
https://motoiq.com/top-lube-for-e85/
So, she was already adding the oil additive and this still happened?
Fuel addtive
I’d recommend oil analysis if you really want to know what’s happening in an engine. It would have detected this contamination well before the point of being catastrophic and is more cost effective than frequent oil changes.
I don’t work for, nor am I compensated by, but have used Blackstone for 2/3 current cars and will do so for every vehicle in the future.
I told my daughter to change the oil every 1000 miles and if she did that it would have been ok.
Hi, excellent article.
Not just E85, driving an cold engine ruins it. It does not matter with E85, regular gas or diesel – the result is the same
E85 does it quicker via a different mechanism.
There are some oils out there that are extremely friendly with E85. Torco TR-1R comes to mind.
Looks like my Prius Prime oil cap during winter. As it will mostly run as an electric car, it uses the engine in short bursts when the battery is depleted. The oil definitely doesn’t like that so once or twice in a week, i run a 40 / 50 miles trip just to bring it at full operating temps. A non issue during summer as the battery has more then enough capacity for my errands and i use the good old (2012 witk almost 500k km on the clock) Civic Si more.
’07-’09 VW GTI’s were notorious for this because of bad thermostats. The dealership would tell people to take the car for a 60 mile drive once a week. Or change the stat yourself and everything is fine.
I saw some horrific sludge mess in engines at the dealership.
Pulled valve cover of a SBC in a Blazer, ticking lifters/valve train noise. The sludge was a perfect reverse mold of the valve cover with little opening for each rocker arm.
Seized BBC in a truck. Pulled oil drain plug, no oil came out. Removed oil pan, It was heavy, pan is full of congealed oil, but there is a hole in the oil, where the oil pump pickup was. Slide under truck and there is a tower of congealed oil sitting on top of the oil pickup screen. To this day one some one dumps out a can of cranberry sauce I think of this truck. We call this stuff “Can”berries. I can’t eat them.
Lastly there was the BBC that was gummed up so bad most of the pushrods would no longer feed oil up the the rocker arms.
All three got new engines.
Hi Mike,
I have a question, our STI is E85 and one injector get stuck opened. A good amount of E85 went to the engine oil. We are waiting for new injector, but what you recommend? Change the oil quickly? I dont know if the E85 in the engine oil can damage the engine.
Thanks,
Francisco
Change the oil before even driving it one bit.