98 Legacy GT-B Limited, or the cheap ass JDM twin turbo wagon.

[Shepherd]

I wanted one of these for a few years now and the GT-B Legacy was the reason why I bought an EDM 96 Legacy 2.2 GX wagon as a daily driver when I decided to end my GTI 20th anniversary's lifespan last year.

So this year I came across an ad for a 98 Legacy GT-B Limited with a broken engine.
White, direct import from Japan to Germany, german registration and bone stock and it even was located almost around the corner (2h drive).
Had a look at it, engine did run but wiggled like J-Lo's ass, body was in a really mint condition, no sign of rust, dents etc.
The seller just didn't want it anymore, he already had the second engine in it as a valve ripped off on the first engine, so the price was damn cheap.
Next day I picked it up.



















Just a few days later I got right to work.


The reason why the engine shook pretty hard was that one of the cylinders didn't want to play anymore.
Aside of the shaking, the EJ20R did sound all normal, but blew blue smoke out of the back. We figured that that one of the piston rings might be broken, so first things first, I checked the cylinders with the endoscope.






Wouldn't have needed to get the endoscope out though.
After a proper clean the engine probably would've run normal again...


...but that wouldn't have fixed the problem.





So I pulled the engine out.







Engine stand is supposed to hold twice the weight... yeah of course.


Piece for piece coming off.







Hone was still looking pretty good.


Not on cylinder 2 though...


Less oil coal on the piston on cylinder 2... suspicious.


Whoops. Melted piston.
Looks like the injector malfunctioned and caused the cylinder to overheat and from that point everything just went shit.


More parts coming off...
Heads looking pretty mint as well.



Cylinder one and three looked good as well.





My brother and I then measured the cylinders with the three point micrometer and afterwards with the two point micrometer to see if the cylinders are still within the clearances.
They weren't, which pretty much killed the idea to throw in one new piston and new piston rings for all cylinders.







Took apart the block then and found more broken things.









Broken piston was pretty broken.





Rods looked good, but the bearings were dead too... at least they didn't spin.





My guess now is that after the injector broke, the piston melted till the rings couldn't take the heat anymore and broke.
Seller said he suddenly heard a loud bang coming from the engine and it then started to run bad...
So what do you do then? Right! You drive your car home.
I guess that's when the spark plug got plugged up with oil coal and all the unburned petrol got pushed into the inside of the engine thinning down the oil till until all the main and rod bearings got fucked up.
I'm quite surprised the cylinder heads and camshafts survived this.
With everything taken apart I dropped the block, crankshaftand rods off at my most trusted machine shop so they could see if everything still could be fixed.



Machine shop confirmed that everything's fixable. 1. oversize for the pistons and 1. undersize for the crank.
Since then I ran into quite some trouble sourcing the right pistons for this engine. Turned out they are NLA at Subaru Japan, so I had to spend some more time trying to find pistons from a different engine that would fit into mine.
After two months I finally received a package from Japan last week with the pistons, so there soon should be an update with some more progress.

Can't wait to have it back running and driving, so I can get to the real fun part: Wheels and suspension.

[TWM Performance]

Wow, what a fantastic car

- Renato

[Dudermagee]

Good start.
Looks like you know wtf you are doing.

Can't wait to see more.

[Shepherd]

Made some progress on the wagon in the last months.
Sucks when you have to wait for parts from Japan, then for the machine shop, etc. etc.
...at least I can use the spare time on my other cars.

Anyway... I ordered 1. OS (0.25) pistons from an EJ207 (...or EJ208, not sure anymore) and compared them to the stock pistons. The EJ207/8 is the followup engine to my EJ20R/H.
The newer model ones are different shaped, and do have 1mm less compression height.





Also ordered an 1.OS piston from the early version EJ20R, here it is compared to the later version EJ20R



Next I had to determine the volume of each piston.





Turns out the earlier version EJ20R pistons (~16,5cc) do have a higher volume than the later version pistons (~14cc). Since the heads and head gasket carry the same part number over the whole production time, I think it's pretty safe to say that's how Subaru raised the compression ratio from 8.0:1 on the early version engines to 8.5:1 on the later version.

The EJ207 piston does have a volume of ~11cc, but the 1mm lower compression height raises the volume to ~17cc compared to my original pistons.
To compensate that, I'll go with a thinner head gasket to end up with the same compression ratio.

I could also just get the heads skimmed down enough, but that would be irreversible.


Dropped the pistons at my machine shop then and went to work on the heads.


Checked if the valves still seal tight, which they all did.


Then took everything apart and dropped them at the machine shop when I picked up the block and crank.
Just told them to resurface them while skimming them down only as much as needed and to check on the valve trains.



While my heads were at the machine shop, I started to clean the block.
In retrospective, I should have done that before I got the cylinders machined.
Few small steel wire brushs for my power drill and little ones for my power tool made the work pretty easy and quick, but also quite dirty.
Will have to wash the blocks down good with silicone remover before I paint and assamble it, but other than that I'm really happy with the result.







Once I got my heads back, they received the same treatment.







Just gotta clean up a few more parts, then paint should happen.

[tekzhicuh]

Looks like you know wtf you are doing.

[P78]

watching this after seeing your mk3 build

[nsogiba]

love the attention to detail

[Shepherd]

Just a small update...
Painted the block halves and the heads, just a few things left to paint before I can start to assemble the block, getting quite excited!

[Shepherd]

Painted the last bigger engine pieces...
Stripped down the spare intake that came with the Legacy...





Cleaned everything with brake cleaner, then taped it off good and sandblasted both the intake and coolant-crossover.
The valve covers I just cleaned with steel brushes on my drill and dremel as I was too lazy to tape everything off properly.
After that I primered the parts, painted them gold and showered them with some clear coat.
Not flawless, but imho good enough, not building a show car.
Nicht das beste Ergebnis, aber für eine Dosenlackierung total in Ordnung.

[cosmo135]

All gold everything.

[jazig.k]

Looks like this is gonna be a great build. Keep it up

[coconutt]

Really good start to your build man.

[GroceryGetter67]

sub'd for sure! Cannot WAIT to see what you do with this thing, I wish I knew a fraction as much as you when it came to engine internals

[Shepherd]

Had a lot of progress happening the last weeks

Few weeks ago I actually started putting together the engine.
The block came first of course.

The crankshaft had completely been machined to 1. undersize (-0.25) so I got myself a nice set of 1. oversize (0.25) ACL Race (3metal) bearings for the main and big end bearings.
Unfortunately my machine shop didn't ask me about the bearings and so they already got a set of standard oversize bearings that I didn't wanna use but still had to buy (Just in case you wonder why there already are big end bearings in place).


Crankshaft and con rods put together.


Prepared the block, cleaned the old screws and painted the visible ones.


Crank placed in the prepared block half


After the block was screwed together, it was time to get the pistons in.


Finally, some time after midnight, I was done... and what can I say? Putting a Subaru block together is all about lube and fingering holes.




The weekend after, I prepared some other important parts... First I checked if the old oil pump was still good to use as it could've been destroyed by metal bits from the broken piston or it just couldve been worn.
Luckily all the clearances are still within stock spec.






...of course the oil pump had to receive some good cleaning, along with some other parts.
First step's always getting everything covered in Diesel and then simply brush the dirt off.


After the Diesel did its work, I wash everything off with brake cleaner. For the oilpump I then used Aluminium primer, gold paint and clear coat.




The oilpan was still pretty dirty on the inside and I couldn't even get all the chunky piston bits out of it, thanks to other sheets welded into the pan. I gave it to my brother who then cleaned it out properly in a machine at work.
After that I simply removed rust on the outside, gave it some epoxy-primer, paint and clear coat.






All done, put together and ready to go in!


Last but not least I reinforced my engine stand... if you wonder why, just look at the beginning of this thread.



Now last weekend the last order of engine (and some other) parts arrived, the only thing I'm waiting for now are a set of injectors and Samco intake hoses.







On Sunday I finally had time to start assembling the engine. Thus the block ended up on the engine stand.


My Cometic MLS head gaskets then received the copper treatment... the copper is supposed to fill little imperfections and differences between the gasket and the block/head surface as MLS gaskets arent squishy enough to do so.




Also had to clean and paint some parts that I forgot to paint.



Worked away and added more and more parts, finally at 3am Monday morning the engine was mostly put together... at least the bigger parts except for the intake and exhaust header.







Now I'm just cleaning, painting and adding parts slowly while I wait for the last important bits to arrive.

[DanK90]

Love the work you're doing man! I have a 95 legacy wagon and this is just pure pron...