EJ20K discussion of reliability

[FastRyder]

Mine lasted about two weeks. Pretty itshay deal. I changed all fluids and ran 94 in it. Two weeks later I got the infamous Rod Knock.

[Sirhc]

Brutal man

What about your oil levels? And how many km?

[FastRyder]

I checked the level just before my last drive. It was fine. The car has 90000km and its bone stock. I'm wondering what would be an affordable way to go to fix this. Lightspeed said minimum 5 to 6 grand with stand alone and all. I just bought the car for a little more then that. Kind of depressing really.

[EvoIVOwner]

I checked the level just before my last drive. It was fine. The car has 90000km and its bone stock. I'm wondering what would be an affordable way to go to fix this. Lightspeed said minimum 5 to 6 grand with stand alone and all. I just bought the car for a little more then that. Kind of depressing really.

That really sucks man. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I just keep hoping that mine will be one of the good ones. Maybe I'll get on that tune a little faster than I was thinking. It's so weird though because I see quite a few people running 91 on these cars with no issues so far. I guess it's always a chance though.

[goodveet]

I just rolled over 116,000km on the odo. 40,000 of which were put on by me. Did a couple auto X, couple ice rally X, and I drive it somewhat hard daily. Still no issues- knock on wood.

[Daniils]

I spun bearing(sounds like cylinder 3) on my ej20k, did a few trackdays LOTS of autocross(50+ events).
I got the car with 59k on odo, it died at 70k km.
It was a very fast autocross course, I was at 7000rpm for like 20seconds, and that killed it.
That said my car potentially ran without oil few months prior to this(oil cooler line burst).
I did oil changes less than 2000kms, at the time of it dying I had enough oil.
My ej20k also has newage sti oil pick up and pan.

[jdmvip]

Thanks for sharing and sorry to hear about the failure.
We are starting to see a clear pattern of fairly early failures for some EJ20K owners and various mileages while others seem to be fine at higher mileage.

I believe the issue may be the quality of fuel, 91 in BC could be different than 91 back east etc, I'm not convinced our fuel quality is as consistent as many would like to believe. Then there's the consensus that we should be running with 94 (and that our 94 may not be enough at that) and many run on 91.

There could be a design flaw but considering many failures happen fairly early within weeks or within 10K in Canada, I believe the tune is too aggressive on EJ20K and everyone may be gambling with their engine.

What I wonder is how the stock tune would fair with an EJ20G or EJ205 as a bottom end? If we start seeing the same kind of failures we'd know fairly quickly that it was the tune. Or better yet, if somehow we could use the EJ20G ECU like a 6K/7K STi II/RA on these motors with the help of someone like Rob?