club.liberty.asn.au

Hey all

I only bought my MY07 auto specB H6 (131,000km) in October from a dealership. I got a tune from Matt at KIDO (amazing as everyone says) shortly after. After about a month I realised it was going through oil too quickly (about 1L every 2,000km) and occasionally blew white smoke from the exhaust on start up. After taking it back to the dealer a few times, they told me it needed new piston rings. So, its been in the shop for the last two weeks, and I got it back today.

When I picked it up, they said it had actually needed a completely new engine, so the Subaru place down the road had found an engine with similar kms and changed them over. All of this is covered under statutory warranty (phew!), however I have a couple of questions.

First, I am assuming the tune from Matt will be gone. It certainly feels like it's gone back to the default, so I am hoping that is the case and it's not just a shit new engine. I hope he has another trip booked down to Melbourne soon!

Second, the dealership said the old engine had low compression. Is this really sufficient to warrant changing the engine? Does this mean it was just the engine block? What does replacing "the engine" usually entail?

Third, I am going to contact the service guys and ask for more details (sales rep sounded like he didn't know every detail about the car), what questions should I be asking to make sure the new engine is going to be okay?

Any other things I should be checking? I am not very mechanically minded. Perhaps there is no reason for me to worry, but I was quite surprised that this happened at 130,000kms.

Thanks in advance

Alex

The tune should be in the ECU, not in the engine?

If the compression is down it generally means that either
a) the headgasket is fucked
b) the valves are fucked
c) the piston rings are fucked
d) the pistons are fucked
e) the bores are fucked.
f) the head is fucked

ALL of these are bad.

a "new engine" in this case is probably a whole engine, including the block, pistons, and heads , and probably intake manifold, and you just unplug everything and replug it. It is also possible they swapped the ECU from the donor car. This would have obviously done away with the tune.

a well serviced H6 should live for 300kkm, but stuff happens

Excellent, thanks for the replies fellas.

The power steering feels muuuuch heavier as well, is that to do with the engine swap or something else? Any thoughts on how to get that back?

I am going to chase up the number of the new engine and see if I can find where it came from and exactly how many kms it now has, but so far it doesn't seem like there is much I can do about the whole situation except hope nothing goes wrong

If the ECU was also changed out at the time of the engine swap, the Immobiliser system would have required re-synchronising with the replacement ECU, and that normally means all keys need to be recoded to the car at the same time?
Did you leave both keys with the car during the warranty repair?

Anyway, it is simple enough to determine whether it is the original ECU or whether it was swapped out......
just ask the mechanic who did the job?
Cheers!

With the new engine they may have wiped out the ECU to all original default settings, I doubt they would have swapped it with the donor engines car.

As for heavy steering, there may be an air pocket in the system from not bleeding the lines properly or the pump may be any good. But I would rebleed it first.