My Recon Subaru Impreza WRX Engine Died After 3 Months – What Really Happened & How We Fixed It
Why Did My Reconditioned Subaru Impreza WRX Engine Fail So Quickly? The short answer is poor preparation and a donor engine that should never have been sold. When I bought the car, the seller handed over a folder of service history records, but I later discovered the reconditioned SUBARU IMPREZA WRX engine had been assembled using a block from a written-off vehicle. The original HPI clearance check had never been run, so there was no way to know the donor car had suffered internal water damage before the rebuild. Within three months, the bottom end began knocking, and a compression test confirmed cylinder three had almost zero pressure. The failure wasn’t dramatic – no smoke or bang – just a slow, expensive death that became obvious on cold starts. After stripping the engine at a friend’s garage in Birmingham, the real story emerged. The rebuilt SUBARU IMPREZA WRX had been put together with old timing components and a second-hand oil pump that wa...