Help with Subaru

Veeky Forums I need your help. I’ve taken my car to a few shops and no one can figure out what’s wrong

I have a 2008 2.5i Impreza
>two weeks ago noticed tapping coming from top of motor coming about around 2300 rpm in neutral
>take it in, shop pulls plugs and sees carbon buildup on top of pistons, #4 being the worst
>oil was 2 quarts low, oil change done within last 30 days and 300 miles
>wot
>sea foam the motor, new plugs, new oil and oil filter
>noise goes away for a few days
>stop driving the moment it comes back, tow it home
>oil two quarts low again
>add oil, start it, let it idle for a few
>start to drive away and there’s a large oil smoke cloud

What’s going on? There hasn’t been any noticeable oil burning going on until just today, and I couldn’t get any more clouds to appear.

I don’t believe it’s a headgasket, but I can’t figure out what’s going on. No milky substance on oil fill cap.
Valve stem seals going out? What other troubleshooting could I do?

103,xxx miles, manual 5speed if it matters

have you found any oil leak ?

Nothing externally. I park on the same spot of my driveway everyday and there’s nothing

Check on the motor itself. I once had an oil leak never a drop on the ground but the motor was soaking with oil.

I’ll take another look, but I was working on it today and I saw nothing

>figure out what’s wrong

You have a Subarpoo

bad rings probably

flat engine designs have oil constantly resting against the rings, even a new engine will leak some into the cylinder when its been sitting

Subaru says 95% of Subaru’s sold in the last 20 years are still on the road

The others made it home ;_;

Is the noise I’m hearing piston slap then?

if it only makes the noise when its low on oil then its expected

engines make noise when they aren't properly lubricated

>the others made it home

Mmy sidees

Rings heads valve stem seals and probably oil problems

Get rid of it

Could be piston slap caused by insufficient lubrication, my guess is you have a broken oil control ring or two. You been hammerdicking the shit out of it or what?

PCV valve? 2 quarts in 300 miles is quadruple bad.

I've heard of guys soaking cylinders in seafoam overnight to try and free-up a stuck ring. Even if that was the case for you, i dont know how well it would work being horizontally opposed and all.

What’s likely causing the oil consumption though? A quart a week isn’t reasonable and I don’t want to clog up the motor again

It hurts ;_;

R.I.P.

I’ve not driven it hard much at all. Neither did the last owner, and I’ve had it for 10k miles

When we bore scoped it, it appeared like there was a 1” wide river of oil passing the piston. I was hoping flooding the motor would help maybe unstick the rings

Yeah, being that low made me shat. The motor was actually flooded with seafoam twice and I’ve been adding some to the fuel

I told you it could be bad rings

which means an engine rebuild

Fugg

Worth rebuilding or just fukkin replace it?

Subaru got sues a while back for oil issues in their engines. Subaru Subashit.

that dosent sound like a stuck ring, that sounds like a broken ring or broken ringland.

Trade it in somewhere or unload it onto some poor sucker on craigslist.

I’m likely to see some pretty fucked up chamber walls if it was piston slap huh?

My car wasn’t included in affected vehicles apparently

Fugg

could have fucked up cylinders for sure

>My car wasn’t included in affected vehicles apparently
Subaru has always had issues with their engines. It used to be trendy to have your coolant eat away your head gaskets and fill your boxer with coolant. It might not be on the list, but it can still have the same issues.

I have an '08 2.5i as well. I don't think the oil burning issues are as bad with these things as everyone suggests (EJ253?). My car has significant piston slap when its cold, but its fine in ~10 minutes of driving.

The oil burning is not unheard of. Oil smoke cloud is spooky. Go see a garage that specializes in Subarus man. See if its worth just keeping extra oil on hand for the amount you are burning and topping off every once in awhile.

No point in replacing the engine, car is worth like $5k with a decent engine

yeah sounds like she is chewing some oil, but you say it has 103,xxx miles thats not really high for an engine to start burning oil unless it may have premature engine wear from driving too excessively.

so what i think is wrong 1. worn oil control piston rings.
2.worn valve guides or valve stems.
3. blocked PCV system from carbon deposits.

id try the pcv system first and next do the compression test to see if you do have a low compression which wont really prove the oil control rings are worn or gummed up.

also what you could do if its cheap to get a inspection camera and have a look in the sprak plug holes on each cylinder and look for scoring or other bore wear, as that will tell you the condition of the internals and if there is a oil consumption problem which you most likely have.

That sucks, you got the wrong engine

My EJ22 is 20 years old and doesn't burn or leak oil

Yeah, my EJ22 was the same way. Ran for 20 years no problems until body rust started making me uncomfortable. Too bad Subaru seems to still have trouble clearing up its reputation after that bad batch of head gasket EJ25s from 15-20 years ago.

Sorry OP, I'm going to have to go with the prevailing advice. Given the age of the car it's probably not worth a rebuild or a new engine vs. just burning oil until you get a new car.

Thanks for the input and advice everyone

The problem is I obviously need a car, but I’m skeptical to buy some other 7k mystery meat piece of shit used car, and I don’t exactly want to drop 25 or 30k on something new. But I’m gonna take it to a subie shop next and see how it goes

Subie shop as in dealer? I don't know if that's going to do much for you other than rape your wallet. Any decent shop that sees Subarus from time to time can go through basics like making sure it's not something dead stupid like a stuck PCV valve, doing a compression check, scoping the cylinders to see if there's obvious wear etc.

It doesn't hurt to try to be certain that what's wrong with the engine so you can decide how you want to handle it. If it's just a matter of keeping the oil topped up and maybe having to degunk the cylinders every year or whatever, then the only thing you have to balance is the cost of oil vs. the cost of jumping to a different car.

No, absolutely fuck the dealer. They’ve dicked me around before. I just mean a shop that takes care of Subaru’s in particular.

Yeah, I want to diagnose the problem. Seafoaming the motor isn’t the long term fix, but more a result of what’s wrong and I want to take care of it right.

>he fell for the subaru meme
if you had bought a 2009 civic it wouldn't be doing this. kys.

Yeah but then he’d own a Honda

>unironically buying a civic

The EJ engines eat oil. It's likely ether the piston rings. Also check your damn oil every fill up. Running that low is not ok.

Also make sure you change the timing belt every 100,000km. Not changing that kills most EJ engines.

>implying there's anything wrong with a honda

8th gen civics are a lot better than 9th gen though. They have timing chains, over 6 inches of ground clearance and decent power for the era. You can easily access most of the commonly replaced parts in that engine. You could do a lot worse.

I don't know how no one has yet suggested using a higher viscosity oil to try to control the flow past the rings.

Try mobil1 high mileage formula in 10w-30. They specifically use oils that have larger molecules so they get into the rings and increase compression.

2 quarts in 300 miles
even pic related wont help in that situation

OP here. I have an update for you Fellers. I got into contact with a Subaru shop and explained all of the symptoms to him. He suggested replacing the PCV valve, which I’m currently about to do, and then running it for a couple weeks and see what it does. He said if that does not alleviate the problem that I will expect to have to replace the bottom end and rebuild the top. He did mention that because of the amount of oil being burned, it’s probably the rings.

I just wanted to say thank you all for the help. It’s so frustrating trying to be a Google mechanic so I really appreciate the input from you guys.

>tldr; $6 fix or $3600 fix lmao thanks guys