After 111502 miles and 40+ track days, the FA20 in the BRZ had it. No complaints here. I was coming off at 3 at Grattan after the last session of the day and about 100 feet from the paddock, new, unhappy noises happened. Thankfully, amongst the Summer Track Days crew of regulars, an unneeded trailer was available and my blueberry was hauled home safely. Otherwise, it was a really good day at Grattan, steadily dropping lap times and improving my line. The new pavement is interesting, and there are some elevation changes to the track that I was surprised by. But a good day at Grattan is better than the best day at most other tracks, so there is that.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about the failure. I got more than 100K out of the engine, which is good considering some of the stories I have heard about this engine. On the plus side, it failed in a perfectly safe place where I could stop it before it ate the crank, and surrounded by friends who aren’t strangers to racecars doing racecar things.

Getting to the oil pan was no easy feat – it’s captive to the exhaust manifold so that had to come out. That was not a particularly fun job and of course involved a Sawzall (last spring bolt, nothing serious). The oil pan is now out and it’s not a happy place. Lots of glitter, made of the souls of big end bearings. And before you say “RTV in the pickup”, no, there was no RTV in the pickup to speak of.

I am spending the July 4th weekend having at it, and am deep into the engine bay with some help from my older son. I have to kick his latest 4AGE build off the engine stand to put this one on it. Poor kid.

I will hopefully have it out by Sunday night and then can spend next week tearing it down to find the bad bearing. If the crank is ok, I will button it all back up and it will be back to doing FA20 things. If there is cylinder damage, well, I have a friend who is a bad influence and thinks I should put an FA24 in it….