Well i've been real busy of late with work and all and have been letting my SRT-4 occupy the garage more days than not. Well i took it for a night out this weekend, just to show it off as i was out with friends and familly no raceing was on my mind. But that didn't happen on the way home after dinner i spy this midnight black wrx sti that i have been trying to race for some time now it was always in the other lane to much traffic, going the other way, yadda, yadda. Well He pulled up along side me revving the motor jumping around and all that. The better half said don't do it but i never listen to her and i had to. This guy has been getting the better of me for months and months even though we have never raced and always pass each other on the fly. I downshifted to third i was doing around 60 65 and started jumping around well he took off and so did i. He jumped me but i closed the gap fast and was passing him when the car fell on its face. I logged 20psi of boost, 74psi of fuel pressure and the data logger showed an engine knock was present. Bitting my tounge i pulled over into a gas station. The idle was high and erratic with an occasional back fire thru the exhaust. After going over the car i found two problems. One, the Rear cam sprocket had skipped one tooth or more and second, to end it all, a blown head gasket i discovered by pulling wires off with the car running my first thought was a fouled plug but it was good after i pulled it, when i got it home i did a compression test and yup there it was. Well i fixed those problems today. Come to find out the stock timeing belt had stretched 8mm not much but enough, when that happended the exhaust valve stayed closed for that cycle on the number three piston and when it came around for more, gas and air were forced into it on top of the fumes still traped in there and it tried to compress that, bye, bye head gasket. So by my mistake you learn something, if you mod it replace the factory timeing belt with a speed part, fel-pro is who i used for a new one and no problems with it yet.

 

BTW, did ya ever make it to the SRT-4 National Meet in Louisiana on the 20-22 Feb 04?
If so, what happened?