legacycentral bbs

First off, this seems to be an incredible site for information, you guys have done an excellent job. Now on to business.

I have a 93SS that was recently acquired. I bought it for $650 with a bad second gear (AT). I had recently rebuilt a 4eat and was willing to give this one a go. It turned out the brake band was way out of adjustment and there wasn't anything wrong with the transmission. Now I could start working on the CEL and rough idle.

After changing the knock sensor, and purge solenoid I was able to clean up the CEL but still had a rough idle with plenty of power. I borrowed a smoke machine from a buddy of mine and found numerous leaks in the induction system. Of course it sometimes takes someone else to state the obvious and I finally did a compression test. My compression gauge hadn't been used for years and I had to use an extension to make it work. I don't think the guage is accurate, but I got 100PSI on the right side and front left cylinders. Unfortunately the left rear cylinder would only give 40PSI. I wasn't too worried about the low overall readings I do live at 4500ft elevation, but knew the low cylinder was bad news.

Anyway, I removed the engine, pulled the heads and sent them off to a machine shop. They wanted to replace all exhaust valves and found one warped intake which was repairable. They also found a couple of small cracks between valve seats and the spark plug hole. Both the machine shop and the guy I borrowed the smoke machine from said the cracks were not a problem and the heads are servicable.

On to the problem. Since the machine shop's leaktest didn't indicate a problem with the offending cylinder I pulled the left rear piston and discovered a broken ring land. I also discovered a missing oil squirter which was later found in the oil pan. .I pulled the other pistons and except for some minor scuffing on one of the piston skirts everything else looked ok.

Thanks for bearing with me so far, now on to the questions, what is the cheapest source for an OEM piston and ring set? I don't plan on doing many mods to the car except maybe a couple of the induction changes. Finally do I need to split the case? the engine ran strong and made no noise except for the burbling during idle.

thanks,

-william

ive seen the ej22t guts go for pretty cheap, so finding used pistons wouldnt be too hard. new would be a little pricier.

you could find a replacement short block, then sell your old one to get some money back.

i bought a good one for 600 and sold my old block for 450. depending on where you look this route may be good for you as well.

Google up Crawford Performance.

They sold a bunch of built EJ22t shortblocks before Subaru ran out of them. *Supposedly* they still have a decent stock of new OE pistons. Worth calling them, at least.

I have some used 22T pistons if you're interested, all size B.

I PM'd you