Be leery of stock AP1 retainers
 

We've heard it before, but I'm just posting up about my experience.

Last year, I blew my engine due to a fueling issue. I bought another F20C engine from a salvage yard with 23k miles on it. I was told the car flipped and the engine was turned off without issue. Upon a quick inspection, everything they told me sounded legitimate. So far the engine has ran fine and it hasn't consumed any oil.

Well fast forward to this last Friday. I never beat on the car and just cruised around NA up until a month ago when I put the turbo back on. Even then I did not beat on it and wanted a retune for more power. I decided I'd swap in some Ferrea beehive valve springs. We ran into a minor issue when I originally tried installing the Ferrea valve springs and I ended up swapping the valve springs in LJ's parking lot Friday afternoon after driving 7 hours to his shop.

These are some of the retainers I removed off of this engine with now around 25,500 miles on it. Only the intake side were cracked and almost all were cracked on that side. These few are the worst. Unless you had the retainers off, you could not tell that they were cracked. The top sides all looked perfectly fine until you flipped them.

https://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3673/photo28is.jpg


Here are the same 3 retainers flipped to see their top sides.

https://img534.imageshack.us/img534/440/photo29s.jpg

That definitely was scary seeing that. I'm glad you decided to swap them out :)

hmmmmm might have to look into this befor i put my turbo on....my engine only has 27k miles but from the looks of it it doesnt matter!!! good lookin out

should i really be looking into this and should i be worryed about this?? i have 100k on my ap1 and the motor is bone stock with stock retainers and my brothers ap1 has 170k miles on it and its also boosted with the stock engine and stock retainers. both of us never have had a problem with our engines.

Damn... Just another thing to do on the upgrade list. What issues did you have installing the Ferrea beehive valve springs?

It is a known problem with intake Ap1 retainers. Most people with F20c update their intake retainers with Ap2 and keep Ap1 retainers on the exchaust side

Noob question, but will this cause any symptoms? Like running poorly etc?

No but it will cause a valve to drop if it breaks

Damn I saw LJ post your numbers on the local boards.

WIsh I knew you guys were coming up this weekend. I've missed you guys twice now

Yea i know mine are bad. I got bc dual springs with ti retainers waiting to go in