Hey guys just wanted to give a PSA to people who have a 2015+ WRX/STi. Approximately three weeks ago, my car started having this godawful squeal on high boost. It sounded like an RC car. Here's a video of what my car sounded like:
If the sound wasn't distinguishable from that video, here's one I found from another 2015+ WRX/STi owner that had the same problem as I did:
I initially brought it over to Centaur Subaru to get it checked out. They maybe had the car for 2-3 hours when they called me saying that everything was fine and working up to spec from the factory. I asked if the tech drove the car hard because the leak only becomes apparent on heavy boost. The service manager that was there at the time when I picked the car up told me this BS story that the tech did drive the car hard. He says he knows this because he was with the tech when the car was driven. I seriously doubted that there was nothing wrong with the car though. So I drove the car home and the noise was still there. I didn't really expect it to disappear cause Centaur didn't do jack.
I didn't want to stress myself out and go through Centaur again(I don't even know why I went there again after I was uckfayed over from a previous incident last year. My bad, I guess?), so I hit up a buddy that used to be a Subaru tech at New Brunswick. Initially we thought that the leak was coming from the intake and intercooler side of things so we removed most of it and put it back on thinking it was probably just a loose hose or coupler. Well that didn't fix it. We didn't have access to a smoke tester so we proceeded to do an air pressure test while spraying soapy water to see if anything from the intake side of things would show a leak. No luck there either. As we were calling it a day and putting everything back together, my buddy notices that one of my header nuts on the passenger side was missing.
Here's a picture:
I bought the car brand new in 2017 and have never touched the headers at all. I'm guessing the nut was probably not torqued to spec. from factory and that's what made it walk off the stud.
We quickly went to his work and grabbed a similar sized nut and installed it. Went for a test drive and the turbo high pitched squeal I was getting was gone!
Sorry for the long assay post everyone. I was talking with diamondedge and he suggested that I post a PSA here since it is good information for whoever encounters a similar problem in the future. I guess this post is both a PSA and a review for Centaur so I'm sorry in advance if it's not posted under the appropriate topic.
