This is my first forum I've ever used online so bare with me. I have a silver Ssei, no pics yet. Picked up car in Cincinnati at a dealership, drove for about 3 months and the engine threw a rod right at a little over 100,000 miles. Paid to have a rebuilt engine installed and have had nothing but vacuum leak nightmares out of the car. It's back in the shop at a different auto shop of course having the head gaskets replaced for the third time since the rebuild was put in. Looking to upgrade to a performance package but have seen some not so great things in the other forums about performance upgrades without doing a tranny upgrade first. The stage 4 performance pkg from 3800performance.com looks appealing.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions before I pay to have this slapped on. Even though the car has been a total nightmare since I've bought it, I absolutely love to drive the car!!!

Welcome! I would figure out all of your issues before trying to mod the car. I also think you'd have been way better off finding a junkyard engine to have installed, but hindsight is 20/20.

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Bye Bye:

RIP sandrock

That was my original thought was to buy a used engine but the used one they brought to the shop was more than used, the owner of the company sent the engine back it was in that bad of shape. Said he had trouble finding a used engine in somewhat good condition without high mileage therefore I just paid for a rebuild.

Good news is just got car out of shop and is believed not to have head gasket problems. He did a fuel test sample and found it had more alcohol in the fuel, like it was E85, than what it should which would cause it to run lean. Said to run as much of the fuel out of it as possible then fill it up with premium. I always put premium in the vehicle so looks like Speedway gas is terrible. Either the tanker filled up the wrong gas in the pumps underground or their fuel sucks. Note to self: staying away from the stickers on gas stations that have 10% ethanol added to their gas.

All fuel has 10% ethanol added unless it says it doesn't, AKA Deoxygenated.

_________________
Bye Bye:

RIP sandrock