looks like a powerful car! good luck

My first run the car felt odd in 4th gear. I ran 11.8 @ 120 and as soon as I let off I could hear a strange rumble to the engine, basically a Subaru mod. I knew one of the cylinders wasn't firing, I was sure I had floated & bent a valve and the engine was junk. Pulling into the pits, I was able to identify the cylinder by pulling plug wires until there was no change in idle.

Not 100% sure what happened to my car, all I know is the piston or a valve smacked one of my plugs. The ground strap was smashed into the tip and the insulation cracked in half.

I towed it home to be safe (and cause I didn't have another plug to put in). Got it home, quick compression test was fine :: big sigh of relief :: I had some random plug (not IX plug), put it in and the car idles fine. I'm gonna put a new set of plugs into it tomorrow and see if it idles & drives OK... hopefully no major damage but who knows.

Looking back at my log, I only revved to 7700, but I guess FP 4R on stock valvetrain is a no-no even though they claim it's safe to 8K.

I wouldnt dismiss it, Worst case to could have cracked a ring land or had a piece of the ring break off but not bad enough to hear or notice compression loss yet. Not sure if you have a maf inline, check that has well and lastly check the turbo before you get on it again. Something did that damage and I would be eager to find out what it was before I started that car again. Logs look good, that timing does seem a little steep. Might have a little det going on as well.

what cyclinder did that plug come out of?

Find a bore scope and check out that cylinder, there was something between the piston and spark plug.

Weird.

Hopefully your engine is ok. Let us know what you find out.

Yea, compression & leakdown are normal... but the borascope shows otherwise. I don't have a good view, but it looks like the corner of the piston is cracked...

I'll pull the head off as soon as I can and get some photos... RIP stock block, 56k miles of fun.

Data from the quarter mile run that blew it...

I don't see any obvious problems, but even small counts of knock can be dangerous when the tune is this aggressive.

your quite lean at that knock... not overly so, but you dont give yourself much leeway if your WB is wrong...

hopefully you get back on the road asap

Thanks for the well wishes.

The head is coming off tomorrow, but after taking the valve cover off, I found that one of the exhaust rocker arms for this cylinder had fallen out of place. I don't have any experience in engine failures, but I take it that that valve stopped opening

Pretty interesting from your initial post before going to the track. They advised you about egt's and your tune, but you still went ahead. One of the most important tools when tuning meth is your EGT gauge, tuning that aggressive not knowing egt's is like playing "russian roulette."
Meth injection doesn't mean you can go super aggressive and throw timing at it and all will be well.

I don't want to come off as bashing you, just pointing out things that were obvious. Maybe it was a freak mechanical failure(doubt it), but i'm sure the tune didn't help things.

METH + EGT, A/F,BOOST GAUGE + FAILSAFES = HAPPY DRIVING

Good luck with the results

Thanks for your opinion. Clearly it was an aggressive tune... clearly I was taking risk... and that's part of the game. Since you can't definitively say an EGT gauge would have prevented the failure, there's no real point in saying "shame on you".

We all take risks when we mod our cars... and while there are all kinds of tools and gauges and logs and tests and gismos and gadgets, it's unreasonable to expect EVERY modded evo to use them ALL.

I tried to make the most power with what I had, and I pushed it too far. Will I be more careful with my own car in the future? Yes. Was I willing to take more risk because it's my own car and not someone else's? Yes.

Of course there are risks, but at least you know what you did. Live and learn. Oh, it is your car and you can run 87oct at 40 psi if you want, just don't post about it

This is a very informative thread. It's too bad how it turned out for the OP, but still a lot of good info in here.