So my mate and I went to see the car today. It's still in good shape overall, except it may need some cleaning inside.
The owner said after buying it from previous guy the engine went with usual bottom end knocking after 7k kms
They took the block and bottom end from another crashed car, put new rings on pistons as the original were still good.
The guy had no idea whether the donor engine was STi or WRX and it's difficult to know exactly now. We took the engine number from the block and will try to confirm with Subaru dealer on Tuesday.
Another thing that concerns me.. is that the guy didn't know if its still running on Mines ECU or the ecu had been changed. It has a boost gauge and when I pushed it, it didn't show more than 0.7bar on every gear. there is no additional boost controller in the car and as far as I know, the boost on v5 sti should be 1.1 bar?
ECU is not a problem as I have 3 lying about, but if the engine was still running on Mines which is usually set up on 102ron Jap Fuel, it's no good.