Subaru Mediocrity

[balzak]

Looks like a Kia Optima

[Rodoni]

I was a fan of subis before the hype. Around here, Subarus are the new Honda...

Not to mention they all sound the SAME!

I might own a sti one day, they are fun cars.

[b*saint]

Well the E46 M3 sounded like a Honda Civic. I'd rather take a WRX over a Bimmer any day.

[iamsam]

my only qualm with Subarus is that they are ugly, plain and simple. Not appealing to the eye at all, in a boring kind of ugly, not a hideous abomination sort of ugly, like an AMC Gremlin or something. much like a camry or taurus in that sense.

i can't argue with an STi's performance, that's for sure. But body styling and aesthetics?? HAH!!!

[Stephen]

Well the E46 M3 sounded like a Honda Civic. I'd rather take a WRX over a Bimmer any day.

uhh have you ever heard an s54?

[jaycheetwood]

STis are pieces of shit. I will say that easily living in Utah where i cant go anywhere without seeing a million of them. I rarely see an STi block make it to 100k without needing a new motor. My friend is actually about to rebuild his at 93k cause he cracked his piston. Which is common for subarus to do being they have oil and cooling issues with those blocks and the design with piston 3.

I know our local shop has a 4 month waiting list on motor builds for subarus cause of how many they are doing.. (solid autoworks.)

[Bishop]

Jay, you're wrong lol... Do your own research instead of spouting off a "common flaw" because of something your friend experienced.

[psyber_0ptix]

I agree with Subaru's being the new honda/volkswagen/bmw.

You get the same bullshit in every car community now since "those movies" were made a decade ago.

I come from a family of subaru's, i learned how to drive in a subaru, and while every car has it's problems i'm still a fan of how easy it is to mod (albeit costly) and how little problems it gives if you know how to drive it. You drive like an asshole, then yea, experience your 05+ ringland failure. Clutch dump it all the time, then surely you don't expect the gears not to sheer (unless you have a built gearbox).

It is what it is, it will have it's followers and haters. Until you actually first hand experience, then your friend of a friends argument is irrelevant. I like both the e30 and a swapped gc. But i can drive the GC faster in the dry, snow, wet any day of the year unlike the e30. Maybe it's just my lack of skillz

[jaycheetwood]

Jay, you're wrong lol... Do your own research instead of spouting off a "common flaw" because of something your friend experienced.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=sti+blown+motor

Glad we could talk about this. I can name numerous kids locally actually. I am a huge contributor to slcsubaru.com here in utah and constantly watch threads about blown motors. So I am not wrong nor fan boying a flaw. I am clearly stating the fact that I have about 8 friends with stis all on rallispec blocks after their stock ones took shits on them.

Some from oil pick tube issues, others from cooling, some from detontation. Subaru knows this, they had to mess with the deck clearance on cylinder 3 because of the motor mount setup.

Dont even get me started on WRX transmissions..

Trust me, if i wanted an H4 I would do it right the first time and buy a porsche.

[Bishop]

The WRX 5-speed was made of glass. The 6-spd was essentially bulletproof, but occasionally suffered problems, but VERY rarely. The early build model 07s had bubbles in the castings in the pistons, which were addressed and replaced since Subaru figured it out fairly quick. The 07+ also suffered from a leaner tune due to new emissions regulations, this posed no problem.... UNLESS.... You're one of the dipshits who abused your car and didn't do any research / learning on it. The ringlands RARELY failed under daily driving conditions, I'd venture a guess that 90% of the failures resulted from people constantly running their motors toward red line on the stock tune. You replace the tune, even with the "stock" tune that Cobb released, or ANY of the other tunes to add a little more fuel, and the motor was essentially saved (as long as you still didn't drive like a twat). People rebuilding their motors at 100k? I'm also willing to bet they abused the shit out of those cars without properly modding the motor, or doing so recklessly... I've NEVER heard of cooling issues with these cars unless you're making extreme changes to the drivetrain, at which point, if you're not upgrading the cooling (or oiling, since it "failed" under similar circumstances) then you're a fuckwit. Aside from cooling and oiling issues due to heavily modded drivetrains, the only other complaints I've heard about oiling was the pick up tube fracturing and losing pressure.. Again, if you did any research, it was a quick and cheap fix since there's a flooded market of replacements... Most people didn't experience this failure though, and a lot of guys replaced it anyway with someone like a Crawford, Cosworth, or Moroso pan for racing reasons.

Anything else you wanna regurgitate? I can do this all day.... I'm not some e-thug, but it's quite entertaining to actually be able to set people straight when they spout off second hand information on the internet and essentially place a stigma on a great company / vehicle.

[Bishop]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=sti+blown+motor

Glad we could talk about this. I can name numerous kids locally actually. I am a huge contributor to slcsubaru.com here in utah and constantly watch threads about blown motors. So I am not wrong nor fan boying a flaw. I am clearly stating the fact that I have about 8 friends with stis all on rallispec blocks after their stock ones took shits on them.

Some from oil pick tube issues, others from cooling, some from detontation. Subaru knows this, they had to mess with the deck clearance on cylinder 3 because of the motor mount setup.

Dont even get me started on WRX transmissions..

Trust me, if i wanted an H4 I would do it right the first time and buy a porsche.

It's really easy to watch threads and post horror stories about kids misusing their equipment, it's most DEFINITELY NOT Subaru or STi specific.

[jaycheetwood]

It's really easy to watch threads and post horror stories about kids misusing their equipment

I am not saying you are wrong as you have posted a lot of true and right information. I am saying that under normal driving conditions I have seen these cars tank which in my opinion is not a good thing to see.

These are high performance cars (wrx/sti), that seemingly very easily have issues under "stressful or playful" driving conditions. I love the way the look and the drive train is great on them. I really just think the motor is garbage after all the things I have seen.

Yes the oil pick ups are known to sometimes break causing motor failures. Which is why my friend will be replacing his and his pan with something better.

I have also seen a lot of bad tuning take motors, which is not subarus fault by any means. I personally am not a fan of cobb at all.. i think what they put out is over priced and trendy. If i personally owned an sti (which i wont now since everyone i know has a wrx or sti around me) I would go open source. I know a guy locally who has done great things with them.

5 speed is garbage and the 6 speed "can" have issues with the 4/5 gears/synchros as I have seen that a couple times now as well but it is not as common as the wrx tranny exploding haha.

[FredK]

Man, it's been 10 minutes. Bishop must be writing a novel.

[Bishop]

I am not saying you are wrong as you have posted a lot of true and right information. I am saying that under normal driving conditions I have seen these cars tank which in my opinion is not a good thing to see.

These are high performance cars (wrx/sti), that seemingly very easily have issues under "stressful or playful" driving conditions. I love the way the look and the drive train is great on them. I really just think the motor is garbage after all the things I have seen.

Yes the oil pick ups are known to sometimes break causing motor failures. Which is why my friend will be replacing his and his pan with something better.

I have also seen a lot of bad tuning take motors, which is not subarus fault by any means. I personally am not a fan of cobb at all.. i think what they put out is over priced and trendy. If i personally owned an sti (which i wont now since everyone i know has a wrx or sti around me) I would go open source. I know a guy locally who has done great things with them.

5 speed is garbage and the 6 speed "can" have issues with the 4/5 gears/synchros as I have seen that a couple times now as well but it is not as common as the wrx tranny exploding haha.

I don't see them tank under DD or normal conditions as often as you I guess. The motor, I can agree, isn't TOP notch, but it's still good for about 400 real wheel horse power if done correctly (much much more in several cases). Anything will blow if done incorrectly. Tuning, I can agree with you on.... I had loads and loads of issues with my accessport on my 03 WRX, and nearly catastrophic issues with my 07 STi. If I were to do it again, I'd not necessarily do open source, since it essentially screws the owner over cause they can't really ever go back to the factory tune (unless something has changed since I left the scene... Open source was essentially the cheap way to tune, and for those who knew they'd not be selling the car... Standalone is a WAY better option in general...). I'd be contacting Bill Knowles (sp?) from I-SPEED / Crawford, Chris at EFI, or Jorge at P&L and arrange for a trip to get the car worked on, or tuned via internet (datalogging and such, Bill was pretty famous for this using ECUtek I believe it was?).

It was a shame the 5-spd was complete garbage if you threw any power at it at all without buying the $1700 RA Gear set.... I did love my 6-spd though.

[psyber_0ptix]

My '02 glass trans and motor held up fine for over three years of autocross and rallycrossing with a vf34 (mind you i sold my car in 2006)

The next owner dragged it to death, broke second within months.

shitty driving kills transmissions from what i've gathered


aaaanyways, i guess this thread has gone a bit off topic so i'm out.