Nutty Subie Owners

The problem isn't limited to Subaru owners... How many 5.0 liter Mustang transmissions do you suppose have been reduced to a box of rattling parts?

If he stripped 3d & 4th, boy-racer must have done some significant ($$$$) mods in his 4 months of ownership. 1st & 2d damage were pretty common on MY02-03 WRXs, even bone-stock.

How much did a new cat-back cost...from the dealership?

This was no excuse. That car had obviously been willfully abused.

Mid-pipe, muffler, required gaskets and bolts: $313. No sales tax because I prepaid from out of state, no shipping because I picked it up. Round-trip gas was about $20.

I've painted it all with high-temp Rustoleum to extend the life. It was shocking to see how rusty the original was after 8 years.

It is a P.O.S. Sincerely. I didn't have a laugh at the thought of the original cost of the car, knowing darn well he wasn't exceeding cars weight limit (due to other info I have found on the net about these overglorified "wangster cranks")

How did that ej18, the smallest of all ej engines crack a crankshaft... are you gonna blame the owner for that too?

Keep Laughing. The truth is real funny.

of the tranny. We had a nice laugh over it.

Hi,

When I was a kid and started hanging out around car shops and the guys who ran 'em, the idea of being "PC" about everything was still long in the future.

I can just hear on of these guys listening to the kid's story and request for warranty service, then asking, "Boy, what's the matter with you. You retarded or what?" After that, Jr. would have been laughed out of the shop.

Not only would he have received no warranty service, but he might have started to figure out if you beat stuff, you break it; it's not somebody else's fault. Today we have some fool telling us he should get a lawyer? Gimme a break!

Rick C

There's always the possibility that they can claim an auto tranny was "raced". An auto tranny can be destroyed in short order if it's constantly floored. Just use a search engine for "automatic transmission abuse". I saw some interesting stories, such as the guy who tried to free his Audi from the snow and blew out the auto tranny in

repair of the tranny. We had a nice laugh over it.

High quality doesn't mean able to take high abuse.

NO WARRANTY FOR YOU!

OP said WRX. Nowhere he mentioned sti. It's also strange that there is not much damage to the 1st and 2nd where you'd expect most of the beating by a new stickie to take place, don't you think? I find the 1st gears (on any 5sp, not just a Subaru) to be the most difficult to live with followed by the second. Still, odd that he could ruin a tranny in just 4 month. I needed over 3 years to accomplish that on my first car with a stick. Apparently Mitsubishi is having a similar problem with, er, problematic users, and is looking real hard into copycating a DSG off VW.

And they are. It should certainly be able to take high-performance driving by people who are actually able to do it (and who maintain it in a manner concomitant with such challenging use). It can. However, it should no more be expected to take abuse from people who can't shift properly than a Sukhoi Su-30 should be expected not to crash to the ground when flown by a non-expert pilot. Just as you shouldn't be surprised when you buy a flute and you don't sound good with it because you don't know how to play too well, you shouldn't complain when you buy a manual transmission car and ruin the gears because you don't know how to drive stick-shift properly. I never saw the STI marketed as a car that's good for people who aren't good with stick-shift - everybody knows you learn that on a cheap car, and then when you can deal smoothly with its worn out clutch unit or whatever then you think about spending more on something nicer.

-- Mark

Doh - thanks to Body Roll, who reminds me I meant 'WRX' here. It's still too early on Monday morning for me. (-:

-- Mark

"Body Roll" writes: (snip)

(snip)

That is an interesting point that I hadn't thought about properly. There's not any reason to think that 1st and 2nd will be made any more robustly than the others? Certainly when I was first learning to drive, it was the lower gears that got more of the abuse.

Still, it's true that, at least in the US, there are many stick drivers who clearly don't know what they're doing - you don't even have to be in the same car with them to see that, and are probably happier not being - I know I often have to hold my tongue as a passenger in those situations! Presumably these are the same people who get all upset if you don't give them a couple of metres in an uphill queue of cars to roll back before they get going again.

-- Mark

Hi,

Operative terms: "marketed as" and "'race' type" car. NOTE the "type." Reference it to "marketed AS" (emphasis added.)

Operative concepts: "Marketing" is hype to sell a product. Period. And REAL "race" cars break stuff. It matters not the supposed "quality" level of parts involved, they break. Period.

Now lets add a bit of improper treatment to a "'race' type" car: we need a license to drive a car. We don't need to be checked out in a particular vehicle to drive it. Pilots need a license to fly. They ALSO need to be checked out in the type of aircraft they want to fly, before they're allowed to fly it solo. Methinks if that procedure were applied to automobile drivers, there would be a VERY high failure rate.

Rick

Good point. I learned how to drive a manual on the Ford Pinto, then moved up to the Chevrolet Chevette. From there a Honda Accord, two Ford Probe GT's, and at last a Subaru Forester XS, and four manual motorcycles along the way.

Blair

C'mon... if you sell a car with 300hp, the trans should be able to handle 300hp properly applied without grenading.

I'm not saying the owner of said WRX didn't screw up, but I still might take his side in this - car "X" should be able to handle some fairly serious "abuse" in stock OEM format without grenading engines, transmissions, etc. ANY car. Lo-perf ones, hi-perf ones.

By abuse I don't mean race level abuse, but you should be able to rip off a max-thrust 0-60 on street tires without smoking the clutch and a max 60-0 stop without warping the brakes.

And by all means Subaru should be allowed not to warranty the car if they can prove it's abuse or modified. I own a 2001 Trans Am that has nitrous... so when the stock clutch gave up the ghost at 30,000 miles I didn't go after GM for warranty... but when the stock window motor starting making crunching sounds I did.

Besides, you can't get warranty coverage if you don't ask. Does the original owner know if maybe there's a defect in the transmission that caused it to fail?

Ray