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Originally Posted by LingLing
Really?! Damn...I was looking around for WRX a while back and decided on a DSM instead because it looked like the aftermarket was pricey. Didn't some years have a rod knock problem?
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The 2.0l WRXs don't have the strongest motor ever and some years had very bad stock tunes that made them knock/detonate and damage the motor. The motor isn't totally bad, it can take some power with a conservative tune, but they can spin rod bearings fairly easy and break rings, so you want to make sure you don't buy one that is already damaged by someone cranking the boost up on it with no tune or putting an intake on it without a tune. The Subaru motors are very picky about the oil you use too. Just using Mobile 1 in the factory recommended weight can lead to smoking or a spun rod bearing on mildy modded cars. The 5-speed tranny on the 2.0l is absolute junk though.
The 04 - early 06 STi's were probably the best cars they made for the US market. The 6-speed tranny is very strong and it was one of their better motors. You don't see rod bearing failures on those motors much at all, but you do sometimes see ringland failures on the back cylinders. The 07+ STi motors stock are junk, junk, junk. Bad factory tune and low grade bad pistons. They spin rod bearings and have piston failures stock, modded, stock with a fixed tune, whatever. Subaru stopped selling some some of the models for a bit to try to fix problems, but the motor failures have continued. There are guys with stock 08 STi's on their third motor and some of the big national Subaru tuners have complained about extremely high failure rates out of the box on new OEM replacement motors that they have got.
The 2.5l WRXs seemed like they were better, but now I see people having problems with them too.
You can search NASIOC and find motor failure lists like this
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/show....php?t=1695936 for different years/models of turbo Subarus from the last few years when the motors got really sketchy. These are probably the same people who say Evos are unreliable