Last month it was a near side wheel bearing, now its a drivers side bearing, and of course the knocking rear shocks this month! The car has only done 33k! Just glad its still under warranty. Getting really tired of subaru build quality thinking about calling it a day now. Have seen so many posts this last couple of month about Hawkeyes falling to pieces not the company or cars they uesd to be.

 

just bad luck i think

My hawk sti has done 43k and touch wood its been spot on

 

at least itd getting fixed under warranty

 

Sorry to hear of your bad luck mate. I recently bought a JDM. Supposed to be better, I'll know in a few months! The HG is certainly a known fault on the UK cars, together with occasional piston ringlands issues.

 

Hawkeye WRX with just over 50k no issues!!!

 

Think you have been unlucky and picked up a Monday morning or Friday afternoon special.

Yes they have a few issues like most cars but count your self lucky its all fixed under warranty

Hang in there atleast until it goes wrong out of warranty then sell It on

 

ive picked up my 2nd hawkeye about 4 weeks ago, 1st no problems, this 1 i think 2nd gear is a bit dodgy, prob needs rebuild, but good excuse to put some better parts in the car i reckon

 

61000 mapped to 333 bhp no problems, yet.

 

STi Spec D 56 plate with 121,000 - apart from the rear shocks being replace three times (twice under warranty) and the headgasket at 70k (done under warranty) and again now, no probs. They seem to be the weak spots on the car.

 

Sorry to hear about the problems you're having. I really believe it's bad luck. I've owned 7 newage Impreza's since 2003 and never had anything at all going wrong/failing other than rear shocks on the sti's. I even tried out a couple of other cars during this time, a BMW 330d and a Vauxhall Corsa VXR, both of which had several mechanical failures within a short space of time, strangely enough!

 

dispite the few floors i can honestly say its the best car ive owned, now maybe thats saying somthing about the cars ive had lol but i was about in the rs era as well, if it breaks i see that as an opportunity to upgrade. Think the key to these cars as well as to all others is always have some spare cash handy for a full build if needed

 

Well knocking rear shocks was a design fault and think yourself lucky I just shelled out £1500 to replace a faulty heater matrix (dash out job). It boils down to luck.

 

Ouch !

 

doesnt feel like luck, the whole rear shock thing is a joke all down to poor design. I just wish someone could build a proper performance car that doesnt fall to pieces, the corsa vxrs, evo 10 and even the bloody golf GTIs all have serious design issues.

 

I had a fault free year and half with my Hawkeye before I sold it. I loved the car, wish I never sold up!

 

Here's my horror story then thats still happening as its still in the garage now. Hawkeye 2006 Spec D. Bought in September 2010. Rear Shocks are gone. Had serious compression issues, had a compression test pistons 1-3 all around 100 Piston 4 at 80. This was 2 weeks ago. Was advised to replace pistons with forged drop-in ones. So ordered the pistons, HG's and other parts to make it stronger. The guy who's doing it rang me after he had the car for a couple of days saying he's sorry but he's having problems taking the engine apart. Finally prised the bolts off to find that the car has already had a short block rebuild before and the pistons replaced with new Subaru ones, way to much glue been put on when sealing it back together. He said he broke 2 of his tools trying to get the bolts off! So all the bits I'd ordered turned up yesterday with him. He'd already picked the heads up on Thursday after being machined. He started to take the pistons out of the engine to put the new ones in and discovered that there was scoring in the bore or something (please excuse me if this doesn't make to much sense as I don't really know what I'm talking about!) So now I've to order more parts bearings and cranks and an uprated oil pump as I apparently have bits of metal floating in it. He said the piston had actually cracked and broken but without causing any major damage. He said that I've been extremely lucky that it hadn't blown up on me. I don't feel lucky I feel that the man fixing it is the best place for me as he's really honest and I buy the parts from his supplier at trade prices and he only charges me for labour. He's got all the old parts that needed replacing to show me when I go to pick it up. I'll take pics of everything and get it posted on here somewhere so you can all see. I suppose the silver lining is that I have never seen the full potential of my car standard as it's not been right since I've had it. It's going to get remapped when I get it back but not for a week or two first. I do want to know something though. I didn't know anything about the engine being rebuilt. I'm the 3rd registered keeper of the car and have the service book with stamps in it from the previous keepers, no mention of any repairs being done. I have managed to get their details, so they could possibly be contacted if they still live at the addresses I have. Who am I to moan to about this. Subaru, the trader i bought it off, the 6 month warranty company that I got with the car when I bought it (ran out in March). Is anyone responsible for not informing me about the car being repaired in the past, or can I claim some money back off someone. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys

 

Should of bought a classic 99k on mine :P

 

dpn - Sorry to hear of your problems - first place Id start is the dealer/dealers that put the stamps in the warranty book. Assuming its a Subaru dealer they should have a complete record of any work carried out on the car, regular servicing and repairs, especially if it was done under warranty.

It probably wont help recover the cost of any work, as its out of warranty, unless any repair work was done within the last year.

I had the shocks replaced on my Spec D 10 months ago, replaced with standard OE STi dealer supplied shocks. They went again recently, but the dealer replaced them under the 12 month parts warranty, even though the car is no longer covered by a new car/used car warranty.

Gareth

 

Cheers Gareth, That helps a lot. To be honest I don't expect to get anything back. I just wish that I could have found out about the car when I was buying it. I had it HPI checked and even had a guy come out and do one of those 70 point checks, to which he said the car was in good condition. No idea on what had already been done on the car.

 

can any of you tell me a tell-tale sign of the hg on its way out please? mines ok as far as i know, but forewarned is forearmed.

 

1. Temperature gauge creeping/fluctuating above the normal centre position
2. Loss of water from the cooling system
3. Brown deposits (which will be oil) in the expansion bottle

 

Trickle of water nose behind the dash, visible bubbles in the coolant header tank and overflowing coolant from expansion tank.Also bits of black plastic in the coolant.

 

Ha! just as a warning now that you might have jinxed your own, heater matrices are more likely to fail in a classic and its still a grand to do at most places

 

The water noise behind the dash can be heater matrix as well though, as mine was doing that, I did think at the time ah it's HG, but I was wrong

 

Aye the water could be the matrix as well, great how basic systems in these cars fail in so many different yet common ways!

 

FFS!! ive got brown **** in me expansion bottle,just had it serviced and was just adviced to was it out..AND got the water noise from back of dash, but just had it mapped by jollygreen monster so would'nt there have been something show up??? only done 25k

 

Never had a problem with mine, bought with very few miles and serviced with top quality parts and by top quality specialists, can't go wrong

I am convinced people are buying other peoples problems caused by abuse, lack of proper servicing due to penny pinching or insistence on using the dealers just because they're dealers not because they are good ! Despite the concentration of cases highlighted on snet Hawk UK STi's get a bad wrap IMHO especially when you have no idea where these cars have been and what sort of lives they've led. Granted the 2.5's are more commonly throwing HG's than before but all Subarus will suffer HG failure at some point treated in the same way

 

Agree to a certain extent on it's past life, but a failed heater matrix is not something you can avoid if it decides to pack in! And if you haven't suffered from the the rear strut issue, you probably will at some point, unless someone changed them to the revised ones under warranty before you got it?

 

Spot on. Couldn't agree more.

 

What revised ones