Davej_Smith

I've had my UK spec MY00 Impreza turbo (old shape) about six months now and have never been very impressed with the performance, initially I just put it down to 'tighness', however 5000 miles later and still seems slugish.

Was recently taken to the cleaners by a Clio sport 172, previous car was a 306 GTI-6 and seemed as fast/faster.

Does anyone have any ideas what might be wrong, car is due for a service next week ....

Robertio

iTrader: (1)

Welcome to the club of slow MY00 cars. Mine is in the dealers next Tuesday to see if the Select Monitor can find anything amiss, if not then it will be back in soon after to see if it is a lack of boost.
I justlive in the hope that one day it may be sorted.

kav

I'd be interested to know how you both get on. My car - MY00 - goes like a scalded cat off the line but mid-range grunt is not good. I had trouble keeping up with a V6 Vectra recently - until we came to some bendy bits but I have to say, it's never felt that quick.

JoeyDeacon

Have to say my MY00 has never really felt that quick but on the Power Engineering rollers a few weeks ago it produced 230 BHP.

The Impreza's big advantage is that it has 4 wheel drive. At the lights hold 4000 rpm and slip the clutch and as kav says "it goes like a scalded cat off the line". Pull away normally and floor it and most cars will beat you due to turbo lag in first gear.

The cars you are comparing to the Impreza (Clio sport 172 and V6 Vectra) are both pretty quick and I would not be surprised if their mid range performance is close to the Imprezas.

Or maybe I am just talking rubbish??

Davej_Smith

While I agree that both V6 vectras and Clio sports are not slow cars, if you belive EVO magazines performance figures then a standard Impreza turbo should trash them both.

0-100mph - Clio (18 secs), Vectra (20 secs) and Impreza (14.6 secs) !

In addittion the comparison was not done from a standing start but from 3rd gear where the torque of a turbo engine should be an advantage.

MorayMackenzie

davej_smith,

How do you do a 0 to 100mph test without a standing start? If you have a rolling start in third, where does the 0mph bit come from?

Moray

BHORT

I initially had a problem with my MY99 where the car did'nt rev freely past 5000rpm and felt a bit more sluggish than I had imagined. I switched brands of petrol and used some redex injector cleaner. The result was much smoother running in general and cleaner revving to 6500rpm and a good increase in performance (subjective of course).

Brendan

Davej_Smith

MorayMackenzie,

Sorry,

The comparison I meant was against my Impreza and a Clio sport encountered locally not the performance figures quoted from EVO magazine. I was referring to JoeyDeacon's comment about off the line performance with turbo lag and meant to clarify that in this case it was not a factor.

Robertio

iTrader: (1)

Joey, if you try taking 25bhp off the figure you got, then you are into the realms which my car is in: 204.5bhp @ 5800rpm along with 209lb/ft @ 4680rpm . It just appears some one stole my mid-range power.

A decent excuse for me to spend my time around the red line, anyway

JoeyDeacon

Robertio,

I have to say that I am highly dubious about rolling road figures, in fact the only reason I took it along was because I have read so much on here about the MY00 being slugish and I have always thought mine was a bit slow. I am now more than happy to put this down to the fact that I have simply got used to the performance. The other problem is that the Impreza is such a capable car that it makes it seem like you are going much slower than you really are.

From the top of my head my MY00 was producing 230BHP at 6400RPM and 217lb/ft of torque (Not sure what revs I will check at lunchtime). I would put this down to roller error but Jonathans (Chins) Audi S3 was producing pretty much factory figures on the same day. If you look at the Dyno page you will see that no UK car has produced less than 229BHP there. Whether this is because Subaru are a little shy of stating the true performance of the car or Power Engineering rollers always over read by 15BHP for UK cars I don't know!

I would be very interested to see what figures your car produces at power engineering as I seem to remember there was a huge discussion about the accuracy of the rollers on the rolling road where you had yours tested.

Davej_Smith.

I agree with you that on paper (0-100mph - Clio (18 secs), Vectra (20 secs) and Impreza (14.6 secs)) it looks like the Impreza should thrash the other two I wonder how much distance there would be between them on the road at 100MPH??

Robertio

iTrader: (1)

Mine was run at Star performance, up in Scotland, same road setup as powerstation according to other posts. Surprisingly enough me driving hundreds of miles down to Power Engineering is somewhat unlikely

The Evo 6 on the day was putting out over 290, but there were no other standard cars to compare it against.

BTW, my car in not any faster than a Clio 172 from 50-100. Me running SUL & Octane booster.

Davej_Smith

JoeyDeacon,

Try counting to five at 100mph and see how much distance you have covered !!!

T-uk

my MY00 also feels under powered compared to earlier MY's I have driven.it has always felt okay low down but form 4500rpm onwards the car's performance is poor,this was highlighted recently at a rolling road day at Star Performance,the torque was all over the place and dropped off steeply at 4500rpm.other MY00 cars had similar results but one car(import I think)was 20hp higher than the others.the earlier cars I saw,had better power results and their torque curve was almost flat and did not drop off until far higher than the MY00 cars.I have since fitted a boost gauge but everything is okay there,as with a decat front pipe and Magnex b/b it peaks at 14ish psi and holds 13ish psi before dropping off higher up the revs.
I did not want to modify this car but feel it needs all the help it can get.I was at K/hill on the 20th,a friend had his standard MY99 which has always felt a far better car than mine.I had added a Magnex straight through centre and K&N panel filter,was using Super Plus fuel and a bottle of Millers Octane booster(this all raised boost 1psi) and my car was surprisingly able to out drag him on the straights,the only problem is,that I know if he did the same to his car I would be playing catch-up again.
I think that they have been mapped for emissions,which has affected performance and the reason some MYOO are better than others is that they have been built earlier and stored before being sold,this is only my opinion but could also explain why some surge/hesitate at certain revs and others do not.

john

JoeyDeacon

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by Davej_Smith:
<B>JoeyDeacon,

Try counting to five at 100mph and see how much distance you have covered !!![/quote]

Erm, thats not really going to work is it because that is comparing me going at 100 MPH with a stationary object. 100MPH is 44.704 meters per second so over 5 seconds I would have travelled 223.52 Meters.

If when the Impreza is doing 100MPH the Clio is doing 95MPH but takes another 3.4 seconds to reach 100MPH (Assuming that both expert drivers and pushing both cars to the absolute limit) In reality the distance between them on the road is going to be very small.

The only real way to compare performance is to time both cars over a fixed distance and see which one completes it in the fastest time.

EVO reckon the Impreza does a standing quater Mile in 14.1 Seconds with a terminal speed of 98 MPH anybody got any times for the Clio 172??

DARREN

I thought my STi wasnt running great until a Honda NSX wanted to mix it and i was pulling away from him even on the straights!!!!!
Cheers
Darren

Davej_Smith

JoeyDeacon,

Ok conceded the difference on the road would not be that great at 100mph, however the Clio in question had two passengers to my one and was pulling away at a steady pace despite my best efforts in third and forth gears to keep with it, this should surely not be the case if my Impreza was achieving Subaru's quoted power.

DavidRB

Not exactly empirical evidence, but in the last two days, I've followed a V6 Vectra from zero to 70 (ahem ) without breaking into a sweat and left one for dead from the lights. On paper I should be able to thrash them and thrash them I did.

I drive an unmodded UK MY00 and it's never felt anything other than very quick, as a Porsche Carrera RS driver found to his surprise. And don't talk to me about despatch riders...

Out of interest, what gear & revs are you pulling and where do you change up?

kav

Hi David

Normally from a rolling start - anywhere from 15-40 mph (coming off a roundabout say) and then into some fairly spirited acceleration through the gears, from 2nd or 3rd, to near enough red-line in every gear.

A Saab, not sure what model because it had been completely de-badged but didn't look anything special but may have been a Carlsson derivative, pulled away from me with ease the other night leaving the M40 at J11 towards Brackley.

carl

Saabs have loads of mid-range torque, whereas your MY00 takes a while to get going. The 0-100 figures aren't representative, as the 4wd must shave 1-2 seconds off from a standing start. If a Scoob was 2WD I think it would be 0-60 in about 6.5. The differences between different high-performance cars isn't as great as the figures suggest.

Consider the following -- I had a lot of trouble pulling away from a Lexus LS430 (280bhp, must weigh nearlty two tons) at 'high speed', but then its drag coefficient is 0.25. I reckon the Scoob's is about 0.4. I also had trouble with a 106 GTi in stop-start away from traffic lights round a roundabout. OTOH, I had no trouble keeping up with, and closing on, a Porsche Carrera from 50-&gt;quite a bit.

Carl (MY00)

lpitt

Don't want to rub it in but I held level with a TVR leaving the Severn Bridge toll gates, and that was in an un-modified MY98!

Couldn't believe it myself but you should have seen the look on the other guys face.

(Mind you once we hit high 90's he left me behind)

Laurence

Davej_Smith

Back to the origianl topic,

Have any of you guys with an apparently under achieving MY00 got any joy with a fix from your dealer or an ecu change or anything else ?

Davej_Smith

Robertio,

Any news after your dealer visit ?

OldSkool

When talking about how fast a standard Scoob can go we always (naturally) quote the best recorded figures. For your information, When testing a UK Impreza Turbo in 1994 (the first UK test), Autocar managed 0-60 (5.8) and 0-100 (18.7)!!!! Hence some peoples problems with Clio 172s et al. Can there really be such seemingly huge differences between cars?

OldSkool.

andyp

I used to have a FIAT Coupe 16v Turbo; about 190hp and much slower on paper at 0-60. However on the couple of times I did encounter Scoobs at anything over 50mph they didn't seem that fast (i.e. 50-70). I do remember a few occasions of Scoobs actually hogging the outside lane and then *trying* to drop me but failing miserably. (This actually put me off Scoobs for a while because). However, having owned the a MY95 for quite a while, I know that in the situations where it really counts, i.e. 3rd gear country lanes, the scoob will perform way beyond what you'd expect from such modest performance figures.

The scoob is a great car, and when on-boost and in the right gear it can be devistating. But if reactions are slow and not on-boost it's easy to get embarrased by other performance cars.

(just by two-pence worth)

Andy

Jza

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>When testing a UK Impreza Turbo in 1994 (the first UK test)

OldSkool.[/B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

OldSkool,

Thats a bit of an old school testnow isnt it!!

Performance cars got the figure down to 5.1secs for a uk turbo with a quickshifter fitted. They reckoned a 0.3 sec reduction in 0-60 times with the quickshifter!!!

0-60 times are rubbish. What if your cars geared high in second so you only need 1 change - a la 306gti-6 and saxo vts. Both v fast 0-60 but i pull away from my bro's 306 after 60 ish!! Also, get the wet figures and you'll see the scooby is a LOT faster!!

To go along with the thread, i have found that my car (MY01 WRX) has loosened up significantly over 3k miles.

Jza

Davej_Smith

Thanks for all the feedback guys, It seems that in real world road situations the clio 172 is pretty much as quick as a scoob. In terms of 0-100 times the scoob has an advantage in that it can just clip 100 in third whereas the clio probably needs a change to forth.

My scoob was at the dealer yesterday for its 6 month service (5000 miles), and apparently there were no ecu fault codes but a reset was performed anyway.

Having filled with SUL the last few times and having had the ecu reset I can report that performance is slightly better with more improved eagerness to push towards the reline. The engine also seems much smoother and with less turbo noise, I wonder if this is a result of an oil change (first sythetic ?), anyway I will be using SUL from now on.

Robertio

iTrader: (1)

The dealer could find nothing amiss while they had the car, admitted it was slightly off the pace, and that there is some hesitation between 6-7 thousand rpm, which should not be there. They had not heard of any other cars with this problem, but would take out any MY00 they got in to check if it was normal in this MY. Could not do anything, but told to take the car back if it gets worse.
Booked into the other dealers next Tuesday to check boost, etc; unlikely to be the problem, but will have to wait and see.
NB Car always run on SUL, recently on SUL & Octane booster, feels smoother, better mpg, but no quicker.

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Dave,
I too have an MY00, ive had a ford puma keep up with me and an escort rst with 4 people in, but now after 11k on the clock they wouldnt stand a chance she has loosened up very well now, give her a few thousand miles more and you will notice the difference in performance its just time, subaru engines are reknown for taking a long period for breaking in but when they are loose they are loose
Then your going to be kicking clio *** all over the place just do it on the track and not the road then get her prodrived

Tony

rjh

Hi,
My MY00 felt slow when I first got it, it's definitely getting faster all the time (13k now). I have just switched to SUL and definitely noticed the engine is crisper.

I think one of the problems is the Impreza hides it's speed very well (it's amazing how much faster it is from the passenger seat!).

I had an encounter with an S3 today (on my 2 mile long private drive of course). Even with a 2k rpm granny start (scared of frying my new judder free clutch) and losing some ground in first I could still get about 3 cars lengths ahead by the time I hit 4th gear And it doesn't feel particularly quick today

Richard

MATTYG

I swopped a Vectra V6 SRI for MY2000 Scooby and I always thought the Vectra was fast but the scooby is just on another level. The problem with the Vectra is that it is designed for cruising and so it is blessed with inter galactic gearing. Even went and tested the GSI V6 which is just short of 200 BHP but still has the same problem.

Could it be you just get used to the performance and as a driver you know when your going to excelerate and so are anticipating it. Looking at your passenger gripping the door handle often brings it home just how quick the scooby is.