John, try calling your nearest main dealer at 18:45 on a Saturday..... I think you will find they are closed.

Everyone is entitled to some time off! Or do you work 24 hours a day 7 days a week!

Dan

Danny, he's a doc, so he might ;)

But... both Mark & JB, please consider trying to solve this amongst yourselves without all us sharks looking at the posts thinking "well take that sucker!" :D

I'm serious, try to get it fixed and find some middle ground. Not to hush up, not my goal, by all means come back and tell the story when you did find a solution (or not) after a few days.

Call it a hunch, but I do think you might still find a way to settle this ?

Edited to say: leave my garden gnome out of this ! :D


[Edited by EvilBevel - 1/10/2004 10:11:53 PM]

While I don't agree with Harvey's trademark 'abrasive' approach (nothing personal Harvey :)), I'm going to add that my PAR 4th gear from Lateral also failed recently after 8-10k kms (+1 track day) use at around only 300-320 hp & lb/fts. One tooth completly broken, two other teeth with large bits missing. Failure occured cruising on autobahn; started as a whine & quickly developed into not using it anymore.

Mark has requested failed parts back to send to PAR, I have requested a refund. Similar to JB, I'm nervous about my legal standing should the failed parts be whisked off to Oz. It looks as though I'll need to get a full engineers/metalurgical (sp?) report for the failed assembly (unfortunate - bloody expensive thing to do!).

While I had a nice warm garage to swap mine out, and a spare ready to go (lucky - I was about to sell it), it's the costs of professionally rebuilding a gearbox (around 700 quid mate's rates here in CH!) that is getting to me, as well as a general pi**ed-off-ness at spending a lot of money for something so that I could forget about it being a weak point ever again...I thought I was making an investment similar to fitting the Porsche brakes to my car. I was wrong, my 'spare' my97 Legacy gearbox survived more km's :(

I'm posting this primarily to stop anyone else potentially going through the very same problems and costs, and should add that I so far have no problem with Mark's approach to resolving my issue.

I should also add that most of the parts for my ej25 rebuild, plus many other bits and pieces over the last 18 months or so, have been supplied by Mark at Lateral Performance, and to date this is the first problem I've faced. I'm very happy with Mark's service levels in general (plus the huge amount of advice he freely gives out). The PAR gearkit that he is selling though is, in my opinion and experience, not fit for purpose.

Sorry Mark :)
Richard

Sorry to hear about this guys :(

Hope you get it resolved.

Bloody Subarus :(

All the best,
Jon

sorry i will not be buying anything from LP
ill be honest, if it were me id be kicking up a fuss in the same manner

****Edited to remove conjecture. please stick to facts****

[Edited by Josh L - 1/11/2004 3:53:31 PM]

StickyMickey,

What you do or don't do is your business, but please stick to facts only within this thread or it will be locked.

I make no reference to being unhappy with Lateral Performance, only with one of the products I purchased from them. Indeed, I made special effort for my post not to be construed as an attack on LP...specifically to minimise the chance of people making posts such as you just did :)

Richard

If, however, my replacement gears develop a problem, then, depending on the fault, I MAY lose confidence in the manufacturer

out of interest, what warranty do you have on the replacement kit. is it full warranty from the replacements kits, install date or the original kits date?

Great post IMHO Richard, and sorry to hear your story - I mean that. Your feelings re: Porker brakes are *exactly* what mine were: "my engine will probably blow next, but at least I had *this* sorted until the car rusts away".

I am very confused now as when I bought the kit I did more than just listen to LP... quite a few Oz guys are/were very vocal about the extreme quality of PAR, the Rigoli name gets banded around a lot, sub ten second Scoobies with PAR gearboxes...

Micky, this thread will probably be under very close scruteny of the moderators... I would like it to stay open courtesy to the people who had a failure with this particular gearset (and not to drag Mark's name through the mud as Mark will surely know).

I will have nothing to do with mudslinging, but I do think it's fair to put the gear set itself into question (or maybe we are all installing it wrongly and will have to hire SecretAgentMan ;) ) and I think it's fair at this point in time that other people can read these experiences.

I was just about to say this. lol

PAR are obviously doing well with their gearsets so are they:

Sending mark all the bad ones (lmfao - not likely though)
Are they somehow getting damaged in transit - again not likely?
Mark - are you changing something before you selling them?-not likely
Are they being installed wrongly - again not likely as appears a few people have had problems with the gearsets?

Interesting read though

Micky, this thread will probably be under very close scruteny of the moderators... I would like it to stay open courtesy to the people who had a failure with this particular gearset (and not to drag Mark's name through the mud as Mark will surely know).

both agree and dis-agree with that theo. the thread was actually about how lateral advertised the kit.

I do not want to see the thread locked but micky does have a point. if a company can continue to advertise unsupported claims, more and more people will fall into the trap.

IMO it is not just gearboxes that need questions answered.

http://www.projectwrx.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=46

[Edited by T-uk - 1/11/2004 3:24:24 PM]

and learn to spell Micky!

After hearing about all these failures i am getting a little bit worried :( but will be looking on the bright side until it happens, also will be making sure my car does'nt get over 400lb/ft :)

Scott

http://www.projectwrx.com/modules.ph...article&sid=46

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/show...hreadid=448424

1st one doesn't work John

grow up Scott :rolleyes:

OK guys

I think i may have a solution LOL ( i know feck all about this really however have been doin some hoome work and lurkin alot )


Townend garage have a gearkit that is unbreakable so they say
iTS NOT CHEAP BUT IF it dont brak then it actually works out cheap

The reason i have been lookin and lurkin is that my MY98 wagon has had 4 new gear boxes and 2 complete drivetrains in 18 months and i am fed up woith this so what a setup that dont keep breakin

If iam wrong about tha teg gearset please put me right

Gossy

Alan - link works for me but this is its content from news section on ProjectWRX website with the link to NASIOC

News: PAR (Chalak) Gearset failures on 5MT's/no warranty coverage.

Touted as an "unbreakable" gearset by Sam, the owner of PAR who makes what was previously known as the "Chalak" gearset for the Subaru's, there have been failures creeping up left and right.

That's not so bad if it wasn't for the fact that they're warrantied to not break.

THIS LINK shows a well documented incident on NASIOC telling the tale of what's happened.

Buyer beware!

-Jorge

Edited to tidy links up

[Edited by john banks - 1/11/2004 3:56:32 PM]

Yes it does? Try again :D

Gossy, I could be wrong, but I think that (ironically) they may be talking about the PAR gear set... Apologies to Townend if that is not the case, but when I ordered the gears originally Mark was very formal about potential installation problems and I was going to go to TownEnd to get mine installed, as Mark recommended them. Time issues then made it was installed by Frank Vreede.

T-UK, point taken, it's obvious that JB/you see LP as much in the wrong as PAR would be, also due to issues not directly related to the PAR gear set, so I'll rephrase:

I think we all agree that there might be a potential problem with those gearsets, and it would be good if this thread stays open.

Can you agree with that ?

And sorry for going (half) off topic, but are there people here who installed the MRT gearsets and have positive/negative experiences ? I ask because I hear a lot about case flexing, and no matter how strong your gears are, if they are forced out of each other touching only with the edges, they may well be made of unobtanium, they will fail. MRT provide a new "spline/shaft" <sp?> to counter this, or so I am told.

T-UK: one more question (which could fuel the fire, but I hope not)... I spent almost 1.5 years reading up on gearboxes for the Impreza (having suffered 3 failures with the OEM one), both on Scoobynet, IWOC, Nasioc (or whatever it was called at the time), Dutch BBS's, MRT forums, before buying the PAR set.

What if it wasn't Mark who sold them, but we got them directly from PAR.

What I'm saying is: if there really is a problem, do they get away with it freely, and do we just bash the reseller ?

I do understand that legally the case rests between buyer and seller, but surely there is something like a case law... You don't sue the local McD employee when your coffee is too hot, even if they *did* recommend the coffee at the time. You go after the big guys.

Want to join efforts ?

Serious question.

Theo

Cross posting JB... not ignoring you, in fact, my last question stands.

You don't have a contract with the McDonald's employee. Also the comparison is slightly skewed since I believe that McDonald's outlets operate as franchises.

In this case the responsibility rests at the supplier's door, at least under UK law. If they trade products of this value they should have the financial robustness or insurance to deal with the consequences.

From page one:

So PAR gets away with it (providing there really is a problem) and we just trash the reseller ?

Not the kind of society I want. (and yes, franchise, I couldn't come up with the name)

I'm not trying to influence you on the LP thing, that's completely beyong my reach. I'm asking if we think the manufacturer holds no responsability.

http://www.johnbanks.dsl.pipex.com/gnome.jpg

Theo's "statue" ;)

If you get it direct from Australia then you cut out the reseller's profit as well, and probably get the facility to pay by credit card for some protection? A reseller cannot take the profits with no responsibility. We buy from an expert retailer/importer for good reason - they source and specify the products and pick up the pieces when it fails because they are nearby. That is the blessing and curse of being a retailer. An action against PAR is a non-starter IMHO. That is also the danger of buying direct from the other side of the world.

Townends unbreakable I believe is the mrt rally dogbox that I used to have, before going for the uprated syncro kit.

Not really, about the same amount of danger as purchasing something from the uk or europe. Only places I would avoid are indonesia and those dodgy places were scams are ripe!

AFAIK the PAR Gearset sold my Mark is not marketeted as unbreakable. The Dog gear boxes by PAR are the unbreakable sets.

PAR Gearsets are being used on a 700bhp Legacy by iON performance too.

Not defending anyone just contributing to a very interesting discussion.

Jon

I would just like to point out, that the "unbreakable gear kit" sold by Town End Garage is made by Modena, NOT PAR.

Mark.

So noted, sorry for the wrong assumption.

Harvey, do you see the irony in this ?

I bet not. Most people won't. I do :D

I look forward to your reply :)