^^^ By mistake... not on purpose, I take it?

my sti type uk 57 plate has just done a little over 3000 miles on its new engine replaced under warranty and seems to be still going ......fingers crossed

do they give a three year warranty on the new engine when you have a ew engine fitted under warranty?

Is the new engine improved somehow as not to have the same issues?

Unfortunately not, it's the same old engine.

The local shell station to me had been filling the v-power tanks with the normal 95 ron stuff, so basically it detted its heart out:(:(:(

And for the record its the second time they've done this in the space of a year:eek:

My car MY06 sti Hawkeye model before hatch was run on stanard 95ron so the guy who had it before told me but i use v power in all my cars so knew when i got the car it would not be running to its full potential. I changed to v power straight away and performance was up and car pulls like a train no hesitation etc.. BUT it is now in the back of my mind could that standard fuel which i know was run for 6,000 miles have actually caused any undetectable faults that just dont show up? 4,000 miles on vpower and no probs at all.

come on guys bring on the scaremongery...:lol:

No disrespect mate but I dont know what mods are done to your car or how you drive it.

But mine was mapped and modified to run on v-power alone, with increased performance becomes more stress on engine components to a degree, I do drive my car daily very hard indeed so it did blow on 95 ron, as you can appreciate I wouldn't know any different to what I had going in the tank so I would carry on and drive it like normal :eek: It wasnt until I had the fuel tested after a thread appeared on piston heads all became apparent.

No one is trying to scaremonger anyone, they are merely putting across there views or experiences. hawkeye engines do seem a little more reliable than the hatch which makes most of the owners hint at a mapping fault of the car to meet required emissions standards

Actually mine is totally standard and it seems ok. so for now im going to put it to the back of my mind and forget about it:thumb:

That is not correct

in 2009 they started using the new shortblocks with nitraded crank and improved bearings

Rob if thats so, surely trading standards are involved ? as they are miss selling fuel and ripping customers off.


very illegal

Sorry, I was referring to the pistons, which aren't any different, and constitute the only problem we've ever encountered. Ring land breakage, we have yet another one in right now.
I must learn to be specific
I must learn to be specific
I must learn..

i think its not just the pistons that are weakish

the stock tune is horrible! boosting at 14.7 arf does not help...

It was posted on the Hatch forum that a hatch engine had failed due to a weakness on the crank. According to the report Subaru had missed a step in the crank manufacturing process to save money, which left it inherently weak.

Can anyone shead light on this?

It says that the bearings have been improved would this be in material or design, if design would that mean that the ACL bearing would not fit correctly?

Thanks,
Paul.

Since the sample of fuel I had tested wasnt taken by trading standards they arnt interested, when they visited the site it was v-power flowing through the pumps again. I can help but think if I hadnt gone in all guns blazing they may have left the 95 in the tanks and I would be allot better off now

That's a new one on me! thankfully, we haven't come across any of those, as the only failure I could imagine due to a step process omission would be a fracture! The design of the bearings hasn't changed, although of course there may be material differences.

One question i have then to all you mappers as all fingers keep pointing to the pistons, but i hear a lot more now against this and more to detination and a ****e map on the 08

If people have modded them inside of warrenty surely part of the mapping process is to see what numbers are being pushed into the engine when on boost.

So this magic number of 14 should in theory drop to 11 on boost or as i hear even cosworth forged would pop.

Or dont mappers have this access when revamping a car

Surely if a mappers worth his salt these boost numbers should be first in his list for fuel mix, cos if thats wrong ****loads could happen?

Isnt there a common number range that is the rule of thumb for this stuff

Oooo and by the way work tomorrow bah humbug

This is most possibly why the original engines are failing 14:7 is very lean as I understand it, on boost to keep the emissions down in the engine too I would think. from what I've read on the afr's a mapper usually tunes to around 11 or 12 if I recall. so remapping is obviously richening the fuel mix to basically stop heat build up & det within the engine and stressing componants.

Mapping has a very large part to play in reliability of the engine

Can someone tell who I contact to find out if the ecu reflash has been done. My car is a euro import? A telephone number would be handy if poss.

id either say a scooby garage near u pay em, or ring Im group they must have access to a database.

There may be other ways but thats where id go

The reply

http://forums.sidc.co.uk/topic/153182-subaru-uks-md-answers-your-questions/

nice video, he has some points and obviously covering summat, wonder who the engineering company was.

My theory.

When they first came out you guys could mod the hell outa them no emissions etc, so it was a great time. Now emissions play a part Fuel mixs changes, thus parts change, thus subaru engines aint what they used to be.

As rasheed said in 09 they changed the shortblock and bearing, so something made them do it, thay also did a new map on the 08s or july Aug build cars, as this was probably the main fault that caused the so called pistons to go.

When we were all young and had our corsas Novas or whatever, we all thought lets slap a KN air filter on a big bore exhaust and try pull sharon the local bike for some finger fun, on a Nova etc thoses add-ons probably didnt make much diff apart from Noise, on a now emissions kinda friendly scoob thats tuned to Eu regs any slight change to something that may cause DET or fuels mixes to change will cause damage, Ok pistons dont help and forged may last longer but eventually itll go.

Look at my saloon, yet again the MAP is diff from the 08s STI, i dont know what but its diff. On looking on the net Edmonds tested it and it seemed slightly slower 0-60 than the old uns, 5.5 they couldnet get 5.2 , could this be the new MAP for the 2011s ?

so in short my view is Subaru wont change there stance, if your gonna mod a new one, get AJ or some company who know there **** to do it, ive spoken to Alan out of the forums, on prices to get mine to 450, so im gonna start saving and move to that soon as novalty wears off and as soon as i start to move garden rubbish to tip in it, It will be going to devon for a makeover, and of course a fully forged rebuild.

In the end we can all speculate if its pistons Map, or something else, with only subaru really knowing. My feeling is that the Emissions crap we all have to put up with now, has hurt subaru and the engines suffered.

My question is HTF do EVOs get away with it 328 co2 us 243 i dont understand


doh

anyway rant over happy work day bah :(


P.S Back in the days when i used to race petrol remote control cars, as some of you who do this know, you could tune the engine by the turn of a screew to change the fuel mix, this in turn made the car go faster but increased the heat in the block with an increased chance of it blowing up, my advice is dont start turning that screw until you know what ya doing hehe.

Tahanks for nothing Mr Tunniscliffe
 

Dear Mr Tunnicliffe - Subaru UK MD (who follows forums like these)

I watched your interview with interest as posted above - re : answering questions from SIDC.

I am very surprised to hear what you said, and feel totally aggrieved at your responses...

I have a 2008 STi which let go at 16,000 miles - never tracked, hit the redline maybe 3 or 4 times in its life, never thrashed, always well cared for, my pride and joy AND YET my engine still failed.

My official response from Subaru was to have my car transported to a dealer who would strip down and identify the problem, whilst 'it was decided' what sort of warranty cover I would be offered. Ring back in 14 days I was told. Meanwhile cough up £1k approx to cover the transport and strip down - and maybe you'll get a new piston if you're lucky.

To be honest fitting just one new piston in a part worn engine was enough for me to pull the plug and go private - finding a reputable 'Enginetuner' to strip, rebuild, and remap to a acceptable standard - able to withstand 'stress' from being expected to perform as 'it said on the tin'.

Of the 1000 approx Sti's sold so far - you say less than 2% have failed. THAT'S A LIE. THAT IS NOT TRUE.

Other Subaru dealers / employees have acknowledged it more like 6-7% official figures, then those outside the box (Euro imports and those who rebuilt using non Subaru 'decent quality' parts) make it an easy 10% or probably more (nearly 15% in USA). This does not include the cars that have failed more than once :)

So thats one in ten that fail, due to what you would call 'over stressing the engine'...

Certainly not acceptable figures for a performance car supposed built to produce a high performance driving experience.


As much as I love my car, I would never advise even my worst enemy to buy a Subaru as with at least 1 in 10 having engine failure - it is a joke which doesn't get funnier - only worse.

In a years time I reckon it'll be 1 in 5.... OH YES just wait and see.

What will you say then Mr Tunniscliffe ?

That the majority of your standard UK cars come with an unwanted free lottery ticket ... guess how long this car will last until it blows on you ?

Drive it like a baby and it will still be up for a good ringlands piston failure.

Its laughable that even the PRODRIVE 330s and 330 r cars blow their pistons too... Blimey thats a great development test period used there.

But there again the Cosworth car must be the biggest joke of all - 395 'lardy' bhp for another £20k ... oh and retrimmed seats - wow biggest performance opportunity of this decade reduced to a pathetic attempt at tuning... (should have stuck to the guys who developed the car first ; )


Obviously you have to defend Subaru as they employ you, but many genuine car fanatics (people just like yourself) have been treated very poorly and will never come back.

I had kept my failed piston in the hope of putting a counter claim of 'not fit for purpose', but I realise that it would cost me more time and money trying to get JUSTICE.

Thanks for nothing Mr Tunniscliffe.

Regards

A

the reflash subaru sent out during the end of aug 2008 was just to lower the redline

they claim that the engine went too lean at redline and that caused problems
probably true

here's what i think happened

engine stays at 14.7 AFR till 4000RPM ur pushing ur car a bit and get some good detonation which destroys ur piston rings maybe a piston..

ur engine starts burning oil

at higher RPM you NEEED good oiling and since ur a bit low on oil from the broken pistons / rings u damage the crank bearings and rod bearing too

i think its all just a big pile of bull**** they have the worst excuses ever!
they should man up and fix the real problem not try to cover it like this...:nono:

This is what they did to mine one new piston,325 miles later engine destroyed itself.

Justice is rare thing these days Stuart.... can't even trust the courts to give it.

Customer service is dead Mr Tunniscliffe....

Thats unbelieveable - they replaced 1 piston?

they also do this here in Israel

I would never accept such crap

The internet is full of examples of Subaru STI Hatch failures and whilst we do of course accept that poor owner modifications, misuse etc will account for some failure (as it always has) there can be no doubt that the Hatch engine is under engineered for it's target market.

The simple facts are there is at least a 7% failure rate. Mr Tunnicliffes attempt of reasurance and the sudden fall to a failure rate of 2% confirm that he or someone else at Subaru U.K are either not in possesion of the true facts or are simply telling lies. The extract of the piston failure report Subaru sent to me looked very much like a generic report on general piston failure, not specific to the hatch or indeed even to Subaru. Please Subaru correct me if i am wrong !!

Subaru have scored some pretty big own goals of late with the handling of these failures and the marketing disaster that is the CS400. 12 months ago i speculated that this subject has a lot of mileage in it. As warranties start to expire next month i believe the subject will gather pace and this thread will rumble for a long time.

If you do monitor the forums Subaru then you should be ashamed of yourselves for sitting back and letting this issue develop. Your approach has in the main been to adopt swerving tactics and look for any way not to take on board the root failure is caused by design and not your customers.

outa intrest if they did say Ok guys lets recall you all and fit forged piston, do you think that it would be put to bed, or do you think there is still a design issue with the block ?

I rem Ali on here saying even with forged pistons a **** map will blow anything.

we have 2 factors here Map and Pistons, correct piston, map still crap, piston Pops under heat.

correct Map, piston forged or not will survive, Forged obviously better.

or do we all think that there is a deeper issue.

maybe people Like Alan or other engine guys can answer it. I know they said they thought it was Pistons, But look at it this way, a piston is Visible damage thus instanly you point the finger

but there are reasons a Piston can blow other than wank material, maybe that was or is the root cause ?

Can anybody voice that the remap done in 2009 only changed the limiter ? or did some other numbers change ?

also in the older Scoobs were they forged or have they always done chocolate ?