hello to all im in need of some advice from you sti owners. im looking at getting my first impreza after along time thinging about it i finaly decided to do it but which one to go for. ive been looking at two models of sti, the info im after is which one should i go for in the eyes of you the existing owners.
the two im looking at is:-
1. blobeye sti 2005/06
2. hawkeye sti 2006> (the lower tax one)

whats the pros/cons for these and any advice id be very greatful for.
also whats peoples input in the prodrive ppp upgrade.

thankyou for your help and i hopefully will see some of you soon when im the proud owner of my first impreza.

 

hawks look better imo, the cheaper tax version is rare, but all hawks also have the weaker in most peoples eyes 2.5l engine.
Loads of torque and makes a good daily driver, blobs are good cars but the scoop can swallow a small child while driving down the road

 

Hi Jaynb welcome to forums

Uk blob is considered best of those two cars, jdm Japanese spec is better still.

ppp upgrade is ok , but more power can be gained from a custom map.

 

thanks for that info people, can you still remap the prodrive ecu, someone told me that it cant be remaped, easily anyway

 

blob blob and blob imo!

 

its just a flash rom file, can be easily overwritten and in all honesty its way better to have a custom map, the ppp was generic file for every car it was fitted to.
Every car is diff and should really have a custom map fitted

 

My personal opinion is the hawk it better looking but the blobs pretty good looking too. The 2 litre is stronger if you want to tune but they are older so my have more wear and tear. Ive heard of a few blobs starting to rust underneath so worth checking before you buy. Id invest in waxoiling either car while there rust free.
The 2.5 is a great engine. The pros are loads of torque and low down grunt. The cons are head gasket issues, more on 06 cars than 07 and crap pistons. Spend about 3k forging it and there aint nothing better. Find a forged hawk for sale and you can have your cake and eat it.
The 2 litre is not without its problems. Many have knocked out bearings and had hg issues also.
The thing with STi's are, when there working there's nothing better. I would prefer a 2.5 in a newage because the car is heavier, just save for the inevitable.

 

+1

 

after having my07wrx running 367bhp 420lbs/ft i decided to go back down the sti route and found myself in the same position you are in now.

firstly ppp i would not entertain it as above generic map...... custom map far better
hawkeye sti i didnt know much about these having only owned a my04sti, my98 uk turbo, my07wrx. all i had to go off was others opinions and figures and facts.

having modded my stdrd wrx to what some may class as beyobd its limits i wanted a car that would not restrict any reasonable mods should i wish to carry them out in the future. it was this that made my mind up for me.

hawk ok the 2.5 has great torque but the 2.5 engine is not as strong as the 2.0
from what i can gather the hawk internals will only cope with around 380-390bhp
where as the 2.0 internals will cope with around 450bhp which for me is more than enough to handle any mods i would wish to make.

ok the hawk imo is a beautiful car and in black looks very agressive but i would rather have a less beautiful car that is safe and reliable which is why i opted for a 05mysti widetrack all the way !!!!!

 

There are 3 engines in this equation, the 2ltr UK engine, the 2.5ltr UK engine and the 2ltr Twin Scroll JDM engine, you really need to know all your options here first

Lets start with the UK 2ltr engine.
Its strong, better than the 2.5 in fact, ok it doesnt give the same ammount of torque but the rev range means that its more fun to drive, much happier and revtastic, though you will notice a little bit of turbo lag lower down, best off with a remap, you just have to find a good one (the model year you are looking at should have A-DCCD fitted), all in all it would be my second choice.

The 2.5 UK engine.
Well this one is the problem child, get a good one and keep it standard and it will be a good car, want to tune it and you can have serious issues (saying that you can have serious issues in standard form with these, but its not a bad engine, just not the best subaru ever did).
The biggest issues with this engine are headgasket failures (mainly on MY06 cars but can happen on MY07 cars too), fly by dire, sorry, wire, makes the car not quite as nice to drive (UK hawk only), ringland issues (pistons) due to the piston design, this engine basically wasnt designed to go into the impreza with the sort of power it had, it ran in the FSTi at 265ps and not the 280-300ps of the hawk STI.
It delivers the most amount of torque of the 3 engines, its also a little laggy, similar to the 2ltr, tuning this engine is problematic, you get to a stage (around 360bhp) where you really need to consider replacing the pistons, if you want 400+ then you may as well forge the engine, you will need to pin the block otherwise you will get flex across the cylinders (hence they get lined), this causes your HG issues, but a fair few people run 600+ bhp on these engines once pinned/lined, in theory, subaru took too much metal out of the block for it to be tuned too highly, so keep it fairly standard and it "should" be reliable, rates 3rd in the list of "to buy".

Now for the last engine, the JDM Twin Scroll unit.
Deemed to be the "best ever" engine produced by Subaru to date, came in on the MY03 JDM blobs to date, includes being found in the JDM hawk eye car, produces nearly as much torque as the 2.5ltr, is more free revving (8k red line) than the UK 2ltr (7.5k red line, 7k on the 2.5), pulls across the rev range better than both the above and actually has more BHP and Torque out of the box than both of the above engines.
No real downsides to this engine, is more "uprated" than the other 2, better oil feed to the bearings due to the cross drilled and nitrided crank, virtually lag free, slightly shorter gearing but you dont really notice it, you lose the burble though, but its replaced by a very nice motor bike sound when on full chant its top of the list if you can find one.
One big plus side is that the hawk JDM doesn't come with fly by dire, so feels more responsive (it is), though find a post by MadUSA when he purchased his new JDM Hawkeye Spec C, he gives a good comparison between the twin scroll unit and the 2.5 as he has both (only a couple of weeks back, search for spec c in the title)

Tony

 

Wow thanks everyone that's settled a few questions that I had, im going to take my time in this and see what I can find and hopefully see people at the club meets mostly the midlands ones, thankyou again every one

 

Tony is the Wikipedia of scoobynet

If you decide to go down the jdm route your only problem will be finding one they do come up but as you can imagine not as common as the uk sti .

 

I have a 56 plate jdm hawkeye for sale

 

I've heard someone else mention fly-by-wire regarding this subject, Tony can you explain?

 

get the 2.0, if you get a 2.5 this will be you..........

 

Throttle done by electronics rather than cables. Plus side with fly by wire is you can have the flat foot shifting and launch control features with ecutek racerom

 

On a few older cars, the throttle is controlled by the use of a cable, on fly by dire, its controlled by the ecu, so you put your foot down and the ecu responds, no cable used, trouble is, the subaru fly by dire is dire, especially on the MY06/07 hawkeye 2.5's, not exactly totally respondent and has some jerkiness issues.
They have of course released updates but its still not as good as the good old cable method

Tony

 

Note these are available for JDM's (throttle cable) long before they were for the fly by dire cars

Tony

 

Can't say i have noticed and once mapped by Mr Rawle i found it very responsive and precise

 

i have driven a few fly by wire and compared to the cable operated versions they are not as good, but by no means bad just not as responsive.

 

the advantage of drive by wire is that it can be mapped to feel however you want it to be. std it isnt great but spend enough time remapping it and all is good.

 

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome to the site and for the vast amout of information, but I think after reading alot on this site that I may go for a later blob eye sti, thanks again on all the help from you guys on my quest to find the right car for me cheers everyone

 

widetrack FTW