When I first got my car 18 months ago, I was stunned by it. It's looks, it's performance, everything.
Shortly afterwards, some toe-rags attempted to nick it, and as a result it spent 3 months in the body shop waiting for silly little parts from Japan and going back in for resprays on dodgy paint jobs (I'll never use an approved repairer again unless they're Scoob dealers!).
Since then, it's been back in to the dealer for a number of mechanical warranty jobs, including two gearboxes.
It's been into a Scoob dealer for some body work, which under close scrutiny was very poor in places (I'll never use an approved repairer again, even if they're Scoob dealers!).
Most recently, as most of you know, it's been in to get a new short block fitted due to an oil problem.
It went into the dealers on May 15th.
It's still there.
I was promised it would be ready well before I returned from my holiday, they had the engine coming and everything appeared to be moving along fine. The third gearbox was already at the dealers awaiting fitment at the same time.
I have now been told that there are no short blocks in the country until July 7th, so my car won't be ready until at least mid-July.
On top of this, IM have reversed there decision to fit a complete new gearbox, and want the dealer to replace only the first gear components, a move I am vigorously objecting to as the current box is clearly faulty and the dealer has failed on two occasions to rectify the fault.
I know I drive my car reasonably hard at itmes, don't we all, but for crying out loud it's a bloomin' Subaru Impreza! Isn't it built to be driven hard???? I bought a UK car in the belief that IF there were any problems that they would be dealt with swiftly and efficiently. This has never been the case.
My car has spent 6 of it's 18 month life either in a bodyshop or at the dealers, the majority of which is waiting for parts from Japan.
What a load of poo!
IF I'd have known it was gonna be like this I would have serioulsy considered an import. It may have been no better, but it couldn't have been any bloomin' worse!!!!
Is it just me, or do IM/Subaru appear to have been getting complacent over recent awards and the like?
I can't wait to get my JD Power questionnaire!
I honestly don't know what to do.

Stef.

 

Sorry to hear of all the problems Stef I do hope you get it back soon, you must be screaming out for a burn.

Hope the above doesn't blow all hopes of selling her if that was your plan, it just looks as though it could scare everyone off.

Hope she gets well soon.

..Ian

 

Selling not a problem Ian, it's on lease purchase. If I don't want to keep it I just give it back and get a new one.
I really thought I'd want to keep it though.
Not so sure now.
Besides, the fact that the car's a celebrity must count for somehting!

Stef.

 

Stef, the reliability couldn't be anything to do with the way you drive could it ? - I've seen the pictures in REVS. Buy an STi, I bought a nearly new v3 and it hasn't missed a beat in the last 12 months. Its thumbs up from me for the JD Power survey. Prior to the Sti I owned a couple of old L series estates as second cars - the first one I paid five hundred quid for, ran it for 5 years and 40k miles - serviced it when I bought it and never touched it again till it went to the big garage in the sky. This is the sort of reliability that made me opt for the Scooby instead of another BMW which I owned at the same as my old 4x4 estates - the BM reliability was a nightmare - 325 TDS SE.

Kevin.

 

Yeah but Kevin, Sti's are included in the JD Power thing are they?
There have been loads of problems with MY98 cars regarding the engines, and the survey on these cars hasn't been done yet. I would be surprised to see the Impreza do as well if everyone's honest.
I do drive my car hard on track, but no harder than other 'enthusiasts'. I think an Sti would have been more suited to my style though!
Anyway, if I'm honest, I miss my car to bits and will probaly never get rid of it.
I'm just peed off that it's not ready and wanted to get it off my chest.
Roll on mid-July.


Stef.

[This message has been edited by Stef (edited 28-06-2000).]

 

Stef,

go and visit a few dealers for a test drive.
Turn up in a Justy or something similar, get behind the wheel of a scooby again, and take the dealer for a spin.

Show him a few of your track skills!
Imsure he will be very appreciative!!!

robski

p.s. welcome back dude, been quite round here lately

 

The warranty on a UK car counts for a lot, believe me. I'm currently fighting with warranty holdings because they believe that one time in the cars life it MAY have had low oil, which MAY have caused the bearing to fail. What a load of b0llox. Get an STi anyway, yours is too slow

 

Stef I just hope Subaru UK don't read Revs or this BBS. In the short time I have been reading the BBS it seems clear your car is not driven like everyone else drives theirs! Multiple 'dump-clutch' drag strip starts week in week out can't aid your case with them!

Good luck all the same!

 

Stef,

sorry to hear of your problems with parts etc. I was very lucky, and got a new short engine within 1 week (4 months ago) due to piston slap (the noise was evident when warm as well as cold). The car was away from me for only 3 days whilst they took out the old block, and fitted the new one.

Since then, I have heard of people waiting several weeks (or more) for a new block to become available. This isn't really an inconvenience for people with the piston slap problem, as their cars are still running fine, but a bit of a bummer if your car isn't running at all

Seems that people reporting the piston slap problem to their dealers, and getting it repaired under warranty has been the main problem. All the UK stocks of short engines were quickly depleted, as was a large proporation of those in Japan which were shipped over. The factory in Japan doesn't have massive overcapacity, and can only produce a small amount more than is actually required for production cars. It's not just UK cars which have been affected!

It also takes a few weeks for the ship to arrive from Japan as well.

I think Subaru are a lot better in terms of warranty than most other companies, including Mitsubishi. I know of one person who has been waiting more than 6 months, for a part for his "official" EVO VI. Luckily his car is driveable.

I have also known people with BMWs and Audis who have vowed never to own one again, after having such bad experiences with them. However, it's very uncommon for people to speak publicly about good customer service that they have recieved, but very common for them to maon about bad service. That's why we hear about all these complaints on this BBS, but Subaru still wins the JD Power survey. It's simply that the overwhelming majority of owners are very satisfied, but that doesn't mean to say things can't be further improved!

 

Stef,

My commiserationson your problems.

As I've explained before, I don't drive an Impreza, though I nearly got a Forester (and was veering towards an Impreza) as a company car.

Thing is, I know how I treat cars - pretty badly - and I needed something that would stand up to prolonged abuse. From reading the posts on theis BBS I came to the conclusion that the cars just weren't reliable enough.

I've read numerous tales of major component failure, which made me think I'd be best off delaying purchase for a while, especially as I pick up £7k per year for NOT having a company car.

I know Imprezas tend to get driven harder than most other cars, but they should be able to stand up to it, surely? After all, I ride bikes MUCH harder than I drive cars and ever after countless track sessions I've never had any problems.

So what is the truth? Am I being paranoid, or are Imprezas really a bit too brittle? Or could it be that there are a fair number of Friday cars out there?

 

Stef!

Buy a Skyline and get it over with, thats the Supercar league

 

......or buy an Escort Cossie!!!!!

Mines 6 years old and still looks/drives like a new one.....MEGA!!!!!


Shaun.

 

Nick,

I don't think that there have been many major problems with Scoobies in the past 2 years, the short engine problem seems to be apparent in MY98 and MY97 cars.

Compared to others I think the Scoobies have a great reputation, and considering the amount of track action they get, I've not heard of many problems.

Check the past 4 years JD Power surveys, they must stand for something.

Greg

 

I would agree with Greg on this one - just because a small number of cars have had problems does not mean that suddenly all Subaru's are unreliable - maybe some are less bulletproof than others.

I think Stef would say himself that he drives the car "enthusiastically" and possibly this has highlighted frailty that lesser mortals would not have uncovered

But seriously, I'm sure everyone can sympathise with Stef (or anyone else) who cannot drive their car because of problems - Scooby depravation is an evil torture!

Thanks

Gavin

 

I have to add that my STI 3 has been brilliant in terms of reliability.

The only time when the car has had any real reliability problems is when I had a phase one "remap" conversion done to the standard ECU.

If you regularly drive hard, then you may find certain components may begin to appear under the "regular consumables" heading, these basically consist of the clutch and brake friction components and tyres. Of course, you will drink more fuel to! I suppose you just have to remember that these are the sort of items that Rally teams replace after every rally, if not after every stage!

I wasn't aware that imported cars were included in the JD Power survey... It would be just like Subaru UK to benefit from the happy import owner without complaining that they don't recognise or deal with imports!

Moray

 

My 97 WRX has run faultlesly since ive owned it, even with all the mods nothing has ever let me down especially running at 1.4 bar constantly. I have crap brakes so I rely on my gearbox for braking when doing trackdays and that runs like a dream, I had the car checked last week after Dono and everything is running perfectly!

But as some I am bored of it!

Harj...

 

welcome back stef.

I am not gonna be popular for saying this but here goes.

The scoobie when driven hard on track is not strong enough!!

It is perfect for fast road use but track day action when driven aggresively (and i do mean aggresively), forget it, the box is a stick of liquorice, the brakes are poo unless you spend serious money on AP kit.

The engine is very marginal IMHO, i would be seriously worried about running a 300BHP scooby on track unless it had been modded internally and set up on a bench dyno.

Dont get me wrong, i think the car is a mega road car and track day car for most people, but for someone who wants to push really hard, forget it, its not strong enough.

It didnt take 3 years to make the impreza a reliable groupN rally car for nothing. It was the box that went pop in the main, lets just say you wont find much standard kit inside the barrets groupN boxes.

sorry to hear you are still scoobyless, its been bloody ages now!

 

Stef......The grass is always greener, and I personally don't think that any car will provide the perfect solution in terms of reliability, warranty, performance and handling. I've never been to a track day and seen a broken down impreza for example, import or otherwise which is more than can be said of some marques.

All I will say is that with your enthusiastic driving style it would be worth buying another car with a manufacturers warranty (as opposed to insurance based one). I say this because a) the dealer can deal with any claim with or without your assistance, b) the warranty is likely to be much more comprehensive, and c) insurance based warranties are hassle from beginning to end in my experience.

This rather narrows down the choice. I'd go for a Porsche money permitting, but failing that you can now buy an EVO through any Mitsubishi dealer with a 3 year manufacturers warranty, as you can with the P1 through the Subaru network. Obviously if you want a car that has superb front end grip, oversteers on the throttle in the dry, is incredible fun to drive, has outstanding braking ability and all this with no modification, the choice is even smaller.

You know you really want to

Steve

 

Stef

I personally wouldn't slag off IM in the JD Power survey. I don't believe that IM take the slightest bit of notice and another Subaru 1st place will help your (and everybody's) residual value.

As with any new car choice, make your choices by test drive only. But the STI saloon comes with my highest recommendation.

 

The worst thing in my opinion is the garage misleading you on the amount of time it will take for the parts to arrive. If they had said at the beginning that it will take 3 months, then you could have chucked in a second hand second hand engine for the 3 months it would have been off the road, then sold it when your new engine arrived. It would probably have cost you a bit of cash, but you would have a scooby to drive around in.

 

Get an EVO, then we'll have some real fun!
Except the brakes aren't in the same league as yours, they almost drive themselves (you need all the help you can get remember ) they sound like clapped out Novas, they go "fairly" well.
Reckon you'd be happier with an STi - but you still need the brakes, you'll need the engine done to keep up with me , you'll be able to transfer most of your bits over.
Think you can get a brand new STi for about 23k now.

 

Thanks guys, as I've said I'm just peed off and wanted some sympathy!

Dave.
I don't care what IM read or see, nothing I've done in the car could invalidate anything stated in my warranty, and I've never done one clutch dump let alone multile ones!

What some of you seem to be forgetting is that bar the initial gearbox going, the problems I've had have all been due to manufacturing defects. These may or may not have been highlighted by the way I drive the car, but that is besides the point. If these defects were not present the car would probably not have suffered the same fate.
My biggest gripe is that parts have always taken so long to come from Japan. Including this engine, I've been waiting for some 12 weeks for various parts to arrive in total.
That's 16% of the cars life!
I just want it back......

Stef.

 

John,

Since my 'track day' bound WRX is less than 2 weeks away, your comments do cause me some concern (ie The engine is very marginal IMHO, i would be seriously worried about running a 300BHP scooby on track unless it had been modded internally and set up on a bench dyno).

Why do you think the engine is marginal? and how aggressive do you think you can be - I would assume a group N rally car is put through more than our cars on a track day (even more than Stef's!)? I would have thought that on a track day (not actually racing) you shouldn't have any problems, except for brakes. Do you think I am expecting too much, and likely to suffer a shock on track?

Have those taking their WRX on track had many problems?

Cheers,

Trig

 

Running 300BHP through a Scooby is risky, especially an early WRX, I was fortunate enough to buy a late WRX which has 280BHP standard. Ive never experienced any probs with my car on track, when ive been on track ive got a little carried away and redlined the car like hell in 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th, it keeps on running perfectly with the boost knocked upto 1.4bar

Touch wood I have had no problems with mine, it seems that there are quite a few Scoobies out there with some manufactured faults.

Harj...

 

Triggaaar,

Enough people have done track days for you not to have to worry. Let's not get too carried away about a couple of engine failures - all cars suffer from this to some extent, and there are now a LOT of Imprezas being thrashed around the place.

Your Scooby should suffer provided you employ a degree of mechanical sympathy. Smashing the car through the gears to shave half a second from a gearchange will eventually cause problems. Unsympathetic driving will always break components - you are abusing your car, and using it in a way is wasn't designed to withstand.

With respect to John's motorsport experiences, you must remember that competition engines and transmissions have a very short lifespan and are typically rebuilt at least once per season. Why should you expect vastly greater durability from a road car?. I have one friend in particular who has lunched the engine and transmission on his Merc SL twice in 50,000 miles and they don't have a reputation for fragility - he simply drives it faster for longer than it could withstand!. It isn't that the Subaru is especially fragile, but when John talks about agressive driving, he means extracting the absolute maximum of performance from the car without consideration to the level of stress it puts the car under. In motorsport, it really is s**t or bust, and if something breaks it breaks....

Group 'N' rally competition is absolutly nothing like any conceivable road use regime.
Be a little respectful of the oily bits and you shouldn't have any trouble.

If you're running a WRX, take the precaution of adding an appropriate amount of octane booster to take it back to 100RON levels, and possibly buy a KnockLink.

Cheers,

Alex

 

Harj, Alex
Thanks for the comments.
I would generally expect greater durability from a road car, because their not as highly tuned (eg F1 3 litre/1.6 turbo producing > 700hp). The Scoob's 2 litre producing 280 though is obviously higher tuned than most road cars, and I was concerned than John's point is that it is working a little too hard to get 280 (I know he said 300, which may be very different). Once sufficiently run in (how far is that? - I expect more than 1000 miles) and I take to the track, I don't intend to ***** foot around, although in comparison to racing, it may not be that aggressive.

Harj - is there that much power available at the red line (since I don't have the car yet) I thought you'd get more from changing up (unless you've just reached the next corner).

Now I need to search on appropriate amounts of octane booster

 

For a while now I believed John (Felstead) had the right idea in getting a Westie specifically for track days. The Scoob is awesome on the road but we spend £1000's trying to make it a track car to have this dinky little plastic thingy overtake like we were standing still!! (or is it Aluminium, John?)

In an ideal world, we would have both. Me, I'm still saving my pennies and doing the lottery

Hope it all gets sorted soon Stef.

 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by johnfelstead:
<B>
Dont get me wrong, i think the car is a mega road car and track day car for most people, but for someone who wants to push really hard, forget it, its not strong enough.

[/quote]


I was hoping this statement would explain what i meant about the car being OK for most people. Sorry if i put accross that the car is bad and not up to track day work, that wasn't the intent.

There are very few scoobies running with a genuine 300BHP. The thing that gets me is the lack of thought that is going into thrashing your car on a track day. I normally do in excess of 100 miles on a track day. When we are racing we usually do 25 miles. So if you do as many track days as some of the guys i know you are going to be running the car much harder than something like a hot hatch race car.

For the guys who are now running with stiffer suspension and slicks in particular, you are puting the car under much higher stress than it is designed for. You may not see an effect imediately but you WILL see an effect eventually. When you put a car on slicks you are stressing the engine mounts/gearbox mounts/diff mounts and the actual engine/gearbox and diffs far more than if you kept to road tyres. The mounts in particular age, and will start to give up after a certain amount of overloading cycles.

I know people say the shell is fine running with slicks, but to be quite frank, thats bollox. The shell is being flexed far more than it is designed for and over time you will weaken it. It will change very slowly in its torsional rigidity so you wont notice it, but due to a very well known effect called metal fatigue it will be getting weeker.

It horifies me at the moment that no one is doing proper engine mapping for the scoobie for the masses.

I dont care what anyone is saying, looking at the exhaust colour of some modified scoobies that have been on track, they are running week at the top end. You may get away with it for a while, but i beleive engine failures are gonna be a more common ocurance as time goes on.

I always treat my car after a track day as though it has done 4 races. I replace the engine oil and filter as a matter of course and i only use high grade 10/60 oil that can stand the high turbo temps that are being seen. Oil like a 0W-40W or similar burns very quickly on a turbo engine being thrashed and should not be used on track IMHO.

Brakes, your gonna kill the standard ones. The absolute minimum you should be doing is installing some fast road pads and checking them for wear after every run. You should always take a spare set and some tools to change them. If you cant put the effort in to taking this minimum level of support with you, then you shouldnt be on track at all, you have the wrong attitude to it.

Track driving is significantly more abusive to the car than driving on road, you are wearing it out quicker by a huge margin. If you think otherwise then you are not being honest with yourself.

I am not saying dont do track days in your scoobie, just be aware of what you are going to be putting the car through. Think about driving with some mechanical sympathy if your car is standard in particular, use the best fuel you can and check everything before and during the event.

Finally, golden rule number 1 to keep the car healthy. Dont rag it on the first couple of laps, bring everything up to temp slowly and do at least one slowing down lap, preferably 2 before coming into the pits after your run, dont touch the brakes at all during this cooling down lap (unless you realy have too of course) that way you shouldnt get cracked disks and pads due to heat soak.

Finaly, i stand by what i have said, for the really agresive driver (of which i have seen few in subarus) the scooby is not strong enough. Most of you guys are fine, the others know who i am talking about.

 

Yeh David, its like most oldey world racing cars, its a plastic pig with a steel spaceframe chassis.

Although the westfield is built as a sports car, you would not believe the amount of work i have put into making this car right for very fast track action.

I could spend 3 hours on how the fuelling system is designed to gurantee absolutely no chance of fuel surge and therefore the engine running week.

I intend to be running the car on slicks real soon (i currently run on some road legal semi slicks) but wont do this till i have a big winged baffled sump installed to guarantee no oil surge can happen.

I am very lucky, i have been there, done it and got the T shirt when it comes to preping a car to win and stay in one piece on race track and rally stage so i know what you have to do to "guarantee" (theres that word again) no major failures occur.

 

I THOUGHT a super**** caused your engine problem??