Hi Guys,

I've owned MY03 STI since january of this year and pretty much since day 1 i've had a problem with the CEL for P0301 Cylinder 1 Misfire. It's been back to the garage at least 8 times since, and they've replaced plugs, swapped over a coil pack, 02 censor, injector, wiring and even the ECU (they haven't even after me asking them replaced the Neutral Position Switch, as recommended by a few people on these forums).

Now Subaru have asked the garage to completely strip the engine to see if something is going on mechanically, even though the car has had a compression test and everything was ok, now i personally don't think they'll find anything wrong with it and i'm now loosing confidence/patience with the car. A few mates of mine have said after stripping the engine you should really think about putting some new oil rings on etc, now if they don't find anything wrong mechanically i don't want to pay £400+ for a set of oil rings the problem isn't cured and then asking to swap the car, also the 60k 72 month service is up in July which is another £400 bill, when the money could be used elsewhere.

I''m not sure where i stand legally on swapping it, and if i can swap it will i get a vehicle of equivelant value today. i.e. i paid £13k for a blobeye with 53'000 on the clock. The garage which i had the car from have got a MY53 STI with only 30'000 on the clock for the same money. Am i being too optimistic to think i could possibly get a near straight swap even though i know my vehicle isn't worth that much anymore, or will they say well your car is only worth £10-11k now so we need to swap it for something of the same value, even though i'm paying finance on £13k.

Hope i'm making sense, and any advice would be much appriciated.