My POS Subaru, round 2.

[JusFlyinBy]

Well, I dunno if you remember my post about the reliability of my wonderful new import, but here's a quick overview.

I bought a 2007 Legacy Limited new from the dealer. Put 12,000 miles on it when I had to flat bed it to the dealer for a serious knock and loss of power.

Long story short, turns out the cats got clogged and the backpressure and heat caused piston 4 to fail.

After close to one month of arguing with the dealer and Subaru HQ, they agreed to purchase the car back in full, even though they "fixed it", IF I purchased another Subaru.

Alright fine, here's my chance to buy the Turbo version that I shoulda bought in the first place.

After ONE day, the car has an F'ing stutter. Picture this, it hits boost, then bucks back and forth up to redline as if the BOV was fluttering or some sh*t. I do a search on the GT forums to find the 2007's have a widely known problem among customers with the same issue, and wonderful Subaru is turning a blind eye to it. I guess the STi's have it even more pronounced. I called my dealership and sure enough. "Yea, thats just turbo lag." Whatever douchebag, I think I know what turbo lag is. (Hokie, this is what I wanted to ask you about yours. Its apparently only noticeable in the 5 spd's)

Yea, go Subaru.

Anyway, I'll probably bring it to the dealer 3 times for the same problem then lemon law it on them. I can't wait till the Subaru customer service line is open this Monday...

BTW, I took out a 2006, perfect. No stutter, and pulls what feels like twice as hard as mine.

Had to rant. :rant:

[HokieBird]

Re: My POS Subaru, round 2.

My car doesn't have the stutter. It seems to be hit or miss on cars 05-07. I did test drive two others and they had it. Subaru acknowledged the problem in 06 and released a flash for it, but most people said that it wasn't always solved.

Most people say a tune takes care of it. I plan on getting an access port down the road to bump up the power anyway so I don't care, but it is ****ty that the car runs like that stock.

It sucks no one has found the specific cause yet. Usually the impreza guys are all over this sort of thing. Some people blame the dual mass flywheel. One guy said his dealership found a problem with his fly by wire throttle body and replacing it fixed his stutter.

[speedyz]

Re: My POS Subaru, round 2.

Well, I dunno if you remember my post about the reliability of my wonderful new import, but here's a quick overview.

I bought a 2007 Legacy Limited new from the dealer. Put 12,000 miles on it when I had to flat bed it to the dealer for a serious knock and loss of power.

Long story short, turns out the cats got clogged and the backpressure and heat caused piston 4 to fail.

After close to one month of arguing with the dealer and Subaru HQ, they agreed to purchase the car back in full, even though they "fixed it", IF I purchased another Subaru.

Alright fine, here's my chance to buy the Turbo version that I shoulda bought in the first place.

After ONE day, the car has an F'ing stutter. Picture this, it hits boost, then bucks back and forth up to redline as if the BOV was fluttering or some sh*t. I do a search on the GT forums to find the 2007's have a widely known problem among customers with the same issue, and wonderful Subaru is turning a blind eye to it. I guess the STi's have it even more pronounced. I called my dealership and sure enough. "Yea, thats just turbo lag." Whatever douchebag, I think I know what turbo lag is. (Hokie, this is what I wanted to ask you about yours. Its apparently only noticeable in the 5 spd's)

Yea, go Subaru.

Anyway, I'll probably bring it to the dealer 3 times for the same problem then lemon law it on them. I can't wait till the Subaru customer service line is open this Monday...

BTW, I took out a 2006, perfect. No stutter, and pulls what feels like twice as hard as mine.

Had to rant. :rant:

A guy around town has a wrx sti and as soon as the turbo winds up around 2k rpm's, that thing just pulls and pulls to 9 grand (what he shifted at when I was in it). You should not have any stutter or even wonder/question if it's boosting correctly.

[HokieBird]

Re: My POS Subaru, round 2.

A guy around town has a wrx sti and as soon as the turbo winds up around 2k rpm's, that thing just pulls and pulls to 9 grand (what he shifted at when I was in it). You should not have any stutter or even wonder/question if it's boosting correctly.

What year STi? They do have the issue too. Although, I've never experienced it in one so I don't know if it's as bad.

I forgot to comment on the 06 feeling faster, but your butt dyno is off. 07s have been putting down a little more power stock. They have a catless uppipe and a different part number for the turbo, but no one has confirmed what has changed on the turbo. It could be that the car isn't broken in yet or it's all mental.

[JusFlyinBy]

Re: My POS Subaru, round 2.

What year STi? They do have the issue too. Although, I've never experienced it in one so I don't know if it's as bad.

I forgot to comment on the 06 feeling faster, but your butt dyno is off. 07s have been putting down a little more power stock. They have a catless uppipe and a different part number for the turbo, but no one has confirmed what has changed on the turbo. It could be that the car isn't broken in yet or it's all mental.

Both true, but the bucking doesn't help. The 06 had a very nice clean pull up to redline. The kind of pull that put you in your seat. You don't feel that in the 07 and im sure its the stutter that makes it 'feel' slower. But honestly, its night and day.

I know for a fact that from car to car you can't rely on your "butt dyno". There are a whole lot of factors that contribute to the feeling that you get. For example, the goat to me feels slow to my buddies LT1, but I take him everytime. But going from one GT to another, I figure is a good base for comparison.

I wasn't aware this was a problem on 05's and 06's. My research wasn't extensive because my computer boots me off the internet as seen in my other post. It seemed obvious in the 07's. Im just ticked off. From one bad Subaru to another. :(

P.S. - I took out an 06 STi also, new off the lot. Not even the slightest stutter. Luck of the draw for me.

[HokieBird]

Re: My POS Subaru, round 2.

I can look up the flash information for you if you want. I would think the 07s would have the latest flash from the factory, but who knows. Sorry you are having such ****ty luck.

When the access port comes out for the 07s you could flash to a different map, but I can understand why you would be upset over a stock car having the issue.

[JusFlyinBy]

Re: My POS Subaru, round 2.

This access port, I didn't read up much on it. What's it cost to pick up one of them? Im going to the dealer hopefully Tuesday for the latest flash. I really hope it fixes the problem, because I don't want to dump extra unnecessary money into the car.

[HokieBird]

Re: My POS Subaru, round 2.

It's about $695 straight from Cobb or around $750 from a tuner like TDC with custom maps. A down pipe and stage two flash nets around 270 bhp and 300 btq. Of course those are 05-06 numbers and their are indications that 07 numbers will be higher. We have to wait till Cobb is done with the 07 AP to find out for sure.

I hope the flash at the dealer helps. It ridiculous that subaru can't tune their own cars consistently and they just say their isn't a problem instead.

[JusFlyinBy]

Re: My POS Subaru, round 2.

Yea, BS im going to drop 700 some bucks to correct a problem it shouldn't have... Its not a huge deal to you because you plan on modding anyway. Im not going to touch this car. Irks me...

I just dropped the car off today. Not even 2 miles from the dealer I downshifted from 4th to 3rd to merge, and it bucked so hard I was shifting out of my seat! Worst its ever done it. I spoke with the Sales manager and the service department manager, who I know very well now because of my first POS, and they both told me they NEVER heard of such a thing... I took the tech for a ride to show him the issue and he goes, yep, we had two of these in for a similar problem. I go, really, and what were the results?

"Well, Subaru had to buy the one car back..."

Yea, lying SOB's. The tech threw them in the bag by saying they had 2 with the same problem.

So I took the guy for a ride and murphys law, it HARDLY stuttered a bit, but was sluggish. The guy said he felt it anyway, so I left the car with them and am driving a 2006 Legacy GT Wagon automatic for the time being. They pulled it out of the used car lot and told me don't even worry about gas, which I thought was nice of them. BTW, I guess my butt dyno is playing tricks on me again because I hit the gas and the words "Holy sh*t" came out of my mouth involuntarily...

Appreciate your input on all this Hokie, and be happy you bought one without this issue... :)

5 spd or auto btw?

[HokieBird]

Re: My POS Subaru, round 2.

I'm completely with you on having to mod a car to perform how it should out of the box. It's pretty pathetic on SOA's part and it seems like its standard procedure to denie the problem actually exists and pass it off on buyers as "turbo lag". Of course people like you know better, but they are screwing the average person.

I have an auto and a 5 spd :p. I was torn, but traffic around here sucks and I'm in it about 90% of the time I'm driving. I just got tired of having to deal with slipping a clutch non stop. Oh well there is plenty of time to get a proper sports car in the future.

No problem I'm just trying to help out. I'm sorry you've gone through this twice now.

[JusFlyinBy]

Re: My POS Subaru, round 2.

Well im not sure if you actually take interest in hearing the latest or not, but I'll tell you anyway, lol.

I got a call Tuesday night after I dropped the car off. The tech asked me if I ever ran 87. Said, nope, always run 93. His second question was, what brand of gas? I couldn't remember, but I thought I've run straight Mobil since I got the car. His reply, oh, you know what's funny? None of these cars seem to like Mobil gas, it causes all kinds of problems! As soon as he said that, it came to me clear as day that my last fill up was at a Citgo. I didn't correct him because I figured he would assume I was lying. So im sure whatever brand I said, he was going to give me the same line. Either way, they kept the car overnight.

Wednesday I get a call from the service manager:

"We did some minor work to your car and reset the computer."
Well, you drove it right, did you fix it?
"Well, the tech said he did feel an improvement."
So in other words, you didn't fix it.
"I called Subaru and they insisted that you had bad gas."
Did you tell Subaru I've been through 3 tanks of gas at minimum?
"Yes, but they insisted I drain your tank and refuel it, so I did... so take it out and call me if that didn't fix the problem."

Well, as if you couldn't guess, theres NO difference what so ever. I'll run it to half a tank then bring it back again.

Trust me, Im not knocking your choice of the auto. Considering this is my commuter also, I was going to go with an auto, but I took out an '07 and wasn't impressed. Then I took out an '06 manual and it was like a rocket. I made the assumption that was the difference between tranny's and opted for the manual '07 which I now know was a mistake.

The '06 5 spd auto they gave me had excellent acceleration. If the '07 auto pulled like the '06, I would have went auto no doubt.

Im telling you, I compared both auto and manual tranny 06's and 07's now and the 06's clearly boost a lot sooner, even with the Si-Nanny in Sport Sharp. Unless, their auto 07 is also problematic. It doesn't make sense, you even said all factors point to the 07's putting out more.

[HokieBird]

Re: My POS Subaru, round 2.

Call a subaru rep if they try to claim it was bad gas. You can cite case #989441. Someone on the Legacy board posted that number when they reported their stutter for an 07 Spec B.

Subaru generally trys to play it off as turbo lag or saying no one else has the problem.