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09 WRX Engine Failures

88K views 348 replies 83 participants last post by  SlimJim8804 
#1 ·
#211 ·
15k and all is clear but I have a 10/08 build date so I am supposed to be in the clear, cant say at the back of my mind I don’t occasionally think about it, like is it the last one before the change or the first after? Then I pull away from the house, hit the canyon and start thinking about the next corner...
 
#212 ·
Engine failures are probably a lot less common they seem from the forum. This forum has how many members with 2009s? A few thousand? Even a one percent failure rate will seem like a lot of cars.

I conduct a car reliability survey, and have found that engine failures are hardly ever common, even when they seem common on forums.

25 owners of the 2009 have been participating in the survey. Of these, only one has had an engine failure (engine spun a bearing and threw a rod at 5,300 miles). One more than we usually see with a car this new, but still far from common.

We'll be updating results next week to reflect this and another reported repair. Current results for the WRX always here:

Subaru Impreza / WRX reliability comparisons

The more owners participate, the better the information we can provide.
 
#214 ·
Good to know. Still, I wonder how common.

When I first started the survey, I wanted to ask people for build dates because problems are often localized like this. But then I realized that too few people know their build date or would take the time to check it. So I asked for month purchased to get a rough approximation.

At this point I don't have nearly enough 2009s signed up to split the group by build date anyway.

But has a poll ever been conducted here, to get a rough idea of the percentages?
 
#216 · (Edited)
Well, that's certainly a lot of cars.

If we assume that one in ten owners saw the thread, which might make sense for WRX owners since they tend to visit forums regardless, and that half of all Imprezas sold those months were the WRX...perhaps about a 25% failure rate. Which would be extremely high.

Failure rates this high usually don't happen because any problem this likely should get caught during development.

Hopefully Subaru will do the right thing and greatly increase the warranty on the engines of the affected cars. I assume that it's somehow not cost-effective to recall and fix them. Though if the failure rate is anywhere near 25%, you'd think it would be.

Has anyone asked the dealer to install the updated parts or whatever it takes to prevent this?
 
#217 ·
A couple weeks ago I alluded to the same issues with the failure rates of '09s with the magical build date over at nasioc. There are some data on how many have the build date and how many have failed. I actually did a quick analysis in SAS just to satisfy my curiosity since I own one. If I remember correctly the median mileage of failure was around 4,200 (mean was about 5,000....but that really isn't relevant given the distribution). I played around with fitting the data to distributions via MLE and found a lognormal to be about the best (just visually). With some back-of-the-envelope calculations I would say one should be in the clear after about 10,000 miles. That is, about 95% would fail before this value given the distribution and parameters I fit.

The above certainly isn't a rigorous analysis and I don't trust the data. In fact, there are inherent biases built into the data. One can easily argue that those on a forum may drive their cars harder than the general population leading to a higher failure rate. It was just something I did for entertainment purposes so you can take it with a grain of salt. Probably would have shared it on nasioc too...but they flame you for everything over there, including making valid points. :screwy:
 
#218 · (Edited)
Interesting analysis. I wouldn't be so concerned about how the cars were driven. Many owners here are also going to drive them hard. And you want a sample of people who drive a car like you do.

The number of cars with well over 10,000 miles might be a bit of a concern, but since they're already about a year old it won't be a concern for long if it still is currently. Adjusting for the current mileage distribution in the population would probably only stretch that tail out a bit.

Reminds me of the discussions of IMS failures in the Boxster and the insufficiently fastened screw inside a batch of Passat 3.6s. The likelihood of failure in all of these cases definitely goes down as the miles accumulate.

In all three cases the manufacturer has opted to let the engines fail rather than pre-emptively fix them.
 
#219 ·
Yeah, as I think you know you just can't do stats the way you guys are saying. Start with a survey that people with both failed and unfailed motors are equally likely to respond and use all demographics.

The problem with fitting a curve is that the error on the upper end is much larger if not many people have had the car long enough. Extrapolating from that based on the variance in the distribution is way beyond tenuous. If the curve is just based on the number of failure reports and not the actual proportion of cars with that many miles having failures it is way worse.
 
#220 ·
Yep, I'm well aware of the multitude of problems of the data since I am a statistician by training. The data coming off a forum are inherently biased just by who is responding, e.g. most likely younger than the population of owners and those younger drivers probably push the car harder. Also, if owners of these cars know about the potential problem the may drive the car differently. The list of problems with the data go on and on (like most data sets).

But you do make a very good point about how many cars haven't hit the higher mileage. Last time I checked mine is around 4,000 miles 15 months after the build date and I'll bet there are many others that are low mileage so the problem may be bigger than the data let us believe. However, I don't think it is as big of a deal most people are making of it. Subaru's willing to fix all of these motors with no questions asked is a sign they are handling it correctly. Also, if you have one of these build dates it has 5 years for a problem to develop.
 
#221 ·
A few months ago I starting inviting Porsche Boxster owners to participate in TrueDelta's Car Reliability Survey to get a better idea of how common engine failures are in those cars due to a known problem with the IMS.

The way I handle the sampling issue is that people sign up and then continuously participate. Anything that happened in the months before they signed up isn't included in the analysis. This and some other aspects of the research design have kept whatever might have motivated people to participate from distorting the results.

I'm not aware of any other reliability survey with a prospective longitudinal design, so the others have to (or at least should) worry a great deal about non-response bias.

It's still not perfect, but the quality of the results have greatly exceeded my expectations. The major limitation hasn't been the nature of the sample but the size of it. Unless a problem is very, very common, it'll take a relatively large sample size to measure its frequency with any precision.
 
#223 · (Edited)
One thing to keep in mind is that engine failures are very rare these days. I process over 1,000 repair reports a month, and see hardly any engine failures in cars with less than 100,000, even 125,000 miles on them.

Electrical stuff? This and that sensor? Tons of that. But mechanical failures--very, very few.

So if over 100 people have reported an engine failure, and they're all within a two-month build window, this is clearly unusually bad. Even if the failure rate is somehow only 10%--and with 100+ reports on a forum out of a population of three to four thousand cars it's at least this high--it would be crazy high by current standards.

Not that anyone here is arguing otherwise.
 
#227 ·
Although we are a biased sample of enthusiasts with an additional bias of having online access and the wits to find this forum, since most of us are younger than Volvo drivers (excepting me) , I would guess this bias is not as fatal since I believe most WRX drivers drive it hard occasionally.

BUT I have read at least one review of 09 that suggested that the factory ECU strategy of a lean boost is dangerous.

I'm pretty good friends with a Subie master mechanic and he told me they strengthened the bearings substantially on my second motor. I imagine they continued this for 10 models et al. Maybe they just put some STI meat on them since I imagine it's all interchangeable now...

Mine died right after hitting the rev limiter in 2nd - wasn't planning on it but it was a tight onramp with a few semis heading my way :)
 
#241 ·
Meh, think that's all the fancy auto clutch paddle shift malarky. Wouldn't be buying that gizmo anyhow. 5MT does the job.

Bah but I love Scoobys. Evos just leave me cold. Anyways, I'll not degenerate this thread into a rant.

Best of luck to the folks out there with failed engines. Let's hope that the rest of us will see 6 digit milages on the 08+ WRX & STi with only one block. Time will tell.
 
#242 ·
i have an 08 with 50,000 on it.
I'm pretty convinced its impossible to blow it up. haha.
have towed 1800lbs over vail pass.
my car is always loaded. abused? maybe... used? yes.
mountain driving and denver driving. dirt roads 35% of the time.
No problems from subaru drivetrain. I love it. more beef cake than BMWs, but for different purposes as well.
AWD for light duty wheelin/campin... and of course SNOW!
Will plow through a foot of snow easy. but don't get stuck.

EXCEPT: front and rear bumpers fall off, all the plastic wheel wells fall off creating issues. too many computer controlled functions such as throttle & the "norm" electronics for these days. unnecessary...

The 08 WRX is one running machine.
I hate cars, I want a Cummins... But that's what work is for... Burnin DESIEL!

So yeah the body sucks. The lights gather moisture. I'm pretty sure GM sponsored subaru for plastic.

mods:
rear muffler delete. intake. nothin good.
hitch, rack, lights. stereo. (MY STEREO did go out at 40k at -15f)
And I have crashed it several times. once on ice, and also through a barbed wire fence in the middle of wyoming (recent **** :mad: )
 
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