The current rumor is that this is an issue with some bad piston rings that a manufacturer supplied to Subaru.

While this seems to be a potential bad PR event for Subaru I think they are handling it very well by stopping sales of known bad cars, and notifying/recalling ones already on the road and fixing them. That's a pretty big thing to do since it can't be cheap to be replacing all of these engine blocks.

Most likely the affected cars will at least get entirely new short blocks since it's probably cheaper and faster to do that then replace just the rings, they may even just get whole new long blocks.

 

It's like buying a new car to receive a used on in return! I don't trust a lot mech's esp. from the dealership!

 

oo doesn't that just sting. looks like the comptetion isn't doing that great so far.

 

On the bright side, Subaru seems to be taking drastic steps to address the problem as quickly as possible. Has Mitsubishi addressed (or even admitted) the burning clutches, hard shifting, surging, stalling, hard starting, and falling apart seats on the Evo yet? Don't be so quick to cast the first stone...

 

That's a good point. It's not often a company will stand up and admit its faults, much less an automobile company.

I do believe a lot of STI owners are panicking at the moment. I think it would be better to have a "wait and see" attitude for now, but that's just me. I don't own a Scoob. Either way, I hope our STI brothers get their problems resolved to their satisfaction.

 

+1.

So far this seems to only affect a very limited number of cars and the issue has only been in the overseas market so far.

Subaru really is going a bit overboard with fixing this problem but I do have to applaud them for taking this big of a step instead of waiting for engines to fail and then quietly covering them under warranty.

I also agree that a lot of STi owners are panicking when most of them have cars that are not affected by this.

 

Totally agree with you here. Resale would take a big hit

 

There does seem to be some panicky folks on the '08 section of IWSTI. It looks like most of the affected cars were still on the lot, only a few of the owners on IWSTI have indicated they have one that falls in the range. I hear all kinds of speculation as to what the real problem is, who knows what it really turns out to be. Subaru is scrambling, for sure, "give 'em all extended warranties! yeah!" . It also seems that it's not specific to the STI, it's any of the Subarus that has a 2.5L turbo. Whoops.

Methinks I'll keep my current ride, grab some popcorn and wait to see how it all shakes out. I've no real plans to buy either a first year new style STI or Evo, I'm content to let other folks work out the bugs .

 

Honestly, I'd be surprised if it affects the resale negatively. I've had cars in the past that had new engines put in under warranty, and it never once made the value go down. Bumped it up in at least one case, but never down. These are not cars with serial numbered components where it all has to match. Heck, I don't even see a real reason the seller needs to disclose the replacement engine, though if I were the seller I would if it were new enough to brag about.