I found a 2009 Ralliart at my local dealer. It has a few issues, but the big thing is that in the maintenance records there is nothing about a transmission fluid change in the last 50k miles that the previous owner has had it. The car now has just under 140k miles. I took it for a test drive and it seems to be shifting just fine. The transmission seems to hold in gear longer than I would have expected once I let off the throttle. Do I need to avoid this car like the plague? Or if I do a fluid change now I should be ok?

 

Depends on the price. A new OEM clutch assembly runs over 2k. A new mechatronic runs over 2k...so that's 4 grand in parts, not counting any labor....and then there's the fork magnet.. So unless the car is exceptional, and or super cheap (near free), I would run far away unless you can somehow determine the car has had proper maint done.

 

My Ralliart has had fluid and filter changes ever 50k and is still going strong at 144k mi. The biggest issue with the SST is that there's a non-serviceable filter inside the housing that clogs with worn clutch material before it gets filtered by the external/serviceable filter. The entire SST is flawed by design.

Driven hard or with power upgrades and they will all fail eventually. There are lots of ralliarts out there with less than half those miles so I'd keep looking unless you're planning on building the car up anyway and an SST build (not stock rebuild) is in the plans.

I'm thrilled my RA has lasted 144k with a Razorlab base tune but when the SST goes, it'll be a part-out or possibly a 5MT swap (even though it's a huge project, I'd love to have a 5MT, big turbo, AWD Sportback!)

 

Thanks for the feedback guys. The RA is already gone from the dealership. The ACD pump was also bad, so I ended up passing on it. Saving my pennies and hoping to pick something up this spring when my tax return comes in.

 

Idk what your budget is, and I'm not saying this to make light of or make fun of whatever your financial situation is- BUT, in MY opinion, buying a car with an SST trans is probably not the greatest idea given that you're talking about saving up just to buy a car. The SST can fail at any time without a moments notice and leave with a HEFTY repair bill, just a freshly rebuilt trans is ~$5000. More if you have to pay someone for install. On top of the routine maintenance being much more expensive than a typical auto trans vehicle.

If an EvoX GSR is out of budget, I would suggest finding a decent Evo8. If that's still out of budget, maybe a civic SI of whatever generation you can afford (9th gen is really good, and can be had for around $10k)...?